Announcing, 2 Bedroom Condo, 2 bath, 2 cats, 2 cars and 2 fidgeting queens ready to rent a fully furnished condo with a large deck and peek-a-boo bay view in Emeryville, CA. Bay Area rent will fetch us $3500 – $4200 (furnished). Wine and booze (lots of it) included.
Ok, MAYBE I’m being dramatic. We adore our life in the Bay Area. More importantly, our chosen family (mostly) is there. There is still a solid list of things that draw us there and keep us put. If all we ever do is live there and bitch about it while we are elsewhere, we’ll have one of the bestsellers ever written. However, Palma is magical. And for less than half of what we could rent our place out for in California we could get access to this shit-hole of a 3 bed, 2 bath, pool, and gardens dump-of-a-place outside Palma. https://www.kyero.com/en/property/4534016-town-house-long-let-biniali
Oh, and did I mention I own an internet-based company. Oh, and we have no kids that we have to worry about the disruption this would cause. Yeah, and our good family and friends would visit us. Meanwhile Chris found yet another AirBnB dump.
At cafe today we created a pro-con list of what it takes to live in the Bay Area and what like and dislike about the Bay Area. The positives still vastly outpace the detractors, but we are surprised by a number of the things that once made Northern California feel like the place to be ceased to be. WTF does that mean? Maybe nothing. Maybe that in year when we take another stunning vacation I’ll revisit these same damned questions. OR maybe that because we have definitively concluded that being parents is off the list, we can now pivot to creating adventure.
Today has been stunning. I do wish this Cathedral wasn’t so ugly. The dude who created this worked with some slacker of an architect, Gaudy or Gaudà or Garish – I dunno, AND apparently he pledge to build this if the Virgin Mary helped him win some war. She must be pissed. 
Outside this dump we found a local Mercat that allowed shoppers to give the fish they purchase to another shop that would quickly prepare the food provided you buy a drink and eat it there. Yeah, we suffered through that first with a fist-full of Gambas (shrimp) only to follow that with a stop at a Cheese and Jamon purveyor that offers sampling items. The temperature was so precisely right that the fat from the Jamon leg was dripping ever so slightly that under the leg of love pooled a small amount of glistening joy. I wish they made Jamon soap, Jamon hair jell, Jamon body conditioner. Hell, I’d even use Jamom oil as…. eeh, never mind. I am now scraching my head to find a place in our world where a farmer’s / fish market would let us do this.
I chose a quiet afternoon in after a brilliant long walk this AM. I’m hydrating, stretching and going to nap so that tomorrow when I’m crushing the limp-along marathon I will at least be well rested. Until then, #unclerandy out.
randy marcotte - uncle randy writes here 