Turns out snapping off a few pics of giant crashing waves is just a lot of foam and water. But, this one seemed a bit evocative. If by evocative, I mean wet.

Yesterday, in honor of the holiday but breaking from normative behaviors, I cooked a feast for M. and me of stuffed and roasted Cornish game hen, ham, potatoes, broccoli and the first bread baking I’ve done in a very, very, very long time.

It felt good to have a real kitchen again. And, there ain’t nothing like jazzing up your stuffing and roasting with lemons you ripped from your own tree moments before tossing in the roasting pan.

Actually, it wasn’t bread but Parker House rolls, and damn if they didn’t bake up most excellently. So excellent in fact we ate them again this morning with butter and marmalade.

Today, we avoided the hideous and shameful trampling crush of shoppers. We instead explored the layers of natural our new town has to offer. We walked to this county park:

Then we drove on over to the city pier and caught a little sunset over the Pacific. Like the huge moroon that I am, I had put down my good camera to grab a pee before this new adventure. But, I caught some sun-fading pinks and oranges with the old iPhone.

(All of the full photo galleries are behind the sundry links in the above pointless but explanatory text.)

Technorati Tags: California, hiking, mountains, ocean, Pacifica, photos, Thanksgiving

My joy at leaving work early, getting lost in the fog trying to find an Office Depot and failing, wandering too long at a Hallmark store than a discount store, where I was unable to choose three pillar candles to set in a housewarming gift, picking up pies M. had ordered from a local bakery and ultimately lying on the couch, is glorious. For hours on end, I have done nada, fuckall, nothing, and I am digging it mightily.

My goal for the weekend is a little fancy cooking for two tomorrow and that’s about it. We didn’t even buy a turkey. Nope, Cornish game hens and ham for us. And, pie. One each.

I want to maybe write, maybe hike. (The ocean is less than a mile in one direction from our place, I’m thinking “west,” the mountains are about a mile and a half in the other direction, could be east.) Maybe we’ll explore our new town apart from the wilderness, including it’s 1/4 mile long pier. Maybe I’ll just obsess on the hellish goings on in India, especially since I know folks who have stayed at those hotels, whilst carrying western passports.

I did slice the tip of my middle right finger off while searching through a bag full of toiletries for dental floss. Damn disposable razor, how’d that get in there? Anyway, without my precious full layers of epidermis, writing stings like hell. What’s that I hear? Another excuse for doing NOTHING.

And it is for the absence of anything that I must do for which I am grateful.

Technorati Tags: Bay_Area, beach, California, home, Pacifica, real_estate, Thanksgiving, suburbs, mountains, India, writing

Insert your own pithy and lengthy entry here. I would have done it for you, but instead I fell asleep on the couch.

The one thought that’s been rolling around in the isolated, empty space that is my brain cavity is all about home ownership. The short of it is I think about the nasty little minds conceiving the housing crisis around the poor folk who have gotten in over their heads haven’t rented in a while. Even with a pretty cool landlord and sufficient resources to live a mellow life, dealing with the man who owns the house and paying the bills for him grinds you down a bit.

Take the security deposit. Mostly they take it. This time around, we no doubt won’t have a crazy Nick on our hands. But, Fred from the management company hasn’t shown up twice now for our walk through, standing up first M. on a Wednesday night and then me on Thursday.

I’m boring myself into a comfy couch stupor, so forget reading any sense in the paragraphs above. Instead, take a look at our housewarming party on Saturday and the reason we moved to this town, the cliched and beautiful ocean.

Technorati Tags: California, Pacifica, real_estate

I like this picture, because I think it’s a rare example of my looking better than M. while traveling.

Despite my whining, we are settling in to the homestead. For the first weekend, we were able to have morning coffee and hang out (while waiting, Godot-like, for the plumber).

By reader demand, I heed the call to present M. in Pacifica, a huge future draw to this little burg, I am sure. Here, he drinks coffee in our garden, as I shall pretentiously refer to our backyard.

It’s like a garden, because shit is growing in it, no help from M. and me so far.

Meanwhile, apparently owning real estate is the deciding factor in my getting my craft freak on. I haven’t crafted nothing for a very, very, glacially long time. (Of course, thanks to global warming, a glacial age is a whole hell of a lot shorter now.)

I had a positively Martha Stewart lightening bolt that unfortunately won’t lead to vast wealth and syndication. It came about because of a long, boring story that’s kernel is: M.’s seamstress (yes, seamstress) messed up some T-shirts I wanted altered rendering wearable but unattractive tourist souvenirs unwearable without my losing a good 70-80 pounds.

Tangentially, I liking buying T-shirts when I travel, because they pack easy and usually you can find something amusing or unique, and with a little hunting you can be sure you’re supporting the local economy. But, jesus h. christ, do the typical style shirts detract from anything like an acceptable fit or look for many a woman built like me. What’s the opposite of a flattering outfit?

It’s kind of a butch, but not in a sexy dyke way, look with a whole lot all the WalMart on a Tuesday night, given up on life or looking good frumpiness. I end up sleeping in the shirts or working out (I never look good in the gym).

Here’s what I did. Throw pillows from around the world.

Technorati Tags: home, Millenials, suburbs

I wrote about our plumbing, the boring kind not the fun naughty bits of plumbing, and it heard my hubris. When the plumber left, the shower was working swell and I wrongfully assumed the clog had been released. Alas, it was not meant to be.

We Costco’d what felt like all day long. Actually, we hit the Northern Cali, suburban hell trifecta — Costco, an Asian supermarket and Target. The cliched perfect storm of my hatred for humanity. I’m thinking of advocating for a complete cell phone ban at all Costco stores nationwide, maybe in a five-mile radius. It’s the only solution for assholes wandering aimlessly and stopping every foot or so in their meanderings around Costco’s wide, but not wide enough, aisles whilst chatting pointlessly.

Fully groceried and toilet papered ready to hunker down in our beachside Shangri la with a big Sunday dinner, the plumbing skunked us. The kitchen sink immediately made it clear whatever clog the plumber freed in the shower was not enough to get the bathroom-kitchen sink continuum back in their separate grooves.

Fucking hell. Suburbs and sunny skies and lemon trees. But, hell. Fucking plumbing.

Technorati Tags: California, mortgage, moving, real_estate

Ah, suburbia. This morning, I awoke on edge and anticipating a new day of sunshine-y awesome pain and misery. Today was the day the plumber was due to snake our woes away.

The other day, the shower was draining slowly. Then, the next day, slower. Finally, I tried plunging and whatnot and got nowhere, apart from cramped up from awkward over tub hunching and plunging and generally working out my core in a very non-Pilates, unsatisfactory fashion. And, then, after I tried snaking it was clearly worser and worser still. As I hung out watching the bathtub waters not recede, M.’s suds and disposal action from the kitchen sink came to visit me in the bathroom.

We have what is called a “home warranty.” I ain’t never heard of such a thing back East, from where I hail. Nope, there, you buy an old house, because mostly everything is an old house, and it’s as it is. Old house and all. Ask Bob Villa.

But, here, you can get some sort of fancy insurance. The seller’s were kind enough to incorporate this fancy insurance into the agreement. For a co-pay, the plumber came to help us out of our misery. I’m not sure if it was a fair price, because I have no idea how much snaking costs in this ‘hood. But, it seemed easy enough.

Foolishly, I spent part of yesterday evening reading a thousand and one interwebs opinions on how much this kind of insurance sucks and how godawful fucked up bad the company we have is. They don’t fix anything, leave you worse off, but take your money easy enough. You never really can tell with internet shit. Afterall, the folks motivated to put electrodes to paper, as it were, generally have an ax to grind when they sit down and tap out their opinionated opus.

All’s I can report is I spoke to Fidelity Home Warranty on Saturday morning, and they gave me a plumber’s name and phone number and said he’d call on Monday to set something up. I got my snake, commenced to snaking, so all the back up and effluvia and called back in hours to let them know it was far worse than previously reported. Within in hour, as the sun was setting, they called back, apologized for not being able to get someone out on a Saturday night and said the same plumber who’s name they gave for Monday would be calling shortly. Sure enough, he called, and told me he’d be here at 11 a.m.

It was 11:20 a.m. when he showed up. I guess that’s my beef. Other than that, he took his powerful, electric professional style snake, told me not to peel potatoes in the disposal (I hadn’t. We haven’t actually cooked here.) and was on his way well before 12 noon.

These pipes are clean.

My awaking with a sense of dread was for not. But, if next Sunday, the same jack off who was mowing or trimming at 8 a.m. today fires up his engines again, I’m going hunting for the most dangerous game with my weed whacker.

Technorati Tags: California, home_buying, real_estate

Long weekend in the City of Sin. Or really the city of extreme levels of consumerism and carefully constructed reality-ish places. We were there for the entertainment (Madonna’s “Sticky and Sweet” tour and Cirque de Soleil’s “O”). So, really, what happened in Vegas, could leave Vegas and be shared with a group of nuns and Amish.

Here’s the photo album of some of the things we saw and did.

Nothing great, but I think I captured some of the glamor and all that it shiny. I kind of love/hate the mashups that are New York-New York and Paris. Architectural distillation of big cities down to city blocks with cartoon and somewhat actual results. It took me a second look to realize that the old brownstones along the “waterfront” of NY harbor were not reclaimed old LV buildings but faux, authentic brownstones, East Coast style.

On to bed to sleep off the excitement and head back to work.

Oh, and this from Madonna. She was singing behind a screen, and I took this otherwise poor quality but kind of interesting pic on my iPhone:

Technorati Tags: architecture, Madonna, Vegas, Las Vegas, travel