How do you feel about California?

If they don’t do menudo on Sundays they don’t count.

Well, where I live now it isn’t, nor does it seem likely any time soon. Its heyday was the 19th century, and it’s been a backwater ever since. I ride my horse through forested trails which were once roads with farms, pastures, barns, and on every stream a mill. Now there are just stone walls and cellar holes to show where that all once was. I find it extremely congenial. My idea of eden is watching the fabric of the living earth knitting over, year by year, the terrible wounds inflicted by civilization.

I assume, given the boiling-over human population of the planet, that I live in a rare and graced place.

You live in The Shire?

I have not spent a lot of time in California, but what little time I have, mainly Los Angeles and San Fransisco, I have really enjoyed.

As a side note, my father was born and raised in Hollywood during the Golden Age of Radio. He was the youngest of five children and the only one of them to leave California. His siblings are all gone now, and I have a passel of cousins I’ve not met this century and many other distant relatives I never have met.

My parents retired to Carlsbad in the early 80s, and I took my kids and visited for a couple of weeks every summer (and a few other times) from the time they were born. That went on for almost 30 years. I loved it out there and can’t see how anyone could find the San Diego area boring, as someone mentioned earlier. Yes, the weather is fairly consistent, but having lived in tornado-, blizzard-, and windstorm-prone areas, I don’t view interesting weather as a plus. There’s plenty to do and see. We were never bored.

That said, I wouldn’t move there, first because I can’t afford it and second because my parents are so inextricably linked to the area that I’d miss them too much.

Yeah, pretty close. The Shire after it had been semi-abandoned for a hundred years. It’s colder though. Perhaps the climate changed, and the wolves came in the winter and ate most of the hobbits. Or else those enterprising hobbits cut down all the trees, the topsoil washed away, and they all moved to Ohio.

Ha! Both my parents were born in Ohio. Maybe they were escaped Hobbits. My younger sister has suspiciously hairy toes.

An opinion I have about CA is that it gets steadily prettier and prettier as one goes northward, particularly along the coastal corridor (highways 1 and 101), beginning in the vicinity of Santa Barbara.

But “they” do.

How about machaca and eggs for breakfast? Jarritos as a soda offering?

Although I have to admit it’s pretty much a lost exclusivity ever since I spotted a vanity plate in Anchorage that read “La Raza.”

I had machaca and eggs for breakfast this morning. I’m not a fan of Jarritos, but I’ll take a nice icy glass of watermelon or cantaloupe aqua fresca.

I prefer horchata – especially with Ensenada style fish tacos.

Paisan!

Did you know San Diego is reusing sewer water for drinking water?

you do realize half of SF IS landfill (as is Treasure Island), which is reason for damage from 89 quake; and have you read about multi-billion skyscraper leaning like Tower of Pisa because they didn’t drill deep enough to bedrock

you went to one of the best foodie cities in USA (SF) and didn’t eat at any of 10,000 different restaurants?

Good example of what I DON"T miss about living in SF–smug, thin-skinned snowflakes, who think everything important started there (The City" really🤦‍♀️) Hint: Beatniks started on East Coast, not Cali

Unfortunately, when you travel for business you are often stuck with whatever is attractive to the leader of the group. In the case of that trip, everybody just “had“ to eat at Postrio, which was not what I would have chosen, and which I gave three stars on Yelp.

I have no doubt I missed all kinds of great eating opportunities.

It is practically distilled water once they get done with it. To me it really beats draining the aquifers and dewatering rivers.

Heh, no snobbery there! And there is no place called Cali in California, any more than Frisco. Bub.