Apartment 208 is on the second floor of a building way in the back of a complex called the Huntington Vista Apartments. The stairs outside lead directly to our door (and to that of our neighbor in 207, a single woman with three bright little girls). You may have to step over a tricycle and a skateboard or two: there are kids everywhere!

Our door opens into a short hallway that veers to the left. A hidden door in this hallway opens to our SECRET PASSAGEWAY (actually the closet of our computer room). The hallway leads to our living room, which has a cathedral ceiling and two enormous quilts hanging on the walls. To your left is the narrow kitchen and beyond that a pleasant breakfast nook; to your right: another short hallway.

A door on the left of this hallway opens to a bathroom complete with tub. Ahead is our bedroom, and if you enter that room and keep turning to your left you will find ANOTHER bathroom, this one with shower. A door to the right of the hallway opens onto the computer room, so-named because of the his-and-hers Macs sitting side by side on a nifty computer table.

That's where I am now. From where I sit I can almost see the ocean. And that is one of the neatest things about this place. If I walk out the door and head west I have to stop after only twenty minutes. Why? Because the entire North American Continent comes to an abrupt halt less than a mile from my door. There's a big beach and A WHOLE LOT OF WATER. I just can't get over that!

Betsy and I moved in here on July 19th without a stick of furniture. You already heard what I went through getting a kitchen table. There are similar harrowing stories behind every other object in the place. I had to discuss my personal eating habits and other arcana with a suspicious credit investigator for over an hour in order to rent the overpriced refrigerator. And Betsy and I were forced to carry home the settee from Pier One by tying it to the roof of her car and driving v-e-r-y slowly through Costa Mesa. Have you ever tried to hang fifty square feet of cloth on wooden clips that are ten feet off the ground? Or assemble an inscrutable Asian computer desk with little more than a Swiss army knife?

We still have several acre-feet of unopened carboard boxes, and the clutter is waist-deep in some spots, but the place is livable now. We've already had four house guests, multiple visitors, and a lively poker game. We have TWO TV sets (courtesy of an old friend of mine who literally owns more TVs than he can count), a cat, and a lime tree out on the balcony. There are books EVERYWHERE!

This is our first apartment together. I just wanted to write something down in case our grandchilden ever ask about it. Be it ever so humble there's no place like home.