every time i sit down to study, the house gets cleaned, the laundry gets done, and the plants get watered.

mail gets opened, and my pile of `books to read` beckons to me.

but in the end, the studying gets done. the only hitch is, ``done`` usually comes at about two in the morning.

oh, well.

so i'm 3/4 done with poli sci, but i needed a break, so i decided to do some english. of course, that involves the computer. and... well, i'm sure you can see where this is going.

anyway, enough about school and studying and blah blah blah.

what i'm wondering tonight is, why do so very many people out there, who do not live in california, think it's so wonderful here?

it's not horrible, i'll admit. it has it's perks. but so many people i meet and talk to are surprised to learn when they get out here, that life isn't stolen from a scene in the movies.

yes, i live four miles from the beach, and i can watch the sun set over the ocean from my backyard. but i lived right near the atlantic in maryland, and no one flocks to trappe with visions of paradise floating in their heads.

i guess what sparked this was an e-mail from a stranger, responding to my old roommate ad.

``i'm sure you surf,`` the stranger wrote. [...] ``do you have a convertible too?``

no, and no. and i'm not blonde, either.

once i got to thinking along those lines, i was reminded that both of my current roomies came out to cali (one from arizona, one from iowa) in search of the ``golden dream.``

neither of them realized how friggin' expensive it is to live out here. or how terribly difficult it can be to find a job. or how expensive school is. or how much gas costs, and how horrible traffic is. and neither of them anticipated the rude people; the anti-surfer types who despise dread heads and people with bleached tips. what's more, they didn't realize why so many people do indeed live here.

not because it's paradise. but rather, because it's too expensive to leave.

any thoughts? (2)����������������