Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

Last week was one of those not-quite-regular-enough weeks of gorgeous warm sunshine in San Francisco. I had shorts on all the time, was motivated to get some miles in on my bike on those bright mornings, and continued settling back into my normal schedule. 

Notwithstanding what I wrote last week about spring cleaning, I have been sprucing a few things up, starting with the website. I have been meaning to do this for a while (and was further prompted by seeing how a dharma sister’s site was laid out), but it was still a little nerve-wracking to be changing the formatting around and trying to get things lined up the way I wanted them. I think about three times as many people read the daily emails as visit the site, so I am not sure how much you have noticed – except maybe the change in font and colour (I would have gone for different ones, but that would have required another $100 a year subscription, so I let it go). Please do send any comments my way if you have some.

More momentously, our recent housing search has paid off. I followed the same playbook as I did three years ago: scanning the listings for some time to get a sense of the market, checking in with my partner as to which options lined up with our criteria, and waiting for a special place to come along. The outcome had a very similar timing as well:  I saw a new listing on Friday, we agreed it was a great fit, made an appointment to view it on Saturday (at the cost of postponing the roam I had lined up), applied the same evening, and signed all the paperwork after getting approval on Monday. I had my sitting group scheduled for 11:00 as we were waiting for the approval to come through, and found it helpful to sit for a while without being on tenterhooks. When I came out of the meeting, we were ready to go. We will move in during June, so I will have to start getting organised for that.

We still managed to get a group with many of my favourite regulars together for the rescheduled roam on Sunday afternoon, enjoying the sunny end of the city as the fog rolled in over the western half. A relaxed walk around the transformations of Mission Bay, included the newly opened park at China Basin and McCovey Cove, where we sat in view of the big screen showing action replays from the ballgame across the creek. Not as gripping as the goings-on as the season wraps up in England, if you ask me.