Californians

:floor: :floor: :floor: Those are good.

Those are good ones! In Indiana, we get "STORM WATCH" the minute a snowflake or two drifts down from the sky. Does this mean we're pseudo-California cool? :floor:

Too funny!

How true!!! :lolabove:

Love this one!!!! :clap_1:

:clap_1:

Those are good ones! In Indiana, we get "STORM WATCH" the minute a snowflake or two drifts down from the sky. Does this mean we're pseudo-California cool? :floor:

sorry mer, i think it means we're dorks !

Geez, guys...sure glad I'm not blonde anymore! We got a good laugh out of this. Seeing that there are two sides to every story, consider the following.

(1) We have lived in CA for over 25 years and have never lived further than three miles from our place of business. And in spite of the high housing prices, we have seen far more appreciation on our CA homes than on any other properties we've owned in five key states. (And we require affordable housing of developers, along with requiring them to finance infrastructure.)

(2) When the weather stations have a "weather alert," they don't mean oil slicks on the highway. They mean the freeway itself is under 10 feet of water. I once defied a weather report while living in Southern CA and ended up in Pacific Palisades, blocked by a boulder almost the size of my bedroom and water washing over the hood of my car. That was the trip that I also learned one should always travel with one's cat in a contained pet carrier. (This was in my 20s, so give me a break, cat lovers!)

(3) You can, indeed run into George Clooney at your local coffee house (we don't allow Starbucks or other chains in our town). You can also end up at a dinner party or a charity board meeting with a guy who robbed thousands of people of their corporate pensions and now lives in a great house here in town. (We may get O.J. Simpson yet!)

(4) You don't necessarily have to make $400K to buy a house in CA, but you might make it after you sell the house, if you reinvest wisely.

(5) People in our town can go on vacation for weeks without locking their doors and we can walk anywhere in town at any hour with no fear of crime. You can watch your local City Council or Planning Commission meeting on closed circuit tv and run down there in your house slippers if you hear something that blows your skirt up. You can also pick your salad fixin's out of your back yard. (So can the deer.)

Finally, for all its stereotypes, CA is a wonderful place to live. If you like living in CA, you will never be satisfied with any other place. We have wonderfully mild weather in spite of the storms. We don't have hurricanes. Give me an earthquake any day, by comparison, because it's over before you start to worry and you don't have to watch news coverage about the earthquake for a week before it strikes. Our utilities are laughingly low and so are grocery prices. Our property taxes are protected by Prop 13. We offer more job opportunities than virtually anywhere, along with great universities and community colleges that are practically free for residents. We have the BEST food and restaurants, aside from some parts of Italy. We are real sports, with a good sense of self deprecating humor. And we know how to have a good time and make no apologies for it!

Donna...I was supposed to be in LA tomorrow through the weekend. Had to cancel due to the impending strike here at the store. But I'm going to live out there sooner rather than later. That's my next move...and I can't wait!

Kimmi, you will fit right in and you will love the L.A. area. There are a gazillion jobs and wonderful places to live there and it is a really great town for young people. I lived there as a 20-something single woman and had a ball. Yes, we prefer the Napa Valley now. But I wouldn't trade Friday nights at the best happy hours in the world or Saturdays at the world's most diverse farmers' market or weekend sails to Catalina Island or skiing in the morning and going to the beach the same day's afternoon or getting six job offers in a week for anything. You can get your little heart broken pretty easily in Lotus Land, because some of the guys think having a girlfriend is like taking a sandwich to a banquet. But people do things in groups more than in other parts of the country. And there are so many things to do there (many free) that your head will swim.

Both of my stepsons live in the L.A. area, Brentwood and West Hollywood, respectively. They grew up just outside Aspen, CO but now wouldn't live anywhere else. We love going to visit. You will love L.A. and it will love you! :clap_1:

Kimmi, you will fit right in and you will love the L.A. area. There are a gazillion jobs and wonderful places to live there and it is a really great town for young people. I lived there as a 20-something single woman and had a ball. Yes, we prefer the Napa Valley now. But I wouldn't trade Friday nights at the best happy hours in the world or Saturdays at the world's most diverse farmers' market or weekend sails to Catalina Island or skiing in the morning and going to the beach the same day's afternoon or getting six job offers in a week for anything. You can get your little heart broken pretty easily in Lotus Land, because some of the guys think having a girlfriend is like taking a sandwich to a banquet. But people do things in groups more than in other parts of the country. And there are so many things to do there (many free) that your head will swim.

Both of my stepsons live in the L.A. area, Brentwood and West Hollywood, respectively. They grew up just outside Aspen, CO but now wouldn't live anywhere else. We love going to visit. You will love L.A. and it will love you! :clap_1:

Ohh I want to go soo bad! I have lots and lots of work contacts out there. One day Donna...one day. Maybe I can go out to Macy's West? :idontno:

Kimmi, you will fit right in and you will love the L.A. area. There are a gazillion jobs and wonderful places to live there and it is a really great town for young people. I lived there as a 20-something single woman and had a ball. Yes, we prefer the Napa Valley now. But I wouldn't trade Friday nights at the best happy hours in the world or Saturdays at the world's most diverse farmers' market or weekend sails to Catalina Island or skiing in the morning and going to the beach the same day's afternoon or getting six job offers in a week for anything. You can get your little heart broken pretty easily in Lotus Land, because some of the guys think having a girlfriend is like taking a sandwich to a banquet. But people do things in groups more than in other parts of the country. And there are so many things to do there (many free) that your head will swim.

Both of my stepsons live in the L.A. area, Brentwood and West Hollywood, respectively. They grew up just outside Aspen, CO but now wouldn't live anywhere else. We love going to visit. You will love L.A. and it will love you! :clap_1:

I have only been to San Fran...but I loved the area!! Went to Napa too..:wub: But my favorite place was Sausalito:wub: :wub: :wub:

Donna
I think you got in at the right time. 🙂
I have many relatives in California, and while SoCal my aunts and uncles have temporarily lived in other places, it was always understood that they would move back to the Golden State. Their sons and daughters, other than one briefly studying abroad, have never lived anywhere else; they could not imagine it. They are all married and all settled there.
Something I have noticed: all of them have begun trickling northwards. Maybe it's the June Gloom, I dunno. Maybe they are feeling crowded. But first one moved to Morro Bay, then more followed.

There is no one perfect place to live.
I've lived in both CA and NY with Colorado in between, they all have their good points, and they all are fun to poke fun at.

Here are some one-liners about Colorado:
You might be a Coloradan if:

Your city has more helicopters than snow-removal equipment.

Mountain-lion-wrestling is a suburban backyard activity.

Hummingbirds and bears visit your bird feeder.

Three days of overcast weather make you wonder if Granny will share her Prozac.

You advertise a bunch of fourteeners you've never climbed on your T-shirt.

You sit in your 2-year-old home and complain about the newcomers.

You know that the People's Republic of Boulder is not a foreign state, but a foreign state of mind.

You think your SUV allows you to drive faster than normal on snowy days.

You're concerned about the local economy, but confident about divine intervention.

Your hands are so chapped in the winter you are able to exfoliate your face with your very own fingertips.

Hey Donna...I saw this in the Times.

NY Times- LA

I have such a fascination with LA...Can't wait to get out there soon! :clap_1:

Cil, I wonder if we might have been neighbors at some point in time! We have lived in Denver CO, Newport Beach CA, Scottsdale, AZ, and have resided in St. Helena (Napa Valley), CA for the past 18 years. We liked all these places, although I felt like Scottsdale was 250 sq. miles of kitty litter, missed my green stuff terribly. It is lovely there, but not a place to live year round. We were there temporarily and were so happy to get back to CA. Yes, a lot of people in Southern CA would prefer to live in Northern CA. It is a different world up here, both from the standpoint of the landscape and seasons and a different political profile. The challenge is that housing is much more expensive in the Bay Area than in Southern CA and there is more competition for jobs (that also tend to pay lower than in Southern CA). It is particularly difficult for young people, who need a healthy job market with less competition for those jobs. But my stepsons adore living in Southern CA and tend to get bored after a few days up here "in the country."

For all of California's challenges, it really is a state of mind. The things I value most are the diversity of landscapes and people, the live-and-let-live attitude (although this doesn't apply in places like Orange County), the variety and quality of fresh food products, and the progressiveness of CA, in general. Every national trend seems to have its germination here. One takes this for granted until you live somewhere else for a while. In AZ, for example, we were shocked to find that they were about 15 to 20 years behind the trend on so many important factors. "The New Yorker" ran a story about 10 years ago about the special, white natural light and soft air of the L.A. Basin that was so fascinating. It is so true! I still fall in love with that area all over again every time I go down there and bask in it. Even the commercial airline pilots gush about the soft air. It is truly Valhalla. But we grew tired of the rat race and the concrete and we love being able to get into San Francisco so easily by auto, ferry, or train. I love being able to live in the country with ready access to a beautiful world-class city.

I will always remember the first time I ever visited the location of our former home, Corona del Mar, which is a part of Newport Beach right on the Ocean. I vowed to move right then and there, and did. The world looked so clean and new and beautiful to me, since I was then living in Denver and we were sitting in a foot of melted snow and mud after a spring snowstorm, all the leaves off the trees and all the grass was brown. My mom visited right after I moved to CA, watched two young bikini-clad blonde beauties strolling across the street in Laguna Beach, turned to me in the car and said, "Donna, people out here don't look all that dissipated." Cracked me up.

Well, enough of my love letter to CA. Have not even included the fact of having met my husband here in CA. We love South Walton, where I grew up, but nothing could entice me to move away from this area again on a permanent basis. It is worth every challenge and stress and cost associated with it, to us. :wub: :wub: :wub: :wub:

I loved reading your letter Donna!