Last week’s edition of The Weekly Letter mentioned Box Mountain, an artificial construct built from boxes moved to California...

“Box Mountain,” I explained to Nazy, “is a volcano.”

“A volcano?”

“Do you feel the magna rising?” I replied. (Sagely.) “If it’s a shield volcano, the mound will simply get bigger. If it’s an explosive volcano, the top will get blown off.”

“But the pile of boxes is shrinking.” Nazy claimed.

Nazy was right.

“I am always right.” Nazy interjects. “Always!”

Several hundred boxes have been unpacked and and the contents put away.

Factual detour: “Put away”, as used in the previous sentence, should be interpreted broadly. It may mean, for example, ‘placed in a closet’. But it could also mean ‘positioned on the floor’, ‘put on the bed’, ‘stored in the bathtub’, ‘planted in the guest room’, ‘shifted to Melika’s attic’....

Nevertheless, we have (truthfully) made huge progress. It’s possible to cook in the kitchen, eat in the dining room and sleep in the bedroom. We hadn’t, however, made a dent in the boxes that contain Nazy’s clothes. I thought back to our initial tour of the home...

“... and a very nice thing about this place,” Louis, the realtor said, “is the huge amount of closet space.”

“We brought our own closets,” Nazy interjected.

“You won’t need those,” Louis continued.

“Louis, my friend, you are so naive,” I thought.

Organized and prepared, Nazy had photos and assembly instructions for her Swiss closets.

“And look at this!” She said, brandishing the instructions. “Construction is so simple: look! No words - just pictures. And everything can be put together by one Swiss girl..”

“Named Heidi?” I asked.

“ ... working alone.” Nazy concluded.

“She has a Phillips screwdriver and an Allen wrench,” I replied.

“So?”

“I can’t find my tool box. I think we need a handy man.”

We divided the selection process. I searched the web and called suppliers. (“You charge $92/hour and you can’t start until June?&rdquo Nazy called Melika to get a local contact. (“You can start tomorrow, Ken? And $30/hour? Great!&rdquo

As we settle in, we have become aware of additional differences between California and Switzerland.

“It’s amazing Mitra,” I exclaimed. “We don’t have to tie our newspapers into cubes with with city-approved twine. I just...”

“You sound like you resent the Swiss recycle approach, Dad. Do you want a messy planet?”

“Eh,” I began, momentarily nonplussed, “I favor clean planets, Mitra. But it irks me that Zurich won’t take newspapers if they are put into paper grocery bags. It would be much simpler...”

“Perhaps,” Mitra replied, searching for common ground, “the authorities don’t communicate well. They simply need to explain why the twine is necessary.”

“It’s necessary because someone on the city council has a monopoly on twine production,” I thought. Cynically. “You’re right, Mitra,” I replied. Crustily.

“If they explain things, Dad,” Mitra continued.

“The California solution is much easier, Mitra. We just put everything recyclable in the blue trash can. I don’t have to drive to a grocery store with my PET bottles, to the fabric bin with old clothes and shoes, to the collection point with cans, glass, glass and glass, to the electronics store with a defunct vacuum cleaner, to the flower shop with ..”

“Hrummph,” Mitra expelled.

“What did you say?” I asked.

On the weekend, Nazy and I joined Mitra and Stefan in Los Angeles. We went to a kick-off fund-raising event for Oxygen Tango in Glendale. And we had time to visit..

“LACMA, Mom,” Mitra said. “The Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It’s just 9 miles from our house. And it’s right next to the Tar Pit Museum.”

“I love art and carpets,” Nazy replied.

“Tar pit, not carpet, Mom.”

There was construction on Venice Boulevard, so it took a while to travel 9 miles.

“This street has more lanes than a bowling alley!” I exclaimed.

“Why are you driving in the gutter?” Nazy replied.

Happily, LACMA had free entry for anyone with a Bank of America card. We saw a huge amount of good art. They even had a movie about the reconstruction of Persepolis, the capitol of the Persian Empire in 500 BC. And, Nazy wandered into the Italian cooking (spaghetti) exhibit:

The tar pits, which are next door, are, eh, tar pits. Scientists have recovered Mammoths, Saber-toothed tigers and a wide variety of other animals.

We got back to Santa Barbara in time to see..

“... the Super Ball, Dan.” Nazy enthused.

“Bowl, dear.”

“I thought it was football not bowling.”

“It’s the Super Bowl. Not Super Ball.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

And, finally, a monster storm has hit the Northeast. I called a friend to check out the situation..

“... and, Dan, I don’t think it’s going to be as bad as they say. And that’s exactly what I said about Hurricane Sandy, too.”

“It’s not just the Northeast,” I replied. “We have a weather warning here in Santa Barbara.”

“Really?”

“Possible drizzle this afternoon. We call it a drizzard.”

“Oh the humanity!”