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.

Happy 27th Birthday to Ryan!

Yesterday, August 17th, was my sister Ryan's birthday!! We can't believe she's 27 - time to pull out the eye cream.

This El Camino was also born in 1980:

Thursday Resolution

Purgatory = Mandatory Laboratory Orientation Casses, 8:30 AM - 2:30 PM.

With half my brain paying attention in case they said something I'd never heard before, I let the other half occupy itself by running through the list of things we need to do, planning out the months ahead of us, and, best of all, making my Thursday Resolution.

Before moving out here, I was very physically active. OK, let me rephrase...before I my intern year, I was very physically active. Last year I worked out as much as I could (and felt like doing). Now that we've moved, I've become a blob. Sure, I go on a walk or a run here and there, but I'm winded and my limbs are all heavy and cumbersome and I breathe like a smoker.

So, here is my Thursday Resolution: Beginning tomorrow morning (you're all bearing witness to this), I am going to EXERCISE EVERY MORNING BEFORE WORK.

Here are the details of the plan my half-brain devised while I was half-listening to lab tips I already know:

1. Wake up, throw on the work-out duds, grab the pooch and head for a run on the beach, through Balboa Park or whatever strikes my fancy...heck, we can run around the neighborhood
2. Run around for 30-60 minutes and, if no one is looking, shove in some lunges, side kicks and squats for good measure
3. Come back, shower and eat breakfast
4. Go to work

Benefits of the current plan: I get exercise, Mishka gets to run around, and we've both done it before the work day has even begun, so, all day long, we can silently feel superior to all of those slackers who laid around and slept this morning.

I'm telling you, this is an excellent plan.

Houses

So, you may be able to infer from the lack of daily entries that I am actually busy these days with work! It turns out that last Thursday evening, I got an urgent page from my Program Director Dr. Mattrey asking me to write a grant for submission on Wednesday (yes, tomorrow). My advisor Dr. Jamieson had a paper and another grant to submit by the same deadline, so she wasn't going to be able to help me. I have written grants before, but never in a little over a weekend. To make the task even more challenging, I just joined the lab last Tuesday, and they study cancer stem cells, which is totally different from my area of expertise. Nevertheless, the field is super interesting, and I love to write, so I dug in full-throttle and the grant is done! Most people love research because they love to work at the bench. I love it because I love to read and write about research, so this was actually a lot of fun for me. Tomorrow, I'll get back to the experiments....

All of that aside, this post is supposed to be about houses. Some of you may know that we were scammed by D. Barrett Burge, our closing attorney for our house at 433 Horace Mann in NC. Instead of paying off the mortgage, the guy kept the money for himself as an interest-free loan (well, WE were stuck with the interest and the payments) until our banker finally forced him to pay it off. We have been trying desperately to get Mr. Burge to respond to us, but he has evaded us completely and has not provided any of the documentation or more than $2000 in reimbursement that we have demanded. So yesterday we filed a formal grievance with the NC State Bar and today we filed a claim with his Liability Insurance. Just remember: D. Barrett Burge is a CROOK!!! If any of you attorneys out there (and you know who you are) have any new ideas for how we can find justice, bring 'em on!!

In sharp contrast with that turbulence, we are currently undergoing the most pleasant renovation anyone could ever hope for. Our contractor Wally is always prompt and attentive, his workers leave the house cleaner than they found it, and George (one of the carpenters) leaves us little congratulatory love notes at the end of each day inviting us to enjoy our new look or to appreciate the way the arches turned out. It is kind of unbelievable. If Wally and his crew don't end up double-crossing us in the end (can you tell we've been burned?), we will build a SHRINE to them (next to the one for our real estate agent Sona) and adopt them into our family. We love them. Here are some photos from the kitchen transformation in progress....

BEFORE:

AFTER (so this is the is the left hand wall, now with Spanish-style arches!):

And this is the view from the adjacent room of the kitchen now that the right-hand wall has been knocked down! Mishka is modeling the former entrance hall, now part of the open floor plan! The floor in the kitchen will be tiled, and hard wood will go down in the rest of the house. Donations are accepted.

DEMOLITION!!!

Demolition.

Doesn't that sound so dramatic?!

Today they started tearing down walls in our entrance way as part of the kitchen renovation. In keeping with the local flavor, we're going for a Mission style, complete with rustic cabinets, tile flooring and Mexican tile backsplash. We'll be in limbo for a while, though - the cabinets are due to arrive as early as August 31st and the appliances will get here a little earlier on the 25th. They're not going to tear down the existing kitchen until just before the new stuff arrives, so we don't go completely crazy. Now they're moving windows and doors, tearing down walls and constructing arches...you know, minor stuff! But this will make way for later! We'll post pictures soon.

Geoff and I went on a jog tonight to the Grape Street dog park with Mishka. The temperature was perfect, like a cool evening in spring time. We really wish you were here!

Comments ENABLED!

We really appreciate those of you who have written us to say you're enjoying the blog. We hoped it would help us stay in touch with all of you, and it seems to be working!

We love to hear from you, so we've been disappointed that no one ever ever left a comment on the blog. Then a couple of you (thanks Marie and Debbie!) clued us into the fact that you couldn't! We've since fixed that, so please leave your thoughts! What have you been up to? When are you coming to see us?

Here are some recent pix...

On Monday night, Mishka and I went to see the free organ concert at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park. San Diego is really dog-friendly and Mishka appreciated the cultural experience. Geoff stayed home to work in the yard or something.
Here's Mishka learning how to swim in the ocean:
At first, this pooch wouldn't even get her paws wet. Slowly she began to wade then jump the waves then walk in up to her neck. Finally this weekend she swam!

We were so ecstatic that we kept encouraging her to swim back and forth and back and forth between the shore and a sand bar. By the end, she was turning around and heading for shore, which we interpreted to mean she was scared. That night, she stood up after sleeping for a while and let out a yelp! We did a physical exam (or what we imagined might be dog-appropriate), and she was fine. Later that night, the same thing happened again and she climbed into bed with us. It wasn't until the next morning when she was hobbling around like an old lady that we finally figured it out - Mishka was SORE from all of that swimming! Of course we gave her full body massages and babied her through the whole thing. It won't stop us, though! Mishka just needs more training! We'll be out there next weekend (maybe next time, we won't push her so hard!).

Some of us have to work...

Hello all

I cannot decide if people care enough about our lives to log on and read this stuff, but my wife sure is a swell writer, and she makes my life interesting and well, enough said; I love her. Anyway, I am working in a busy clinic just 3 miles from our home-in-progress, and I think the staff likes me. I saw 200+ patients in my first 3 weeks and contributed in other ways respectably I hope. My very first patient here was a 6 month old recovering from a major plastic surgery operation on her face (to remove a huge congenital mole). Her face was very swollen, warm and red and begged for some antibiotics. Everything since then has been downhill. For all you nay-sayers, learn some Spanish---it is coming fast and you don't want to be the odd man out. There are lizards everywhere, replacing the squirrels in my NC life. They are quick buggers, darting around and...they do push-ups every morning, so you have to respect there dedication to good health. Every morning while I brew some coffee, I have to pinch myself because I feel we are constantly on vacation. Every weather report says "high of 74", "low of 68". Who lives like that? I guess we do.

We go to the zoo and beach a lot, because we can. It is awesome. We recently entertained a close friend Brad Warren (husband of Lorrie from Staesville Children's Clinic), because he was here promoting Thor-Lo socks from good ol' Statesville at a recent tennis tournament at La Costa featuring Venus Williams, etc.... We had a nice dinner at a nearby mexican restaurant.

We miss NC, but we sure do have lots to show you when you visit.

much love
Geoff

Sleeping in

When people ask me about my residency, it is hard to explain. You see, I'm doing research all year, and they gave me a whole month to decide what lab I was going to work in. Even though I chose the lab in the month of July, it is August, and for complicated reasons, I'm still waiting really to begin...which means I get a lot of sleep.

As a teenager, I was a champion sleeper. I could remain asleep for hours and hours, allowing the dreams to play themselves out to their impossible conclusions until I was exhausted of so much rest. Mostly I did this in Spain, where my poor, exasperated grandmother had made our breakfasts with fresh squeezed juice early each morning hoping maybe that day we'd get up. To her credit, she would kind of mock us but never disturbed us. So I slept.

Once I signed on for medicine, I never thought I'd have days like that again. Amazingly, as fate would have it, here I am in San Diego, sleeping eight, nine, ten hours, even. Every morning, I awake when I am good and ready, when the half-waking dream has fully unravelled, and I am aching to stretch. Even Mishka, who used to nose me in the early morning, is doing it. It makes for some crazy dreams.

For instance, this morning I had a very rational dream whereby I was going to get on a plane from Europe to return home, but first, I must become a chicken and be boiled in a pot for soup. I was nervous about this. Geoff had been through the same ordeal, and told me "Yes, it does hurt at first as the temperature rises, but then the adrenaline kicks in and you hardly feel the pain." I was wondering whether I should ask to be plunged in head first. Of course, the fact that I would become this chicken soup did not interfere with my travel plans the next day. That's the lovely thing about dreams: it can all coexist.

Yesterday, I awoke having dreamt about the death - or non-death- of a 67-year-old black woman, a close friend in the dream. I was visiting her in the hospital because she had pneumonia, and the doctors had decided it was time for her to go home. She had decided it was time for her to die, so she told her family she wasn't going to make it out of the hospital. They needed to prepare themselves, because the end was near. And boy did they prepare...even while she still lived and breathed, they made the funeral arrangements for the next day, including a viewing in the same hospital bed. When the next day arrived, so did all of the preparations - the flowers, the beautician who puts make-up on the deceased, platters of food and bowls of punch. My friend lay very still while all of this went on around her and while she was made to look "just as she had in life" by the miraculous talent of the beautician to the dead. After everyone left, Geoff and I were the only ones who remained, and she sat up. I awoke as we were planning on taking her home with us.

So, if anyone can decipher these dreams, please let me know and I'll let you have a crack at my dream about the rice fields and the flying carp that I hijacked to the moon....

Daddy

This is not going to be a sad blog, but I have to mention that today marks the sixth year since my dad died.

Ever since, Geoff and I have dedicated this day to Daddy, usually by doing the things that he loved to do or by eating the foods he used to make. When we lived in North Carolina, we would go hiking in Pilot Mountain around the knob where we held his memorial service and then make Daddy's barbecued ribs for dinner. Today we remembered him by making fresh tomato and bacon sandwiches (which Daddy used to make using his own home-grown tomatoes) then visiting the zoo.

Last time Geoff and I visited the zoo, we walked through the Hummingbird Aviary, and it reminded me of my dad. He loved birds and raised pigeons growing up. When I was a kid, he nursed an injured pigeon ("Gloria") back to health. He had a colony of prolific zebra finches and a million bird feeders around the house. And he loved the hummingbirds. After Daddy died, we planted a special tree in his memory. Just before we put it in the ground, a hummingbird flew around and around the tree. It was comforting.

At the San Diego Zoo, there are plaques all throughout remembering loved ones. I thought it would be really cool to have one for Daddy, maybe in the Hummingbird Aviary or one of the other aviaries. A donation of $5000 will buy a plaque, and all of the money supports the zoo and its conservation efforts. Apparently you can set up a fund or something, which would be nice, because I think we could come up with the money with the help of family and friends by 2011, the tenth anniversary of his death. Ryan liked the idea, so that's our goal.

Broadway Rocks!

Tonight Geoff's boss Leon Kelley and his wife Jewel treated us to a night of Broadway at the San Diego Pops. They hold season tickets to these open air concerts on the water and have great seats right up front, with a little table. We packed a gourmet picnic dinner (and carried it in the cooler given to us by Naila, Steve et al and the picnic basket given to us by Pat and Curtis), and they loved it (I was trying hard to suck up, so that was good).

The show was fantastic! The four singers were these great Broadway stars and they even sang things from Jesus Christ Superstar and Tommy, in addition to Phantom of the Opera and other crowd-pleasers! And did you know that the 80's Bonnie Tyler song "Total Eclipse of the Heart" was originally meant for - and finally made into - a Broadway musical about a vampire? YES! The whole crowd indulged in a full throttle Broadway rendition dipped in Velveeta, and suddenly I was 8 again, leaping and twirling dramatically with my mom in our pajamas. Everyone was humming and swaying, but it wasn't until the end that all inhibitions were shed and everyone burst into song and dance to the encore "Aquarius" from Hair, with the whole cast dressed as flower children and the chaotic euphoria punctuated by no less than FIREWORKS exploding over the water.

Wow.

Just a short walk down the road, the sold-out Padres/Giants game was going on, featuring Barry Bonds! Geoff and I were marveling at how many cool things can happen even simultaneously in this place. Hope you'll come visit us soon.