Skipping Town

It's a new year--and a new blog. Starting today, I’ll taking most of my blogging elsewhere: to http://saclights.com/blog/MargoOL . SacLights is a new Sacramento entertainment and lifestyle website published by The Sacramento Bee . I’ll be writing a blog called “Desperately Seeking Sacramento,” where I’ll more or less continue writing about what I always write about here on Skipping Town: exploring Sacramento and trying to figure out what life looks like here. It’s an exciting opportunity to be a little more aggressive in my search to understand the “real” Sacramento, and I hope you’ll visit my blog, leave comments, etc. I’ll still be posting occasionally to Skipping Town, but my Sacramento musings will all be on “Desperately Seeking Sacramento” now. Happy reading!

I haven’t kept very close track of the books I’ve read this year; that will change in 2008. Fortunately, I kept a partial list of books I read during my trips in Spain, and I have a bookshelf-full here to jog my memory. Here’s what I read in 2007, more or less: Books Read While Waiting to Return to Spain After My Visa “Exile”: 1. Babel Tower—A.S. Byatt 2. The Sex Lives of Cannibals—J. Maarten Troost 3. The Secret Life of Salvador Dali—Salvador Dali Books Read in Europe: 4. Sister Carrie—Theodore Dreiser 5. Perfume—Patrick Suskind 6. Notes on a Scandal—Zoe Heller 7. The Good German—Joseph Kanon 8. Winter in Madrid—C.J. Sansom (Madrid) 9. Exit into History—Eva Hoffman (Romania) 10. Gaudi—Gijs Van Hensbergen 11. City of Falling Angels—John Berendt (read after Venice) 12. The Country Girls trilogy—Edna O’Brien (Galway and Edinburgh) 13. The Sea—John Banville (Galway) 14. That They May Face the Rising Sun—John McGahern (Galway) 15. Dracula—Bram Stoker (read in preparation for Romania) 16. A...

This weekend, in pursuit of some holiday spirit, Andrew and I went to the Mondavi Center, a wonderful performing arts venue in Davis, to see the a capella ensemble Chanticleer. Owned by the Mondavis of wine fame, the center hosts performances in theatre, dance, and music as well as film screenings and lectures. It was our first time there, and we were duly impressed: the venue itself is modern and airy, with a large auditorium and pleasant, window-encased lobby atrium, and the lineup from 2007 and for 2008 almost (almost) rivals what we would have found at the (much-missed) BAM. The Merce Cunningham Dance Company is among the upcoming dance entries; Azar Nafisi and Seymour Hersh spoke in 2007. I’m not sure if the Mondavi Center is up to hosting a performance from, say, the Ballet Preljocaj, led by the French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj, which Andrew and I saw at BAM a couple of years ago and which featured, among much other strangeness, dancers with wine glasses affixed to their li...

It’s official: I’ve changed my name. After spending the morning visiting the Social Security Office and the DMV, I’ve both changed my name and switched my driver’s license from New York to California. I’ve registered to vote out here as well. It was time-consuming to drive between the two offices (especially because—not surprisingly—I got hideously lost), but ultimately far less painful than my DMV experiences in NYC. In fact, I walked in at 11:00am, got a number, and was called immediately: no need to line up outside the office two hours before it opened. You might argue that this makes Sacramento superior to NYC. In this instance, I suppose you’d be right. Well, perhaps not: California’s state-changing process required me to take a written driver’s exam of 36 questions. I passed. But if I hadn’t, it would have been really annoying. So I’m now officially my new married self, though my credit cards, passport, and other sundry items still have my “maiden” name. I've made the name-ch...

Friday night, we nearly had a repeat experience of our hideous incarceration with the Wyndham timeshare presentation. Earlier in the week, Andrew called me from work and said, “I’ve done something you’re not going to like.” He’d gotten a phone call from a salesperson from the Sacramento Kings—the local NBA team, for anyone who, like me, drew a blank at the name—offering him free tickets to Friday’s game in order to learn more about season ticket packages. Andrew’s love of any sporting event led him to momentarily forget the consequences from the last time we’d accepted a “free” offer, and so we found ourselves heading to Arco Arena for a game against the Clippers. During the second quarter, a man in a suit introduced himself, offered Andrew a folder of information about ticket packages, and left. That was it. Whew. This weekend, we also had a Sacramento breakthrough: we used public transportation, including the Sacramento light rail, and Amtrak train, and an Amtrak bus, to get ourselve...

A review I wrote of the Nisbet Plantation, where Andrew and I spent our honeymoon, was just published on a new travel website called Vezeo, along with a couple of pictures I took. Check it out! http://www.vezeo.com/2007/12/10/a-sophisticated-honeymoon-at-the-nisbet-plantation/#more-447

I feel like I've somehow slipped into the wrong season. Today, the sun is shining, the sky is blue, the still-red leaves are sparkling on the tree-lined streets of our neighborhood--it's a perfect October day, warm enough for just a sweater if I decide to head out for a walk. The Northeast, meanwhile, has been pounded with snow, truly December-like; hats and gloves and scarves and boots are--I imagine--piled beside front doors, school delays are being hoped for, and lighted Christmas trees are framed in frosty windows. Ah, the Northeast. I miss the winter. I miss walking through New York on cold December days, wearing my very silly fur-lined, ear-flapped hat, tucking my hair around my neck, beneath my scarf, for extra warmth. I miss the overabundance of radiator heat in my old Brooklyn apartment, which turned the rooms into cozy havens, warm protection from the icy wind outside. I miss seeing people toting armsful of shopping bags on the subway; the Christmas tree at Rockefelle...

Today, our doorbell rang, and when I answered the door, I was greeted by a policeman holding a photograph of a fugitive. "Do you know this man?" he asked. "He's wanted by the police and gave this house as his address." I studied the picture but, not surprisingly, did not recognize the fugitive. "Sorry for disturbing you," the policeman said. This incident would be unremarkable except for one thing: this is the second time that I've been confronted by policemen seeking a fugitive who'd given my apartment as his address. Long-time blog readers will remember that I was in Barcelona the first time this happened and had to give a lengthy statement to the Spanish police about who I was, who I rented the apartment from, who'd lived in the apartment before me, what I was doing in Spain--all in Spanish. I consider that the highlight of my brief Spanish-language endeavors. And now, here in Sacramento--a world away in more ways than one--a fugitive ha...

Last night, Andrew and I attended our first Sacramento event: the Best of Sacramento party, a benefit for the March of Dimes put on by Sacramento Magazine . We joined the crowds at the convention center and were given a wine glass, plate, and tote bag, then headed inside, where 300+ winners of the magazines annual “best of” competition plied their wares—which included excellent food, wines, desserts, music, shops, and services. We had Indian food; Greek food; Italian food; sushi. We had tiramisu and petit fours. We had some delicious wines, and local beer. Our hands-down favorite: the extensive cheese selections elaborately presented by The Firehouse Restaurant. The dance floor was packed by that time, but Andrew and I were content to look on, enjoying our cheese from the sidelines. There are few things more enjoyable—no matter where in the world we happen to find ourselves—than a cheese plate. Newcomers as we are, watching Sacramentoans in action was as captivating as pursuing the foo...

On January 10, 2008, or thereabouts, all of our belongings will be joining us here in Sacramento. Unbelievable! We’ve found a moving solution that will, hopefully, work out; and we’ll be packing up our wedding gifts and repacking all the other boxes in the attic after Christmas, in preparation for the move. Among the things that will be arriving in a few short weeks are my books—the many, many boxes of them that have remained sealed since I left New York. The kitchen things I didn’t throw away or sell will arrive as well; I have very little recollection of what I actually saved. Will my blue bowl be in one of the boxes, or did I leave it by the curb? Did I keep or pitch my soup ladle? Blankets; lamps; my alarm clock—I know they’re packed away, somewhere, among many other things I can’t even remember owning. It will be strange discovering all of these things again. They’re relics from a different life—my New York life, my single life. I’ve gone through two hefty rounds of belongings sin...

We did it: we found a Wii game I like for more than five minutes! It’s Guitar Hero III, and it is incredibly fun. After several days of experimentation, we've entered the Medium level, fumbling through songs including "Barracuda" and "Slow Ride." We’re making progress, definitely getting better; and it is far from the boring, exploratory drudgery that seem to weigh down all the other games I’ve tried. Hopes are high that this is the start of a renewed enjoyment of the Wii, and a glowing review in the Times of the new Mario Galaxy gives me hope that there just may be a second game out there for me as well...

It was our first Thanksgiving together—not the first we’d ever spent together (we spent a Thanksgiving together in Barcelona in 2005), but the first Thanksgiving for which we cooked an entire meal ourselves. The fact that we just returned from the East Coast wedding festivities three weeks ago prompted us to spend the holiday this year in Sacramento rather than fly cross-country yet again. Just because we weren’t with our families, however, didn’t mean we had to do without the traditional feast; so we set out to prepare it ourselves. The bulk of our kitchen things are still in Pennsylvania, but over the past few trips we’d managed to squirrel away quite a few items, and with the purchase of a few extra necessities (a turkey platter, a carving set, a gravy boat), we were ready to cook Thanksgiving dinner. We bought the smallest turkey we could find (still twelve pounds), and everything we needed to make butternut squash, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, gravy, cranberry/pumpk...

We made it out! We’re free! I can hear traffic outside my window; there are non-chain stores and restaurants nearby; there was a crazy lady behind me in line at Target yesterday. Even more importantly, I can now walk from room to room —a studio apartment would be no problem if NYC was right outside the door, but a studio apartment in a suburban apartment complex was, to put it mildly, not really tenable. We now have a living room, a dining room, a kitchen, a bathroom, a bedroom, and an office alcove—as well as a large storage room and a walk in closet. It’s a huge apartment, and beautiful—lots of light, beautiful details, great wood floors. Pure charm. The bathroom and kitchen also have “charm,” in the form of the following: only one electrical outlet in the kitchen; no garbage disposal; and separate hot-and-cold faucets in an ancient sink in the bathroom. The character of the apartment makes up for these deficits in modernization, of course, and we’ve made the rooms pleasant and fully...

We hadn’t planned to take a honeymoon. Having spent the last year or so traveling, we decided we weren’t hurting for vacations and that we’d wait and plan a big trip once Andrew had been at his job a little longer. But it turned out that he was given two weeks off for the wedding—so we decided a honeymoon was in order. Our plans started small—spending a few days in New Hampshire—but quickly grew larger. We went to a bookstore one night to peruse guidebooks for Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico, Puerto Rico. Fabulous as all of those destinations sounded, they didn’t say honeymoon . The Caribbean did. We chose Nevis, a tiny island that’s part of the Dutch Antilles, with a population of around 10,000. Far from touristy, it’s a true tropical paradise; wild goats, sheep, and pigs wander about, and there are “monkey crossing” signs along the roads. Getting there required a long series of flights (Pittsburgh-Charlotte-St. Maarten-Nevis), with the final flight to Nevis on an old, tiny propeller plane...

It was exactly what we wanted, and much more than we expected—that’s the only way I can describe our wedding. It’s perhaps too soon to write about it; it doesn’t seem possible that our wedding was actually our wedding. It also doesn’t seem possible that it was only a little over a week ago—it was all such a whirlwind. The day of the wedding someone said (or perhaps I said) that the day would be like a runaway train—once it started, there’d be no stopping it; anything that hadn’t been done would just have to remain undone. And it was very much that way. Early in the morning, after the bridesmaids’ hair appointments, we began setting up for the ceremony and reception. Determined not to see Andrew until the ceremony, he, the groomsmen, and assorted spouses handled the ceremony room; the bridesmaids and I handled the reception room. I was pleased that the hundreds of pinecones Andrew and I had shipped from California added the perfect fall touch to the tables. Everything looked splendid, t...

After a manic gathering of boxes and bags and suitcases and cookie trays, we managed to get ourselves to The Summit on Friday afternoon. There was just enough time to unload everything into our rooms before we had to get dressed, speed through the rehearsal, and head to the rehearsal dinner. The dinner was held at Caileigh’s, a restaurant in Uniontown inside a beautiful historic home. The dinner was organized around a Spanish theme—tapas-style appetizers, Spanish wine, and a steak/shrimp dinner. The tables were named after Spanish cities. The dinner was lovely, and the perfect kick-off to the weekend—I had the sense the whole time that we were embarking on a kind of wedding adventure, and that this was the first big piece of it. My acceptance into the Littell family was solidified during Andrew’s father’s toast, when he bestowed on me a beloved Red Sox baseball cap—how far Andrew and I have come since those very first Yankees games he took me to! Gathering back at The Summit’s bar was ...

On the Thursday before the wedding, after a big gathering at the Orlando house, Andrew, Molly, Ian, Katherine, Barbra, Chris, and I went to Lynn’s for a beer. It’s a great little place, but it doesn’t see a lot of new faces; every head turned when our group walked in, not losing much interest even when we were settled at a table. We ordered drinks and settled in to enjoy the night’s entertainment—a one-man band. Ah, Connellsville. You never know what to expect when you visit a place like Lynn’s. In this case, it was a true spectacle: a man singing, playing guitar, and playing drums simultaneously, using his right hand to both strum the guitar and hold his drumstick. Ian began craning his neck, explaining later he was trying to identify the source of a cowbell. A wild-haired woman materialized at his ear. “You lookin’ for the cowbell?” she asked in a low voice. “Look at his foot.” Indeed, there it was. Our bill was delivered; it was $14, for 7 beers. Our amazement at the low cost drew y...

Andrew and I returned to Pennsylvania on Saturday, October 27, to begin preparing for the big day. Foolishly, we thought we’d spend much of the time packing up our voluminous belongings that keep building in the attic to prepare for the big move West in the next couple of months; little did we know how much wedding work remained to be done. Really, for being more or less organized and staying more or less on top of things over the past few months, the sheer amount of things to do was staggering. Of course, a lot of the work was self-inflicted—like the multi-step process that went into assembling all the little details, including the escort cards, cookie name labels, guest hospitality bags, favors, ceremony programs. It took a small village, gathered around the kitchen table, to get it all done. But it was all worthwhile—things turned out beautifully. My birthday fell amidst all the craziness; I was surprised anyone remembered it at all. Indeed, Andrew baked me a cake, seizing a rare mi...

So much to catch up on! It’s been a whirlwind two weeks, and now, back to real life, it’s hard to believe it’s all over—the planning, the wedding, the honeymoon. All of these months of details and ideas and errands led up to an absolutely perfect event. On to married life now. My husband (!!) and I are both back at work; and we’ll move this week to our new apartment. In the meantime, I’ll work on catching up on my blog…

I came across this Letter to the Editor in the Times yesterday, and wanted to share it. As the writer says, this event is absurd in a way that seems somehow particularly California. Here's the letter, copied from the Times website: To the Editor: It was evening of the third day of fires whipped by the infamous Santa Ana winds. It felt like sunset on another planet as I saw a truck drive slowly by with a driver staring up at the palm tree in our front yard. Later, there was a knock on the door. I answered. It was the truck driver. He offered to buy the palm tree in our front yard. There was an eerie silence as I stood there in the orange smoky haze, ashes falling like snow on Mercury, and blinked two or maybe three times. By motivation, this had absolutely nothing to do with the fire — it just seemed like something that would happen in Southern California. As I quietly closed the door, I thought about Joan Didion; she would understand this. Tom Impelluso San Diego, Oct. 24, 2007

There's a secret menu at the In-N-Out Burger, the ubiquitous California fast-food chain. Andrew and I have been there a couple of times; and last time we noticed people eating things that we certainly hadn't seen on the very short menu board. I remembered reading somewhere about a secret menu--perhaps it was in a Calvin Trillin book, perhaps not--and a Google searched proved this to be true. There's a whole list of things you can order--provided you know enough to ask for them. Obviously, we must now visit In-N-Out and use our new knowledge. But for me, there's more to it than this; my intrigue extends past the idea that I can have an interesting meal. Andrew and I have been to In-N-Out--yet we've been missing out on the "real" experience. A whole world of In-N-Out was there, right in front of us, yet we couldn't see it; we were outsiders, not privy to the larger joys, the greater satisfactions. As I read through the secret menu that Andrew had printed...

Immersed as we are in the final two weeks of wedding preparations, I’d like to take this time to remind everyone involved—parents, groom, bridesmaids, groomsmen, and myself, the Bride—of their roles and responsibilities. To guide us is one of my favorite and most indispensable resources, which I found years ago at a thrift store: The Bride’s Book of Etiquette , published in 1948. First, I need to remember that since I will be 31 by the time we get married, I must not get carried away: “A Bride who is not quite the young girl she once was would do well to temper her wedding with an informal spirit. You may wear white and even a piece of old lace on your head, but you won't go in for a voluminous veil and a bevy of bridesmaids….As your Groom-to-be is probably marrying you, in part, for the grace and charm your added maturity has given you, it is never wise to let him down by girlish and kittenish display. You are not a middle-aged woman by any means, but you are not quite the jeune f...

We found a new home this week--in downtown ("downtown") Sacramento, on a lovely street in a popular neighborhood called Midtown. There are non-chain restaurants and shops nearby, an organic food co-op, and--best of all--lots of beautiful old Victorian homes, each one unique. Being in a city, even a small one, will be a relief after these months in bland, cookie-cutter suburbia. We love the apartment: huge, with wood floors throughout, lots of windows, and amazing leaded-glass cabinets along facing walls in the dining room. We have a private laundry room, a garage, and a little balcony/roof area. It has charm and character to spare--it will really be a home, especially when we have our things moved over! The landlords, an older couple from Brooklyn did a sneaky thing: someone else had been scheduled to see the apartment a day ahead of us; but after talking to Andrew, the wife called back and asked if we could come a half hour BEFORE the other appointment. I think she wanted to...

This weekend, we headed north to Reno and a little dose of history. Our destination: the Cal-Neva Resort in Lake Tahoe, a casino/hotel that was built in the 1920s and was owned by Frank Sinatra from 1960 to 1963. The Cal-Neva straddles the border between Nevada and California: in the ballroom, a painted line down the middle of the floor marks the state boundary; in the swimming pool, you can swim from Nevada to California. We’d come to the Cal-Neva to cross Reno off of our weekend trips list; and though we love, love, love Lake Tahoe, we need not return to Reno. Reno is a strange city. It’s nestled in the mountains with little around it, and the city’s sudden explosion of huge casinos, all-you-can-eat buffets, neon signs, and trashy entertainment is jarring and unsettling. Renoians, whether they’re wandering through the annual Italian festival (surprisingly large, we discovered) or dealing cards in a casino, have a distinctive look about them: weathered, jaded, cynical, eyes that have ...

Andrew and I spent this weekend in L.A., and, contrary to my expectations, I really liked it. It’s a giant—in our few short days there, we didn’t even begin to crack the surface—but the little we did see showed that my preconceptions about L.A. were wrong. Far from being filled with would-be celebrities, cookie-cutter model-types, and intimidation, the city seemed fun and eclectic, full of all the usual urban suspects—tourists, hipsters, families, creative types. I’m not sold on the idea of living in L.A.—the driving, clearly, is a deterrent. But from the passenger seat, there was very little not to like. Andrew had a business meeting Friday morning in Beverly Hills, so I set out to do a little window-shopping and people-watching on and around Rodeo Drive. It was a good introduction, made pleasant by a stop in a café for coffee and a croissant, a soccer match on the TV above the counter. (The stop was made even more pleasant when I was able to nip into the restroom to remove, and then ...

Maybe it was because my mind was fried after an intense few days of discussions about staying in California. Maybe it was because I’d been at home all day by myself and was just happy to hear a human voice. Whatever the case, when my cell phone rang and a man said, “Congratulations—you’ve won a trip for two to Las Vegas! All you have to do is come and pick it up, and you’ll just have to listen to a short presentation about vacation condos,” I said, “Great!” (Good thing I didn’t receive an email on this particular day from Nigerian royalty promising a million dollars if I’d only just send my bank account information. What kind of mood was I in??) “Are you serious?” Andrew said when I called to tell him we’d be heading to a presentation after work. Overcome by greed and, for some reason, missing my usual critical faculties and skepticism (maybe I’ve already been in California too long), I said, “But it’s a free vacation!” Andrew, because he is loving and forgiving, agreed reluctantly to ...

We’re in. We’re staying. A week of talks and lists and pros and cons—and it added up to a decision we know is the right one. It’s a good job, and we’ll move to a nicer apartment, buy furniture, and move our stuff—all of it, every last book—at last. I’ll set up a real work space rather than a haphazard takeover of our dining room table. It will feel more like home. If we had tried to write a job description for the ideal job for Andrew post-MBA, the perfect job to demonstrate clearly his move from editing to business, it would have been this job. It supports what his MBA and his summer internship suggested—that he’s serious about changing paths. This makes it more than just a good faith effort—someone has given him an amazing chance to actually do it. We couldn’t pass it up. We celebrated over a big sushi dinner at a restaurant in Roseville—actual good sushi right in our little suburbia. A bright spot, certainly. We’re in L.A. this weekend—Andrew had a business trip and I joined him—and...

The East, the East! The Atlantic Ocean—the real ocean! It was such a short flight—just 4 or so hours to Atlanta—and there I was, back again on the side of the country I consider home. Even the air felt more substantial, heavy and thick with muggy heat, unlike the thin, dry atmosphere of California. I met Michelle at the Charleston airport Friday afternoon, and we spent the day walking around the city. Charleston has a lot of charm—beautiful old homes, cute shopping streets, and lots of excellent restaurants serving seafood and Southern specialties. When Rachael and Barbra arrived, we went for dinner at Coast, a great seafood restaurant, then headed to our bungalow on Kiawah Island. I’ve always loved South Carolina’s beaches, and Kiawah was wonderful. It’s a private island, unspoiled by development, and there were broad expanses of sand and perfect water temperature. The weather, despite the forecast, was ideal, sunny and hot, and we spent the day swimming and chatting on the sand. We ...

....but only for the weekend. I'm heading back to the East Coast tonight, on the redeye to Charleston, SC, to spend the weekend with Barbra, Rachael, and Michelle--the first time I'll have seen Michelle in a year and Barbra in nearly as long. I'm very excited to see them AND to be back in a normal time zone--being 3 hours behind is far less fun than being hours ahead, as we were in Spain. It will be wonderful to swim in the warm Atlantic, to have a sense of history, of depth. To actually walk around a city and sight-see. But it will be strange to take such a long flight and find myself in the same country. And who knows: my return on Sunday may be very short-term. Or it may begin a more extended commitment. Strangely, it's chilly outside here, a lovely fall-type day following last night's rainstorm that sent Californians into a confused panic. (Clouds? Rain? Here ?) It's fitting: fall always signals transition for me, and this time is nothing if not transitory. ...

Against all odds, Dog the Bounty Hunter has become my favorite television show. Ordinarily I have no patience for reality shows, but Dog is somehow in a different category. Dog is a bounty hunter, hunting down fugitives along with his wife Beth, his sons Leland and Duane Lee, his brother Tim, whom he calls Youngblood, and his daughter, whom everyone calls Baby Lyssa. Each bounty-hunting member is all but indescribable. Leland and Tim both sport partially shaved heads with long, ornately secured rat-tail style ponytails. Beth is a shockingly voluptuous, shockingly big-haired blonde. Duane Lee looks like your everyday thug. And Dog: with his generous assortment of heavy chains and leather wrist-wraps, constantly worn wraparound sunglasses, and his own shockingly long, big blonde mane with a regularly changing selection of clip-on hair ornaments streaming down either side of his weather-worn face, he is a character who proves that real life trumps fiction every time. One of the most remar...

I’m getting frustrated with the Wii. Andrew has brought home several more games in the hopes of finding one that will finally unlock the mysteries of Gaming—that is, in the hopes of helping me understand just what the attraction really is. So far, after stints with various sports games, Mario Party, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Zelda: Twilight Princess, and Surf’s Up, I am perhaps even more baffled than I was before. Here’s the thing: for me, the games are boring. With Metroid and Zelda, I actually fell asleep while Andrew was maneuvering the characters through dull, seemingly endless rooms and paths with absolutely no clear understanding of what the characters were supposed to be doing or looking for. In Zelda, if you toss a pumpkin against the ground, a green emerald comes out. But so what? What’s it for? Who cares? In theory, I could enjoy exploring the “worlds” of Zelda, but I couldn’t seem to maneuver my horse without just running head-long into trees and stone embankments. Surf’s...

It’s hard to believe, but we could very well be headed back East in as little as 14 days. This time, we’d actually be making the trip by car, driving our new (old) Volvo cross-country with our suitcases, a random assortment of plates, and piles of pinecones, taking our time to see some of the sights as we make the long journey. Our destination: undecided. My shower and our wedding will initially lead us back to PA, but we’ll essentially be homeless once again, adding more things to our already voluminous collection in the attic and re-packing our suitcases with the fall clothes currently buried in boxes. Where we’ll go next is anyone’s guess. Or we might just stay here, swallowing our dislike for our suburban existence in reluctant exchange for an excellent business opportunity for Andrew that will, surely, lead us back to New York or beyond in the not-so-far future. Just as we were on pins and needles pretty much until we boarded the plane to fly to CA in July, we are putting off plan...

Wine, livestock, a geyser: an unlikely trifecta that shaped our first foray into wine country. This Labor Day weekend, we road-tested our Volvo by driving about three hours north to the Anderson Valley, a stunningly beautiful wine region that’s much less famous (and expensive) than Napa. First stop on Saturday: the Ceago winery, where we sampled a few tasty wines then strolled through the beautiful grounds and garden, lush with lavender bushes, wispy dill plants, rosemary, squash, melons, sunflowers, and many acres of grapevines. What better way to follow up this serene peacefulness than attending a livestock auction? We’d planned to stop at a local county fair on our way to our hotel in Ukiah, and, seeing “LIVESTOCK” marked on the fair map, were intrigued. A huge pavilion was crawling with 4-H kids, rabbits and turkeys and roosters huddled in cages, and pens full of goats, sheep, pigs, and cattle. A steady stream of visibly proud kids were leading their prized pigs and cows to the auc...

For anyone who likes video games, Andrew has an amazingly cool job. For people like us, unversed and uninvested in the world of gaming, his job is interesting from a business perspective but that’s about it. What would be extreme perks to others are simply amusing diversions for us. For example, last night Andrew brought home a Wii. We played a game of tennis, then bowled, our movements unrestricted by furniture. Andrew played a little golf and baseball. It was fun, but after about an hour, we were done with the Wii. This is what people have been paying so much money for, waiting on waitlists for? I’m missing something, apparently. Perhaps I’ll understand it a little more when Andrew brings home a Mario Brothers game, which I always liked playing on our old Nintendo system many years ago. Wii shall see.

Californians are friendly. In grocery stores, the cashiers strike up conversations, smiling and scanning my food. It’s off-putting; I’m not used to small-talk, not least because usually I’ve just spent an ungodly period of time alone in our studio apartment, out of reach of human interaction. The conversation is usually prompted when I show my driver’s license, required whenever we buy beer or wine. “You’re a long way from home,” a Trader Joe’s cashier observed recently. Or, the more common comment: “What brings you out here?” They ask how long we’ve been here, if we like it, how it’s different from back home. These questions are sometimes complicated, especially if Andrew presents his FL license. Sometimes we talk about FL as though it’s a home we’ve just left, remarking on the difference in humidity and other such chitchat. A couple of weeks ago, the cashier at the large grocery store Raley’s studied and studied my license, getting a handle on my name, which she used throughout the r...

We did it: we survived our first weekend together in suburbia. This is actually the third weekend I've spent here--once when Andrew went to a bachelor party and once when he was on a business trip--but those weekend I filled with on-my-own things, extra work and writing and renting DVDs. We faced this weekend with a kind of puzzlement. What, exactly, were we going to do all day? We'd already gone to see a movie this week--Superbad (our high expectations were disappointed); there are no museums or parks to go to; and there's nowhere to go strolling or exploring. We waited to see what would happen. Somehow, the time passed, and we managed to actually have a nice, if fully suburban, two days. Friday night, after we bought the car, we celebrated at a nice Vietnamese restaurant. Saturday, we went out for breakfast then drove into Sacramento to--finally!--return our rental car. This involved my first solo drive on the freeway, and though there was a very close call with a lane ch...

We are officially car owners. It’s crazy. Yesterday we paid, in full, in cash, for a used ’98 Volvo in excellent condition that Andrew had found listed on Craig’s List. We’ve been searching for a car for weeks now, intent on getting rid of our money-sucking rental, but nothing has been quite right: too expensive, too sketchy, an armrest that looks as though it had been chewed on regularly. We found an Audi we liked but decided against it out of fear for expensive repair work. We met a Passat seller, convinced we were going to buy it instantly, but were disappointed to see that it was definitely the worse for wear, and that the seller works at the local prison. The Volvo felt right immediately, and the sellers, a middle-aged couple who’d just bought a brand-new Lexus, had lived in both Pittsburgh and near Cornish in New Hampshire, and had a fat file folder full of painstakingly compiled information on the car’s history, inspired trust. I actually felt more wary of carrying around all th...

Seals, whales, otters—the promise of dramatic sea life was one of the things that drew us to Monterey, and our weekend did not disappoint. Saturday afternoon, when we arrived, we headed to the Fisherman’s Wharf for lunch and spotted seals sunning themselves on rocks around the harbor. We sat outside to eat—fish and chips for Andrew, clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl for me—and even saw seals swimming in the water just beneath our terrace. There were more seals, as well as large pelicans and many other birds, in view as we made the 17 Mile Drive along the coastline. The wildlife, cypresses, and dramatic sea were almost overshadowed, however, by the extravagant mansions lining much of the drive and the overwhelming abundance of ridiculously expensive cars. There is a lot of money in Monterey, and even as we ate breakfast on Sunday morning at a little café in town, we saw Lamborghinis and Porches and Ferraris drive idly by. Even a few of the cars in the parking lot of our lovely over...

This weekend, Andrew and I found ourselves once again fighting panic and existential despair at the MDPOE. A friend had flown in from Pittsburgh this weekend, preparing to relocate with his family in a few weeks, and I helped him house-hunt Friday. It’s very nice to see the occasional friend from the East Coast (more or less), but strange, too; our life here feels somehow more real when someone familiar enters it. In any case, he had booked a room at the MDPOE for Friday night, not realizing that it is a place of hellish misery; and Andrew and I, intent on cutting down our travel time for our weekend trip to Monterey, were committed to the MDPOE as well thanks to Priceline. This time, our room had 5 forks. Nate’s had 2. He also reported that his room had what appeared to be a blood stain under the window. I don’t know what it is about these places—this was actually a different branch of the MDPOE—but they are simply awful. Almost determinedly awful. Nonetheless, everyone survived the n...

Over the past week, Andrew and I have managed to acquire the following: ---TV ---DVD player ---Futon ---Daily delivery of the New York Times ---Printer ---A copy of The Rocky Road to Romance by Janet Evanovich One would think we were—at last—getting settled. And indeed, it would appear that way. The last time I had cable TV was—never. I have never subscribed to cable in all my years of living as an independent adult. In Spain, we had cable for approximately one month; but Spanish cable boxes and the television sets that accompany them are complicated to a degree unknown to the rest of humankind, and I never learned how to turn the TV on once everything was installed. This is not an exaggeration. We moved to a new apartment shortly thereafter and didn’t bother signing up again. I can’t lie: it’s nice, very nice, to have TV. I can watch Everybody Loves Raymond as I clean up dinner and watch Iron Chef America before going to sleep. On weekends like this one, when Andrew is away for wor...