I spent the bulk of last week in Tucson, the parched and prickly land of my mulleted youth. I visited with an old friend from college, the infamous "Jewish Lobbyist," so named not only for his commitment to his home and heritage, but for his inebriated and celebrated tryst with a nubile young coed in the lobby of Riley Hall. I spent another two days with my best friend from high school and his three young children. All of whom have the same energy that made him a champion striker on the soccer pitch. He spends most of his days now semi-comatose. It's to be expected. Carl Lewis couldn't keep pace with that crew. I spent a day on the rock with Todd, and wussed out on technically easy routes that just a year ago I was flashing.

Of course a year ago I was climbing them in the company of two hot, single climber girls, at least one of whom I hoped would be so impressed with my daring feats on vertical stone that she would welcome me into her heart or pants or some combination of both. Nothing like the attention of a pretty girl to bring out the hero (or fool) in most of us.

I was in Tucson because of a job interview at a prominent software company that keeps a headquarters there. An interview that went very well. And based on the outcome of a few other important interviews and the results of my psychological profile test (let's hope they don't discover I'm TOTALLY full of shit) and the quality of the offer letter, I may well find myself back in my adopted homeland. Technically New York is my homeland, but as all those important events between the ages of 8 and 21 occurred in Arizona, I consider myself at least a transplanted desert rat.

Just an asside here, but I've never actually taken one of those psyche tests before. I'm not sure just what they are going to find out, other than that I'm a narcissistic attention whore with a serious inferiority complex and a devastating procrastination streak. Of course they could have found all that out in my blog, but I'm not about to offer them the URL. I read my Dooce . I know better than that.

I'm not sure I'm ready to leave the comfortable and cosmopolitan SoCal just yet, Newport truly is the only place I have ever felt was "home," but I'm learning not to look always at what could be lost, but rather at what could be gained. And although I will lose regular access to a network of wonderful friends and the towering gray granite of the Sierra Nevada and the beach and the culture of Cali, I will gain regular access to a network of wonderful old friends and the chance to meet some new ones and the towering red sandstone of Utah and the sunsets over the desert and the community of the Mountain West. And probably skin cancer, but, hey, there are always costs.

I'm not sure how well Josh will adapt to a land without surf and sand - well, there's LOTS of sand but it's not quite so soft. More importantly, I'm not sure how he will adapt to a land where a full five months of the year it's too hot for a creature with a permanent fur coat to go galloping around chasing far flung tennis balls - a daily event for him currently. He seems to take change with relative ease, however. He has already discovered the most important first lesson for any desert creature: what happens when you put your nose into a cholla cactus. And he has learned that Todd has cats. Adorable, highly-mobile treats that torment him from behind that terrible sliding glass door. The door from which my dog stared intently, silently, deadly, for HOURS.

I was very tempted to let him inside just to see how many things would be broken in the chase that would almost certainly ensue, but as I will more than likely be living in that house at least temporarily, I didn't want to wear out my welcome quite so soon.

Honestly, there's a part of me that feels that a move back to AZ is a move backward in my life. Like I made it to the place where so many millions have traveled. I made it to the coast, as far west as I could go, and I made myself a life. Sometimes a frustrated life. Frequently an unfulfilled life. But I made it. Am I ready to let it go? To move east again?

So I sat in the Yard House in Scottsdale with Todd, ordered a couple beers and thought about the setting sun over the Sonoran valley. I thought that maybe I don't know exactly what I want. Never have. Maybe I never will. But I may never find it if I don't start looking around.

I figure as much as I bitch and moan about OC, it has been my home. And a good one. Maybe Arizona could be home as well. And if not, there is no reason at all that I can't go back to SoCal. At least until the San Andreas fault or the Irvine Company claims what's left of it.

Besides, I figure that if I leave OC for AZ my level of bitching and moaning will probably remain constant. I will just be bitching and moaning about different stuff. Like the suburban subdivisions all punctuated with mini-malls, covering every square inch of the desert like beige, stucco wallpaper. Like the 150 days a year in which I will have to put asbestos boots on my dog just so I can take him for a walk. Like the total lack of a Wahoos for more than 300 miles.

Shit.

I guess I may have to stay in SoCal after all. Sure, I can handle a little melanoma, but the lack of a good veggie burrito may be more than even I can bear.