A Random Assortment of My Life

There's been nothing going on to merit a full entry on its own, at least not until later Friday or Saturday, because on Friday morning, my co-author on my book about the making of the Airport movies has invited me along to the media opening of Lex Luthor: Drop of Doom, a 400-foot freefall ride clamped to both sides of the Superman: Escape from Krypton tower at Six Flags Magic Mountain. Ever since leaving San Diego and his job at a magazine there, and moving back to Venice, he's reconnected with publications he's worked for, and that includes an amusement park magazine that assigned him to write a profile of this new ride. He has a comp media pass for this that can get him and one other person in, and that's me. He has the ulterior motive of us finally meeting face to face and being able to talk more about the book than we have in past weeks since he's been busy with other writing assignments and working with a '70s actress on her memoirs. Plus, he may still have the Lang family scrapbooks that he's keeping safe for actress/singer Monica Lewis while she moves to a new house. She was married to Universal film executive Jennings Lang who was the executive-in-charge on Airport (he watched the dailies and made sure everything was going ok, but with a producer like Ross Hunter, he had nothing to be concerned about), and then produced the sequels. Lang died in 1996, and according to my co-author, the scrapbooks potentially contain a lot of information that only I might be looking for. He's already pulled out what he wants for the book, but wants me to have a look as well. He goes for an overall view. I want to go in deep. We're a perfect match in that way, also because of his connection to the Lang family, having worked with Lewis on her memoir, which was published in May of last year.

So I get free admission into Magic Mountain, and it's going to be my Third Farewell Tour. I want to go to all the spots I've liked, including Pistachio Park, and maybe, just maybe, up the Sky Tower to the now unfortunately empty floor, freed of all its historical artifacts, which were the one thing that distinguished Magic Mountain from the rest of the Santa Clarita Valley, that acknowledgement of its history. However, it has the benefit of being set apart from the rest of the valley by its location to the extent that you don't feel like you're in Santa Clarita. But that history was still important.

Nevertheless, this is the perfect opportunity to say goodbye to Magic Mountain, to silently give my thanks for the many times it sustained me, helped me keep my sanity in this valley. Plus, I've never been to any media event like this, so why not have a totally different experience at Magic Mountain than what I usually had?

- Next item on my list in Notepad of things to write about is my latest DVD reviews, or at least my DVD reviews since May 31. I can't believe it's been that long since I've posted anything about them. I liked my reviews of seasons 3 and 4 of That '70s Show, and I finally sorted out my feelings about Tyler Perry in my review of his Good Deeds. He would be better if he doesn't push so hard, and there's one scene in Good Deeds that shows a potentially great future for him as a filmmaker. So here's the many I've done since my review of Episodes:

Zero Bridge

Law & Order: Criminal Intent: The Seventh Year

Love is On the Air

Trial & Retribution: Set 5

That '70s Show: Season Three

That '70s Show: Season Four

Miss Minoes

Margaret

Designing Women: The Final Season

PTown Diaries

Tyler Perry's Good Deeds

The Fairy

Father Dowling Mysteries: The Second Season

- In my reading of all the issues of The Henderson Press, I'm on Vol. 3, No. 3, January 19-25, 2012, I'm happy to say that I can amend my opinion of the weekly newspaper. Editor Carla J. Zvonec has finally stepped back from writing every single article in order to actually manage the paper, and not only are her editorials well-written, but finally the Henderson Press has focus and passion for the area again. There are outstanding reporters in Buford Davis, Guy Dawson, and Brian Sodoma, and the level of silly writing that used to plague these pages has dropped dramatically. Unlike Don Logay at his worst, these reporters realize that the paper is about the city, not about them. I liked Logay for his passion for Lake Las Vegas, but I hated how he was so obviously marketing it instead of just reporting it. The writing is much sharper and the profiles of various people in business and businesses themselves do more than just point out that they're there. These reporters are finally finding out that there's a lot of interesting stories in these businesses.

After Mom and Dad came back from Las Vegas and gave me all the publications I wanted to read (including that week's issue of Las Vegas Weekly, a few issues of Las Vegas Seven, and Friday's edition of the Review-Journal), I found the latest edition of the Henderson Press and was very happy. Henderson won't be my home, but I know I'll visit often and I'm confident of always being well-informed because of the Henderson Press. They've finally reached a zenith from which I hope they never come down.

- Today, in honor of Independence Day, Turner Classic Movies showed 1776, one of my favorite musicals. As I watched yet again the business and arguments of the Second Continental Congress, I came up with an idea that could either be a biography if I can find enough information, or certainly a novel. So much has been written about John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and others in that Congress, but there's been very little written about one of those figures. A novel set around that debate on independence from this man's perspective could be interesting. I know that the debate probably wasn't what it looked like in 1776 (For example, Richard Henry Lee said to John Hancock that he had to decline a spot on the committee to draft a Declaration of Independence because he was asked to serve as governor of Virginia. In reality, his wife was ill), but it would still be something to see it all from this one perspective I want to pursue. I've gotta start writing some of these novels so I can keep my list manageable.

- Around where we're going to live in Las Vegas, there's nine Wienerschnitzels, five Sonics, a Walmart, a Vons supermarket, a 7-11, a Smith's supermarket, the Whitney library branch, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few other things. Everything's accessible, and it's far back enough from the Strip to feel separate from it yet make you want to go as often as you can.

1776 is the only movie I've watched in full in a while. I'm favoring books more and more now and sticking to it. In the past three days alone, I've read five books, including The Age of Miracles by Karen Walker Thompson and Zombie Spaceship Wasteland by Patton Oswalt. When will Patton Oswalt write another book? He's got another career in this if he wants it and I want more from him. Also, read The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. Don't even ask "What? Why?!". Just do it. It may very well be the best book of this year and many previous years, even though it was published this year.

I Couldn't Believe It Until It Was True

Over the past five years, Dad has occasionally recounted stories of people he's met through his work at La Mesa and other residents of Santa Clarita who say that they have lived in this valley all their lives and have never lived. If Dad was to be believed, these people did all their errands in Santa Clarita, did not go to Los Angeles for anything, or Ventura, or Burbank, or Anaheim, or any other part of the Southern California region. I don't know if that stands for vacations as well, them never going on vacations to anywhere in the U.S. or internationally, but I've never pressed for that kind of information since it never really interested me. Plus, that sounded impossible. This valley offers little enough as it is. If they lived in Ventura or San Juan Capistrano or Anaheim, I could see them never leaving where they're living for anything. But Santa Clarita? To do anything interesting here, you have to leave, or at least go to Six Flags Magic Mountain for the day, which is separate enough from the valley in presentation and what it offers to not feel like part of this valley.

Last Thursday, at the Walmart on Kelly Johnson Parkway that overlooks Magic Mountain from the parking lot, a significantly heavyset, balding guy in his 60s, who mopped sweat from his forehead at one point, even though the store was air-conditioned, took the same turn as I did round a corner of the store and the aisle narrowed between us. I let him go first, and then we got into a conversation about the day, then about freeways, and then into his history. He lived in New York City in the late '50s and early '60s, then moved to Santa Clarita in '68 or '69, back when roads would dead-end, long before the valley looked like it does now. It was all farmland. He's lived here since then, doesn't like how rude kids are here, hates Las Vegas (he still believes that it's partly run by the Mafia), and asked me if I was seriously going to buy the pair of Rustler jeans I was holding onto, a light blue pair that I favor more than the dark blue pair I have now, but which I still wear because it's not ripped, and I don't like to spend money on jeans unless I have to. This time I had to, to replace one pair that doesn't fit me, that I thought fit me when I bought it long ago. It's not a matter of weighing more than I did then, just that I miscalculated. So I have this new pair (I told the guy, just laughing it off, that I wasn't thinking of buying it, to deflect him from his subtly derisive question), and I'll look for another when we go to the Walmart Supercenter on Carl Boyer Drive. One more pair will do it and then I'll have three and that will be enough.

Anyway, during the story of his arrival in Santa Clarita, this guy told me that he finds it a waste to go to Downtown Los Angeles to a show because of all the traffic that surrounds the Staples Center and the Ahmanson Theatre. He continued talking, and I responded with nods of understanding and vocal acknowledgments, but in my mind, I was thinking, "You can't be serious! Oh my god, Dad was right! These people, previously fictional to me, do exist!" I didn't think much of the guy, because he seemed too bitter to me to be able to live life comfortably (Yeah, there's crap in life, but it's not all bad. It's all in how you live it and how you meet the circumstances you face), but here was proof that somehow, some way, people make their lives here. Now I believe it.

I consider it to be the valley further separating from me and vice versa. It's giving me information and truth I don't think I ever would have discovered if I stayed here. It's a farewell gift to me. Besides, as soon as I get to Las Vegas, I'll forget it all anyway, so there's no harm in it revealing such truths.

The Second Farewell Tour

Last Friday afternoon, with Mom and Dad still in Vegas, having a full day of looking at other apartments and mobile home parks just in case (they found where we're going to live, but just wanted to look at possible backups that we hopefully don't have to use. I'll elaborate some other time), the extensive changes I saw at College of the Canyons didn't surprise me as much as total ignorance of history yet again, which I know is to be expected from the Santa Clarita Valley, but this time, it was truly breathtaking.

During the First Farewell Tour, I decided on that Wednesday that we should have a Second Farewell Tour, to our old apartment in Valencia, and to College of the Canyons to see what has changed since Meridith and I went there as students, my time there further back than hers. Then a walk around the mall, not so much a Farewell Tour since we've been there many times already, but rather as a reminder of the better life to come in Las Vegas with better malls, not just a repository for Hot Topic and Forever 21.

The apartment, situated behind a shopping center that includes Pavilions supermarket and Peet's Coffee and Tea, was the same as the last time we went, a few months prior. It's a revolving-door apartment. No one stays for very long. It's either a starter, or just temporary digs until fully deciding what to do. For us, unfortunately, it was a starter. If we had stayed there for all these nearly eight years, I still wouldn't have liked Santa Clarita, but it wouldn't have been as bad to me as it is. It was peaceful, the one place in Valencia where you could truly clear your head of all the noise and make your own oasis, filling it with whatever you wanted. You want only music and books? You can have it. You want to spend all your free hours at the pool behind, but connected to, the clubhouse? It's yours.

I remember a second-floor neighbor who had his fish tank balanced on the ledge of his patio, plugged into the socket out there. I don't know how he maintained that balance, but he must have had some serious confidence. Very little probably worried him.

In that apartment complex, you always meet people very briefly, but the few impressions you get are nothing of the shallowness that pervades the rest of the valley. People are just trying to make their way through the day, hoping to live it how they want. The clubhouse staff, those in the rental office mainly, were really the only shallow-looking ones. Nothing much to them. But that was it. You could go to Stevenson Ranch, you could go to other parts of Valencia, you could go to whatever parts of L.A. you wanted, see the mindlessness, come back and know that your apartment would not be bombarded by all of that. It was truly home for a time. Not a home I could have seen myself in for the rest of my life, but suitable for when we were there. We should have stayed there longer and not moved into pretty much total isolation in Saugus.

After stopping at Jamba Juice, and then the post office to drop off my check to the IRS, Meridith and I walked to College of the Canyons. No bus needed like the one we took from Saugus to that Pavilions shopping center. I wanted to show Meridith the route I sometimes walked, though it was from the bus transfer station to COC, yet we walked through that transfer station on our way. Meridith always waited for the bus because she was loaded down with textbooks, binders, and her knife kit for her cooking classes. She'd never seen that rising and falling set of sidewalks like the ones we walked, like the ones I walked all those years ago.

Getting to the campus, I saw the sober-gray parking lot signs that hadn't been there when I was there. Comparing my time there to Meridith's time, my COC was bare bones. My cafeteria at the back of the Student Center had long tables tucked into corners, my favorite being one in the way back of the cafeteria, on the far right, if you're standing at the entrance. Instead of doing my math homework, I'd read many books, but mostly Subways are for Sleeping by Edmund G. Love whenever I got a copy from either the Hawthorne or Norwalk branch of the County of Los Angeles library system through my Valencia branch.

Those tables are gone, replaced by one small circular table with bluish armchairs around it, and one at the other end of the same arrangement. I think there were long tables on the main cafeteria floor as well, or maybe not, but now there's a lot more circular tables with black chairs around it. The kitchen areas were closed, including the Subway stand (that's closed until the start of the fall semester since they don't make significant money during the summer, being that those areas are only open until noon or 1 p.m. during the summer), but I noticed that the Subway stand was moved from the start of the area to the end, facing the cafeteria, and where it previously had been now has beverage refrigerators lining that wall. I don't know how COC manages to do it, but that wall looked solid, just like many other walls I saw.

After the cafeteria, Meridith took me over to Hasley Hall, where she had attended one or two classes, and which had never been there when I was there. Not completely there. It was just beginning construction when I was there. But now, this washed-out gray building with automatic glass doors that slide apart when you approach them, a burbling small waterfall on the ground floor, and the film department now having its own theater there, I first wondered where in the hell the school had gotten all the money for this building, and then was impressed with what they had done. They have turned education there into even more of a sanctuary. People can study whatever COC offers in complete peace. The classrooms are most impressive, wide and without the usual stigma of costly education. I'll bet this is exactly why fees have gone up and up time and again, which makes me glad I graduated long ago. Plus, the former journalism department has a cluster of rooms there too, although the in-print Canyon Call was disbanded and now COC has Cougar News Online, which to me is vastly disappointing because newbie journalists should have the pleasure of seeing their name and their words in print. I know that the industry is veering from that, but on a community college campus, journalism students need that. I have all five weeks of my time as interim editor of The Signal's weekend Escape section in print. It wouldn't be the same to me online. I can flip through those pages, know why I put in what I put in, what I was also doing when I wrote my own articles for the section, and what I was already thinking about for the next week. These are my memories in print.

Knowing that here was the journalism department on the second floor of Hasley Hall, and there was the film department on the first floor, what happened to the building formerly known as the M building, now known as Mentry Hall? (That's another thing: They gave actual names to these buildings, no doubt based on how much money those names donated, but it was simpler to just have letters. The buildings don't change much on the outside just because they're given names.)

We went to the second floor of the building because that's where the screening room was for the film department. It's still there, but the door was locked, so I couldn't see if anything had changed, though I doubt it. No reason for it to change.

My biggest shock was on the first floor of Mentry Hall, where the former newsroom of the Canyon Call was. The door was open, and right in front of me, a white wall. The glass case displaying old cameras was nice to see, and obviously a clue into what this part of the building now was. When we walked in, two darkrooms were to our left. To our right, what used to be the offices for journalism advisors Jim Ruebsamen and Lila Littlejohn (who has worked as the editor-in-chief at The Signal and now the City Editor, I think), are now either still faculty offices or conference rooms. But next to those rooms were just solid wall. They had torn out that newsroom and now there's only walls. How did they do it so fast? Is there anything still within those walls or is it truly solid wall?

Oh, but that's not all. We went up to the second floor of Towsley Hall, and where I used to take that door across from one of the elevators into a hallway to go to my English class, there's only two classrooms in that now-small section of space, one across from the other. That's it. Where did the other classrooms go? And again, how fast did they tear them down? Because that being solid wall, nothing behind it can remain.

I'm not against that kind of widespread change. The College of the Canyons I knew is not the College of the Canyons my sister knew, and that's not the College of the Canyons current students know. I can live with that, just like how Walt Disney World today is not the Walt Disney World I knew. But at least in that case, there are fans and Disney historians who know what came before, who have memorabilia related to those times, who know what the parks looked like before various changes in different years. I know that I can't expect the same because this is Santa Clarita after all, but COC could use a historian in much the same way. Did someone at least take photos of those hallways now gone? Does the library keep such records? I don't know and I don't think I ever will know, nor do I want to because it's not my place. I hope there are, though, because I remember, and I'm sure not staying here.

Across from the extensively grassy Honor Grove area, where students laze about and where graduation ceremonies are held at the end of terms, and under Towsley Hall, Meridith and I stood at an automat-type vending machine in which you press either the left or right arrow buttons and the racks spin, revealing sandwiches, Red Bulls, ramen cups, burritos, plastic spoons and forks. You find what you want, line the plastic door up to where you want it, put in your money, slide that door open and take out what you want. I asked Meridith to take a photo of it:



I don't remember if this vending machine was around when I was at COC, but it looks old enough to have been there during my time. I never went into that area much, so I wouldn't have noticed anyway. But it seems like the only constant you can find at COC now are the vending machines. Sure they took out the candy vending machine with M&Ms and Snickers and Reese's, and so much other good candy in California's Quest for Better Health (not a name of any program, but that's the attitude of it), but that's just one machine. The others I knew are still there.

The library is all I'm really grateful for at COC because it sustained me in the weeks after we moved to Santa Clarita, when I was trying to figure out what all this was and where I could fit into it if we had to live there. I found a bit of that fitting in at The Signal, but not enough to really feel like I was part of something good. Granted, I gained necessary experience that I could use for what I want to pursue next as a writer, but that wasn't quite enough. At the library, I had all those books, all those novelists to pull down and read, and it was different from going to the Valencia library because it wasn't as public. It was just me and those books. Mine to figure out what I wanted. I could sit on the floor with one long bookcase looming in front of me and one behind me and never have to get up for anyone passing by.

Alas, the library was closed by the time we got to COC (It closes at noon during the summer and we got there after 1 p.m.), but that was ok. It's not my library anymore; it belongs to others. This campus hasn't been mine in so long, but I can still see those ghosts, knowing that that wall used to be the Canyon Call newsroom, knowing that those two classrooms used to be a hallway to English department classrooms.

It's different at the mall. On our walk to COC, we passed by construction of a pool behind the Gold's Gym building, which used to be Borders. I couldn't imagine where there would be room for a pool, but a no-longer-used loading dock is a good place to have it. A Gold's Gym across from Wolf Creek Restaurant & Brewing Co., and near the Edwards Valencia 12 movie theater is still odd to me, but these changes don't really matter. Businesses will take up space wherever they can find it. Thank god for Chipotle, though. That was the best quesadilla I have had in a very long time, much less greasy than Chronic Tacos makes them.

Facing Las Vegas, I won't miss anything in Santa Clarita. But if I was to miss anything about this valley, COC doesn't rank very highly, not even for sentimental reasons with the library. An education haven, sure. A quiet campus at which to study. And at the now-COC Performing Arts Center (it had a few other names over the years), I saw Frank Ferrante as Groucho Marx in a one-man show, and Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain in a one-man show. I sure won't forget those. But there is nothing at that campus that I will pine for, because the UNLV campus has it beat. It's huge, and even if you just drive around, you can still get lost if you don't have a general idea of where you're going. You have to pay attention to those signs around the campus. I still haven't seen the library, though I want to, I want to tap into any historical archives they have there, I want to play at the arcade there, I want to look around in that bookstore again, and I know I'm going to have a lot of fun there, even though I'm not a student. They welcome everyone, no matter why you're there.

Letting Me Go Easy

The Santa Clarita Valley and I have always been at odds, as has been well-documented. But last night, we agreed on a permanent truce, triggered by a simple act.

I've never believed that there are any truly good people living here, just vapid, shallow people, with the great exception of former Signal columnist and weekend Escape editor John Boston, who was my mentor at the newspaper for a time, who showed me through his methods of writing and editing how to feel truly free in one's work, to explore anything, and to write about it too. He was just one person, though. What about the rest of the valley, which to me has never had heart, never compassion, never any indication that it cares?

I could say that tonight was just coincidence, but I like to believe that it was the valley's doing, offering the end of our always-fractured relationship. The Showtime series Episodes turned me from an unfortunate resident back into a very happy tourist, but I also needed to emotionally disconnect from this valley. And I have.

Throughout the evening, I heard splashes and little-kid voices from the community pool that the right side of our large patio overlooks. Also some adult voices, but mainly the shouts of those kids. As nighttime officially arrived with a near-to-8 p.m. darkness, I heard a thump on our patio, across from our kitchen window facing the "neighbor" across from us (not really a neighbor in that sense, just the standard definition of one who simply lives across from you). I opened the door that leads to the patio and heard the little boy of the group tell his grandfather that he wanted to draw things, be an animator, and his grandfather jokingly replied, "Are you going to make enough money to take care of your grandfather?" These kids sounded like the most well-behaved group that ever visited the pool in the nearly seven years we've lived in this place.

I turned on the patio lights and found a new, green tennis ball on the ground. I picked it up and wondered where it came from: Was a nearby neighbor too overzealous with throwing the tennis ball a short distance to their dog? Then I realized that it must have come from the kids because it sounded like they were also playing on the path that leads from the pool area to the pool gate, which passes right by the high wall of our patio. So they threw it, and it landed there.

I debated whether to keep it, give it to Kitty, but she loves her orange tennis balls. I had no use for it because I don't play tennis and the basketball in my room is my ball of choice. I walked over to that wall and threw the ball back down the path toward the pool area. I heard one of the kids exclaim, "Someone threw it back!" and in unison, whether two or three kids, I heard "Thank you!" I called back, "No problem!", and went back inside.

Living in Santa Clarita for nearly eight years and experiencing other parts of Southern California, you learn a lot about who people are, how to tell right away whether they'll help you or harm you in some way, what they want from you, and if they're sincere. I am grateful to this region to have learned all that without having to play poker to learn, but hated all the baggage that came with it, all that I had to endure.

This was nice. This felt to me like the valley's truce. And it came after learning that Dad's job interview went well, that Mom and Dad may very well have found our home in Las Vegas. All I'll say so far is that it's in Las Vegas. They'll probably look at more developments tomorrow to have a backup plan just in case, but if this works out, we'll be residents of Las Vegas. There are enough stores nearby to please Mom, so we have the basics in food shopping and anything else we might need; it's eight miles from the Strip, and Mom told us that you can't see it from inside this development, but when you pull out, there it is: My desert dream. I've also learned about my potential home library branch, and received the happy news that my beloved Pinball Hall of Fame is only four miles from there.

Perhaps the valley knows before I do that we'll be leaving very soon. I hope so. I'm still not happy that we spent all these years here, but what happened last night makes me reconcile the fact that that time is gone and now it's time to make up for it, quicker than I ever imagined. Because there will not only be a lot to make me quickly forget about the unhappy experiences I've had here in Santa Clarita, but I'll be so busy with research for books and novels I want to write about Las Vegas that it may be like I've never known anything else but Las Vegas, save for our happy years in Casselberry, Florida up to 1992, of which I see Las Vegas as a continuation after a very long interruption.

From Santa Clarita, I take only my detailed education in how to read people. And I'm grateful that it let me go easy. My heart, mind, and soul are already in Las Vegas, and my body is just waiting to get there.

Gentle Waves of Soy Milk, Not Rip Currents

I'm trying to remember the last time I had corn flakes, and the year doesn't come to mind. I've always been a Cheerios fanatic, ever since I was little, when my parents used it to keep me quiet in stores (sometimes I screamed because I liked to hear my voice). They always kept a steady supply on hand. Maybe corn flakes were for vacations, in keeping with exploration of things not part of daily lives. I'm sure I've had it sporadically throughout my life, but not enough to remember one key rule about corn flakes filled up to near the top of a bowl: Don't pour milk (or soy milk, in my case) as heavily as with Cheerios, which each have a hole in the middle and can therefore handle a deluge of milk with grace.

I realized this on Tuesday when I poured soy milk over Kellogg's Corn Flakes, but moreso yesterday. Pour your milk of choice too fast, and it fairly dives off the flakes and belly flops onto the counter, exploding in different directions. Before the first bite, I had to mop up the Olympic Diving Team with a paper towel.

It's a good lesson not only in proper milk pouring depending on the cereal, but also in life: A gentle touch in everything, always. Or else you have to mop up more than you ever expected.

The First Farewell Tour

Mom and Dad set out for Las Vegas in a rented Chevy HHR yesterday afternoon, a little after 2. They'll be back on Saturday, which leaves Meridith and I to do whatever we want, but without use of the PT Cruiser since we don't drive the roads here, and it's the only car we have right now between the four of us. Even if they were home, we still wouldn't use it, because it has to be treated very delicately, and even if we would, it's not worth it because we still need it to get around and it can't go great, great distances. Plus we're looking to trade it in for a younger car when the time comes. It's aging rapidly.

So, with time to ourselves, what to do....

Basketball?

Check.

Sunscreen?

Check.

A water bottle for each of us?

Check.

A plastic bag for the basketball and the water bottles?

Check.

Meridith wanted to go to the Circle K near our place, so that was our first stop. She was looking for new spicy-flavored Slim Jims: Chili pepper, jalapeno, and habanero. Circle K had them, but they were only the monster sizes.

Next was Circle K and they only had mild Slim Jims, since the customers they get are often mild-mannered.

Then we walked through the Seco Canyon Village shopping center, which looks nothing like a village, but of course the name of a shopping center or a strip mall is never supposed to reflect what it is. It's supposed to be more than the setting actually is, with the hope of blinding people to how dull it is. Or at least that's how it is with Seco Canyon Village, which offers a veterinarian, dry cleaners, Papa John's, dentist's office, a vaguely Italian restaurant, and a credit union bank. CVS is the anchor of this shopping center. Very small. Doesn't feel at all like a home shopping center.

To walk from our apartment to way out to the intersection next to Rite Aid is about 1.9 miles. 1.9, and it took us three hours to walk there and back with many stops on the way. We walked from CVS through that shopping center, past many neighborhood entrances, to the park to see if anyone was playing basketball. If the court was empty, we were going to shoot some hoops. We're not that good that we can play a full game.

The hoops were being used, so we kept on walking, past the elementary school, to the 7-11 on that side of the street where we also didn't find the regular size spicy Slim Jims Meridith wanted. After that, we crossed the intersection to the Shell gas station convenience store to check, and nothing there either.

Then Rite-Aid, first to look for the Slim Jims and finding the same mild ones that CVS had, and then, hey! How about some ice cream? They've got that Thrifty ice cream with scoops that look like rounded squares. A scoop of butter pecan for me in a sugar cone and a scoop of Circus Animal Cookie ice cream in a regular cone for Meridith, with the frosted cookies mixed into the ice cream. Not pieces; whole. Meridith found three in her scoop.

We walked the length of that Rite Aid shopping center, remembering that the Goodwill store was in the back. Once we got to the corner of it, Meridith called Mom and told her about our walk so far and that we got ice cream, and Mom said to her that we sure know how to make the most of our time. We sure do. Plus, she and Dad were going to Golden Corral in Hesperia, a buffet we haven't seen since Florida, so it was only right that we did something good for ourselves, and that was ice cream at Rite Aid. But that wasn't all.

I love the old books at Goodwill, seeing what people owned before that's now in these stores. When we walked past the kitchen items to get to the books, I said to Meridith that it's like looking in other people's houses, except it's legal!

I was also looking for a VHS copy of Neil Simon's I Ought to Be in Pictures, since it still hasn't been released on DVD, and I wanted to own it on VHS since I still have a VCR, and it's the same reason I own The Glass Menagerie, starring Joanne Woodward, John Malkovich, Karen Allen, and James Naughton, on VHS. I want these two movies on DVD already and I think that day may be coming soon since Warner Bros. has the Warner Archive and Sony has its own made-on-demand disc service, releasing previously unreleasable old movies for fear that they wouldn't turn a profit. But here's a way for people to have them and for the studios to still make money.

The walk to this intersection and the long walk back, through those neighborhoods, past a blue clapboard house with a country feel that I want to find a variation of in Las Vegas one day (not as a house, but as an apartment or something of that ilk), was to look at this area more closely, to see what we didn't see very often because we always drive right by it, to feel more the fact that this valley can never rise from what it is. I know it even more now. It seems to be fine with what it is, but it's not my kind of fine, so that's good enough reason to finally move on out. And yet, it was also to do what we've never done in these 7 and 3/4 years we've lived in Saugus: To get ice cream from Rite Aid and just walk around. To sit at a picnic table at the park to rest our feet after a long walk, which was much more out of necessity than a wish, but we've never sat down at those tables, just to sit and watch the little scenery there is, the cars blazing by, the people walking around the park, the people walking past us with dogs who it turns out were headed for a dog obedience class being held in a nearby section of the park.

It didn't increase the goodwill I've never had toward this valley, but it made me realize that somehow, people have found their lives here. I don't know how they do it, and certainly they're made of different material than I am, and that's good. It's home for them, and they treat it as they please. Their ways don't jibe with my ways. Therefore, still no connection to this valley after all these years, which is as expected. I will leave with no regrets, nothing to reconsider. I found the limited scenery peaceful at least, even with the traffic right near me. So there was that, but still never enough.

On the walk to 7-11, Meridith and I planned what I call our Second Farewell Tour. It may or may not be tomorrow, depending on if someone comes out to fix our broken washer, but it will definitely be either Thursday or Friday. We were originally planning to go to Valencia Town Center Mall to try the burgers from Burger King's summer BBQ menu, since we both tried the bacon sundae last Sunday, and we'll still do that, but we also want to walk to College of the Canyons and walk around the campus to see how our old haunts have changed (the library and a table far in the back at the cafeteria for me; that same table for my sister since she hung out there with her friends) and how the campus has changed in general from when we both went there at separate times. We haven't been back since we each graduated from there, and I would like to go to the bookstore once without hyperventilating over how much I have to pay for a textbook, which I did every time I went there as a student. Now I can do it as an outsider and laugh at those prices. But if they have any Sam Shepard plays for the theater classes again, I'll buy them used, or new if the price is reasonable. Plus I want to see what the English department is pushing these days. Plus I'd like to see the old journalism newsroom which they might be using for something else, since student journalism classes were cancelled in 2009 and the Canyon Call newspaper was disbanded, long after I left. Apparently, there's an online news publication, so they may be using that newsroom now.

Mom and Dad are in Las Vegas for a job interview Dad has on Thursday, and starting today, they're going to look at mobile home parks they've researched. Nothing barren or hopeless-looking. They've found a few that apparently have a community feel and they want to investigate further, including a senior mobile home park that allows Meridith and I there too, since we're over 18. That's Mom's first stop, and she'll go from there. She's hoping that it'll be as easy as when they found the Super 8 that they're staying at on the Strip, across from Bellagio, with views of Planet Hollywood, the Cosmopolitan, and a slight view of New York-New York. I think it will be, because it happened exactly like this 7 and 3/4 years ago. They went back to Southern California in late July 2003, while Meridith and I stayed home with Tigger in our condo in Pembroke Pines, Dad had a job interview then too, got the job, and they found our apartment in Valencia. We're hoping that it plays out exactly the same way because this will be the first time we've felt at home anywhere since 1992, when we sadly left Casselberry in Central Florida for Coral Springs in South Florida, after having spent many happy years there. Happiness is coming again!

For now, the Second Farewell Tour is coming, and it's necessary. When I needed to find some kind of footing in Santa Clarita, to get clear of that frenzied cross-country move from South Florida to Southern California, to figure out who I was in Southern California, that library at College of the Canyons was there for me, and so was the empty campus at 3:50 p.m. every Friday afternoon, after my cinema class, which I loved to walk before I began my walk from the campus to the bus transfer station across from the mall property. Peace in the middle of a vortex. That's what it was. I need to see it one more time, to see what changed, and to remember and to appreciate again. Besides my family, at least that was there.

Be Open to Everything

The smaller double-decker cart filled with what we needed, Dad, Meridith and I went to the emptiest checkout lane at the usual Sprouts in Valencia. Only one person ahead of us, and the last of their items were being scanned. Dad took up his post at the check-writing counter, watching the prices, Meridith stood next to him, and I wheeled the cart next to the bagging area, next to a bagger named Alex. I found that out from her nametag.

The employees at Sprouts range from indifferent (stockers) to friendly but guarded (those behind the vast meat counter) to they'd-move-in-with-you-if-you'd-let-them (checkers and baggers). It's not a disturbing friendliness, like they've been watching you for all the months you've been shopping there and know exactly what you're getting, just the kind of friendliness you know from those you're friends with.

After I stopped the cart, Alex asked "Paper or plastic?", and I immediately answered "Paper," before Dad started in on his well-worn question to Meridith and me: "Kill a tree or choke a pelican?" I usually don't have a reason to decide what the groceries should be bagged in since we have enough plastic bags for the garbage pails around the house, and enough paper bags to collect the full bags from those pails every Friday. But I knew we were getting low on the paper bags, so I got there before Dad.

What happened next, I'm not entirely sure. She first held up Dad's bag of pretzel nuggets, saying, "These look good," directed at me. I could only smile the smile of a guy who doesn't know what the hell is happening. Then she saw the book in my hand ("The Loop" by Joe Coomer, which I'm loving enough to cart around with me in places I don't usually carry books, including Sprouts. I brought it in on the off chance I'd have a minute to read a few lines), asked what it was and I showed it to her. She asked if it I liked it, and I said I did. Then she said she loves to read, and I should have chimed in, should have asked what she liked to read, who her favorite authors are, what her favorite novels are. Not really as an "in," since we're moving, but just to find out what kind of reader she is.

I didn't ask any of that, though. All I could manage was "I'm a speed reading nut," and I don't think she even heard that. I felt awkward. Her comment about the pretzel nuggets, looking at my book, the question about what I was reading and if I liked it, were not at all part of the usual bagger service. Other female baggers at that store just bag and move on. Was she flirting with me? Did I miss my chance by not following up immediately by asking her what her favorite books are?

I mulled this over after we left and went to Pavilions, and spent an hour there, then when we went home and all throughout this evening. I may have been flirted with, but I'm not sure, since my only experience has been in 11th grade when I know for sure that Stefanie Markham flirted with me while we were at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel's school newspaper awards at an auditorium in the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Art. She had the best pair of legs I'd ever seen, and put them against my pant legs. I was just joking around with her, didn't think that I was flirting, but I was wondering then what the heck was going on.

I still can't tell if Alex was flirting with me. But I do know that I don't know how to flirt back. Does it just happen? Is there a rhythm to it to be established from the start? I figure that if you happen upon a person that attracts you, then it comes easily. But I've had minute experience with that, and that's not really the focal point for me anyway.

If she was flirting, and even if she wasn't, Alex indirectly reminded me to always be open to everything. In Santa Clarita, you become set in your ways as a matter of survival. You have to go to work, you have to go food shopping, you have a set of chores to do on this particular day, and you only go to this movie theater in the afternoon because it's less crowded than the other one, and more pleasant. It's the only way to combat the ennui before it overwhelms you.

Alex showed me that in being able to reinvent myself when I move to Las Vegas, I need to open wide my heart and mind. There are books to read, those that will come from my new home library, books to write, states to travel to, experiences to have in my home city. What has always worked here in Santa Clarita as a matter of survival won't work there, and I'm ecstatic about that. I can become the person I was never able to be here. I need to go wider, be fully open to anything and everything that will happen in my life. I have my plans, but those plans should also be flexible. What I'm so sure of now, I might not be so sure of later depending on what happens there. Just go with it. I thank her for that because I needed that reminder. It's going to happen soon, we're going to move, and I need to be ready right at the start of what I've wanted again ever since we left Casselberry in 1992, when I was 7.

Besides all that, Alex was strikingly beautiful, sporting dirty blonde hair. If she was flirting with me, I was really lucky.