Item: 1 blue fleece pullover

This was warm enough when I left home this morning, but by the time I left the office it was pouring rain, cold, and windy. I had to detour to a mailbox, but kept chickening out of going in an inadequate jacket. The rain is supposed to keep up all weekend, so I should have plenty of time to finish unpacking and put the place in better order.

I read a sentence on The Writer's Almanac yesterday that provoked some personal envy. It was this, about the writer Richard Ford: He's lived in fourteen states, as well as France and Mexico.

My pastor, Erwin McManus, mentioned last week that when he gets interviewed, he's often asked "If you could live anywhere you wanted, where would you live?" His answer to this is: "I can live wherever I want. I want to live in Los Angeles."

I want to live in 14 states, France, and Mexico, plus a whole lot of other places. I have the ability to do it, pick a place off the list and go. The difficulty with this is that in choosing a place I give up everything that happens someplace else, and this is where the longing comes from to start with. It's not always so much about a particular place as about not wanting to miss anything. It's an old struggle. I wind up writing about this a lot, because it continues to be there.