San Diego

Safely arrived as of about 1:30 this morning after a day of loading two vehicles, scrubbing the house and driving over 6.5 hours with an unhappy cat. She's doing well now. Me? I slept about four hours, then unloaded the two vehicles and am currently sweltering in my mother's non-A/C house (62% humidity! After single-digit humidity I feel like I'm in the tropics, haha!).

Arizona sent me off in style with the biggest dust storm I'd seen yet and a whopper of a midnight thunderstorm that blew some unknown object against the window of vintage heavy yellow glass in my garage and shattered it.

This is all very hard an ego that has not always been particularly resilient, but I'm trying to remain positive. In between job search activities I'm going to volunteer at the VA hospitals (now that I'm actually within range of one) and see what other related trouble I can get myself into. I also have the chance here to ride my bike daily again (it got too hot in AZ), and plan on enjoying a game at the First Place Padres' new ballpark that I haven't yet seen.

Some small nice things I've already noticed about living in San Diego instead of an AZ desert town 3+ hours from the nearest big city: more than one AM radio station, my cell phone gets more than zero to two bars of signal power, the cat's hair is very soft instead of wiry and dry, and... I've gone from having to choose between Walmart, Kmart, a small JC Penney's and a handful of expensive boutiques, to having so many stores I don't know where to start (headed out to find a wallet and some summer pants--teachers don't need nice summer clothes, so my wardrobe in that area is pathetic, haha).

I'm sorry I don't have anything substantive to say. A lot of my brain is wrapped up in the future right now, and coping with the present...

Anyway, I know I have at least a half-dozen regular readers in the area. I'd love to meet some of you. *hint, hint*

Update: One more nice thing about San Diego... the food! Today for lunch I stopped in at a little cafe-style restaurant called "The Pita Place." Quick, fresh and delicious with everything made from scratch. I had a warm falafel sandwich with dressing, cucumbers, tomatoes and onions. Side of fresh yogurt-cucumber dressing with pita triangles. Mmmmmm... *eyes rolling back in head with bliss*

There was definitely nothing like that in my old hometown.