initial impressions and observations

After completing my first full week here in LA, I thought I'd reflect on what I've been noticing.

• I have not checked the weather once. Not once. It's just beautiful every day. The only time the weather even crossed my mind was when a website still had me programmed as living in Brooklyn and I knew temperatures in the 40s couldn't be right. As an early Hollywood booster wrote, the weather here "works with a man, not against him."
• Occasionally, you run across a scene that is so inherently "LA" it's somewhat sickening. Like the other day, when I treated myself to a pedicure, a 7-year-old girl was getting one next to me and dictating different colors for each toe.
• It's going to take me awhile to shake off the NYC chill and get used to how friendly people are here. It's not as easy to skate through life anonymous and unnoticed by the crowds around you. Random people ask you how you are and really seem like they want to know. When you ask where something is in the supermarket, the stockboy offers to walk you there. When you ask the Staples sales associate where the nearest hardware store is, he takes 15 minutes to draw you an incredibly detailed map.
• Speaking of supermarkets, I have to stop myself from going grocery shopping every day. It's just so fun! I can buy as much as I want and still get it home. There are flavors and options and products I've never even encountered - all under one roof. Actually, under any number of roofs. And they don't charge an arm and a leg for things that you have no choice but to buy, because where else are you going to go? My only problem now is that my shopping cart is bigger than my stomach.
• I've already experienced the one thing I missed most about living in LA: the drop-over. It's a completely different experience to dial a number and drive your car a few blocks, or even a freeway exit, out of the way to say hello to a friend than it is to find yourself on a train that passes through a friend's neighborhood, determine which stop is closest to their apartment, take a chance to get off the train and climb the stairs to get out of the station in order to call and see if they're home (unlikely since it's New York), and then walk however many blocks to visit them.
  
• Because you have to drive everywhere and the supermarkets are so generous, there is less need/desire to leave the house...not a good situation for someone holed up writing their dissertation. I'm going to start running or walking or something, just to be out and about.