Moving to a new house in a new state is a good reason to write a post about new stuff. So, without further ado, here’s the top ten new things I’ve learned since moving to California.

1. I really don’t have to wash my “oily” hair every day. A stylist here told me I needed to stop washing my hair every day in my new climate and that after a few weeks my scalp would stop producing extra oil to compensate for what I was washing away every day. Go figure. It actually worked! And in the meantime I found I can now say: dry shampoo, where have you been all my life? You rock!
2. College debate teams are apparently alive and well. My daughter just joined one. It has the same standing on campus as a sport; you train and go to tournaments. Sounds like all those softball tournaments in the sweltering heat, but with less sweating? OK, maybe not. But at least there’s a time limit.
3. The Next Door app is a really great way to “meet” your neighbors. It’s like Facebook, only everyone in your feed lives nearby. We’ve used it to get recommendations on local contractors and doctors, give away all our moving boxes, sell some stuff we didn’t have room for, find a babysitting job for one of the girls, learn about neighborhood events, and even borrow a wheelchair to use temporarily. Great use of technology to make a big city feel small.
4. The smell of cigarette smoke is really really really hard to remove from a room. Really really really hard. It took a half dozen coats of a variety of paint/sealers, before we found a shellac-based primer to get most of the smell out of the bathroom in which the previous owner apparently enjoyed her habit. And we still have to keep an air freshener in there… This leads me to wonder… if it’s this hard to get the stuff out of my walls, what the heck is happening to that lady’s lungs? 🙁

5. When the package says you should wear a respirator to apply the aforementioned shellac-based primer, they mean it. Enough said.
6. The US Postal Service will send you a preview of today’s mail if you sign up for their Informed Delivery service. This is a super cool way to make your family think you are psychic when you can predict the senders of each piece of mail before seeing it. And it would be great for those who are traveling to know what mail has arrived when. Oh and I suppose if you think someone is stealing your mail, you can see what they took? It is interesting, nevertheless, especially since it means the USPS is taking digital images of every piece of mail we get…
7. Must eat more dark chocolate (the stuff that has at least a 70% cacao label) because I’m living in the land of sunshine. We all know dark chocolate is good for us, right? But apparently it helps protect our skin against the harmful rays of the sun. (Something about flavanols or whatever.) Quote from miscellaneous web resource that must be true because it’s on the interwebs: “If you’re planning on a beach vacation, consider loading up on dark chocolate in the prior weeks and months.” I now live where people do beach vacations and, thus, I need to load up on dark chocolate all the time.  (I’m still working on exploring all of the dark chocolate options but so far these Ghirardelli Chocolate Intense Dark Bars are my favorite and Amazon has a great price, especially on Subscribe and Save, because DUH!)

8. The advertised average daily temperature in San Diego (75°) is just that: an average. The locals say we’ve been in a heat wave (85-90°) for much of the time since we arrived. Everyone told us we didn’t need air conditioning (our house doesn’t have it), and yet on those really hot days when I walk the dog I seem to hear a fair number of AC compressors running?! It’s OK. Nicaragua prepared us for much worse than this. 😉
9. These little birds are like the mob bosses of the aviary world. We put a bird feeder on our office window and feel like we’re watching an episode of The Sopranos. These little guys peck and squawk at each other to jockey for position on the feeder. Then they scare away any other types of birds wanting to eat and generally make a mess of the feeder all the time. Only when the feeder is mostly empty do they allow the kinder, gentler birds to take a crack at it.

10. Door handles with levers are apparently loved by dogs all over the world. Our dog has a particular fondness for couches and bread, both of which are frequently left out in our house. In our previous home, we closed him in the mudroom when we left, for the safety of our bread and couches. We tried leaving him in a closed room the second time we left him alone at our new house (the first time we tried giving him free reign, but he was up to his old tricks). When we returned, he was on the couch. Wait – what?! Did someone break into our house just to free our dog from the office? Or could he actually be opening doors? We put his bed in the laundry room one night with the door closed and waited to see what happened. Here are the few seconds I caught on camera after the door was mysteriously opened from the inside… looks pretty guilty to me!