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...