Tag: Southern California
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Moving
In less than two weeks, if all goes according to plan, our youngest and I will be on the road, waving goodbye to California. Yipe!
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Goodbye, California
I will miss California. I’ll miss the views driving up PCH and on the 101 through Thousand Oaks, Santa Barbara, and Ventura. I’ll miss the Hollywood of my 20s, 30s, and 40s — all very different experiences. DTLA will always be one of my favorite places to hunt down historical places and imagine myself in…
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That Time We Bought a Tesla
We didn’t mean to buy a Tesla. Which sounds weird, I know. Was it an accident? No. We didn’t fall into a Tesla and accidentally sign for a loan. What I mean is that when we were shopping for a new car, we weren’t even considering one.
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When you see a chance…
Sitting at the controls of the C-141 Starlifter, I peeked out the windows at the mountains below. I was flying a satellite to a California air base where it would be launched in a couple of weeks. There was only one teensy, totally minor, peculiarly odd thing about what I was doing. I wasn’t a…
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The Cure for Homelessness
“Dive bomb!” A person on the Metro red line had been tossing plastic baggies of puzzle pieces at people’s feet on the train. Once, as the doors opened, she waited until they were just about to close, yelled “Dive Bomb!” and tossed a puzzle piece baggie at a passerby on the platform. This was our…
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Surveiled
I took my regular walk in my neighborhood this morning. It was Sunday, already hot at 10:00 am, and super quiet. No one was around except for the odd car driving by. Suddenly, I heard a cheery, female voice. “Hi!” it said. I looked around, but didn’t see anyone. “You are being recorded,” said the…
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Charge!
I was just thinking about all the things I charge around my house: These things use very little electricity to stay charged. Living in Southern California, it seems crazy that we don’t have solar panels on our roof. Since we don’t own the house, it doesn’t make sense to pay for them. When we do…
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Helping but not helping
Our yard is a mess. Okay, it’s mostly fine but we have a lot of weeds, and the grass — where it exists — is dry and crackly. I’m okay with this for the most part because we live in super dry Southern California and it turns out that the natural landscape is not a…
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Get off my lawn
Phsst-phsst-phsst-phsst-phsst-phsst-phsst-phsst… On one of my morning walks in our suburban Los Angeles neighborhood, I took a detour around a home where a mass of sprinklers was dousing the lawn in little arcs. The lawn was green, lush and beautiful. If I played golf, I probably would have been tempted to tee up. Instead, I skirted…
