NoCA bliss

Five months ago finds us desperately trying to organize an absentee move to northern California while preparing a 3 month escapade through asia and depositing a dissertation. Our final nights in our home there, the dissertation having been completed a few days earlier, were spent on the floor under a travel towl purchased for our trip. Our cars were on a truck headed to California (via God knows where), and our stuff was waiting to make the same journey in a wharehouse in Champaign. Finally we left it all behind and boarded our plane to Japan--with many a loose end behind. We didn't put our house on the market at the right time, for one. Nevertheless, the immediate needs upon landing in Japan and subsequently China were sufficient to distract us almost entirely from the worry of what we had left behind, what hadn't quite been completed, and the ambiguous status of all of our worldly posessions. Fortunately, travel with a backpack rapidly teaches you that you don't need much more than what fits in a backpack (and a lot of what one initially takes finds its way to the bin right quick) and a good companion. Hence, we didn't worry--much (acute moments of intense panic and stress and wondering if the house would ever sell etc., only to be replaced by the need to understand what the squiggly lines on the menu mean and whether this was the kanji for fish eyes or not...).
Needless to say, we survived Asia. Had a grand time. And never sold the damn house nor resolved many a loose end. Oh well.
Now we're in Northern California. One of us has a job, the other will soon. The house has an offer on it, and as the last loose ends are being removed, we find ourselves in the blissful cognizance of a bonanza of opportunity in our new home. In 2 hours we can go to the beach, the mountains, vineyards, etc. etc. People that live here don't know how good it is, and to realize this, we highly recommend a long stay in the mid-west. No offence to those that live there and love it, we simply didn't feel at home amidst the corn and soy, with the closest mountains hundreds of miles away (and not really mountains, some of us would argue). In a month or so, we have moved in, been to Tahoe, Napa, Sonoma, San Francisco, Oroville, Fresno, Merced, ... Life is good, quite frankly, and the only regrets we might have now are to have worried so much about things that are now resolved. Of course we are a little stressed about what we'll do next weekend: skiing, yosemite, beach, or wine?