So, where was I?
Ah yes. I resigned from my job to become a full time writer, and pen the next great American Science Book: “Death from the Skies”. That’ll happen in late May. But there’s a little backstory…
So a little while ago I get the contract from the publisher, and Mrs. BA says to me, she says: You know, a writer can write anywhere.
And I say, Well, yeah.
And she says, Rohnert Park is boring.
And I reply, Well, yeah.
And she says, Little Astronomer will be going into middle school next year, and we need to get her to a better school system.
And I think, She spends a lot of time researching stuff on the Internets, so she’s probably right.
So I reply, Well, yeah.
Taking this as confirmation that I’m agreeable to moving (which, in fact, it was) Mrs. BA starts the research. She looks at place after place, and where the schools might be good, the weather is terrible. Or it’s too urban. Or too rural. Or it’s on the East Coast, which we left back in 2001 (and don’t miss the weather, or the traffic).
Anyway, Mrs. BA works and works on this, and one day she walks into my home office and says to me, she says, How about Boulder?
Now, many thoughts crowded into my head at that point. Boulder? I love Boulder! It has a rich atmosphere, it’s a fun place, the mountains are spectacular. I have many friends who live there. People who live there love it, and seem amazingly happy. I spent weeks there working on a Hubble camera, and had a great time. It was the setting for Steven King’s The Stand. What’s not to love?
So I say, It’s cold there.
And she replies, The schools there are incredible. They have two of the top 300 high schools in the nation there.
And I think, we’re done negotiating.
It was that simple. OK, it was actually a lot more complicated. We needed to go to Boulder and reconnoiter, so we combined a vacation with poking around and looking at houses. We found one we loved, and we went back and forth on it, but we have settled on it. We put our house in California up for sale, and amazingly, it was sold immediately. I’ve never seen such a thing. If I were superstitious, I’d say it was fate. But in fact it was due to years of Mrs. BA’s effort into making our house really pretty nice. Also, we had the best house in our price range on the market in this area, and we priced it to sell. No luck or fate needed (since they don’t exist).
Sorry. Even when telling a story I have to let a little skepticism sneak in.
But there you have it. That’s the final part of the big news. I’m writing a book, I resigned my job, and the Bad Family is up and moving to Boulder, Colorado.
I have no idea how this tale will end, except that at some point a book will come out, and the Little Astronomer will get a great education, and that soon enough we’ll be reminded, after six years of rain and fog, what a real winter is like.
Sounds like fun. Eastward ho!
