Living in San Francisco, loving MarketWatch

If you want to work at MarketWatch, you better make sure you like babies.

Almost everyone here has them, and there’s even a large collage in the kitchen dedicated to cute baby pictures. People take them to sports practices and doctors’ appointments. They get sick. They do cute things. And you have to share these stories and all relevant pictures and videos. It’s important.

Also, you must like World Cup soccer, or at least not dislike it out loudly. Someone here has a vuvuzela and once he honked it while I was one the phone with an analyst. I said to the analyst, “Sorry about that,” and the analyst said, “No problem.” I think it brought us closer.

In my free time, I think of excuses to give homeless people about why I can’t give them money. I’m trying to find the perfect balance of something believable and something nice. I always say I don’t have money, but I think I can do better than that.

Also in my free time, I go to Big Sur, which is a majestic stretch of coastline that is all misty and peaceful. The cute boy I went with said I was too high-energy for Big Sur and could I please tone it down, and chilll out and stop asking so many questions. But I think Big Sur and I got along just fine. I even lost my phone in Big Sur, and what did Big Sur do? Big Sur gave it back the next day. That’s love.

Speaking of love, I love the parking situation here … because it’s so challenging that it will make every other parking situation in my life seem like a breeze. I’ll admit, I didn’t love the $400 towing ticket I got in the first week, but I loved signing that receipt, “Unhappy.” I had to make the signature slightly illegable so the lady wouldn’t question me about it.

After you get your car out of impound, the good thing about San Francisco is you can do some shopping without having to go into stores. Because they all have windows! With lots of displays!! I dig the shops. One of them sells meat for Middle Eastern dishes and another one carries only stuff for people with foot fetishes. I’m waiting for friend to join me before I go in. I mean, you can’t just go marching into foot-fetish stores all alone, even if it is just for curiosity’s sake.

If you are wondering what the internship is like, it’s fun … and very busy. I’ve been covering Canadian stocks and have learned that you don’t even have talk in that Minnesota-type accent to do that. All you have to know is that gold and oil are very important to Canada’s economy. But ice hockey, not so much.

I’ve also been closing a column on U.S. financials stocks and doing a daily column called “Stocks to Watch,” which previews company’s with expected earings reports. I wrote a personal finance story on dividends that was “most popular” one day, and I’m working on a few feature stories on uranium, telecommunicaitons and gold.

I type a lot of percent signs each day — probably 50 but I’ll have to count the exact number tomorrow. I’ll update in the next post. Thumbs up, Marketwatch.