Tired, But Satisfied

A call last night from the automated sub system for the Hart School District. A request for me to sub for the campus supervisor with my favorite hours, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. The first time I've subbed since December, since furlough days made the campus supervisors skittish about taking time off during this latter half of the school year. Disappointing, but it was great to have work again, an hourly rate, and a check to come soon. I'm not sure if I'll be called in during the final week of the school year coming up, but I loved doing the job again.

I'm exhausted, of course. First, I had to go to bed earlier than I usually do, which I've no complaints about, even though my body made an epic attempt to get used to getting up at 6 a.m. instead of 10 a.m., and I was still tired on the way to work, also stemming from having gone to bed at 12:30 and having a little over five hours of sleep. I have to make adjustments. I need to start getting to bed earlier even though there's not a job coming up just yet. I need to because I need my body to be used to it by the time we move to Las Vegas. I need to be ready for job interviews and hopefully that position as a full-time campus supervisor.

I love the work. I love walking around an empty campus while the kids are in class, looking at the architecture (which isn't anything remarkable, since the buildings at La Mesa Junior High look the same as the buildings at Valencia High, my sister's alma mater), thinking about my reading, my writing, and, of course, seeking out some kind of history. At this moment, I'm thinking of all of La Mesa sitting there in the dark, gates locked, ghosts of history gradually emerging, more than they did today, even though I could sense them. There are untapped memories there. It's keeping in the style of the Santa Clarita Valley that brief glimpses of history are there, but aren't allowed to fully bloom. Always the future, as I've mentioned before.

Today was a busy day, mainly because on my first day back, I always overdo it. After the bell rang and the kids went to class for first period, I walked around and around and around the campus. John, the head campus supervisor, disappears into the campus supervisors' office, near the front gate, after the bell rings. I get it, because unless you're called, why expend the energy that you need for later, in supervising brunch (15-minute break) and lunch? I wasn't looking to impress anyone since I already know that I do a good, faithful job there. I should have taken it slower. But first, I wanted to get reacquainted with the campus, then have a few uninterrupted opportunities to look at the adobe-style building across from the office, and imagine that I was in New Mexico, where I hope to be many times in the years to come.

Most of my day was spent walking back and forth from the P.E. building. Kids to bring to the office to leave early, kids to go to the guidance counselors, one girl brought to one of the assistant principals because of a lighter in her backpack. By 11 a.m., I was already yawning. I wasn't all that tired, but my body sure wasn't happy. If there was a second day, a third day, I'd be used to it again.

I felt so satisfied today. This is what I want to do. I realized, though, that I have to make a few other adjustments, none troublesome. For one, in my finances, I need to put in a shoe budget. I'm going to wear out a lot of pairs of velcro sneakers, and I also have to buy protective insoles because I don't want to buy shoes with those already in them. I want velcro, and thus far only a certain brand that I wear right now. I'm happy to do that, because I'll be fully part of a middle school campus that I'll take as much pride in as I have at La Mesa. I've felt close to La Mesa, but not close enough. I can do the job, but I want to feel that connection in my job. I will in Las Vegas.

Generally, in this job, your days off are when the school has days off. You have the summer all for yourself, though I'll also seek work during the summer, in freelance writing. When the workday is over, it's over. You don't have to bring any work home with you, and you don't have to think about the day. The rest is yours, and your paycheck is secure. What more could I ask for? It's good, solid work. And in hindsight, it was probably inevitable, what with hanging around empty school campuses where my mom and dad worked, the same campuses where I attended middle school and high school.

To have a job I like in a hometown I love will more than make up for these nearly nine years in an unfeeling region. Judging from today, I still love it, so it'll be the easiest transition.

My Favorite Henderson Press Article

I've read 25 issues of The Henderson Press thus far, and have liked many articles, but none have struck me as a favorite until now. Vol. 2, No. 20, dated Thursday, July 14, 2011, has an article on page 14 about 25-year Master Floral Designer Jill Ann Ferrero, who makes all the floral entrance displays at the Casino MonteLago in Lake Las Vegas. She also makes new arrangements in front of an audience every Thursday morning at the casino in the "Cerimonia dei Fiore" (Flower Ceremony). Ferrero is the kind of creative person I love to read about, and I'm relieved that writer Don Logay isn't as breathless in this article as he usually is about everything else in Lake Las Vegas. This was a terrific article with beautiful photos of two types of arrangements. It's going to be hard for any future article to top this.

Spiced Wine Avenue? Come On.

Ever since The Henderson Press became a weekly newspaper in Volume 2, No. 8, they've added a few things to fill more pages besides longer articles, including a City of Henderson Crime Map, pointing out where in Henderson burglaries, robberies, assaults, sex assaults, vehicle thefts, family disturbances, and narcotics happened. I read it just to learn street names. Crime will happen anywhere, and I'll just be careful and alert enough, keeping myself safe.

But now I've got research to do. I want to know who came up with these street names and why, if it was one person per area or many people. I like some of these names, such as Blueberry Lane, Warm Springs Road, Tullio Way, Coralino Drive, West Horizon Ridge Parkway, Zinnia Circle, and Bugle Bluff Drive. On the crime map in the Thursday, June 9, 2011 issue, Volume 2, No. 15, a vehicle theft happened on the 1500 block of Spiced Wine Avenue.

Spiced Wine Avenue? I thought some effort was made to give streets names that correlate to that particular area, either historically, or in observation of what a particular area faces, or something totally random but which makes sense in the context of the city. Some don't make sense, like Windmill Parkway, but it gives off a bit of imagination. Where the hell did Spiced Wine Avenue come from? Some wine-drinking contingent from Southern California that was assigned to name these streets? I want to know its origin, not necessarily to mock, but just to be able to shake my head knowledgeably. I can't accept that one.

It's Time

For the past few days, I've been feeling it acutely: It's time to go. It's time to pack it up here after nine too-long years, taking only what we really need, and head on out to Las Vegas and start a new life that we've needed for all those nine years. I did some good here in Santa Clarita, writing a while for the Canyon Call at College of the Canyons, being the interim editor of the Escape section of The Signal for five weeks in early 2008, and I gained a few then-new favorite writers (now they're reliable favorites), but that's not enough. I've never felt close to any part of these lands, the people, the buildings. What I want, what Mom wants, what Meridith wants, what I hope Dad wants, is in Las Vegas.

I'm able-bodied. I can work. I want to be a full-time middle school campus supervisor. I've studied campuses closely since kindergarten, and known them intimately since 6th grade, when Dad resumed his teaching career first as a substitute teacher after 19 years at Southern Bell (which became BellSouth in the process). I followed him to Silver Trail Middle in 7th grade, in which the first half of that school year was spent at a cluster of portables near our condo in Grand Palms Golf & Country Club in Pembroke Pines (nothing fancy; we lived way in the back end), and then during that winter break, teachers and administration moved into the new school site that had just finished construction. I walked around that school many, many times, before any of my classmates and other students occupied it. I also spent 8th grade at Silver Trail, and then in 9th grade, at Flanagan High School, I went back to that former Silver Trail campus of portables, which became Flanagan's, because the main campus was so overcrowded that they had to place us 9th graders somewhere else. Mom was working on the main campus in their copy machine center, making copies for all the teachers, and then I joined her on that campus for 10th grade. In 11th grade, she moved to Hollywood Hills High School as a library assistant, and I went to school there for my final two years.

Attending College of the Canyons here, I loved late Friday afternoons when my cinema class let out (always an easy "A"), when the campus was empty and I walked around, looking at those hallways, feeling that utter peace that spread throughout those enormous three floors. And then being a substitute campus supervisor at Dad's school, La Mesa Junior High, I was very happy in that job. I love studying the architecture of these campuses, even if most of it is the same in this valley, as what's at La Mesa is the same at Valencia High. I didn't mind it. There was one building, across from the office, that felt like adobe architecture. I'd look at that and imagine that I was in New Mexico, where I want to be in the years to come, to travel throughout it.

I can be comfortable at any middle school campus in Las Vegas. I look forward to getting to know those kids, to making sure they behave while outside, to keep the school in good standing. I'm excited about this chance because I will finally be in an area whose history I can feel, whose history I want to explore. Not only is there one book I want to write about a certain aspect of Las Vegas history that has interested me for the few years I've known about Las Vegas, but I had an idea for a novel set in Las Vegas that I want to pursue. I won't be looking to prove anything about Las Vegas as other novels tend to do. It is a hedonistic paradise, and that's where I want to be. That's how I want to live. It'll be set in 1950s Las Vegas, because the historical figure involved lived during that time and visited Las Vegas during that time. There's a lot of research to do not only about 1950s Las Vegas, but about this figure himself, and the famous gambler who it's claimed escorted him around town, but apparently cannot be confirmed.

This will be my home. This is where I belong. This is where I can place roots and have a home base, and travel to the presidential libraries and smaller presidential museums I still want to visit, and travel throughout New Mexico, and know that I have a home to come back to. It's a comforting thought that I haven't had all that often because of how many times we moved throughout Florida and then here to Southern California, to Valencia, and then to Saugus a year after we arrived. It's there. It's all there. I told Meridith today that I'm going to be so relieved to have a library card, because more than that driver's license to come at the Nevada DMV, it means I have somewhere I belong. A home. A library. A home library. Home in all its forms. Streets and businesses and casinos and amusements to explore every single day. If you can't write in Las Vegas, you might as well give up writing. I can write there for sure. And I can live there for sure. I know it.

More DVD Reviews

I've figured out how to write my main character in my somewhat art-driven novel, why he's so devoted to his art, what he hopes to continue to accomplish by it. I'm not sure yet why he's going to do what's presented to him, but I'll map it out soon. When I'm not working on this novel or my other books, I'm still keeping myself limber by writing DVD reviews, and I see that I haven't posted links to new DVD reviews since April 29. There have been a lot since Car 54, Where Are You?: The Complete Second Season. Out of this new batch, I'm most proud of my review of Raw Faith. 95 Miles to Go comes in second:

Carlos Mencia: New Territory

The Big C: The Complete Second Season

Tom and Jerry: Around the World

Raw Faith

Happiness Is... Peanuts: Team Snoopy

Young Goethe in Love

95 Miles to Go

Hazel: The Complete Third Season

Barney Vinson's Got It

I'm nearing the end of The Vegas Kid by Barney Vinson, and though the plot doesn't move much (I'm sure there's a climax coming along soon, though), Vinson mirrors the atmosphere of Las Vegas perfectly, especially this line at the beginning of chapter 17 on page 137:

"Sam was happy, though. He didn't mind being Sammy Duran or dealing crap at Blackie's. In fact, he liked living in the desert and being himself for a change instead of some chrome-plated cowboy."

Exactly. Las Vegas is all about being yourself, doing what you want to do, tapping into your deepest passions and bring them swiftly to the surface. I'm going to dive into so much after we move there, inside and outside of Southern Nevada.

I also love Vinson's "About the Author" paragraph on the very last page:

Barney Vinson was born in the U.S.A., raised in Texas, and moved to Las Vegas a long time ago. He worked as a dice dealer at the old Dunes Hotel, then went to Caesars Palace where he was the casino gaming instructor for another long time. He lives in a small house by the side of the road with the Vegas skyline in the distance and writes full-time, while his wife Debbie works and pays the bills; they take in stray cats by appointment only. Vinson is the author of 23 books (six of which have been published). The Vegas Kid is his first novel.

I want to be Barney Vinson, but not working in any casinos. I want to earn enough money to write often, and I want to live as he writes. He and I have the same sense of humor.

One of My All-Time Favorite Lines about Las Vegas

As I read more and more about Las Vegas, I'm sure other all-time favorite lines will emerge, but it'll take a lot to top this one, from Las Vegas: Behind the Tables! Part 2 by Barney Vinson, when he's arrived at the Sands for the 35th Anniversary Celebration:

"I went through the door of the Sands and caught the blast of a thousand slot machines having dinner."