August is a month of many milestones for me. This year Curtis and I celebrate five years of marriage. And it is also the tenth anniversary of my move to California. It's hard to disentangle the two things because moving here is how I met Curtis, and meeting Curtis is the reason why I've stayed. Interview Trip, April 2008 Growing up in Oregon, I never ever ever thought I'd become a dreaded Californian. Those were the shallow people, the people who drove too fast, the people who were raising prices in our lovely state. There was so much pride in being an Oregonian, though truthfully I didn't have any other points of comparison. In the last semester of college, I got the itch to get away. My thesis adviser forwarded me an announcement for a new program called City Hall Fellows , with sites in Houston and San Francisco. I had never spent time in either place, but I applied to both anyway. By some miracle I was accepted for a placement in San Francisco, and moved here ...