Thursday, January 11, 2007

California Dreaming

My high school Geography teacher Mr. McDonald instilled the fear of God in me about the San Andreas Fault and told us all that California is non-ecumene* and that you couldn't pay him enough to live there.

Earthquake-schmearthquake: California kicks ass.

I'm here in the Bay Area this week, working remotely. The weekend included another feeble attempt at surfing (I got a bit further than when I tried last Spring, but still didn't get up on the board) and hanging out with this cool dude:

With 32+ years of experience at being a very enthusiastic person, I'm learning to that liking a lot of stuff is a pretty good problem to have. It's still a problem, though. Imagine, for example, if you went to Small Town, Iowa to visit someone. (Play along with me. Maybe it's your mom's cousin or something.) As you drive by the local diner, you glance in the window and see the locals sitting at the counter, and you immediately wonder what it would be like if that was *your* local diner, and they knew that on Sundays you liked your eggs over-easy and your bacon crisp and your coffee with milk instead of cream, and the waitress called you "Hon" (which, to me, is the sign of an excellent diner waitress). Anyway, that's kind of what happens to me whenever I go somewhere. I have imagined myself living everywhere from Paris, France to Paris, Ontario, usually much to the dismay of anyone to whom I've mentioned these grand fantasies. (On the large majority I don't actually follow through, but there were those 2 little cross-country moves.)

All of my wanderlust is particularly bubbly here in California, for a whole host of reasons, and also because even though I only lived here for 18 months back in 1998-2000, my friends here are like family.

Plus, the weather is really good. In January, 10°C is "cold." Everything is relative.

*Good word, eh? Despite his earthquake-alarmism, Mr. McDonald was a good teacher.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

He is such an adorable kid!

For Julian every vacation is a scouting trip. Seriously, we've looked at open houses in Hawaii and checked for web developer jobs in Switzerland.