There's no place like home

Geoff didn't realize how apparently cheeky he was in requesting both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off as the new guy in the practice. Even so, they gave it to him...exactly.

In order to get back in time for him to work on the 26th, we had to fly back on the red eye at 9:45 PM on Christmas Day, a voyage wrought with near-missed planes, the deicing of a frozen toilet, a seat that didn't recline, the torture of the movie The Santa Clause III: The Escape Clause, and sickly and ginormous neighbors spilling their germs and their bodies into our seats. Just as we had laid eyes on the North Carolina landscape and known it without any sense of surprise to be home, we slipped back to Pentuckett Avenue in the dead of the night murmuring "there's no place like home."

We really enjoyed spending time with our parents, meeting our newest niece Wesli, playing with her big sister Rylee, and hanging out with our friends. Only, it flew by too fast. We packed to change locations six separate times. There were people we didn't get to see. We only got one full day with our adorable nieces. But at least we got to go home for Christmas.

Next year, Geoff isn't likely to be so cheeky...or so lucky.

Season's Greetings!!

We want to wish all of you the very warmest holiday season!
If 2007 was a great year for you, we hope that your luck will continue into the new year. If things didn't go your way last year or times were tough, we hope that you will find all of the love and happiness that you deserve. And, since life is rarely ever so clear cut, in the meantime, we hope that we can be the kind of friends to you that you have been to us all of this time.

We love you!

Quiet for so long

Nearly a month has passed since I last updated this blog. During the interim, I made some (invisible) attempts: there's a draft kind of dangling, not quite ready for its debut. There's Part II of the Pink Martini story waiting to be told. Of course, there are so many new things to tell - my VIP weekend at Montesoro, our California Thanksgiving dinner outside, the December Nights festival in Balboa Park, the next phase in our renovation.... What can I say? We've been swept up in daily life.

Since I last wrote, we've discovered some more misconceptions about San Diego living:

1) It is not 70 degrees here all year round.

Let's stop there.

So, as the temperatures have dipped into the upper 40's at night, we've been tempted to turn on the furnace, but we were trying hard to hold out (never mind the fact that we don't know how to light the pilot anyway). To our delight, there's cause to burn fires in the fireplace. We wear sweaters indoors. Geoff started calling me the Ninja Sleeper because I've been going to bed in a snug black long-sleeved shirt and black leggings. Mishka is summoned as a bed partner for her heat-generating capabilities. Every morning we all awake to find ourselves huddled together in one tiny fraction of our Cal King bed, making a triple spoon with Mishka as the smallest spoon inside. In this place where the usual sun and mild temperatures make it hard to accept the changing seasons and the shortening of the days, it is somehow comforting to us East Coasters that winter has set in (sort of). At least we see the signs....

A few weekends ago, I took Mishka hiking in Lake Laguna with Anni and Gustav and Ifat (another friend from the lab), and, miraculously, the whole place was covered in a thin layer of snow!! Mishka hadn't seen snow in years, since global warming or bad luck had denied Winston-Salem any snowfall. She ate chunks of it greedily and ran around like a drunken banshee. Best of all, we made a tiny snowman, and Mishka sat patiently for their portrait together. I think they both look wistful, don't you?

Seeing the end in sight

In some ways these pictures are long overdue, but really, we haven't regarded our home improvement endeavors as finished or photo-ready despite the fact that the workers have long gone and we are washing dishes in a bona fide dishwasher (and not the bathtub anymore).

Maybe it is hard to see it for what it is, but we notice what is missing more than what is there. All around us, we spot the critical pieces of furniture that are missing, doors and spots on the ceiling that need to be painted, and makeshift solutions waiting for a more permanent configuration. We still have to add a backsplash in the kitchen and the contractor has a few more items on his punch list at our house.

Today, with the slightest gesture, things seemed to come into focus. We drove an hour to Temecula to pick up some barstools I had spotted on Craigslist for a bargain. For whatever reason, those four stools made our kitchen somehow feel suddenly complete. Forget the fact that the chairs that go with the kitchen table are waiting their turn to be recovered or some of the dishes are still in storage. Tonight we ate our take-out seated at our very own kitchen counter, gazing across the granite at the under counter lights (ooh, we'll need to tell Wally that we want the light rail up after all since you can see the lights from here), and admiring the beauty of this giant project that we suffered through for months.

It is hard to tell what came first - this new sense of home-ness or the feeling of home that Christmas trees bring, but, whatever the inspiration, we bought our first west coast tree today on our way back from Temecula. We opted for a Noble fir from Oregon over a Frasier fir straight from the mountains of North Carolina, both for its favorable carbon footprint (how many thousands of miles did the Frasiers have to travel?!) but also for its more appealing price...which was still more than we were used to paying back in NC, where you point and they cut. All the same, though, we are grateful. We were sure that living in Southern California would condemn us to a fate each year of hauling out a silver aluminum tree from the garage. As retro chic as that may be, we still pine for the evergreen smell of a real Christmas tree. O tannenbaum!

Guests

The fires are out (mostly) and fall has fallen. There's a cold misty gloom outside, afflicting everyone with acute seasonal affective disorder. A few bewildered trees are turning red, others have shed their leaves while still green. It is autumn in San Diego.

We are currently in the midst of hosting our first guests to the left coast - Geoff's parents, who left for their Mexico cruise on Tuesday morning, and Sam and Molly Franklin (with adorable baby Tessa, here dressed as a ladybug for Halloween), who will be here until Monday morning. We'll have fun pictures from their visits to share.

When are you coming?!!

Halloween, the Bacchanale

Last night Geoff and I dressed up as the Bearded Lady and the Picture of Dorian Gray to go to a neighborhood party themed "Carnival of Terror." We were really excited about this party, because we've been watching over the past few weeks as our neighbor Kelly transformed her craftsman-style home into a ghoulish haunted house complete with graveyard, killer clown, sarcophagus, and a cage filled with dismembered baby dolls. In fact, we met Kelly when we slowed down one day to compliment her on her decor. In about 10 minutes she told us her life story and invited us to this party, giving us a glossy flyer with a terrifying clown on it.

Cool.

We asked Jess to join us, and she planned to dress up as a fairy. I suggested she make it more evil by going as the Twisted Tooth Fairy with blood coming out of her mouth and a bloody tooth in her hand, but she wasn't interested. As we were getting ready at my house, I looked over and realized that her outfit was actually a piece of lingerie, so I teased her that maybe she was going as Tinkerslut, and we had a good belly laugh over it as she thanked me sarcastically for being such a sweet friend. She had a point, though - it wasn't actually that revealing.

So after waiting a long time for Geoff to put the finishing touches on his make-up (to look like the flesh was melting off of his face), we walked over to the party. Kelly (who was dressed as a freakish circus ringleader) had every decoration imaginable, there were awesome appetizers, a full bar, and ghoulish music. Kelly cornered us in the game room and, with pressured speech, proceeded to tell us in far greater detail than was befitting the length of our aquaintance the story of her son's circumcision, her father's Parkinson's disease, about four or five present and former jobs she held, her father's freak accident with the paint thinner and the spray gun and the details of how she got that giant wax alien from the set of the movie in her game room.

There weren't that many people there yet, so we wandered around and took pictures and chatted with the other freaks. Soon it became apparent that there were no eligible bachelors at this freak show, so Jess urged us to ditch that party prematurely for another party with more single guys. We made our excuses and felt bad for leaving a party that was clearly not up and going to the level that the hostess had hoped.

All three of us headed downtown to a multi-level party with a bouncer, themed "Coyboys and Indians." As soon as we stepped into the party and saw the throngs of scantily-clad singles on the prowl, Geoff and I realized our costumes - and our very concept of Halloween - was entirely misplaced. Somehow Halloween, with its celebration of the dead, the undead, the freakish, the scary, and the alter-ego, has morphed to become a parade of fantasies and an excuse for a bacchanalia. At that moment, I understood why every costume shop in San Diego is filled with skimpy nurse's outfits, little bunny suits, or tiny underwear with no other identifiable purpose than to be really tiny. Jess' costume, which I inaccurately had dubbed Tinkerslut, was practically nunnish in this crowd, though she fit in much better than we did. Geoff and I couldn't have been more out of place in our Victorian-inspired costumes, which were intended to be scary or freakish and not at all for the purpose of mating.

Oddly enough, however, a more authentic spirit of Halloween (at least how we see it) did emerge from this clash of two worlds. Our appearance at that party created something of a mutual freak show - they staring at us wondering in horror what we thought we were (zombie? they asked Geoff, princess? they asked me stupidly), we gawking at the devil woman in hot pants whose pointed tail was coiling its way dangerously back towards her rectum.

We were like a pair of macabre turkeys who stumbled into a flock of hot and bothered peacocks. Ridiculous. We tried our best to mingle, but the silliness overwhelmed us, so we left the party and Jess stayed behind. Hopefully the evening was fruitful for her.

Spectacle

While searching the internet for bearded ladies, I came across a site featuring human marvels, which sent me off in an exploration of other peculiar people once billed as circus freaks.

We now recognize many of these sideshow attractions to be people afflicted with medical disorders like proteus syndrome (elephant man), microcephaly (pinhead), hypertrichosis (lion man), phocomelia (the human caterpillar), Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (rubber man), and acromegaly (giant). Scattered among these genetic anomalies were commonly a few people who brought spectacle upon themselves through piercings and tattoos.

As much as I marvel at the photographs of the circus performers displaying diseases I have heard of but never seen, not one shocked me as deeply as the photograph of this tattooed man. I have seen many tattoos and am a big fan of Miami Ink and its spin-off LA Ink (I am positively obsessed with Kat Von D), but this dude has literally the hardest-core tattoo that I have ever seen. Here is what someone wrote about this guy on the web site:

I have quite a bit of ink in my skin, pushing 300 hours at this point, but the fellow above is truly a hardcore body modification enthusiast. Facial tattoos in North America radically transform public perception and interaction. A facial tattoo that also happens to be a skull, a symbol of death, likely increases that backlash one thousand fold. Still, it is a gorgeously detailed piece of work and I hope this brave fellow still loves the tattoo long after he stops playing bass in that metal band of his.

Seriously. Can you imagine?

Rebuilding

The mantra after every natural disaster is "We will rebuild right away."

It makes you wonder where we (humans) fit into the natural order. As horrified as I am to watch this beautiful place go up in flames, to watch the people whose homes were lost, hear of lives lost, watch landscapes dessimated, I can't forget that this is part of the life cycle of this climate.

I heard a geologist talking about the chaparral and how some plants depend on fire and smoke for germination, how they are uniquely adapted to this inevitability, and how civilization has stamped out the small fires that would cleanse the countryside, allowing, instead, for old brush to accumulate and become fuel for the perfect firestorm.

Just as inevitable as the fact that wildfires will char the landscape again is the fact that we will rebuild again. Rarely learning from these hard lessons, we will replace those buildings that were in the path of a larger force.

So, the next time the Santa Ana winds from the desert blow across our dessicated landscape and ignite a flame, even those who know better will watch with shock and horror as nature puts us in our place.

Thanks to all of you for your calls and emails asking if we're OK. Fortunately, we're located in a little fire-free zone (our house is at about the 805 sign on the map). We're lucky to have bought a house where we did, because we looked at places in the areas that have been evacuated and threatened by the fire. There is a lot of ash and smoke in the air, which is worse today, and we're both finding ourselves wheezing a lot more. Curtis, the foreman of the construction company who did our renovation, just brought over an industrial air purifier with HEPA filter that they use when they are doing mold clean-up jobs to help clean the air inside our house. We needed this anyway, since we've been battling the dry wall dust.

Mishka and I are holed up in the house, cleaning up and painting and making cookies while Geoff is struggling to keep the clinic going with half of the staff missing due to evacuations. The scale of this disaster is truly staggering, but the emergency response efforts have been really great.

Blaze

All of San Diego is covered in an eerie haze, ash raining down like snow while the air is strangely warm even after the sun goes down. It smells like a camp fire, as if all San Diegans had stopped their mad dash to go camping...together. With the flames shooting up to 100 and 200 miles in the air and 60-mile Santa Ana winds pushing them across the dessicated brush and through the valleys, engulfing homes and forcing evacuations, today has a distinct apocalyptic feel to it.

It makes you think about what you would do if you had to evacuate your home this morning.

Valley Dog

Another minor miracle in this desert: it rained this morning. As a result, there were accidents stalling traffic along every major highway, and I crawled my way to work at an average of 15 mph.

The long commute gave me a chance to catch up on the news. Ordinarily, I listen to NPR, but today was the last day of the fundraiser, and I couldn't take their placid guilt trip anymore. So I skipped through the stations to find some good local station gabbing about sensational tidbits.

I found it.

Get this - I learned that yesterday, at the Ocean Beach pier, members of the local PETA chapter stripped nude, painted themselves to look like fish, then hung themselves by hooks to dispell the myth that fish don't feel pain. (Check out their press release: http://www.peta.org/MC/NewsItem.asp?id=10346) That's interesting. I know they feel pain, but boy are they tasty. Wonder when they'll stage a protest against the baby seals for eating fish.

Anyway, these PETA maniacs are why each time I need to enter the vivarium at UCSD I have to go through a keyed code and a palm scan twice.

So, with this ludicrous and disturbing image in mind, I ventured to the grocery store after work to stock up on food for us...and for Mishka. You see, Mishka eats raw.

That's right. In addition to body surfing and hanging with the well-dressed bitches at the dog park, Mishka has embraced California culture full on by reverting to the diet of her ancestors.

Californians crave fads. They crave pseudo-health movements and social consciousness. (Just today my friend Anni mentioned "I would prefer to eat happy meat," by which she meant the meat of animals that had a good life before they were whacked.) They believe that natural is always better (nevermind that snake venom or sulfuric acid are natural). And, as a testament to the persuasive power of the Californians, Mishka has brushed her kibble aside (food tainted with molds and fillers and substances unfit for any living, darling creature), and has converted to a true canine diet of raw meats (supplemented, of course, with Brewer's yeast, omega oils, pureed veggies and multivitamins that the primitive dogs probably didn't consume). The true difference? Mishka actually eats her dinner.

So, PETA, eat your heart out. Mishka is a HAPPY DOG.

Step 3

I knew it was going to be a long day when I was ready to be done after only the first hour-long session. I had six more to go, each consisting of 48 multiple-choice questions...and this was only day 1. I have to go back and do it again tomorrow.

Going to the Prometric Testing Center is kind of like my idea of visiting Prison: ID and documentation required, they take your photo when you walk in, you're assigned a long number, no jackets, no writing implements, nothing in your pockets, no cell phones, no drinks, no gum. Kleenexes? Strictly prohibited. You don't ask why.

Between every session, I took advantage of tiny bits of the meager 45-minute total break time to walk outside into the lush courtyard and breathe in the air. It actually rained today in this desert, though, so the air was too thick to be refreshing.

Around noon I actually contemplated sneaking in some wine in a thermos tomorrow. (Too risky.)

Finally, after thinking I was done one section before I was actually finished and then having to return, deflated, to the computer to trudge through another hour, I made it to the end.

When I got home, Mishka acted like she hadn't seen me in months. We headed for the dog park, where she pranced around like the belle of the ball. Tomorrow is all about getting through it.

Trying not to fail

OK, guys. I'm sorry.

I've been out of touch because it finally occurred to me that I might have a better chance of passing the Boards if I actually studied a bit. I promise to return next week with Part II of the Pink Martini story, pictures of our mostly finished renovation (gotta clean up first!), and more. But here are a few to pique your interest...

Red Bull Air Races:

A rear shot of Jess investigating the air leak in the dinghy (sorry, but there aren't many more pix of that adventure after this, because we decided it was a bad idea to bring our cameras onto a sinking vessel):

Mishka and her new buddy Gustav on our hiking rendezvous last weekend to Lake Laguna with my Swedish friend from the lab, Anni:

Mishka, wistful in the wilderness at Lake Laguna:

Mishka's new buddy at the dog beach (who, despite his charm and good looks, doesn't hold a candle to her main squeeze back in Winston-Salem - Baby Oscar):

More to come next week!! Hope you are doing well, and hope you'll come visit us!

Pink Martini, Part I

With our house in ruins and no end in sight, I decided it was a fine time for an adventure.

It all began with a simple plan: Jess and I would go see Pink Martini, the band/small orchestra whose musical style belongs on a menu: lounge marinated in world, infused with jazz, garnished with classical, then served with a dollop of theater. Without being intrusive or overly stimulating, Pink Martini wets your appetite, sends you to an exotic yet familiar place, and invites you to sink down and sip on something both potent and entirely silly...like a pink martini, for example.

Giddy with the idea that our town, the beautiful San Diego, is the kind of place that attracts acts like Pink Martini on so frivolous a night as a Tuesday, we decided we wanted to go...

...but not for the $45 ticket price.

(You see, though there is truth to the words of my crazy neighbor Tony - "Beans and rice are good for you" - I didn't think I ought to condemn us to those two culinary choices by further squandering our money on random entertainment during this massive renovation.)

All was not lost, however. Jess, who is never short on fabulous ideas, decided that we would simply get a BOAT! (she declared triumphantly) and pull up close to Humphrey's, which is on the water, and enjoy the music for free from our own little vessel.

Perfect.

(As you may recall, Jess is my friend with the sail boat, the one who took us for a sunset cruise weeks ago. This sailboat is located in Mission Bay ("1" at the top of the map) whereas Humphrey's is in San Diego Bay (red star at the bottom of the map.) To take her boat, we would have had to have sailed it a considerable distance and in the open ocean. Since this concert was after work, we opted for finding a new boat. Again, Jess was full of ideas.)

"A dinghy!" she cried.

"Great!" I replied.

(And so it was decided.)

Jess called upon one of her 5 million friends for a loaner dinghy. After work, we met the dinghy owner Gary, a guy she races sailboats with (yes, Jess is a badass, if you haven't gleaned that yet), at the "Dinghy Doctor," where his vessel had been "patched up." We waited a long time for the Dinghy MDs to return from their dinner break and discharge our inflatable boat. I used that opportunity to head to a little Mexican place down the road to pick up our dinner - it was there that I finally learned that "menudo," which appears on every Mexican menu, is actually tripe stew (note to self: no menudo for me). Finally, we got the dinghy and loaded it up in Jess' Audi wagon, and I followed her in my car as we searched for a suitable spot to launch.

For reasons unclear to me even now (but that I suspect had something to do with the fact that we were trespassing), Jess decided the best spot would be to launch - not off of the pier - but off of the dirt and rocks to the left of the pier at the yacht club.

Our first task: inflating the dinghy.

This task was accomplished manually (or pedally) by pumping an accordion-like air pump with the foot. Perhaps because Fate considered this to be too straightforward for the kind of evening we were about to have, it turned out that the air valve on her pump was broken, so it had to be covered while pumping out then uncovered to allow air to refill the chamber. The bottom line is this: while one person (me) stomped on the pump a la hee-haw, the other person (Jess) had to coordinate perfectly with the covering and uncovering of the hole. It was vaguely like CPR at the Opry.

Several people passed us during this ridiculous endeavor and asked us what we were up to. We jokingly replied "We're fleeing the country to Cuba." They smiled politely if skeptically. It wasn't long before our little boat was seaworthy (or so we thought).

Getting it to the water wasn't so easy - Jess had chosen a spot where the earth fell off steeply and rocks jutted out here and there. We lifted the dinghy overhead. I went first, half sliding down the slope. We decided to let the dinghy sort of shimmy down the embankment. She followed, and we eased it into the water. Jess hopped in. Since night had fallen and no one was around, and we had several hours of beer drinking on the boat ahead of us, I decided to slink off very unceremoniously to pee on a rock. (This pretty much galvanized our friendship.) When I returned, I could tell something was wrong, though. "Isabel, I'm pretty concerned. There's a leak." "Oh?" I asked. "Yeah, an air leak. Not a little one. A massive one. Like a whooooooooosh." "That so?" "Uh huh. And a water leak. Water rushing in." "I see." I couldn't really add anything more. "But here's the deal," continued Jess, who gives the reassuring impression that she's MacGyver's female counterpart, "I really want to go to the concert, and what's the worse that could happen? I mean, we'll have to bail water and pump up the boat every so often." She paused, and we were silent. Suddenly, she declared "I say, let's do it!!" Without a second thought, I agreed and hopped into the vessel, only to hear the sound of air escaping rapidly through a large gash.

Green Flash

Not only is the west coast different than the east coast in a general sense, but the coast on the west is literally different than the coast on the east.

This may seem perfectly evident to all of you, but what I am about to share are concepts I hadn't really contemplated before moving out here. Brace yourselves. Here are two of my more unilluminating revelations:

1. The ocean is on the OTHER side.
(This I "discovered" while walking Mishka along the shore at the Coronado Dog Beach.) When you're walking along the beach and the ocean is to your right, chances are you're heading south if you're in San Diego but you're likely to be strolling north if you're in Wrightsville. Amazing!

2. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west.
This truth (which I have known for some time) has some unforeseen implications - consider this: if you want to catch an amazing sunset on the beach, head to the left coast, but if you're looking for an awe-inspiring ocean sunrise, go right. Truly incredible.

For some bizarre reason, these notions hadn't really crossed my mind before we became Californians, and they don't cease to delight me when I think of them now.

I was reminded of Revelation #2 on Sunday as I watched the sunset in PB with Jess, who was rescuing me from our renovation. Jess, as you can probably tell from my prior entries, is the kind of person who grabs life by the horns and lives it fully. She sees lots of sunsets but never loses her sense of wonder. Geoff and I have seen only a handful since we moved out here. We've been so busy.

Jess and I walked out to the end of the long pier and watched the big yellow sun turn red as it sunk towards the water. I snapped a bunch of photos on her camera because the golden light was making a really spectacular pattern on the deep teal of the ocean waves. Then we watched it melt into the horizon, half expecting to see a massive steam cloud rise up from where the ocean had swallowed up the sun. Instead, we saw something far more miraculous.

It was unmistakable.

There it was in the split moment after the sun had dipped below the horizon. Had you blinked, you would have missed the bright pulse of lime green light above the water. But no one blinked. Every person on that pier saw it and instantly burst into applause. And we weren't just politely showing our approval and admiration. No, this applause percolated up and out of us, an unconscious and exuberant expression of our collective gratitude toward Nature herself. With that bright pulse, we were glad to be alive. How could we not? We had witnessed the green flash!

Coming up for air

WE'RE BACK- not because the renovation is over or we finally have some time to breathe. (Don't be silly!) No, we're back because it has been two weeks since the last entry, and if I don't write something now, this black hole may just swallow us up completely.

Looking back at my last entry, I pity my 2-week-ago self who, with charming naivete, actually believed that the computerless haitus would only last a few days. Instead, one debacle has followed the next, each week our contractor Wally assuring us our kitchen would be functional by the weekend, and each weekend passing without this actually happening. So, here is a glimpse of our lives at this moment: picture a dust bomb, the new hard wood floors covered in paper, all of our belongings strewn out randomly in boxes and teetering piles, the kitchen half-finished with the refrigerator bulging out of its nook (the drywall, that I had woken up early one morning to paint, torn out because - surprise! - the nook was built too small to house the fridge), all of the bedroom furniture pushed into the center of the room since last Sunday in preparation for Monday's installation of the trim that hasn't yet happened, the office (finally finished) now serving as the werehouse for all things we hold dear (protection against the workers, who believe that any horizontal surface - whether clean or beautiful or labeled fragile - is a suitable table for greasy old pipes or anything else they wish to set down.)

Despite the continued chaos and clown circus back at the homestead, life has pushed forward. We've managed to continue to enjoy this amazing city despite a few lost opportunities due to home improvement. This entry will be too bloated if I try to cram in everything I want to share with you, so I'll forecast the entries to come: Soon, I will tell you about the night that Jess and I decided to take a dinghy with a massive air and water leak to the Pink Martini Concert at Humphrey's (which is on the bay). I'll also write about how we went on a 32-foot sail boat and watched the Red Bull Air Races with Jess and her friend, an ex Naval Pilot. I'll show you pictures of the daredevil aerial pilots who weaved their planes deftly through pilon obstacles, coming within 10 feet of the water. Hopefully, I'll also find time to tell you about the rain shower (a small miracle, since it was San Diego's first since April 22) and about the strange way that autumn has heralded its arrival in this place famed for everlasting springtime. And, if I can stomach it, I'll tell you more details our extreme home make-over.

(There are some things that I won't be able to tell you about, though. Because of our roles in this renovation (painting, moving, cleaning), we also missed some amazing things - a huge beer-tasting festival that we completely underestimated from our friend's description (which ironically occurred on the same day as our favorite Brewgrass Festival in Asheville, which we nearly flew home to attend), the Old Town Art Festival, and Street Scene, a huge outdoor music festival where Spoon, one of our favorite bands, played. Hopefully we'll be able to tell you about these things next year.)

Black hole

For the next few days, we will be computerless at home. We are going into a technological black hole.

Our belongings have been pushed from the back of the house into the front and the computer has been disassembled. The hard wood floors did not get installed today (shocker), but the tile floor is being laid, walls are getting finished, doors are being hung, and paint applied. We hope to have amazing photos to show you once we have returned to cyberspace. Or maybe even just photos showing modest progress. Anything.

In the meantime, have a wonderful weekend!

Chaos

We live in an episode of Survivor meets Extreme Make-over, Home Edition. And we're about to vote somebody off the island.

Every surface of every object in our home is covered in a thick layer of dust. My fingertips are dessicated from the layer of dry wall dust coating the keyboard. Our noses and lungs are full of it. Our bodies are launching a counter-attack, and I feel very sleepy. Our only remaining fortress is our dusty bed - not even our bedroom (which is more of a portal these days, since walls have become more figurative than literal). Other than the bed, we have one semi-accessible chair, and I'm sitting in it now as I write to you. Geoff has to stand. We went to a movie tonight because there is no place to be at home. We feel defeated.

The other night, after two days straight of pulling up carpet and carpet tacks and prying off baseboard by myself, I dreamed that the workers shoved something else into the nook designed for the refrigerator. It was disturbing. I bought a Dyson vacuum in a futile effort to regain control of our environment.

In anticipation of the new flooring, we crammed all of our possessions into the back part of our house and onto the back porch, confident that we'd be moving it all back that night. Instead, the construction crew creeps along in their efforts to lay the hard wood floors. Good thing it never rains. They did make headway in demolitions to put in the second set of French doors in our living room (see before and after) and to enlarge our master bath (the torn up tangerine-colored room) and add a second closet. Meanwhile, our kitchen deadline has also been delayed. The granite guy Peter, of "Stone Surgeons" has to get another kitchen ready for an open house, STAT! What could be more open than OUR house?!

Yesterday, we were so upset to discover that almost no headway had been made on our floors (sentencing us to another night as captives on our own bed) that we were thrilled when a car paused then lingered in front of our house on the street. Geoff ran out to see what it was. A woman was wrangling a king snake (which Geoff, the herpetologist, identified). She was trying to get it out of the road using her dog's chuck-it. Geoff pulled a Steve Irwin and pinned its snakey head down, then picked it up. I snapped a few photos of Geoff posing with the snake because it was hands down the most fun we had had all day. Geoff completed the picture in his wife beater. You can take the boy out of Carolina, but you can't take the Carolina out of the boy.

Today, to add more drama, our contractor Wally almost had a panic attack. He called me urgently today to inform me that Mishka (who should have been confined to the back rooms) had been let out and had dashed off suddenly, traumatized by the loud sound of the concrete grinders. Thirty minutes of searching by several men had revealed nothing. Geoff and I raced home. Geoff found her on her way back from the dog park, skipping down the street and making sure to look both ways. I took the afternoon off to babysit her and run errands.

Even though this is tougher than we anticipated, we can already see how good everything is looking, and we can't wait for everything to be done so we can start our new lives in our new home. After all of the dust settles (and gets promptly sucked up by the Dyson), we plan to go hunting for furniture so we'll be ready for your visit!

Cooling off

Finally we can get back to boasting about the absolutely gorgeous weather in San Diego.

Last week was infernal. Even the water from the spigot came out hot. Our ankles and other weird body parts wouldn't stop sweating. There was no relief. Misting yourself only made the heat muggier. There was nothing you could do. Over the airwaves came urgent announcements calling for people to conserve energy, that a black-out was imminent if everyone didn't cut down their A/C. Now there was something we could be smug about: since we don't have A/C, we don't have to feel guilty about it.

Yesterday, the heat wave finally broke and the night cooled off in that familiar way. For the first time in days, I could sleep with the covers on. The evening air spilling in from the window above my computer has a crisp edge to it. Mishka is warming my feet.

Heaven, again.

Labor Day BBQ on PB

Beach barbecue, anyone? Ahhhh, life is sweet!

On Labor Day, we met some friends from my residency (Jess and Matt) at Pacific Beach for a barbecue. Geoff carted our trusty $15 grill to use it finally for what it was intended (as opposed to serving as a ghetto kitchen on our condemned back deck).

So we were going to go to a beach in La Jolla called Windansea, but, instead, we ended up at PB because that's where Jess lives. Allow me to "explain" PB to you: Beverly Hills 90210.

OK, there.

PB is San Diego's beach town, kind of like Myrtle Beach for those of you from NC (but with more surfboards and far fewer mullets). There's a permanent theme park with a rickety old roller coaster and bags of cotton candy, almost everyone is blond and tan, the mean age is 22, and the dress code is bikini or surf shorts.

Since alcohol is permitted on the beach, and this crowd just loves the beercahol, you can imagine what interesting cocktails ensue. Perhaps you heard the news of the riots that broke out in PB earlier in the day before we arrived.

OK, now insert us.

As you can see from the photo, only Jess blended in with the local folk (and only because she had decided, at dusk, to go for a dip). The mean age of our group was 34. And, oh yeah, instead of Budweiser, we were drinking a fine Argentinian Malbec and grilling marinated carne asada for fajitas with homemade pico de gallo, guacamole, red peppers and vidalia onions.

The drunk, golden kids actually came sniffing around, wondering what smelled so good. Two surfers tried to bum beer off of us.

Luckily, no one puked on us or tried to start a fight. Besides some beach wrestling, which was held at a comfortable distance, they didn't bother us much, which was good, because it was a spectacular sunset and an unbelievable dinner. We stayed until the sun had melted completely away and all the kiddies had gone home.

Sweltering heat

Most will agree that San Diego has the best weather in the country. What they don't tell you is that, some time around the end of August, both the temperature and the humidity creep up. The evenings don't cool off as dramatically as before, and the lack of air conditioning becomes all too obvious. Your appetite diminishes, you stay parched, and you drape yourself across the sofa in your underwear as the tiny fan blows hot air in your face.

What makes this worse is this renovation we're going through. All day long the doors and windows are kept wide open for the workers to move in and out, letting in the heat and mugginess but doing little to clear out the dust from the construction. Without a kitchen, it is hard to locate a clean cup for water, and, anyway, we're filling the Brita pitcher in the bathroom. Even with the filter, the water tastes weird. Still, it is better than heat stroke, so I've taken to leaving a bowl in the fridge for when I get thirsty. I would have left a cup, but I didn't feel like washing dishes in the bathtub.

Saturday was particularly oppressive. The cabinet guys were here installing cabinets. Before they arrived, I was cramming to get the kitchen primed and painted, including the ceiling, because I didn't want to worry about painting around these brand new cabinets. It was so hot, I hardly ate anything. Geoff had to go to work to finish some charts before he leaves for LA for a week-long Boards Review Course. By 3 PM, I was spent. I grabbed a beach chair, my beach basket and Mishka (who was also spent), and we headed for the Coronado Dog Beach. Living near the coast is a luxury. You can decide on a whim to head for the beach in the late afternoon, a really lovely time to go. The waves were huge, crashing sometimes with sprays that would reach the horizon. Amazingly, though, it was calm enough near the shore to go wading, and Mishka and I enjoyed a few dips into the water, which felt much fresher and cooler than usual. The water also had a stronger ocean smell and there was no seaweed around. It was like a different beach. We found a tennis ball, and Mishka never got tired of chasing it in the waves or running up the beach after it. Usually she gets bored when we play fetch, but she was exuberant yesterday. Later on in the day, I got caught up chatting with another dog owner on the beach, and I spied Mishka running back to the water on her own to play in the surf with another black dog with a tennis ball. She ventured into the shallow water on her own!

Gypsies

When our contractor Wally happily announced "The worst of it is over!" after the initial demolition (the one where they knocked down the walls and moved the door), he was wrong.

Since then, Geoff and I completed the demolition of the kitchen by applying skills sharply honed in medical school (determination, persistence and extreme anal retentiveness). Wally was shocked the next day to find we had finished it on our own - he expected to have to do the hard parts for us. He had no idea that medical school, like boot camp, shapes a young person's constitution, making one perfectly-suited to conquer tasks like "Tear your kitchen apart." Maybe the biggest nuance that med school engendered (as opposed to boot camp) is that, instead of smashing the kitchen to bits like Ozzie Osbourne with a guitar, we carefully removed each cabinet, sorted and stored every screw, then put them aside neatly, where they will stay until we are ready to reinstall the cabinets in our garage for our next act of anal retention: the Garage Organizing System.

(Why were WE demoing the kitchen, you might ask? Well, partly it was because we were still uncertain whether we were going to get the relocation money promised to us by Geoff's employer (that has been a nightmare) and partly because Wally realized we were chomping at the bit to do something, so he threw us this bone.)

Anyway, at this point, there is a sheet of plastic bisecting the house (thankfully because the dry wall dust was settling on every surface), and we have only one functioning appliance in the kitchen proper: the fridge. Last night, I came home late to find Geoff jumping gingerly through a tiny opening in the plastic, back and forth to fetch the supplies strewn in various nooks throughout the house (salt? oh, that's in the dresser drawer...spatula? did you check the paper bag on the floor?). I followed him through the rabbit hole onto the back deck, where he had set up a make-shift kitchen on the ground consisting of a toaster oven (thanks Beta and Abebi for the wedding gift) and the $15 grill that we bought to take on the beach. With these tools, he made a lovely dinner of Asian BBQ chicken, fresh corn on the cob, and roasted red peppers with fennel. He even handed me a bloody mary when I walked in the door.

We may be living like gypsies, but Geoff is making sure these gypsies eat gourmet.

Fishka

Last weekend we took Mishka to the Coronado Dog Beach to practice her swimming. She's gaining some confidence overall, but still she's a big chicken:

Now she's putting up with the renovation - the kitchen has been completely demolished. Our cabinets are arriving much sooner than expected: tomorrow! After they are in, the fabricator will make the templates for the granite and blah blah blah. What this means for us is that we're doing dishes in the bathtub and eating out a lot. Tonight we went to an open house and made dinner of the wine and cheese.

Before we go, we'd like to send a shout out to Jim and Mickie Vacca, who have been following us from the east coast! We love hearing from all of you, so please keep writing and/or leaving comments.

(We're fascinated by the gilded sand on Coronado's Dog Beach - all of the dogs leave that place looking like they've been dipped in gold glitter:)

Renovation

Sona (our real estate agent and great friend) and her husband Aaron recommended this show on Bravo called "Flipping Out": neurotic, fastidious gay interior designer meets expensive real estate. It is just as hilarious as they promised.

If you've seen the show, you can rest assured that our renovation is nothing like that.

Basically, we're waiting on the windows, appliances and cabinets to arrive. It looks like the kitchen will materialize some time in early September. That's good news for all of you who plan to visit us in November - we'll actually be able to cook for you! Geoff is flipping out in his own way as he tries to prepare our dinner using the toaster oven and a small grill intended for beach barbecues. I'm oddly at peace with the chaos. It has become rather normal to use the microwave on the floor in our living room or to snake the big orange extension cord around whenever you need power. Lighting the gas stove with a match throws me back to summers I spent with my Abuelita in Spain. So, maybe I like living in the past with a touch of camping. I'm OK with it. Geoff? Not so much.