Skipping Town

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...