I had spent 20 years living in Chicago when I had an opportunity to move to California. I'd moved many times while growing as the daughter of a career Air Force dad. And though I never thought of Chicago as home, exactly, it was where I'd spent my 20's and 30's. It felt comfortable ... I knew the neighborhoods, had friends, loved the hot dogs and pizza and early mornings on crisp late October days. And I had already lived in southern California, both as a kid for a few years, and as a teenager after my father retired from the service. Up in the high desert, along the I-15 freeway, in the then-rural town of Hesperia, I'd had all of California I needed. The empty desert was fine, though heartbreaking bleak at times. But Los Angeles? Highways, drive-by shootings, government by "the people's republic", extremes, massive numbers of people crushed onto each other, urban chaos, Blade Runner ... well, why not? I would have welcomed a transfer to London or Shanghai or Munich ... treat LA the same and see wht you make of it. So here it is.