[Note: This and subsequent posts are a bit delayed, owing to the fact that I actually did take some time to celebrate the holidays.]

Though I identify strongly with metropolitan San Diego, the truth is that I didn’t actually do most of my growing up there. Much of what you’d call my "formative years", including the de rigueur angst-ridden teenage phase, in northern San Diego county. Much of this dry, rocky, hilly region is liberally strewn with sagebrush and the Live Oak (quercus chrysolepis, to be precise; don’t say you never learned anything here). The drive up from the airport was mercifully uneventful; I had been expecting to be served the usual generous slice of gridlock that is one of the storied hallmarks of southern California life, something which has definitely gotten much worse since I moved north.

Though I was looking forward to the grand family soirée, I couldn’t help but be somewhat depressed as we finally entered the arid granite valley where Escondido has stood since 1888. The place has continued to grow, but, on the whole, has done so with a suffocating mediocrity that silently screams "welcome to anywhere". Housing developers churn out seemingly endless numbers of faux Mediterranean tract homes, hurling great waves of terra cotta roof tiles across the landscape that are finally, if grudgingly, hemmed in by the hillsides.

New strip malls have sprung up, and some of the aging ones have been given stucco face-lifts, bringing welcome commerce and tax money to the city, but with the same monotony as the cookie-cutter houses; they, too, are roofed with red tiles meant to evoke favorable comparisons with Spanish or Italian villages, and clad in the same dizzying spectrum of stucco colors like beige, cream, and taupe. All the familiar corporate and franchise chains are represented, just as they are in the neighboring cities of San Marcos, Vista, and Poway.

Besides the politically mandated enclave of quaintness on Grand Avenue and some other oddities, there’s little to distinguish Escondido from, say, Orange County, San Jose, or Riverside. It’s not my intent to denigrate the place, but there’s a numbing sameness to it that is inescapable. I knew that I was not there to take in the local scenery; I was there to see people I know and love. Nonetheless, there is a palpable banality to the place that nags the soul. Though I was excited to be there, I was also glad to know I’d be returning home when Christmas was over.

Upon arrival at our hotel, I prostrated myself on our surprisingly comfortable bed, as the children, still young enough to regard the situation as impossibly exotic, quickly busied themselves with exploring our suite, and marveling at the strange wonders within, like the tiny refrigerator and the lilliputian shampoo bottles. I lay there for what seemed like forever and yet only moments, until yanked from my vapid reveries by my wife, who reminded me of my husbandly duty of heaving our enormous and ancient suitcase out of the car and into the room.

We had arrived. It was time to get down to the celebrating.