For the Love of a Great Book and a Big Pastrami Sandwich

I wasn't exaggerating last night when I briefly hailed Best Friends, Occasional Enemies by Lisa Scottoline and Francesca Serritella as me never having been more in love with books. In fact, I may have understated it.

If you're a genuine writer, anything can be written about. Scottoline makes her travails on an elliptical machine very funny. Serritella, Scottoline's daughter, turns an attempt to get rid of the mice in her apartment into three epic parts. All that they write, from occasionally getting at each other, but never with malicious intent, to the powerhouse that is Mother Mary, Scottoline's mother and Serritella's grandmother (Wait until you see the photo of her wearing a lab coat simply because she'd found it at the Dollar Store and likes to wear it), to the occasional references to George Clooney (Scottoline's man of choice) and ex-husbands Thing One and Thing Two (Scottoline's reasons for happily living with her dogs and cats), makes me thankful that I pre-ordered this from Amazon. I'd read Scottoline's Why My Third Husband Will Be a Dog and My Nest Egg Isn't Empty, It Just Has More Closet Space (which included a few pieces from Serritella, but not as many as this book), and when I heard this one was coming, I knew it wasn't one I could leave until I got a library card in Henderson. I needed this one now and it was worth every page.

It also made me realize that I can't merely wait for Scottoline and Serritella's next book, and there has to be another. There must be.

I'd been satisfied with going from Scottoline's first book of columns to the next and now this. But suppose her other books hold the same kind of satisfaction? Until I Googled Scottoline's name last night, I didn't know that she writes legal thrillers under the "Rosato and Associates" series, starting with Everywhere That Mary Went from 1993, the latest being Think Twice from last year. And then there's two serial novels she co-wrote with a bevy of authors, as well as six stand-alone novels, the sixth, Come Home, coming out next year.

I know I can't expect the same good-natured writing found in Best Friends, Occasional Enemies to be prevalent in her legal thrillers, but having read the first page of Everywhere That Mary Went last night on Amazon, I know I can expect the same level of knowledgeable insight from her (Being that she had been a trial lawyer) and writing that makes me feel comfortable even before I start on the first page. I ordered that one last night, and as soon as it arrives, it's shooting straight to the top of my reading list. A legal thriller suits me since I read Grisham in 3rd grade and continue to do so today, and one of my interests is the Supreme Court, and the inner workings of the lower courts, so it fits.

Shifting from books to food, Dad's birthday is tomorrow and he wants to go to MacArthur Park in Westlake in Los Angeles to get a picture taken with the sign (because of the song), and to Langer's Deli across the street from MacArthur Park. Being Jewish, we can tell if we're at an honest-to-kishka Jewish deli, and just by looking at the massive menu on the website alone, this feels like it.

For pastrami, I've contentedly subsisted on the pastrami sandwiches offered by Weinerschnitzel. It's the best I can do living in the Santa Clarita Valley where the only things that are Jewish are the little slivers of spaces for Hanukkah stuff at the supermarket. We're not the majority here, and certainly don't expect to be, but what brings in the most profit is what gets the most attention. In Las Vegas, it's different. Supermarkets there have a good-sized aisle for Jewish food. Packaged, sure, but at least it's more attention than we get here.

Compared to what Langer's has, I'm apparently not getting real pastrami from Weinerschnitzel, but I don't mind. It's cut very thinly, and it's good at least. That's all I can ask for from this empty-soul valley. But tomorrow, oh lord. I've scrolled through that menu and I've drooled many times. I'm not intimidated by the size of it, and in fact, I'm never taken aback by any large menu. Give me a 25-page menu and I can reduce it to what I want within two minutes. Speed reading is a major component of that, but I also generally go into restaurants with what I like right at the forefront of my mind. If it's an Italian restaurant, and I've been a good boy with my diet in the weeks before, I order fettucine alfredo. If it's Mexican, I want a quesadilla. If it's a Jewish deli, I want some kind of sandwich, big enough to make me not care about how many calories I'm consuming, just to be in awe of the masterwork in front of me.

Mom looked at the Langer's Deli menu first yesterday and she was intimidated by it. It has everything we've been starved of here, including whitefish and lox, but which, coupled with cream cheese, is a tad pricey at $15.95 for an appetizer. And you can have either the whitefish or the lox. Not both. And they've got matzo ball soup which I hope isn't served as large as it is at Jerry's Deli to try to cover up the fact that it's so-so. I hope there's respect given to the matzo ball in relation to the soup and vice-versa. I'm also harboring high hopes for the cheesecake. I love cheesecake. I can't have it often because I like my thinning frame. With a menu like this (http://www.langersdeli.com/langers-menu), the hope is justified.

I looked at the menu late yesterday afternoon, scrolling past the hot sandwiches, the "daily entrees" including corned beef and cabbage and "One-Half Boiled Chicken", the steaks, the deli plates, though I had already decided what I wanted when I saw it at the top of the page. I was just seeing what else Langer's offered, just to be assured that this was the Jewish deli I had hoped to find after eight years of not having any.

A pastrami and chopped liver sandwich with "Russian Style Dressing." That's what I want tomorrow. They have chili cheese fries, but I'm not keen on that. It feels disrespectful. They have regular fries, and as long as there's mustard, which undoubtedly there will be, I'm fine with that. I just can't fathom chili and cheese on a separate dish next to a pastrami and chopped liver sandwich. Not when there's kishka and knishes available on the menu.

I told Mom I'd found what I wanted and she was stunned. She had picked out the pastrami and chopped liver sandwich too. For her genes, I'm grateful, as they include a steely resolve, patience, and a love of black olives and cheesecake. This wasn't really a surprise to me because with Jewish delis, what I pick is relatable to Mom or Dad or both. I've been raised well.

Deep, Passionate Book Love

I'm reading "Best Friends, Occasional Enemies" by Lisa Scottoline and Francesca Serritella, and have never been more in love with books.

That is all.

For now.

That Old Feeling Again

Every month or so, I get an insatiable yen for anything to do with Superman, Captain Nemo, and Zorro. I want every Superman comic ever made, every book to do with Superman, Captain Nemo and Zorro, and every TV show and movie centered on the three of them.

But about a day or two later, the yen fades because of other books I want to read, other movies I want to see. Last month, it got as far as me watching most of Superman: The Movie from my sister's massive DVD box set that I got her for her birthday a few years ago. It includes all four Christopher Reeve Superman movies, as well as Superman Returns from 2006, cartoons and serials featuring Superman, and documentaries, along with a director's cut of Superman II and an expanded version of Superman: The Movie.

This time, it won't go away. I need to give some time to this craving. So in my room at this moment, I have 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, of course; Captain Nemo by Kevin J. Anderson, and Zorro by Isabel Allende. I also have the Zorro: The Complete Series DVD box set, which is the early '90s Zorro TV series. And I have the Smallville pilot on the Tivo, back from when it aired a week before the series finale (Or was it right before the series finale?)

But that doesn't feel like it'll be enough. I need more. So from Amazon, I ordered The Mask of Zorro, The Mark of Zorro (1940, featuring the greatest swordfight in movie history), and Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. From AbeBooks (http://www.abebooks.com/), a slew of titles: It's Superman! by Tom De Haven, The Last Days of Krypton by Kevin J. Anderson, Enemies & Allies, also by Kevin J. Anderson (about Superman and Batman reluctantly teaming up), The Death and Life of Superman by Roger Stern, The Other Log of Phileas Fogg by Philip Jose Farmer, which involves a search for Captain Nemo, who's actually Professor Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes stories, Voyage into the Deep: The Saga of Jules Verne and Captain Nemo, a graphic novel about Jules Verne writing 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Captain Nemo by Jason DeAngelis and Aldin Viray. Even though manga doesn't interest me, that one does because of Captain Nemo.

Oh, but we're not done yet. Remembering that the Warner Bros. Studios store site (http://www.wbshop.com/) still had its Cyber Monday sale going (from which I ordered the third season of Night Court earlier in the day for $8.15), I searched for Superman DVDs, hoping that in the section of heavily discounted TV DVDs, the ten seasons of Smallville would be available, of which I was only interested in the first season to see if I like it enough to want more.

No chance of that, as they remained pricey at $47.95 each. But what about Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman? Yeah! I was an addicted nine-year-old when that first season aired. I especially loved a scene in which Clark Kent flew as Superman to China to pick up Chinese food, though as I learned, that had happened in a later season.

There on the Warner Bros. site was the first season of Lois & Clark for $12. And the first season of The Adventures of Superman with George Reeves. And Superman Serials: The Complete 1948 & 1950 Collection. Done, done, and done. I don't think this craving is going to wear off by the time any of these books and DVDs arrive. Thank god the books are always cheap.

Just now, while typing the Superman Serials title, I was reminded of the Dick Tracy serials, the 1990 Warren Beatty movie (which I watched a lot at the same age I was hooked on Lois & Clark), and the Complete Chester Gould's Dick Tracy books available, volumes of them. Thankfully, that feeling passed without kicking up anything in me. Dick Tracy doesn't have half the same effect as Superman, Captain Nemo, and Zorro do, though he's still a deeply rooted interest.

This is why I will always believe that the inside of my head looks like the sets on Beakman's World. Because not only am I thinking about these three great fictional figures, I'm also mulling over my desert playlist, full of music that I think represents, for me, Las Vegas, Henderson, Boulder City, and the surrounding desert, and wondering if Matchbox sells its cars individually, not just in packs. I really want that city bus.

The Flour Truck of Henderson

In Casselberry, in the late '80s, my four-, five-, six-year-old self loved plunging his hands into a rectangular plastic wastebasket filled with toy figurines and cars. Hot Wheels, Matchbox, Camaros, a Lamborghini, and a car wash set and a racetrack that hooked up on one end of a table, and letting the car go at the top, hoping it would build speed fast enough to race through the loop-the-loop on the other end. All with so much to love, though in hindsight, no clue why.

I guess it was the young American boy thing to do, probably the same reason I had a collection of baseball cards in a binder, though I liked basketball much more. I also read Motor Trend when I was eight and nine, but I don't think I was looking at and admiring specs and engines. Maybe just the cars themselves, the shapes, the style.

On the second-to-most-recent trip to Las Vegas, I returned to that little boy form, in a different aspect. We spent a lot of time in Henderson, deciding even then if that's where we wanted to live, exploring the area, seeing what fit and what didn't. We stopped at a Smith's supermarket, and I walked around in awe because it felt like a neighborhood supermarket should. It felt like people cared about what they bought, whereas at a Ralphs or Vons here, people just grab what they need on an errand, throw it into the cart, zoom right into the checkout lane, pay for it, and zoom right out. At that Smith's, it felt like people took their time to shop, to buy what they truly wanted, what would fulfill them.

It was also a supermarket of unusual sights, namely a circular display outside one aisle filled with toy cars and trucks. Toy aisles at Ralphs and Vons are perfunctory and brief, filled with cheap crap to buy only when you're heading to a birthday party that you really don't want to go to, and you have to bring something.

Here were cars, VW Beetles, school buses. I looked at all of them, picked a few up, not for nostalgia's sake, but out of curiosity, because I still have that part of me. I discovered that my taste for cars had been replaced by working vehicles: School buses, ice cream trucks, street cleaners, daycare transports, moving vans and trucks, anything with a daily purpose.

At that display, I found a flour truck, dark brown at the front, lighter brown in the back, with doors that open on each side, and light peach-colored bags of flour that are highest at the top, and seem to have tumbled toward the bottom. On the left and right side of where the bags of flour are held, the logo of the "Diamond Flour Co." is stamped, and each side says, "Good Quality & Good Service." It was probably about six or seven dollars and I bought it. I wanted it as a reminder of a good place, and to start a collection of working vehicles.

That collection grew by five at Target in Valencia on Friday night. While Mom and Meridith looked at styluses for the Nintendo DS (since we'll need some new ones soon), I found a Curious George doll that reminded me of kindergarten at Sterling Park Elementary in Casselberry, and Mrs. Moffat let each student take home the Curious George doll for one night and bring it back the next day. At the end of the year, one of us got to take it home for good, and it wasn't me. It sure wasn't as big as the one that I picked up. I hope there is still something like that in some kindergarten classes.

After I showed it to Mom and Meridith, I put it back and then stopped at the Matchbox aisle to see if there were any airplanes, namely commercial airliners. Nothing with real-life airline logos on them since that's too specialized and it's what hobby shops and stores such as Puzzle Zoo are for, and especially "The Airplane Shop" near McCarran International in Las Vegas, which I'm jonesing to visit the next time I'm there.

Looking more closely at the packs of cars available, I spotted a five-pack with a street cleaning vehicle ("City Cleaner"), a moving truck ("Move-It"), a blue-and-green polka-dotted ice cream truck ("Polka Dot Ice Cream Co."), a daycare bus ("Child Care Learning Center"), and a red van for roadside service ("Mobile Vehicle Service"). I grabbed it, loving that I could get these five for nearly $6. I'm not sure if I'll have another plastic rectangular wastebasket filled with these kinds of vehicles, since I'm far more choosy than I was back then (If it was a car and the wheels moved, I wanted it) and I intend to treat these much more carefully.

Right now, I'm searching on Amazon for what Matchbox cars are available, and so far, there's a water truck, a garbage truck, a "Wildfire Crew Transport" truck, a dump truck, an RV camper, a dry bulk truck, a cement truck, a forklift, and a city bus I'd really like to find. And thinking about the Cheeseball Wagon food truck from the food truck festival that opened the newly refurbished Auto Row in Valencia early in the year, from which Meridith got a t-shirt, toy food trucks would be most welcome in my collection. I hope there's some enterprising minds thinking about that.

That Long, Peaceful Night

DirecTV had a free preview weekend of the Starz! and Encore channels, and I Tivo'd a great number of movies, deleting all the episodes I had recorded of The Good Wife to make room for them, along with episodes of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations that I probably wouldn't watch despite my interest in them because many, many, many books take priority.

Early yesterday evening, I watched most of Same Time, Next Year, which is really skilled at understated dialogue, so that the laughs are bigger. The playwright Bernard Slade who adapted his play into this movie knows rhythms in dialogue and words within lines, such as when a pregnant Ellen Burstyn says, in reply to Alan Alda's question about whether she's comfortable, "In my condition, it's hard to be comfortable in any position."

I haven't finished it because I wanted to see if I could focus again on an entire evening of reading the rest of Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton, which is wonderful in the descriptions of a career as a chef, a career that didn't take a traditional path, but is incredibly tedious in the Italy section toward the end. The same vacation dredged up over and over through different contexts. Mostly, I wanted to see if I could read a 304-page book in one day, since I had started reading it after I got up at 11 that morning. I can, but it's mighty hard when I've only got a tenuous connection to a book. I connected to a few things said, and loved the culinary descriptions, but it took some willpower to get through many portions of it. It wasn't a matter of forcing myself; I just wanted to see where the story went, though more out of curiosity than interest.

And yet, I loved how the evening turned out because the TV was off, I was sitting on the couch reading, and the entire living room was silent. Just me and a book. Mom, Dad and Meridith were in the other room, Mom resting because of heartburn, Dad watching his Korean soap opera, and Meridith reading Chore Whore by Heather H. Howard, one of my favorite novels, and one she was curious about.

Reading like I was, I felt so light inside and so did the air around me. I was exactly where I belonged. On to the next book and more of the same!

10th Grade Spanish Done Right

10th grade at the main campus of Flanagan High School in Pembroke Pines, Florida was strategy every day. There were so many students on that one campus alone, probably well over 2,000, that it's a wonder the buildings didn't bulge on all sides. It was two levels, and one stairwell to get to the second level, near the cafeteria, was so crowded between classes that you had to hold your breath just to have enough space between you and the person in front of you. If you didn't have to buy lunch in the cafeteria, then you didn't spend time there. Far too crowded, unless of course you were part of a clique that hung out there, but I wasn't, and didn't know of any since I wasn't very social, only when conversations occasionally formed around me and I was sucked in. I had a friend named Stephen, who was much the same way, and we chatted in the morning and during the day, but never hung out together outside of school. It was just that way for me: You go to school, do what's required by the system, and go home. After homework, the rest of the time is yours.

Spanish class was always in the morning, first class I think. I don't think that was why I failed, though. I dreaded it. All those phrases to learn, the different pronunciations, the sentences, and there was one assignment I remember in which you had to write an essay in Spanish. I was so inept at the assignments that I failed, and summer school was the only choice. It's ironic that I failed Spanish considering my newfound interest in Mexico, though I don't think I'll visit. I'll probably study Spanish anew because of it, but because I'm not confined within the pressures of a classroom, it'll be easier.

Mom and Dad kept on me about my grades, but failing Spanish wasn't such an issue. I'd go to summer school, hopefully get a better grade, and that was that. In previous years, I had gone to summer school voluntarily anyway to get ahead for the next school year, and it was because of this diligence that I didn't have to go to Hollywood Hills High at all for the last half of my 12th grade year. There was an arrangement made so I wasn't marked absent, and I got to stay home.

To give you an idea of when I retook Spanish, X-Men was the most hyped movie of the summer. Entertainment Weekly had a huge spread about it, from the cast to the plot to the special effects, ahead of its July 14th release. Movies played a major part in my Spanish class in summer school, since that's really all I remember about the class, and standing up for what I believed in, even when it pissed off the teacher and in turn got the class pissed off at me.

We were a good group, a few class clowns, but none that stood out to such disruptive effect. Friendly, temporary acquaintances all. The teacher liked the rhythm of the class, how lessons went by so smoothly, and I'm thinking it must have been a Friday when she decided to show a movie in lieu of doing anything else related to Spanish for the latter half of the day.

But it wasn't a good one. It was Fools Rush In, starring Salma Hayek and Matthew Perry, back when Friends got him movies and he wasn't as good a comedic actor as he is now. I had seen it a couple of years before and hated it, mainly because the director, Andy Tennant, did not and still does not know how to stage comedy. This is another example of influences previously being unknown. Part of the movie takes place in Las Vegas, which I feel can be home for me, and part of it was filmed in Taos, New Mexico, which I want to visit one day. Back then, I didn't know anything about either, and only knew about where I lived in Florida, what was around me in that area, and where I had been in Florida.

After the teacher told us that she was putting on Fools Rush In, I loudly groaned, and it was enough to make her change her mind and continue with classwork. And my classmates were ticked at me. But I didn't care. I wasn't going to sit through the same bad movie again. There are times when you should do for others, when you should bite your tongue, understand that it makes the other person happy, and just go through with it. This wasn't that time.

The last day of class arrived and the teacher decided to put on a movie since the class was over and there was nothing else to do. This time, it was The Mask of Zorro, starring Antonio Banderas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, and Anthony Hopkins. I was much happier, especially because there were swordfights.

There are many instances in life in which you have to go through the crap to get to the treasure. That was one of them. I didn't care that my classmates were glaring at me, because even though I didn't enjoy some of the classwork, it was required in order to get a good grade. I had to do it. But even though I still had to sit in the class during a movie, I didn't want to have to suffer through what I didn't like before. Sometimes I stand up for what I believe in even if it inconveniences others. I don't do it often, only when I'm confronted by something that could threaten my wellbeing. This was also before I got heavily into reviewing movies, and saw other movies that were a lot worse, before I developed Teflon skin that could let me write a review of a bad movie and move on without being bothered further by it.

I'm most proud of not being affected by my classmates glaring at me and probably hurling a few complaints at me which have long been forgotten. One of my favorite songs is "Englishman in New York" by Sting, his tribute to raconteur and staunch individualist Quentin Crisp, who's one of my heroes. In that song is this lyric, which is one of my favorite quotes: "Be yourself, no matter what they say." I had been living it before I even knew about Quentin Crisp, and only now did I realize that I was.

Thanksgiving: As Comfortable as Stuffing

On Hanukkah, which my family and I celebrate, the world doesn't stop because not everyone is Jewish.

On Christmas, most of the world feels like it stops, but not all, because I'm not Christian or any other denomination that celebrates Christmas.

But on Thanksgiving, the entire world feels like it stops. There is no work for anyone to do, but I say this because neither I nor any other member of my family is an employee at the mercy of any of the corporations and companies that do their damndest to squeeze the ever-loving profits out of Black Friday, with some stores already open during Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving here is just me, Meridith, Mom, Dad, Tigger, Kitty, and our finches, Mr. Chips and Gizmo. We don't have to cook a great deal since it's just us, so there's one big dish of stuffing, two dishes of candied yams with marshmallows (since Mom likes them a lot), and either a turkey or the massive breast of a Butterball turkey, as it was this year. This also means that there's nothing to catch up on because we know each other, every day.

When I got up past 11 this morning, Mom and Meridith were watching the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in the master bedroom, and Dad was out looking for an L.A. Times. Before I even had a late breakfast, I got on the computer to see what Thanksgiving detritus there was, holiday wishes from good friends on Facebook and by e-mail, including one from Sara, always nice to see.

This day is as comfortable as stuffing. I was ticked off last night about how Sony packaged the complete series set of Married with Children, and decided right then to get a DVD storage binder for the discs so I didn't have to constantly take out DVDs to get the one I wanted and then stack them one on top of each other again. Today, I decided to go further: I'm going to get a huge DVD storage binder, perhaps with the capacity for 420 DVDs, so I can store 90% of my DVDs that way, get rid of cases I don't think I need beyond booklets that come with a few of the DVDs, so when we move, I can bring more books with me to Henderson.

There will be some exceptions, such as the complete series sets of I Love Lucy and M*A*S*H, because those are uniquely packaged, and my James Bond DVD sets, four volumes. But for movies like Unstrung Heroes, Murphy's Romance, Adventureland, My Blueberry Nights, and 84 Charing Cross Road, I don't need the DVD cases. All I want is what's on those discs. That's it. Why let those cases take up space in boxes? That's a waste, and in the new apartment, I can use that space that those DVD cases would have taken up for my books. For now, I'm researching various binders, received a strong recommendation from a Facebook acquaintance who knows what it is to store DVDs since he has hundreds, and I'll see what looks strong enough and will last for years.

Before dinner began, I finished reading the final three pages of Hopscotch and Handbags: The Essential Guide to Being a Girl by Guardian columnist Lucy Mangan, who is one of the funniest writers I've ever read, possibly the funniest, but very much in my top three. She doesn't strive to be funny, reaching for the laughs like Dave Barry does. Her thoughts are sometimes outlandish, but the laughs emanate from whatever she writes about, including womanhood in this case. Before the holiday, I thought that I would take these days to read all of that as well as My Family and Other Disasters (A collection of her columns in The Guardian) and The Reluctant Bride: One Woman's Journey (Kicking and Screaming) Down the Aisle, also by her.

But I looked at one stack of books across from the foot of my bed, on the right side of my room, and there at the top was Stranger on a Train: Daydreaming and Smoking Around America with Interruptions by Jenny Diski, about the two Amtrak trips she took throughout the United States. I decided that I wanted to travel in a book for a while. And under that one was The River Queen: A Memoir by Mary Morris, who traveled down the Mississippi in a houseboat called the River Queen. That will come after Stranger on a Train.

I don't brood as much as Jenny Diski does in the early pages of this book, but reading her descriptions of her childhood and teenage years, her reasons for being on a cargo ship from the U.K. to Tampa, Florida, the people she meets that she describes so well, I realized that I am exactly who I want to be. I am a passionate, voracious bibliophile with a job I love that I want to make full time so I can keep on reading and writing like I do now. I have books I want to write and see published, there's always movies throughout the year that I want to see (including Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol, the 3D release of Beauty and the Beast, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and many more throughout next year), I love to play Galaga on the Nintendo DS whenever I find the time and especially when I find an arcade machine, I love pinball, I love basketball, and I feel, even with Henderson and Las Vegas coming up in due time, that if I find someone to share my life, that'd be nice, but if not, that's ok. I don't want to push for it. I don't have that drive. I'm very comfortable with who I am. I've figured out the right blend for my life and it suits me perfectly.

In that same vein, I found that I want to read a lot more travel books (by travel writers, not the guidebooks, not yet anyway) about China, Mexico, and New Mexico. Las Vegas is a given what with the stack of books I have about it already, and hopefully being a resident soon, which will give me the most welcome opportunity to ransack the Nevada history sections at the Henderson and Clark County libraries so I can learn all about where I live and the state that I can proudly call home.

My interest in China began after reading The Last Chinese Chef by Nicole Mones and wanting to know more about its culinary history and so much more about its history in general, as well as its literature. I wanted more about Mexico after reading about Anthony Bourdain's experiences in food there in his The Nasty Bits. New Mexico is because of The Secret of Everything by Barbara O'Neal. It's because of that wonderful, wonderful novel that I want to visit there one day.

However, I recently learned that the influence of New Mexico has been in my life far longer than this past September, when I read The Secret of Everything. After Andy Rooney had put squarely in my mind the notion of becoming a writer, I discovered in my early teens a book called Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life by Natalie Goldberg. Goldberg's advice about writing and the prompts she provided in order to provide fuel for writing made it feel like writing was about freedom, about writing whatever you wanted and not being afraid to do so. In that book, I remember reading about Taos, not even knowing where that is, though I do now. And I found out that Goldberg lives in northern New Mexico.

I need places that don't just talk about freedom, but live it. Las Vegas feels that way to me, even under the constraints of the economy right now. To me, it is about hedonism; it is about finding the pleasures that can enrich your life every day. Whatever weirdness you might be into, you could find it in Las Vegas, and you're part of keeping that freedom going there.

New Mexico feels the same way to me, but with more of a spiritual bent, more of an expansion of heart and mind through the scenery and the culture. I've got a lot more to learn about it, but it feels right to me. I don't think I want to live there, but I like knowing that it's there, and one day I will see it, greedily gulping all of it. And I hope that travel will coincide with my one major goal in life: To visit all the presidential libraries in the nation.

I didn't think about Thanksgiving like this last year because I was just rising from the dark pit of the anxiety that had so overwhelmed me from being vastly overweight, which was also brought on by so much caffeine consumption that I could have become an alternative energy source, and I had begun losing weight, but was still watching my own body so closely that I didn't consider anything else in my life.

These last months of this year and the beginning of next year are different because there is a future ahead, finally a future after eight years of living here, where there's no vivid color, no personality, no feeling that you're living well. I think more and more about Las Vegas, about Henderson, about our new apartment complex, about the Pinball Hall of Fame, about those casinos on the Strip that I haven't visited yet, about the libraries in the area, about my future career, about the Hacienda Hotel and Casino near Hoover Dam, about all that there is that will make my life better. It's pretty good now with the books I have on hand, but I want more. And Las Vegas and Henderson is more, much more.

I'm thankful for everything that you've read here, and Thanksgiving itself, the one day of the year in which the nation feels silent enough in order to do some considerable thinking, and center yourself fully, understanding who you truly are, and finally embracing it entirely, without uncertainty.