I have this love and hate relationship with southern California. At one hand, I love hanging out with my friends that are down here. The food selection is better than the Midwest, upstate New York, and most parts of Texas. The weather is gorgeous, and there's plenty of places to go work out. It's civilization!!!
However, every time I land, I hate getting in a car and driving around. Too many cars and too many people for me. People give me attitude at the airport, at the Hertz rental station. There's only Starbucks in the OC. And every Starbucks I go to, there is nowhere to sit. Nothing! Not even at 8am or 3pm or 7pm. I look up cafes in my GPS and on google. For every 1 independent cafe, there's about 10 Starbucks. One in every corner. I believe it's a ordinance to have it zoned for Starbucks and whatever chain and retail store there is. UGG!
All the palm trees here are imported. My coworker who's really into trees and gardening said the taller ones are from Saudi Arabia and the shorter ones are from the Caribbean. That's so sad. Nothing is natural here. It looks uncannily green since this whole area is very dry. I also notice pipes along every flower and grassy area since I bet they use TONS of water to keep everything from dying. Everywhere I drive from Rancho Santa Margarita to Aliso Viejo to Irvine or Mission Viejo kinda all look the same. Same Starbucks, same Albertson's or Ralph's, same Target or Home Depot. I guess that's suburbia for you. But one thing I gotta say, the condos and the homes here are beautiful! They're all very new and clean looking - so I guess I can see why people want to live somewhere comfortable.
So here I am, in my hotel room, updating my blog before I go out running because I went to two Starbucks and none had open tables.
