New Baby (Car) and Balloons

There are several of these "and the wine is bottled poetry" signs introducing tourists to the Napa Vally. Kaz and I pass them everyday to and afro work. Apparently in late fall all the vines turn color and look pretty. Right now they're all green.

I get to see lots of balloons every morning on the way to work. I've counted anywhere between 6 to 14 of them, and sometimes they get real close to my car:)

Speaking of car, this is our new baby in the driveway with sister Sally in the background. His name is Sherman Tank. Named after the primary American muscle tank of WW2 used by the US and it's allies, Sherman's a little Japanese Scion xA '05 that gets about 32 miles/gallon in the city and 37 on the highway. Instead of a high caliber gun for head on enemy engagement, he's got Yakima racks for our eventual canoe and mountain bikes.

From the inside, Sherman's pretty sci-fi looking:) He's got an iPod adapter and a pioneer sound system that pumps 160 watts. The manual transmission keeps my antsy nature somewhat satiated, a higher seating postion allows you to see stuff better and your legs extend down as well as forward when seated. He's like a mini mini-van station wagon spaceship!

I made the drive across country in 3.5 days with all of our stuff from the storage space in VA. Now we have a bed, chairs, kitchen table, drums, glasses, dishes, lamps, silverware... and lots of accumulated junk-stuff from our combined lives. We've been going through everything when time allows and finally have most everything organized:) This is a shot from the loft of a beautiful quilt that Karen's maid of honor, Sarah, made for us as a wedding gift. I found a real MacGyver way of hanging it in the "great room" using random materials laying around. Looks real good!

Ran into some unexpected snow in Wyoming on that trip cross country. I named the Penske truck Leonard. He was only 1000 miles old when I got him. He's a Man now. I'm still a terd though;)

Here's the front of Clos Pegase, the winery where Kaz works. Story goes that when Pegasus, the winery's namesake, landed on Mount Helicon his powerful hooves ripped open the peak and released the waters within. The Spring waters irrigated the vines and wine was born; the Muses were "inspired" by wine and art was born.

website--> http://www.clospegase.com/
location--> Calistoga, CA (population 5,214)





Karen swears that this guy is not one of her co-workers, but how could she REALLY tell with that crafty disguise? I jest not, keep one eye always wide open when working and playing lute in the wine caves.

"Hark, the owl of Dionysus doth see best in a cellar." -Unknown

Anyway, Kaz does her best not to knock over the artwork in the caves when she's driving the forktruck. It seems to me that if she accidentally chips a piece of old Pegasus here and there they'll just look more authentic, right?

Our (more permanent) new home!

April 17, 2007...

Move in day at our new and improved home.

It's part of a duplex and and it's wonderful. Our neighbors are an older married couple; they're both massage therapists, which I think opens up some really good bartering possibilites for me! Sally gets her own parking spot and there's space in case she ever gets a brother or sister. You can see our old home in the background in his temporary holding spot until Joey takes him back to Alameda. He seems a bit dejected back there, but we haven't heard him complaining too loudly.

We have our very own backyard which we're supposed to keep up. That was good news for me because I've been wanting to keep up a backyard for a long time now. It's green now, but apparently in the summer it gets so dry that the grass turns a lovely shade of yellow-brown. The dormer window is our bedroom window and everything to the left of that belongs to our neighbors. The tree in our yard is a plum tree.

This is our yard view from the wood deck. You can barely see it, but there's a little shed to the right of the shot with extra storage space and yard tools. On the far left just beyond the fence there's a white horse. Immortals call him Shadowfax but our neighbors call him Jack.

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One of the best things about the house is the fire place. We love it and have used it every night, since it's been so cold. Joey likes to tend it best, so I let him and I just sit by it and use my computer. We set up a make-shift table on top of our coolers with a piece of wood we found lying around. It works for now.



Above the fireplace are the big windows that let in a BUNCH of light. We really like the light that we get in the place. In the top left of the pic is a wagon-wheel-style chandeliere which we like, but we may put it on a dimmer switch.

Out the back door we have a porch swing which really sealed the deal since Joey and I had our first meeting on a porch swing. .... sigh....

Just beyond the porch swing is a better shot of our storage tool shed.

This is the big view of the "great room." There are two big closets to the left for storage and coats and stuff, along with a closet that has our BIG fridge in it. It's kind of nice not to see the fridge all the time.

If you turn around from the "great room" you get to see the TINY kitchen. We'll probably end up getting an island at some point, but for now it's functional. Besides, we only have Frank and Marybeth's camping cookware (two small pots) from the camper and the plastic plates & glasses from the picnic set that Dan and Adriane gave us for our wedding (what lifesavers!!). Through the halway to my right is the bathroom. If I look 90 degrees to my right I'd see the front door. On the far left you can just see the sliding glass to the backyard. The stairs lead up to the loft and bedroom.

This is the view of the loft from the "great room". There are another two big closets up there and the door to our bedroom. It's tough to see, but the door is tiny and diagonal at the top. I feel like Alice In Wonderland whenever I walk/duck through it.

And this is our bedroom. It's actually much bigger than this picture implies. It has lots of closets (again with the closets) and hookup for a washer and a dryer. We won't get a washer for a while, but at least the option is there. We getting some good use out of the air-mattress since our regular mattress is in storage in Virginia still. All in due time, we say.

Our (first) new home!

April 10, 2007. Tuesday. Move in day at our luxurious natural setting accomodations. Aka, the local State Park, site number forty-two. Close to the bathrooms and across the way from the creek.

Actually, pronounced "Boo-'thay".

This is the Dolphin in his new surroundings, far from the hustle and bustle of Alameda.

He and Sally seemed to get along well.

Beans and rice with vino, the perfect combination!

This was the sleeping quarter above the drivers cab. To the right is the dining hall, and to the left is the lounge.

Facing the other direction, you can again see the dining hall, along with the kitchen and the bathroom in the very back. We didn't use the

bathroom much since we didn't want to fill up the holding tank too fast because we didn't know how long we needed to stay there and we weren't really sure where the nearest dump station was. In addition, Frank told us some pretty funny (but only funny if it wasn't you) stories about having to pick up terds from the ground. So we put our terds else where, namely in the bathrooms that the park provided for us.

Speaking of bathrooms, you can see how close the toilets and showers were to us. And below is a close up of the facilities. The showers were 25cents for 3 minutes. Needless to say, I took the shortest showers of my life at this park. All fond memories.

The State Park was really beautiful. Every night we went to sleep with the crickets, the stars and the fresh air. And every morning we would hear the birds sing and watch the sun rise when Joey drove me to work. Just a stones throw away from Brooklyn, right?