Hometown

Fair Oaks, California is a nearly-quaint town about 25 minutes outside of Sacramento. All the houses are different, the yards are big enough for big dogs, and the trees are old and plentiful.

This place where I grew up is a tasteful blend of suburban convenience and rural foliage. If you sit on the back porch my dad built, you'll smell the bright scent of our backyard citrus trees, hear the hum of the pool filter along with the chatter of birds. If it's an early summer morning, the air will be comfortable and the sun will still be kind. It's pleasant.

There's a collection of shops and places to eat. We call the collection Fair Oaks Village. It's the older part of town that used to be all of the town. In the middle is Chicken Park, which can hardly be qualified as a park. It's really only a patch of grass with a few trees. The "Chicken" part of the name is valid, though. The chickens and roosters have laid claim to the Village and we, the people, have let them. They have the right of way on the low-traffic roads and have convinced Paul the hairdresser at the corner salon to lift them into the rafters under the eaves each morning. If they're hungry, they'll loiter outside Sunflower Drive-In and inevitably strut away fed.

Fair Oaks is a nice place with nice people, and it's all stuck in the middle of two identities. We have chain restaurants and a nice Target, but we've also got a neighborhood buck and arrogant turkeys in our yards. It's the kind of place that could only be a hometown. It's not a tourist destination or somewhere to stop between points A and B -- It's where people live.

An Introduction

Look, I don't really know what a blog is.

I could give you some vague description with too many words, but if a solid definition for "blog" exists, I don't know what it is. And whatever its definition was at the birth of blogging, I'm sure it's evolved since then. (Side note: I don't really know what an influencer is either.)

But regardless of what a blog is expected to be, I'm treating it like a journal. Except it's a journal that other people can see, which I'm hoping will encourage me to practice writing nice sentences about interesting things.