After my Friday evening experience with a flat tire, my weekend improved immeasurably. And so far, the work week has treated me well also. For once, I'm not complaining about the lack of work. The life of a consultant is feast or famine - either you're working on an urgent project, in which case everything else falls by the wayside, or, in between times, you're not assigned to any project and your time is more or less yours to use as you see fit. I'm not sure that my employers include "shopping" as an approved activity for these periods, but that's what I've indulged myself in at length this week - books, no less than three pairs of shorts (I can finally lay my raggy, black Adidas workout shorts to rest!) and some new clothes for my Summer trip.

So it goes without saying that my mood has been as light as air, although allergies have kept my energy levels in the doldrums. Each day, I've been coming home to spectacular cloudscapes. The weather has been unsettled, which provides for an ever- changing sky. How could I not be happy here?

Another gorgeous evening sky

Amidst my own contentment, and the realization of the luck I've benefited from, it's often hard to think about others who don't have it so lucky. Yet my recent move, and the problems I faced in finding a nice apartment I can afford, has made me increasingly aware of what an odd place San Francisco is developing into. It truly is becoming a town where only the middle class can afford to live. I can't imagine how people who don't have a good professional job can afford to live here.

This growing realization has had at least one decided effect on me - I now tip fairly lavishly in coffee bars. Yeah, it's not much, but for those people who work there, it can make a difference, I hope. Before this, I'd always resented the recent expectation that you should tip in coffee shops. I always felt that it came from greed. But now I know differently - people with per-hour jobs like that can barely afford to live in this city!

I'm finding too that my attitude towards gentrification is changing. San Francisco has always had a large and colorful "alternative" population. I took the common resentment of gentrification from this population to be somehow an incomprehensible preference for living in squalor. But now I'm seeing that as an incredibly naive viewpoint. The reason that so many people hate gentrification is that it drives out all but the wealthy. The dot-com gold-rush is making it possible for legions of twenty- and thirty-somethings to pay exorbitant rates for housing, which is pricing the less lucky out of the city entirely.

Just today, I came across an article in the New York Times about the lives of janitors in Silicon Valley. It's pretty appaling that the wealthy technology companies are taking advantage of illegal labor and hence rock-bottom labor costs merely to keep their floors clean. The Bay Area used to be a place of liberal conscience - apparently no more.