Looks like another perfect day -- Posted by Noah

I'm sitting at the US Air terminal in LAX while I write this. Okay, now I'm on the plane … geez, you think up a nice opening for a post …

We spent today doing all those "we're not going to be home for a while" things. Finished packing, put everything imaginable on our iPods, cleaned, unplugged stuff. We had hoped, in vain, to fit in a screening of Cloverfield before the shuttle came for us at 7:25 but we had to settle for Wikipedia spoilers (apparently New York gets destroyed by a physical manifestation of Giuliani's ego).

It's odd that I only really started to feel like LA, and Eagle Rock in particular, were my home when it was time to leave. As we drove down familiar streets for the last time (for four months), ate our last lunch at The Coffee Table, said goodbye to Amanda's coworkers, etc, it really started to hit me that this was what my daily life had become, this is what I'll be missing on a daily basis.

It seems that LA sort of sneaks up on you like that. Loving New York hits you like a thunderclap. You suddenly realize you're really THERE and it's YOUR HOME and you OWN IT. My love of Boston was bred into me from birth, though I didn't actually live there until I was 26. But LA is more subtle. If you're going to love it, to feel like you belong there, you might not realize it until you leave. I should have seen the signs earlier, like when I started to enjoy Randy Newman's "I Love LA" unironically.

This probably started yesterday at Disneyland when we realized "Oh, this is our last ride on Space Mountain." "This is our last time fastpassing California Screamin'" "This is the last time we'll plod through Adventureland, stuck behind obese tourists trying to figure out what a Churro is."

So the shuttle to the airport was kind of bittersweet. I genuinely FELT it as we drove past that family that has some kind of Mexican barbecue operation in their driveway, or past our neighbor whose front lawn is covered in garbage (he likes to sit out there in it, I believe I've mentioned him before in comparison to Oscar the Grouch).

I understand why some people can't stand LA. But I also fully see why some people adore it. I knew I would miss a lot of things while we're gone for four months - my family, our pets, television … and I knew I'm miss our house. But I'm just realizing that I'll actually miss this weird, sprawling city-state.

Sorry Randy. Just call me another guy who missed the point.