Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Thirteen reasons I’m looking forward to Santa Rosa
Yeah, I know it’s not Thursday.
In no particular order . . .
1. Balloon rides over Napa Valley. I’ve always wanted to take a balloon ride: the view, the cool wind, the excitement of being inches from death. I’ll have to do this quickly before Karen catches wind of it, however, since I suspect my life insurance doesn’t pay for deaths by parachute or hot air balloon.
Oh, I’m probably being unnecessarily fearful . . . right? (It wouldn’t be fun if there weren’t some risk!)
2. Dim sum at Hang Ah. Imagine that — a nearby dim sum restaurant! I may be an insane foodie, but even I’m not nuts enough to make my own dim sum. Only time we can get dim sum is when we’re in the Bay Area or Seattle, once a year max. A little dim sum goes a long way; I’m thinking we’ll be doing this every three or four months.
3. Colleagues. I’m going into practice with a few fellowship-trained specialists. One’s an otologist, one’s a facial plastic surgeon, and one specializes in sinus surgery. After being all by myself for ten years, this will be heaven. (I’ll be holding down the office most of the time while they’ll come up only a few days a month. It’s the best of both worlds.)
You can’t imagine how lonely and limiting it feels to be in solo practice with no one to talk to. Oh, I can call people (and I do), and I post cases to our specialty’s internet billboard. But it would be far nicer to be able to say, “Hey, come look at this.” And that’s about to become a lot easier.
4. Better health care for Karen. That’s Big Reason #1 for this move. We’re hoping we can find better pain specialists for her in the Bay Area.
5. Better education for Jake. And that’s Big Reason #2. If the high schools don’t work out, we’ll have him take his GED and then go to the local JC, which is top notch, or perhaps Sonoma State University. Who knows, maybe eventually we can get him over to our alma mater. And wouldn’t that be cool! Because . . .
6. We’ll be near Berkeley. Why is Berkeley great?
Because undergraduate women are required to protest in the nude. It’s true. You can’t even get from Latimer Commons to Dwinelle Hall without being assaulted with youthful eye candy.
Berkeley also has a beautiful campus, the most liberal townsfolk in the nation, Top Dog, East Bay Vivarium, terrific bookstores, and great weather, too. What’s not to love?
7. Family and friends. You know who you are 🙂 Seriously, though, maybe now we’ll be able to lure people to our home for dinner. Ten years in Crescent City, and we’ve had Karen’s family up a few times, my family NEVER, Stan and Elissa once. I’m lonely! I want to cook for people!
8. A kick-ass farmer’s market, Santa Rosa Downtown Market.
Yup, it’s all about food with us, and you can’t devise great culinary works without high quality produce. I’m counting on the produce being much better in Santa Rosa. After all, it’s . . .
9. Wine country, and while I’m not a big wine drinker, I appreciate an occasional Pinot Noir. It’ll be fun to hit the Sonoma and Napa Valley wineries in the off season. (If you’ve ever made that trip, you’ll know what I mean. The traffic is appalling.)
10. House hunting. It’s a more expensive market down there, though not as nasty as San Francisco or San Jose. If we sell our house, we should be in a good position to buy a nice home in Santa Rosa. Maybe not this nice,
since we don’t have $45 million, nor do we need 30,000 square feet. But nice enough.
I’m looking forward to the hunt. We don’t want much; after all, we use less that 2000 square feet of our current home. We want a new or almost-new, single-story home with a killer kitchen and maybe a bit of a view. Proximity to good schools. Some land in back for a garden. MILF neighbors who like to sunbathe in the nude.
Little things like that.
11. Restaurants. Seriously, it took me thirty seconds with Teh Google to find Syrah Bistro. Imagine what an hour of intensive study might yield?
We are going to get so fat.
12. Calistoga’s famous hot springs. My wife doesn’t like to soak herself in hot water, but I do. Maybe I can convince her to let me go away by myself for an occasional weekend. Some “me” time. Or maybe I can convince her that this a health spa would be the ideal retirement plan.
That’s what this guy did, after all. If he could “study chiropractic” and call himself a doctor, think what I could do! I can see it now . . .
Dr. Walnut’s
Ear Wax Cleaning & Hot Springs Resort
I’ve got dibs on free massages.
But there are even more advantages to being back in the Bay Area. I’ll be home again, home with all those peripheral types I like to think of as my kind of people. People like
13. Mistress Marisha. Yeah, I know she’s no longer giving professional sessions, but I find it reassuring that she and others like her are living nearby. You never know when I might need some discipline.
New rules for Sunday Thirteens: leave a comment and I’ll give you some lurve! Sounds like the Thursday Thirteen, doesn’t it? It’s a freakin’ coincidence!
microsoar’s flash fiction
dan’s making money . . . again.
corn dog: Arf! Arf arf arf arf arf!
da nator’s Excerpts from a Zoo Intern’s Journal, Pt. 1
dwight’s got a book meme
D.
Ahem. You do know, I hope, that when you’re flying in a balloon, you are moving with, and at the same speed as the wind. Hence, you will feel no cool wind, unless you’ve been eating cool beans.
This comment bought to you by your local aviation pedant.
What is the point of protesting in the nude when no one will remember what you were protesting for? All people will remember is that people were protesting in the nude.
What’s wrong with you, man?!
DON’T LISTEN TO HIM, GIRLS!
I hadn’t read the post yet but I was looking at the pictures. I thought, “Gee that looks like Bizerkely, not Santa Rosa.” I was right. Nude for no reason. I guess you could say that about the whole bay area. I saw a nude “Neptune” on a Bart platform one Halloween. He actually had a body guard. He was one dang beautiful Neptune. All he was wearing was some well placed glitter.
Looks like you made the right decision. One question: what influenced the decision more, healthcare for Karen, or naked coeds?
There is no perception of “wind” when you are up in a balloon. You are moving at the speed of whatever wind you are surrounded by.
Ergo, the ballooning experience is exceptionally quiet and still. When the flame-valve-gas-thingy is ignited, it’s jarring every time.
Berkley? Ah man. It’s just as well. Your Texas district election commission is going to be calculating the results this November and the clerk is going to say, “Hey! Somethin’s missin’. Alright! Which one of you Bubbas stole our token liberal? Dutch? Wassit yew? I know’d its yew.”
Microsoar: forget the balloon ride, then. Sounds too hot. I’m parachuting.
Dan — yeah, what microsoar said!
CD: only non-Berkeley people call it Berzerkly 😉 And, honestly, I never saw any public nudity, not while I was there. In high school, though, I went to a meeting of the science fiction club and when I walked in there was a girl with big boobs on the floor, lying on her back, naked from the waste up! Freaked me out. Turns out it was an overweight guy with man-boobs, and I never did learn why he had taken off his shirt.
DN: I think you know the answer 🙂
And, honestly, I never saw any public nudity, not while I was there.
Maybe the nudity is just to get people to go there. Once you’re there, you find out that was just in the demo version. 😉
Reminds me of our junior high school visit to the high school to show us how great it would be to go there (as opposed to the private and parochial high schools). During lunch, you could eat outside in the bleachers, play frisbee. It looked great!
Once we got into high school, you couldn’t do any of that stuff. You had to eat inside, sit down and they had these imaginary lines you couldn’t cross before the bell rang. I mean, if your foot crossed the line, they’d make you step back.
Meanwhile, my friend went to a Catholic high school. He got to do fun stuff during lunch…
Dwight, I haven’t been a Texan for ten years. I’m an Oregonian. Pete DeFazio’s my rep, Ron Wyden’s my Senator. Solid blue, especially if Jeff Merkley kicks Gordon Smith’s ass in November.
You are correct – only non-Berkeley people call it Berzerkely because the people that live there think everything is just fiiiiiine. I have NO idea why you have not seen naked people in the bay area. I have seen the nudies all over at all times of the day. The densest display is in San Francisco at Critical Mass, but there are strays everywhere. I saw a nudie at Lake Merritt the other day, butt checks toward the sun while I was walking the lake path. NOT what I wanted to see amongst the goose poo.
Hayward is Hayweird, but unlike the people from Berkeley, the people who live in Hayward will actually say they are from Hayweird.