The nagging feeling soaked into me like the rain as I stood on a crowded subway train, smelling the people around me. By the time I got oout of the station, being shoved and poked up the stairs, my decision to leave was like a ray of sunshine.

I had visted Los Angeles some years before, but opted instead to create my life in New York. If I could make it there, right? Well, I didn't care to finish that sentence anymore. I was changing my tune.

You know you're in Southern California when:

• A major earthquake hits your third day in town, and you think it's one of those magic vibrating beds you stick a quarter in
• You get an apartment with a pool, and Shelley Winters is swimming in it
• Richard Simmons gives your neighbor a car
• Tab Hunter drops by their housewarming
• and that really is Jamie Lee Curtis at the mall and Frank Sinatra at the light

You know you've been in Southern California too long when:

• Your mother in New Jersey knows more about the morning quake than you do
• You would never go in the pool or the ocean, cause you know what's in there
• You stare at Luke Perry at the gym; not because he's a star, but because he's sitting on the machine you want to use, and talking too much

Still, California had a lot of adventures waiting for me, right around the corner..