Go west, young birder

POP QUIZ:

What do this book

and this school

have to do with this birder?

Here's a hint:
That's Dr. Matthew Callahan (aka Matty McMatterson) and our friend Christine, who lives in San Francisco, who gave me the field guide pictured above because . . .


Matty got the job at Sonoma State!

He got the call yesterday, and we'll be leaving in July 2009. It's hard to believe; it all seems so far away. But sure enough, we're packing up and moving to California.

Being the live-in-the-moment person that I am, it's hard to be sad now about leaving this place and all my friends. I'm so excited at the thought of a new beginning that I can't feel sad or wistful right now. I'm sure, however, that will come once the departure nears.

In the meantime, however, I sure do have a lot of new birds to learn. It'll be "beginning to bird" all over again! Varied thrushes, weirdo chickadees, no more Eastern bluebirds -- wow.

I'll be in the land of Earl Cootie and Matty Boy, trolley cars, and fog fog fog.

I'll be twenty minutes from Bodega Bay, the setting of Hitchcock's The Birds and an incredibly beautiful coastline, judging from the photos.

I'll see John Muir's redwoods and the Pacific Ocean.

Arnold Schwarzenegger will be my governor.

oh my god...