[ckissick]

My family has been here (San Francisco) since before the '06 earthquake. I'm not going anywhere. My (very fit) 90-year-old mother still lives in SF and still loves walking around the city every day. I live in Half Moon Bay, a 5-minute walk to the beach. I watch the sunset (or the fog getting dark) almost every day. I go walking in the nearby redwood forests often. I love the Sierra, for backpacking, skiing, mountaineering, and rock climbing. We often go to Tahoe, the wine country, Carmel, etc.

I have a thriving civil engineering business, with most customers wealthy Silicon Valley people. There's rarely a true recession here. We're a Republican family, but almost all my friends are liberal wackos. We just tease each other. It's no big deal. I have money and freedom. (Well, when there's no plague going on.) The Dems have not impacted my personal life in any measurable way.

We sometimes talk of retiring to some place like Oregon. My daughter goes to school there, in Bend. Recently, while visiting her, we heard some people talking in a store about how much they hate Californians. How we ruin everything everywhere we go. Screw that. If we do retire to a less expensive area, it will be to the Gold Country. Murphys is nice. I can't abandon my state.