My New Home.

I went to the Texas Department of Public Safety today and applied for a Texas driver's license today. The woman who processed my application took my New York license and wouldn't give it back. I guess they figure once you're a Texan you don't need to be anything else.

Even with all the moving around I've done since 1998, I still had a New York license. It came up for renewal when I happened to be living in Jersey City for a year, in 2002 (after I'd lived in Nashville for two years and on the road for two years), and it was so easy to renew it by mail -- and I was almost living in New York, I was right across the river -- so I just did it. Since then I haven't really had a home anywhere, till now.

I love my new Texas home, despite the fact that, after just spending half an hour on the front porch reading and drinking a beer, I have 40 mosquito bites on my ankles -- really, forty. But, because I can sit on my porch at 7 in the evening in late June and drink a beer and read a book, I know my life is pretty damn good.