While the drama had been brewing with Emmett, I'd been in touch with a my longtime friend Michael in San Francisco. He and I had met on an inbound MUNI train years earlier, and after a couple romps in the hay we both came to the realization that we both carried too much baggage that didn't match and we'd probably be better off as friends than lovers. When I'd made the decision it was time to return to Bagdad By The Bay, he suggested I move in with him until I found a place of my own. "I have big house all to myself. You'd have your own room downstairs and I'd be glad to have the company."
Michael lived out in the Avenues. Not my first choice of where in the city I'd ever want to live, but his offer to crash there until I found work and got a place of my own was too good to pass up. So, the first weekend in December, Michael flew down (to drive my car while I drove the rental truck) to Tucson and helped me pack up, load the truck and get out of town.
As I recall, a job arrived pretty quickly, even though I wasn't able to return to the firm I'd worked for the previous eight years. I still wasn't able to transition into PC support, but a job's a job and since I had the architectural and AutoCAD skillz, any port in a storm, y'know?
Unfortunately, instead of staying put at that prestigious national firm, when the opportunity arose for me to go elsewhere and actually get my foot in the door doing computer support work, I jumped on it.
While I prided myself on my PC knowledge, I soon found out I was in over my head. I knew the ins-and-outs of Microsoft Word, but not to the degree required by a Law Firm. Additionally it was a whole new world for me to be dealing with end users, many of whom were difficult at best and—being a Law Firm—hellspawn at worst. I got minimal support from the two other people on the Help Desk and next to none from my supervisor. I was miserable.
In one of those odd twists of fate, however, one day while returning from lunch, I ran into a guy I'd worked with in Phoenix twelve years earlier. I knew Fred had relocated to San Francisco, but lost touch with him shortly after he left the firm where we both worked.
Fred now had his own business. We chatted briefly and I told him of my employment woes. "I'm looking for people," he said. "Here's my card. Come by next week and we'll see if we can come to a mutually beneficial agreement."
And thus began two years of employment hell that was to send me back to Arizona again.
(To be continued…)