I realized tonight that even though I've been here in Los Angeles for over 6 months now and I've done a pretty decent job of creating a life here, I still don't feel like this place is home yet. There's certain things that tip me off. Mostly, the drive home tonight is what hammered it home. I was kind of lost in thought as I made my way home from a family friend's house, and I found myself having to pay attention to specific things that, if I were fully comfortable with the area, should've been able to have been executed on autopilot.

In the dark, I didn't know exactly where it felt natural to stop to make the turn onto my own street, and if I were completely used to it, I'd have been able to do it almost with my eyes closed. I forgot about the fact that the right-most lane on Wilshire Boulevard going westbound just past the 405 merges into the lane next to it, and I shouldn't have turned into that lane in the first place, which I wouldn't have forgotten had I been used to driving back to my apartment. I still forget which streets are on which blocks around my apartment and around my workplace, and I sometimes can't remember what stores are at which cross-streets and which boulevards go straight through and which ones dead-end at a building and re-appear with the same name a block away. And I still don't know the DirecTV lineup, which TV stations go to which networks, and which radio stations inhabit which dial positions, which is usually something that comes pretty quickly and sticks with me. That's just within Los Angeles -- and mostly the Westside, for that matter -- since once you put me over that hill into the Valley, I'm completely lost and don't know my way around at all.

It's little things like that which keep me from feeling completely at ease and at home here. I know it's things like that which come with time, and it's just the simple fact that I haven't been here long enough to assimilate all of the information that's come pouring in over the past six months. It's just not long enough for me to put the puzzle pieces together. But it makes me feel a bit out of place and out of sorts, so although I'm trying to be patient and just wait for the day when I suddenly realize that L.A. has become home, that day doesn't seem like it'll come soon enough.