Julia Turns Down The Alley... Tornado Alley

After thinking about it for an agonizing three hours, I decided that all my San Francisco plans should go the way of yesterday's paper. I sacrificed the prestige that comes from being a Petco photographer and quit my job. I'm moving to Kansas City, Missouri, instead.
San Francisco is too expensive. Additionally, San Francisco does not have enough tornadoes or general inclement weather. There is not enough gingham. There are not enough kitchens decorated exclusively with Mary Englebreit cutesy kitsch (I never tire of her "life is just a chair of bowlies" malapropisms!) I want to be closer to that midwestern axis on which my world turns-- Chicago Public Radio's This American Life (Ira baby, I'mma comin'!). In Kansas City, open containers of alcohol are allowed in the street. This is information that hardly applies to a teetotaler like me, but is strangely enticing nonetheless. Fratboy friends I haven't yet made will feel inclined to visit, I'm sure.

While my California friends are biting their nails reading The Omnivore's Dilemma and pretending that the organic kale they bought at the under-the-freeway farmer's market doesn't taste exactly like dirt, saving every last dime to afford their basement-level tenderloin apartment that they share with a pot dealer inexplicably named Sandalfoot, I'll be slathering strip steaks in K.C. Masterpiece, wearing a Kansas City Cheifs starter jacket and drinking beer out of a red party cup downtown, suddenly feeling a strange pride in an Irish heritage I may or may not even have.

My only fear is that in my absence, Rachel may become more like this guy.