November 3, 2004

• Thanksgiving

  Before I left for a conference in Irvine, I was kind of stressed out about work. My job requires I see and witness things that most people go to movies to see. Needless to say, sometimes I can be pretty burned out. There are many things for which I’m thankful. And after returning home from California, I increased my things-to-be-thankful-for by at least 10.

  10. Gas where I live is $1.79 a gallon. (In Los Angeles it was $2.49 per gallon. No wonder they’re all so angry.)

  9. I only have 3 stoplights between my house and work. (I read a local paper while in Newport Beach that talked about how some guy got hit walking across Coast Hwy.)

  8. I don’t have to pick up my dog’s poop, and he can pee whereever he pleases. (On Balboa Island, people have signs on their fenced-in yards warning pet-walkers to not let their dogs urinate on their bushes. So they pee on the fences or the sidewalk, since everything is paved.)

  7. People here actually let me onto the highway. (Defensive driving is the rule in L.A.)

  6. I don’t pay state income tax. (Heh!)

  5. Vegetables cost the same here as they do in California. (Which is odd, because you’d think without state income tax, they’d make up for it in sales taxes. And they don’t.)

  4. It doesn’t take me 45 minutes to get to a beach and find a parking spot.

  3. I don’t have to pay thousands per year to dock my sailboat on the water.

  2. I can actually afford to buy a house with my income. And unlike my colleagues in California, I can probably pay it off in three years. (I saw some houses in Newport Beach that were selling for $1,500,000, with no yard, no privacy, and about as much square-footage as my old apartment. What a ripoff!)

  1. The majority of people in our state were apparently informed voters.

  • 9:29 pm
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