[Porsche-O-Phile]

My wife likes her job, I like mine, we're reasonably happy here overall and see better opportunities for us staying than going. And frankly I don't see an overall better viable alternative.

When one comes along, I'll be waiting in the alley with the car packed and the engine running though.

Sometimes you gotta' take the bad with the good. There's plenty to complain about here, but virtually everywhere else I can think of is worse. I'll take the nice days and sunshine over snow, rain, lousy weather, short days (that whole "winter" thing that I've repressed from my childhood in New England) that pretty much everywhere else has. Virtually everywhere has the same problems with being overcrowded & expensive. EVERYWHERE is overcrowded and expensive now. Show me someplace that isn't where I'd actually want to live. . .

My wife works for Disney (which she loves and has a decent future ahead of her at). Can't really do that career "just anywhere". If she's happy, I'm happy. I ain't about to just uproot that willy-nilly and have her gripe at me for the rest of my life about how I cost her "what she really wanted to do". I know what that's like (I walked away from a flying job that I loved a while back because it didn't pay the bills). I see good stable work opportunities here (in a recession, there's nowhere better to be than Southern CA - I know this from first-hand experience).

I've lived in enough places to know that everywhere has its good and bad. But overall, CA still has more net "goods" than "bads" far as I'm concerned and frankly, I don't see a better viable alternative right now. . .

But yea I agree with you - the pseudo-communist government of this state, the endless conversion of the region into a third-world extension of Mexico, the idiotic cost of housing, the overcrowding and traffic, etc. do all get a person down after a while. . . All I can do is find ways to accentuate the good points and mitigate the bad ones within the constraints of reasonable commute and my meager salary. . . It's the best one can do.