Smells like burning

**I want to preface this entry by letting those of you who have been calling and emailing know: I promise I'm not avoiding you, I've just been on the road a lot this week, and this is the first time I've gotten to check my email this week. I'll try to catch up over Thanksgiving, but please be patient with me!**

Last week I stayed in Redlands, CA, just east of L.A., home of the University of Redlands and of my friend Laura who teaches there. It was great to stay with someone whose first words when I arrived were, "You can just go ahead and explode in the room upstairs tomorrow, but for now why don't you just go to bed?" Phew—none of that having to be personable for a few minutes when I'm really just dying to go to sleep! Laura was an excellent hostess, and while I was in town she even scored us a tour of the local NPR/PBS station in San Bernardino with her friend Dave who works there and is somewhat of a local celebrity. For comparison for those of you in Portland, he's their Irwin Gratz, or maybe more like their Justin Ellis on the radio. Very cool.

My week or so in L.A. was a lot of catch-up work and actually not too many interviews. Given the layout of the city, it's basically impossible to be centrally located, and it's tough to get in more than two interviews in one day because of the distances involved. I talked to two lawyers in downtown L.A. on Wednesday. I wish I had known ahead of time how high security the downtown offices are: Not only are you not allowed to take the elevator without a pass (which I've seen in other cities), but you're not allowed to even walk in the general direction of the elevator without being yelled at by a sniper. Ok, maybe he was unarmed, but he definitely ran at me in a fearless, I've-been-trained-to-kill manner. Apparently L.A. thinks the next 9/11 will be perpetrated by a young woman with a camera blowing up a downtown law firm. In their defense, I was carrying a backpack, and after the traffic hassles I'd endured to get there, I probably looked suicidal. Anyway, both interviews went well, so it was worth all of it. I got to hear more great getting to and from ND stories, and I talked to a guy whose son-in-law is part of the WGA, which just went on strike last week and hopefully will come back soon so I can see new episodes of The Office when I watch TV.

On Thursday I went down to Oceanside, which is down near San Diego, to interview Joe Leaser. Joe and his wife Liz were really fun to talk to, and their house had an amazing view of the ocean and the fire-devastated hills. They were lucky enough to avoid evacuation, particularly since they're both diabetic and two of their dogs are blind, but the surrounding area is full of charred trees and ravaged land. It was stunning, and the smell was actually a bit overwhelming. The fires had been out for almost a week when I got there, but the air quality in most of L.A. and down by Oceanside was still pretty bad, especially for me since I hadn't been acclimated to it as it happened. That evening, I went to Dana Point for dinner with the Kheriaty family. Aaron was a good friend of my brother Dave when he was at ND, and now he's teaching psychiatry at UC Irvine, where he runs an institute that studies issues of psychiatry and spirituality. I won't elaborate too much, but I will say I want to do that, too. Here's the link if you want to find out more: http://today.uci.edu/Features/profile_detail.asp?key=300
Aaron and his wife Jen have three young sons, all of whom proved mroe skillful with my camera than I am. It was a fun shoot.

I had the most amazing weekend after that. First of all, I took two days in a row completely off from work. I went to Santa Monica to watch ND get pounded by Air Force. Yes, Air Force. But it was ok, because I was with my friend Andrew, with whom I have witnessed many sad Notre Dame debacles. Andrew and I were good friends as undergrads, and now he's doing his residency in emergency medicine at the UCLA hospital. He gave me a quick tour of UCLA, which has a beautiful campus, and then the two of us headed down to Laguna Niguel, where I was spending the night with my friend (and former Portland roommate) Rebecca, who just happened to be in town on business, staying at the Ritz Carlton. On the beach. Talk about fortuitous timing! Andrew, Rebecca, Rebecca's friend Tom (a fellow philosophy nerd, yea!), and I went out to dinner, and then headed back to the hotel for some fun and games...now you may be wondering, what do four intelligent, fun, interesting young people do on a Saturday night at the Ritz? Buy a cheap bottle of wine at the grocery store and play football in the public parking lot down the road, of course! Andrew used his well-honed ND skills to open the wine without a corkscrew, and then the two of us regaled the Davidson grads with tales of football Saturdays, and they told us all about their library. A truly entertaining evening, followed by a good night's sleep in the world's largest bed at the Ritz. Where they put the ocean on flatsrceen TV so you can fall asleep to the sound of the waves. Seriously.

So I enjoyed my time in southern California, and I know my friends there won't take it the wrong way when I say that it takes a special kind of crazy to live out there. With all the fires, earthquakes, mudslides, floods, droughts and ants, Los Angeles is a microcosm of the Apocalypse. And that would be the Apocalypse plus traffic that can strike at any moment, turning a perfectly nice trip to the grocery store into a harrowing trek through the desert, and the smog that makes every day feel like you're watching an episode of the Brady Bunch. Oh, and I'm leaving out the flagrant materialism; the contrast between rich and poor in L.A. was truly shocking. Like, brand new Ferraris next to old pickup trucks on the freeway shocking. I think I'm the wrong kind of crazy for that area, but I'm glad 8 million people seem able to make it work.

Anyway, I'm already in Tucson as I write this—more soon!