Step One: Visit Honda of Lisle. Ask for Manny.

I recently stumbled onto the blog of a couple of Midwesterners who came out to L.A. last summer, hoping to jump start their careers. The last entry, dated a week or two ago, announces that they're headed back to their hometown.

The goals that brought them out to L.A. no longer any appeal, and plainly put, they're both more than a little homesick.

MG & I have friends -- folks we like and respect -- who came out here before us, and headed back to Chicago before we'd signed our lease. Their reasons for going out, and coming back, were rational and considered, and we know a dozen more people just like them.

I admire them all for their bravery. Moving to a new city to try something out, and knowing when it's time to retreat are both remarkable feats, like finding the courage to go to college far from home, or breaking up with your impressive boyfriend when you realize he's a jackass.

We pulled off the first half so far -- two years, five months and counting. The second half? If the time comes, I trust we'll figure it out.

In the meantime, we can't go through our lives, waiting for the sudden realization that this was all a terrible mistake. We've had to build a life here, even if it's not going to work out in the long run.

My Irish grandmother would not approve. She was a world-class Preparer for Disaster, with a six-by-four foot cupboard stocked with emergency supplies of generic butter cookies and peanut butter. And she always kept an eye peeled for ill tidings. She used to listen to a police scanner radio in the evenings, ears pricked for any word of misdoings in our corner of Oak Park. If a squirrel so much as farted in the night, she'd be on the phone to our house -- just five blocks away -- to warn us to be careful when we went to put the car in the garage.

When we first thought of moving to L.A., I searched high and low for blogs or websites that might prepare us for the change, and came up woefully short. I found Franklin Avenue, which isn't quite the Welcome to Los Angeles gateway I needed, but it proved that sane people live in this city and have ordinary lives, almost entirely free of crack addiction and prostitutes. (Even if it didn't offer me a cookie and a glass of milk, Franklin Avenue is smart, well-written blog and highly entertaining. I recommend it whole-heartedly.)

Add to this that of late, I've started to think this blog could use a little bit more direction. Not a lot more. God forbid. If I can't ramble on my blog, the top of my head might well blow right off. But I'm thinking it might be time for me to start putting up the kind of posts I would have killed for when we were trying to make this decision.

The first, and most essential piece of information I can possible provide someone thinking of moving to L.A.:

Buy a car.

Even if your move is months or years away, buy a car. A good car, well-maintained, with excellent gas mileage and a fully-functioning air conditioner. We bought a 2001 Certified Used Honda Civic in 2004, almost 18 months before we ultimately moved to L.A. For one thing, it spread out the expense of the move over a longer window of time. For another, it let me establish a good driving record in the marginally less-insane city of Chicago before moving to Los Angeles.

More importantly, buying the car started to prepare me for a mindset that has proven invaluable since we moved here. There are driving days and walking days. The point is, condense all your car-centric errands into as few days as possible. Hit Costco on your way home from work, schedule lunches with your Mid-Wilshire friends for the same day as your haircut in West Hollywood. At the same time, try to bundle together local errands into a single neighborhood walk.

You can't spend your whole life in the car. It will drive you insane. At the same time, you can't not have a car in Los Angeles. Maybe someday, when at last there's a light rail line all the way to the sea, but right now: No.

So you have to make a point of balancing the two extremes. During the semester, every class day is a driving day, so I've tried to make the rest of the week as pedestrian as possible. With the spectre of employment looming, I will probably be reduced to pedestrian weekends, but even that's something. I already take pedestrian weekends pretty seriously, riding public transit to haircut appointments just because I can.

If you work it right, eventually it's a treat to be in the car, because you're not on foot. And it's a treat to be on foot, because you're not in the car. Or put it another way: Eventually you get sick of both. Uh, yeah.

Tomorrow: More advice of dubious value