California, 2007

Currently reading: Terry Pratchett’s Carpe Jugulum

All this free time is bad for me. Without full access to a computer, I’m going nuts. I can barely afford it, but $7.59 at the B. Dalton at the mall down the street gets me a little well-deserved time off. It was a toss-up between the Pratchett and Harry Turtledove’s In the Presence of Mine Enemies. I guess I thought dark alternative history wouldn’t help with cheering me up.

Must get to a used book store. Although once I get there, I may spend far more than seven bucks.

Ever since high school, I’ve burned through an average of one new book a week. Once I start a book, any book, it’s an effort to stop. I don’t know why. I remember War and Peace took me two nights.

I loved those Goodwill Booksales, where I’d completed most of Ace’s Books entire English print run of Perry Rhodan for about P5 a pop.

And well, now I’m in Los Angeles. I’d probably be better off about three hundred miles north along the coast. This isn’t a reading town…

Los Angeles isn’t much of anything else for me. Sure, I’ve seen more limos and Porsches than anywhere else, but I’m not much of a car buff. I walk through the aisles of Best Buy and Circuit City, and the sixty-inch plasma screens and 3.2 gigahertz processors fail to move me. I suspect that for me, Disneyland will not be the happiest place on earth.

All I see are miles and miles of suburbia, in the distance disappearing into the smog.

My friends and family say once I have a little disposable income in my pocket I’ll be happier. Once I have a car, a nice apartment, and half the IKEA catalog, all my problems should go away.

I wish life was that simple. I wish I was that simple.

In the meantime, the money in my bank account is less than half of next month’s rent. We’ve given our 30-day notice, and now I have no idea where to go from here.

North to San Francisco, where we have relatives, and we can probably get a room for cheap?

Points further east? Places with a lower cost of living, but then fewer job opportunities?

Or throw everything we own into a rental SUV and head for the East Coast?

Ah, well. Nothing to do but put my life in God’s hands.

And hope he doesn’t squeeze too hard.

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