Mr Fantasy...

Eschaton has up a description of an Irvine CA home up for sale for a mere $18 million.

http://lansner.ocregister.com/2011/01/21/new-mansion-is-shady-hills-priciest-18-9-million/96316/

Then there's my fantasy dwelling. Neither big nor tiny. A walk-up second floor apartment in a fantasy town with a good library, a good bookstore owned and staffed by people who love books, good schools, a pub that makes its own beer and hosts local musicians playing jazz or chamber music without amplification, a non-fussy restaurant where the chef cares about the food without beating you over the head with his/her cleverness, stores owned by real people with idiosyncratic offerings, a good bakery and farmers' market, the whole town surrounded by woods, fields and farmlands, and with a train that in an hour or so takes you into a major city. Not that i'm asking a lot here.

Or maybe living on a boat moored in a harbor, most of whose activity is small-scale commercial so I can go over two docks and buy fresh fish.

Do I ask too much? i don't think so. Or I shouldn't be asking too much. But I'm struck by the fact that my fantasy involves the place I'm living in, the society in which I find myself, and its priorities, than it does my material circumstances once I have heat, comfort, electricity, Internet and three square meals a day. And, at that, with little or nothing separating me from all that: no fences, huge yards, moats with right-wing alligators armed with AK-47s...