Being in between jobs right now, I get on the computer every morning. I check my e-mail, log onto Facebook for a little bit (I don't fall into the Black Hole of Lost Time, though), check various job listings, apply for any that look possible (at this point, I don't look to have an overwhelmingly desirable feeling about them, but that there's something in each of the jobs that would interest me, such as doing back-office work at an Ethan Allen location, owing to an interest in interior design and wanting to see people have the home design they may have dreamed of for years), search the library catalog for any books I meant to search for the previous night, or that still remain in my bookmarks on Chrome that I still have to hock the Ventura Library District to buy. Oh, and of course my own writing, novels that I'm researching, picture book ideas I'm looking to expand, poems I'm trying (I don't know how much of an interest I have in poetry yet).
So why would I want to spend even more time on the computer? Why, when I have so many books I want to read, and one DVD binder with movies and TV series I haven't watched yet (I want to try the Canadian series L.A. Complex again, which aired in 2012 on The CW, and which seems appropriate now that I'm in Southern California again. I also have the entire run of As Time Goes By, because of Judi Dench, but I want to get beyond the third episode already, actually take time for it)? Besides that DVD binder, I also have a few DVDs scattered between my bedroom area (actually the dining room area of this apartment, but because the apartment smaller than what we came from, without a third bedroom, we converted it into my bedroom) and my bookcases that I want to watch, too.
And then I stumbled onto Forge of Empires.
No, this story isn't going to end the way you think it might.
I haven't spent obsessive hours upon hours and days upon days playing it, starting from the Stone Age and working hard so I can travel through time this way. In fact, I haven't even signed up for an account yet. I just sit there at the front page, reading the information they have for potential new users, their blog announcing updates, and watching the citizens in the shadow of the castle on the front page go about their work. I've only done this since last weekend, the kid with his nose pressed against the window of the toy store, though I'm not wide-eyed, nor wishing for this or that, or that I could go inside and have everything that I want.
I remember FarmVille and Mafia Wars on Facebook. I don't remember exactly why I started playing them, but I think a few Facebook friends were playing Mafia Wars and I traded with them on various items and whatever else was involved there. I've long since forgotten. But I remember that you had to wait for energy to be replenished, with a countdown clock indicating when you'd have more of it. As to FarmVille, my old farm is still active, right down to the 2010 New Year's ball drop pole I put on that farm. I still go in every now and then to play with it, when it all actually loads properly.
So I imagine that Forge of Empires also has the same clocks there, that you have to wait before various things are replenished. I see also that it's a SimCity type of game, spanning the Stone Age, then the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Middle Ages, the Colonial Age, and the Industrial Age. I like that kind of historical bent. But still I sit in front of its homepage. Still no account created. Why?
This morning, I realized why. Even while being attracted by the graphics, the possibility of seeing right in front of my eyes what these various ages might have looked like, and to build a city and make it work, I'm a writer. I'm working on creating my own worlds through novels I hope to see published some day. I'm already seeing to the lives of my characters, who are also seeing to my life in that sometimes I'm simply transcribing what they say, as it has happened to countless other writers.
But it's not only that. Looking at the front page of Forge of Empires, and the graphics, and indeed some of the YouTube videos that have been posted about the game, such as the tutorials and the time-lapse footage, they only serve to strengthen my interest in reading historical novels. Just like watching The Lion in Winter recently made me seek out novels about the English monarchy, Forge of Empires does the same in other ages. I went looking for Steven Saylor's series of Roman novels featuring Gordianus the Finder. I'm thinking about novels set in the 1930s, my favorite historical period to study. I'm wondering about the 1890s. I remember the musical 1776, and David McCullough's 1776 comes to mind, which I still haven't read.
I think, for me, Forge of Empires is best as inspiration to seek out historical novels, biographies, and other non-fiction works so I can venture through those time periods that way. I can't keep staring at a screen more than I usually do in pursuit of what I need in my life (a job) and what I want (to write these novels and other books). Each day is already short enough.
Thursday, January 11, 2018
Tuesday, January 9, 2018
The Mandarin Orange Lottery
Ever since my family and I moved back to Southern California and felt we were settled enough in Ventura, Mom and Dad began playing the lottery again. Not to as great an extent as those slot machine players I'd see sitting for hours at the casinos we went to in Las Vegas, nor the poker players who looked like they had been there for days. The important things, like when the Powerball goes above $300 million. Same with Mega Millions. Of course, in response to this, Dad went a little overboard with tickets, playing six sets of numbers on one ticket and a few on another. Understandable, though, just for that slim chance. It's the usual assertion that all it takes is one. I suppose it's worth a try in that way. Thankfully, not all the time.
When we lived in Santa Clarita, Mom loved the scratch-offs. Again, there was a limit. Just a certain amount for the month for scratchoffs, mainly the dollar ones, unless there was something that looked interesting in the slightly higher-priced ones. It's the same here again. Just a scant few dollars a month for scratch-offs, although with Dad's additional interest in it, we've bought a year of those Year of the Dog scratch-offs. In our house, it's been 27 years of the Year of the Dog. So it fits us.
Myself, I only do a scratch-off if presented with one, such as it has been with Year of the Dog. One I did had two $888, but not a third. You need three to get the amount. The latest one netted me $2. Enough for two more of those scratch-offs, but I'm not going to chase down the $888.
However, I will chase down the glory can of mandarin oranges. Sure you can get mandarin oranges anyway, especially canned, but I only like to get them at Ralphs because they're the only ones that are steeped in mandarin orange juice, not light syrup.
I usually get four or so cans every time we go to Ralphs since I like to have it every day. But opening the cans is a gamble, my kind of gamble. Sometimes you get a few whole mandarin orange segments, along with mandarin oranges that look like they were shot to pieces by a gun from Men in Black. I had one can the other week that was nothing but that. Sometimes you'll get the mandarin orange massacre along with a few thinly-sliced pieces of mandarin orange, lopped off from a bigger mandarin orange segment. This is why I like to buy cans with different dates on it. All of them now expire in 2020, but there are some with one January date and others that are two days earlier. It might be different days of production for wherever this is packaged, so I want to see what different days have brought.
The day before yesterday, I hit the jackpot. I opened the can, dumped the mandarin oranges into a small bowl, and every single mandarin orange was plump and whole! No ragged pieces! No thin slices! In the five months we've been there, that we've been shopping at Ralphs (we also go to Vons and Trader Joe's, especially for the latter's new tuna salad, which is a masterpiece, and reminds us of the slightly smoky tuna salad we used to get from Lox Haven in Margate, Florida), I've never gotten a can like this. It gives me hope that this particular Ralphs store, the only one we have in Ventura, will get more.
Of course, I don't get canned mandarin oranges just for the hope of that. They're the only oranges I eat, and the only way I prefer them. The less work I have to do with peeling, the better. And it's always interesting to see the differences between cans. I prefer gambling with 89 cents a can.
When we lived in Santa Clarita, Mom loved the scratch-offs. Again, there was a limit. Just a certain amount for the month for scratchoffs, mainly the dollar ones, unless there was something that looked interesting in the slightly higher-priced ones. It's the same here again. Just a scant few dollars a month for scratch-offs, although with Dad's additional interest in it, we've bought a year of those Year of the Dog scratch-offs. In our house, it's been 27 years of the Year of the Dog. So it fits us.
Myself, I only do a scratch-off if presented with one, such as it has been with Year of the Dog. One I did had two $888, but not a third. You need three to get the amount. The latest one netted me $2. Enough for two more of those scratch-offs, but I'm not going to chase down the $888.
However, I will chase down the glory can of mandarin oranges. Sure you can get mandarin oranges anyway, especially canned, but I only like to get them at Ralphs because they're the only ones that are steeped in mandarin orange juice, not light syrup.
I usually get four or so cans every time we go to Ralphs since I like to have it every day. But opening the cans is a gamble, my kind of gamble. Sometimes you get a few whole mandarin orange segments, along with mandarin oranges that look like they were shot to pieces by a gun from Men in Black. I had one can the other week that was nothing but that. Sometimes you'll get the mandarin orange massacre along with a few thinly-sliced pieces of mandarin orange, lopped off from a bigger mandarin orange segment. This is why I like to buy cans with different dates on it. All of them now expire in 2020, but there are some with one January date and others that are two days earlier. It might be different days of production for wherever this is packaged, so I want to see what different days have brought.
The day before yesterday, I hit the jackpot. I opened the can, dumped the mandarin oranges into a small bowl, and every single mandarin orange was plump and whole! No ragged pieces! No thin slices! In the five months we've been there, that we've been shopping at Ralphs (we also go to Vons and Trader Joe's, especially for the latter's new tuna salad, which is a masterpiece, and reminds us of the slightly smoky tuna salad we used to get from Lox Haven in Margate, Florida), I've never gotten a can like this. It gives me hope that this particular Ralphs store, the only one we have in Ventura, will get more.
Of course, I don't get canned mandarin oranges just for the hope of that. They're the only oranges I eat, and the only way I prefer them. The less work I have to do with peeling, the better. And it's always interesting to see the differences between cans. I prefer gambling with 89 cents a can.
Wednesday, January 3, 2018
My Home in Space, Through Time, In the Future, and Within Alternate Histories
I've been thinking about the meaning of home for a few months, ever since moving again. There are parts of Ventura that feel home-like to me, but at this point in my life, I don't think I'll find an overall home I can become attached to. Not that I want to move again, but I don't have the expectations anymore that I used to whenever we moved. I've learned. I'll take whatever comes here. So far it's good. It'll be better when I'm hired somewhere.
However, within that thought process, about places I've been to, places I've lived in, favorite things in my life, I think I hit on something.
The second movie I ever saw, when I was 5, was Jetsons: The Movie.
My favorite childhood movie was Flight of the Navigator.
I am hopelessly devoted to Blade Runner, Tron: Legacy, and Oblivion.
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow occupies an important place in my permanent book collection.
Every time my family and I went to Walt Disney World, to the Magic Kingdom, I always spent the day in Tomorrowland, circulating among Space Mountain, the then-Tomorrowland Transit Authority, and Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress, as well as the arcade adjacent to the exit of Space Mountain (from the inside) and the entrance (from the outside).
I own nearly the entire run of Red Dwarf on DVD.
There are other examples, like the Nerd Trivia page-a-day calendar I recently mentioned, especially seeking its sci-fi bent. I also realized, paging through one of my DVD binders, that I have the complete series of the cult hit The Middleman, which I loved when it aired on then-ABC Family, and practically wailed over its cancellation.
But the earlier ones, those above, that's what factors into this: Science fiction, even in what some might consider some of these imperfect forms, has always been a beacon in my life, beckoning to me. But I've never really paid attention to it.
Until now.
In seeking a stable home for myself, I know now that it'll be science fiction. Specifically science fiction novels and short stories. My New Year's resolution is to immerse myself completely in them, not only to find my world(s) within them, but also find inspiration in the universes they conjure, hope for me that my own, comparatively earthbound writing, can be as good, as all-encompassing as these works are.
As my past experience with science fiction indicates, I'm a geek nomad. I've never taken sides between the Jedi and Trekkies (or Trekkers, whatever you prefer). I do lean more toward Star Trek than Star Wars, but I will eventually see the new movie. I like going from, say, an issue of Asimov's Science Fiction to Firefly, and then from Firefly to whatever Kim Stanley Robinson has going on lately. To quote from my previous post about the Nerd Trivia calendar:
I think if I was to appear in space-based science fiction, I would be the cargo captain with the rundown, yet still reliable ship who's always ready to be sent anywhere in exchange for a sizable donation to the Help Keep Me Alive Fund. I wouldn't race headlong into danger, or seek out some potentially risky adventure. Just let me drift among the stars, taking in the universe at my own pace (save for when there's cargo to transport).
I don't think it's only the sheer scope of science fiction which seizes me, though. It's not only the wonders that can emerge from thousands of words, making me wonder how someone did all this, made this world simply through words (it's never simple, of course). I realized that it's also the architecture in science fiction that I want to study closely.
When I was a tyke, my parents and I (and then my sister) lived in Casselberry, Florida, so close to Orlando that we went to Walt Disney World every weekend. I was in a stroller and I guess then the castle itself and the buildings made to look like different lands made a deep impression on me, though I didn't know it then.
While five years of living in Las Vegas was hard, there were those days when we went to The Cosmopolitan, the Wynn, the Mirage, the Bellagio, and other hotels, and I loved that elegant interior design and was curious about who had done it, how they planned it, what they enjoyed in their lives that inspired them to decorate as they did. Obviously under the edict of a Steve Wynn, of course, or even someone with lesser power than that, but it was still them. They were the ones who made it happen.
For me, in science fiction, it would be the size of staterooms in starships, how various captains decorate their own quarters, how much room there is for an overcrowded population to live in, say, a futuristic Los Angeles. How are such cities powered? What thought goes into what a starship will contain? Such questions as that will undoubtedly poke at me while I read.
I don't think I'll write about science fiction novels and short stories extensively here. I already write reviews for BookBrowse, and I don't want to do it that way. It'll probably be when the mood strikes me, when I spot a building or transport or some neon-filtered way of life in the far-off future that I want to write about, to wonder about it further.
Whether this portends me one day writing science fiction, I don't know. I have two ideas for short stories, one which involves holograms in a supermarket, and the other an earthbound non-futuristic short story collection set in the outskirts of Las Vegas, in a rundown former motel-turned apartment complex that faces the back end of the McCarran International parking garage, which has got to be the biggest parking garage in Las Vegas. The rest of what I want to write, my ideas list, is not only resolutely earthbound, but doesn't involve science fiction at all. I think for the most part, I just want to absorb everything it offers and apply it to my own work. Just something for me, not always to try to push out to the world. I'll wander and then come in with what I've found that interests me. This blog won't be overtaken by such an adventure. It'll still be different things.
(Postscript at 5:10 p.m.: This whole thing makes more sense now. I just remembered that when I was growing up, I always told my mom that I would build a time machine. In trying moments over the years, she's always asked me, "Where's your time machine?" No wonder the Back to the Future movies are among my favorites, the third one my favorite of the trilogy.)
However, within that thought process, about places I've been to, places I've lived in, favorite things in my life, I think I hit on something.
The second movie I ever saw, when I was 5, was Jetsons: The Movie.
My favorite childhood movie was Flight of the Navigator.
I am hopelessly devoted to Blade Runner, Tron: Legacy, and Oblivion.
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow occupies an important place in my permanent book collection.
Every time my family and I went to Walt Disney World, to the Magic Kingdom, I always spent the day in Tomorrowland, circulating among Space Mountain, the then-Tomorrowland Transit Authority, and Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress, as well as the arcade adjacent to the exit of Space Mountain (from the inside) and the entrance (from the outside).
I own nearly the entire run of Red Dwarf on DVD.
There are other examples, like the Nerd Trivia page-a-day calendar I recently mentioned, especially seeking its sci-fi bent. I also realized, paging through one of my DVD binders, that I have the complete series of the cult hit The Middleman, which I loved when it aired on then-ABC Family, and practically wailed over its cancellation.
But the earlier ones, those above, that's what factors into this: Science fiction, even in what some might consider some of these imperfect forms, has always been a beacon in my life, beckoning to me. But I've never really paid attention to it.
Until now.
In seeking a stable home for myself, I know now that it'll be science fiction. Specifically science fiction novels and short stories. My New Year's resolution is to immerse myself completely in them, not only to find my world(s) within them, but also find inspiration in the universes they conjure, hope for me that my own, comparatively earthbound writing, can be as good, as all-encompassing as these works are.
As my past experience with science fiction indicates, I'm a geek nomad. I've never taken sides between the Jedi and Trekkies (or Trekkers, whatever you prefer). I do lean more toward Star Trek than Star Wars, but I will eventually see the new movie. I like going from, say, an issue of Asimov's Science Fiction to Firefly, and then from Firefly to whatever Kim Stanley Robinson has going on lately. To quote from my previous post about the Nerd Trivia calendar:
I think if I was to appear in space-based science fiction, I would be the cargo captain with the rundown, yet still reliable ship who's always ready to be sent anywhere in exchange for a sizable donation to the Help Keep Me Alive Fund. I wouldn't race headlong into danger, or seek out some potentially risky adventure. Just let me drift among the stars, taking in the universe at my own pace (save for when there's cargo to transport).
I don't think it's only the sheer scope of science fiction which seizes me, though. It's not only the wonders that can emerge from thousands of words, making me wonder how someone did all this, made this world simply through words (it's never simple, of course). I realized that it's also the architecture in science fiction that I want to study closely.
When I was a tyke, my parents and I (and then my sister) lived in Casselberry, Florida, so close to Orlando that we went to Walt Disney World every weekend. I was in a stroller and I guess then the castle itself and the buildings made to look like different lands made a deep impression on me, though I didn't know it then.
While five years of living in Las Vegas was hard, there were those days when we went to The Cosmopolitan, the Wynn, the Mirage, the Bellagio, and other hotels, and I loved that elegant interior design and was curious about who had done it, how they planned it, what they enjoyed in their lives that inspired them to decorate as they did. Obviously under the edict of a Steve Wynn, of course, or even someone with lesser power than that, but it was still them. They were the ones who made it happen.
For me, in science fiction, it would be the size of staterooms in starships, how various captains decorate their own quarters, how much room there is for an overcrowded population to live in, say, a futuristic Los Angeles. How are such cities powered? What thought goes into what a starship will contain? Such questions as that will undoubtedly poke at me while I read.
I don't think I'll write about science fiction novels and short stories extensively here. I already write reviews for BookBrowse, and I don't want to do it that way. It'll probably be when the mood strikes me, when I spot a building or transport or some neon-filtered way of life in the far-off future that I want to write about, to wonder about it further.
Whether this portends me one day writing science fiction, I don't know. I have two ideas for short stories, one which involves holograms in a supermarket, and the other an earthbound non-futuristic short story collection set in the outskirts of Las Vegas, in a rundown former motel-turned apartment complex that faces the back end of the McCarran International parking garage, which has got to be the biggest parking garage in Las Vegas. The rest of what I want to write, my ideas list, is not only resolutely earthbound, but doesn't involve science fiction at all. I think for the most part, I just want to absorb everything it offers and apply it to my own work. Just something for me, not always to try to push out to the world. I'll wander and then come in with what I've found that interests me. This blog won't be overtaken by such an adventure. It'll still be different things.
(Postscript at 5:10 p.m.: This whole thing makes more sense now. I just remembered that when I was growing up, I always told my mom that I would build a time machine. In trying moments over the years, she's always asked me, "Where's your time machine?" No wonder the Back to the Future movies are among my favorites, the third one my favorite of the trilogy.)
The Physical Manifestation of Days
Sitting on the second shelf of my smaller bookcase on the left side, the first of three bookcases side-by-side (the biggest one is in the middle and the one on the right is the same size as that smaller bookcase) is the 2018 Zen Page-a-Day Calendar that I've had for three or four years in a row. I believe in everything that Zen represents, though my kind of meditation is reading. There's also a great deal of philosophy in it, which I've begun studying, but a more accessible philosophy that doesn't make you tear your hair out over how dense it is, and even when you try to chip away at it, it doesn't yield. Not the kind of philosophical thought that others write only to show how much they believe they've learned and how smart they think they look. I've also discovered many writers through it that have made it into my infinite reading list. Sometimes I pick them up right then and there and seek out their books, especially those from the Zen masters. Others I look up every once in a while and pick them up from there.
Also, from this past December until just after Christmas, I was thinking about a second page-a-day calendar for my bookcases, namely the 365 Things to Love About Being Southern Page-a-Day Calendar. I'm a Florida native, and I'm always interested in Southern culture, so I thought this would work for me. I remembered that it was at the Go! Calendars store at the Pacific View Mall, and the last time I went, when they were having a 50%-off-everything sale (it was a pop-up store, unfortunately, although with how many storefronts are empty on the second floor, they could use a permanent Go! Calendars store), there were still two calendars available.
But I looked through it again that last time and there wasn't much there that I didn't already know. I appreciated their filmographies of Southern actors, particularly Renee Zellweger, but I already know all her movies. And what I didn't know, such as the famed restaurants in every state, didn't offer anything beyond the names of the restaurants. Not about what they served, not about the barbecue culture within each of those that are barbecue joints, just lists. I don't want just lists. I want to know what those places are like. And I know there's Yelp for that, but I'm not on a computer all the time, though I'm usually on one too much, to write, to look for work right now, to research, and to write. In that calendar, I would want to have the details of a place right in front of me, but on one square page, there's probably not much room for what compilers of that calendar could hope to achieve further.
I wanted a calendar that would either give me something new every day or give me another angle to something I already knew. I needed a calendar that's close to me the way the Zen calendar is. And browsing those shelves of page-a-day calendars yet again in that store, I found one:
A Year of Nerd Trivia, newly published. 2018 is the first year of it.
I pulled it out of the box and randomly flipped through some of the pages. The back of the box had already intrigued me, what with a Doctor Who quiz and a quote from Neil DeGrasse Tyson about his 14-year-old daughter's emergent geekiness. In the calendar, I had flipped to a "Nerd Lit" page (book recommendations all) for Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which I'd heard about in passing, but never looked into it. The description didn't interest me a great deal, but times may change.
I decided that this was the calendar for me. I'm more of a geek nomad. I wander between worlds, from Firefly to the Star Trek universe, tiptoeing through Doctor Who and nursing my obsessions with Blade Runner, Tron: Legacy, and Oblivion. I'm not a Jedi nor a Trekkie (or Trekker; whichever one you want). I think if I was to appear in space-based science fiction, I would be the cargo captain with the rundown, yet still reliable ship who's always ready to be sent anywhere in exchange for a sizable donation to the Help Keep Me Alive Fund. I wouldn't race headlong into danger, or seek out some potentially risky adventure. Just let me drift among the stars, taking in the universe at my own pace (save for when there's cargo to transport).
So the Nerd Trivia calendar became my second one at the start of the New Year. The first day had a Lord of the Rings quiz, which I had to look at the answers that at the bottom, upside-down. I didn't know any of them. I'm not against fantasy works; I just have to find room for them. I not only once bought a copy of Game of Thrones from Walmart (giving it up when we moved from Las Vegas back to Southern California), and borrowed a paperback copy from the Ojai Library, but I still haven't read it. I guess maybe I wanted to see, based on the TV series (which I also haven't seen), what all the hype has been about. But that's probably not the best way to approach such a series. There has to be something within it that intrigues you enough to venture forth. I'll look into it again, of course. As to Lord of the Rings, the Goodwill in downtown Ventura had a 50%-off-everything sale two days after Christmas, and I found a shrink-wrapped, unopened set of the Lord of the Rings trilogy on DVD (the theatrical cuts) for $4.00. What better time to give it another try? It's not that I didn't like it the first time (I saw the The Fellowship of the Ring in theaters, and was impressed), but I still haven't seen The Two Towers and The Return of the King.
The next day, January 2nd, was a Nerd Lit page for I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. Dystopian worldwide epidemics don't interest me, nor do vampires, so I could skip that. But today had trivia about Star Trek: Generations, that the budget for the movie was so tight, the Next Generation crew had to wear the Deep Space Nine uniforms. Jonathan Frakes was wearing Avery Brooks' uniform, and it was too big for him, which is why whenever Frakes is on camera, his sleeves are rolled up.
So even if there's a day that doesn't interest me, like I Am Legend, I know that there'll be something coming up that will. To me, these calendars are the physical manifestation of days. The day ends, I tear off that day, crumple it up and throw it out. But before I do, I hope that I've spent that day well enough, accomplishing at least some of whatever I'm looking to do, be it writing or the currently ever-present job search, or like on New Year's Day night, watching The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin on PBS, the documentary I waited months to see, ever since I heard about it when it was making the film festival circuit.
One day gone, crumpled up. The next day here. I always hope that the Zen calendar will live up to my expectations of it each day, and it usually does. I can be casual with the Nerd Trivia calendar. I'm sure that something interesting will pop up. I'm just hoping that there'll be a Nerd Lit page every week. Only 52, then, sure (51 now), but I'm sure some of these recommendations will lead me to still other books, just by looking them up. Not that I need a calendar for book recommendations, with how much I read as it is, but there's always something I haven't noticed, even as I explore widely.
Also, from this past December until just after Christmas, I was thinking about a second page-a-day calendar for my bookcases, namely the 365 Things to Love About Being Southern Page-a-Day Calendar. I'm a Florida native, and I'm always interested in Southern culture, so I thought this would work for me. I remembered that it was at the Go! Calendars store at the Pacific View Mall, and the last time I went, when they were having a 50%-off-everything sale (it was a pop-up store, unfortunately, although with how many storefronts are empty on the second floor, they could use a permanent Go! Calendars store), there were still two calendars available.
But I looked through it again that last time and there wasn't much there that I didn't already know. I appreciated their filmographies of Southern actors, particularly Renee Zellweger, but I already know all her movies. And what I didn't know, such as the famed restaurants in every state, didn't offer anything beyond the names of the restaurants. Not about what they served, not about the barbecue culture within each of those that are barbecue joints, just lists. I don't want just lists. I want to know what those places are like. And I know there's Yelp for that, but I'm not on a computer all the time, though I'm usually on one too much, to write, to look for work right now, to research, and to write. In that calendar, I would want to have the details of a place right in front of me, but on one square page, there's probably not much room for what compilers of that calendar could hope to achieve further.
I wanted a calendar that would either give me something new every day or give me another angle to something I already knew. I needed a calendar that's close to me the way the Zen calendar is. And browsing those shelves of page-a-day calendars yet again in that store, I found one:
A Year of Nerd Trivia, newly published. 2018 is the first year of it.
I pulled it out of the box and randomly flipped through some of the pages. The back of the box had already intrigued me, what with a Doctor Who quiz and a quote from Neil DeGrasse Tyson about his 14-year-old daughter's emergent geekiness. In the calendar, I had flipped to a "Nerd Lit" page (book recommendations all) for Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which I'd heard about in passing, but never looked into it. The description didn't interest me a great deal, but times may change.
I decided that this was the calendar for me. I'm more of a geek nomad. I wander between worlds, from Firefly to the Star Trek universe, tiptoeing through Doctor Who and nursing my obsessions with Blade Runner, Tron: Legacy, and Oblivion. I'm not a Jedi nor a Trekkie (or Trekker; whichever one you want). I think if I was to appear in space-based science fiction, I would be the cargo captain with the rundown, yet still reliable ship who's always ready to be sent anywhere in exchange for a sizable donation to the Help Keep Me Alive Fund. I wouldn't race headlong into danger, or seek out some potentially risky adventure. Just let me drift among the stars, taking in the universe at my own pace (save for when there's cargo to transport).
So the Nerd Trivia calendar became my second one at the start of the New Year. The first day had a Lord of the Rings quiz, which I had to look at the answers that at the bottom, upside-down. I didn't know any of them. I'm not against fantasy works; I just have to find room for them. I not only once bought a copy of Game of Thrones from Walmart (giving it up when we moved from Las Vegas back to Southern California), and borrowed a paperback copy from the Ojai Library, but I still haven't read it. I guess maybe I wanted to see, based on the TV series (which I also haven't seen), what all the hype has been about. But that's probably not the best way to approach such a series. There has to be something within it that intrigues you enough to venture forth. I'll look into it again, of course. As to Lord of the Rings, the Goodwill in downtown Ventura had a 50%-off-everything sale two days after Christmas, and I found a shrink-wrapped, unopened set of the Lord of the Rings trilogy on DVD (the theatrical cuts) for $4.00. What better time to give it another try? It's not that I didn't like it the first time (I saw the The Fellowship of the Ring in theaters, and was impressed), but I still haven't seen The Two Towers and The Return of the King.
The next day, January 2nd, was a Nerd Lit page for I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. Dystopian worldwide epidemics don't interest me, nor do vampires, so I could skip that. But today had trivia about Star Trek: Generations, that the budget for the movie was so tight, the Next Generation crew had to wear the Deep Space Nine uniforms. Jonathan Frakes was wearing Avery Brooks' uniform, and it was too big for him, which is why whenever Frakes is on camera, his sleeves are rolled up.
So even if there's a day that doesn't interest me, like I Am Legend, I know that there'll be something coming up that will. To me, these calendars are the physical manifestation of days. The day ends, I tear off that day, crumple it up and throw it out. But before I do, I hope that I've spent that day well enough, accomplishing at least some of whatever I'm looking to do, be it writing or the currently ever-present job search, or like on New Year's Day night, watching The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin on PBS, the documentary I waited months to see, ever since I heard about it when it was making the film festival circuit.
One day gone, crumpled up. The next day here. I always hope that the Zen calendar will live up to my expectations of it each day, and it usually does. I can be casual with the Nerd Trivia calendar. I'm sure that something interesting will pop up. I'm just hoping that there'll be a Nerd Lit page every week. Only 52, then, sure (51 now), but I'm sure some of these recommendations will lead me to still other books, just by looking them up. Not that I need a calendar for book recommendations, with how much I read as it is, but there's always something I haven't noticed, even as I explore widely.
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
The Important Edibles
About two weeks ago, we went to the Cheesecake Factory at The Oaks Mall in Thousand Oaks to pick up slices for each of us for what we thought would be a visit to the beach here in Ventura and having our cheesecake there. But the Thomas Fire and the subsequent smoke blanketing our region made that impossible. So we had our slices at home a day or two later.
At the Cheesecake Factory case, I spotted one called Chris' Outrageous Cheesecake and decided to try that without knowing anything that was in it. When my mom, my sister and I were at the Cheesecake Factory a few weeks before that for dinner, I tried the Adam's Peanut Butter Fudge Ripple Cheesecake, and that was more palatable than the monstrosity I subjected myself to: Chocolate cake, brownie, coconut-pecan frosting, and chocolate chip coconut cheesecake, to crib from the order that the layering is listed on the website. It made me wonder: Why does Chris hate people? What happened to shake that life so badly early on?
Now, I've done bad to myself over the years. In my mid-20s, I devoured tubs of Extreme Moose Tracks ice cream from Ralphs in the middle of the night, while not going to bed until 5 a.m. Yeah, I was an idiot, both to myself and to my health. In that same time period (it may have been because Santa Clarita tended to feel isolating, and what are you supposed to connect with there besides going out of the valley in order to do anything interesting?), I also inhaled so many Dr. Peppers over a span of months, that I had a worrisome caffeine problem. Mainly too much of it. Try sleeping under that condition. No chance. I finally pulled myself out of it after realizing how truly awful all this was.
But none of that was as bad as that slice of Chris's Outrageous Cheesecake. I sat at the dining room table, forking my way through it, appalled at how this one slice of cheesecake completely disrespected the sanctity of cheesecake, and decided right then and there that I need to taste again simply to enjoy it, not to just taste to shovel whatever into my mouth and go back for more and more, unthinking. In other, thinner words, I needed to get back on a diet and fast. Forget all the milk chocolate squares I had indulged in in weeks' and months' past. The worry of job hunting will do that to you. Never mind the one bag of pork rinds my mom, my sister and I shared in one shot back in early November (my love of all things pig knows no bounds, though). Forget the different root beers I had tried, and the egg nogs I had tasted in order to find the best one here (that was necessary, though, because having left Las Vegas, I no longer had the egg nog from Anderson Dairy, which, to me, was the best one there, and that's a local brand). I needed to partition my eating life once and for all. Keep it to more fruits and vegetables for my daily eating, and save the really important things for every now and then, but also know what those really important things are. Keep a list so there's never any doubt.
That list, diet-motivated or not, has varied from place to place, everywhere I've lived. In my teens, living in South Florida, I loved the chicken nachos at Miller's Ale House in Pembroke Pines. Huge portion, and I cleared off the entire platter. Extra cheese and no jalapenos always helped. Come to think of it, I also loved them in Las Vegas because there was a Miller's Ale House at Town Square. It's the one restaurant I've been to where my order has never wavered, from then to now. But those days are done. There's no Miller's Ale House in Southern California. As to boba tea places, such as No. 1 Boba Tea in Las Vegas, I ordered a peanut butter and banana smoothie from the first time we went there, to the last time five years later, no matter if we went to the one in Chinatown in Las Vegas, the newer Galleria at Sunset location in Henderson on Mall Ring Circle, or the one on Eastern, in the massive Target shopping center, which was our go-to-location.
But that's gone, too. I don't lament it because here I am, with so many new experiences, and still more to try. In Oxnard, which is one of the unhappiest cities I've ever been to, I was relieved to find that they have a Vallarta supermarket, so we don't have to schlep to Santa Clarita for one. They have two in Oxnard, and Mom and Dad had gone to the dingier one when they were visiting here, but we were lucky to bump into the much cleaner one last month when Dad was looking for a Fallas bargain clothing store. There, I discovered something that, when I have it, is better than books. Seriously. It's chicharrones which, in this case, are mainly pork fat. I'll have to get the name of this type right next time, but when I had it, I knew that this was paradise. That slice of Chris' Outrageous Cheesecake is what put me back on a diet, but those chicharrones are what keeps me on a diet because I want to be ready for the next time we go to Vallarta.
With this in mind, I've come up with a list of those foods important to me. Not the daily essentials, like bananas. I already know those. But those which I most likely would go to great lengths for if I had to, but fortunately, I don't have to for most of these. Some may require adjustments, as will be noted. But all this is who I am in foodstuffs:
Tillamook medium cheddar cheese.
Kroger blended vanilla yogurt (especially in the large tub from Ralphs. I have given up other yogurts for this one).
Grilled pork sausage spring rolls from Pholicious in the food court of the Pacific View Mall here in Ventura.
Vietnamese iced coffee from Pholicious in the food court of the Pacific View Mall here in Ventura (Vietnamese iced coffee became my lifeblood after my sister introduced me to it at 99 Ranch Market on Maryland Parkway in Las Vegas at VeggiEAT Express in their little food court. The iced coffee at Pholicious isn't as good, but it's good enough. At The Oaks Mall in Thousand Oaks, they're opening a Vietnamese place in the food court and I must try the iced coffee there. I hope for it to be like the iced coffee at VeggiEAT Express, but considering my limited options in this part of Southern California, I'm not going to get too choosy).
The ham-and-cheese croissant at Master's Donuts that is not only generously filled, but is also the longest croissant out of all the donut shops I've been to thus far in Ventura.
The carnitas quesadilla at Vallarta (the best quesadilla in the Ventura County area. The runner-up is the cheese quesadilla at La Salsa Fresh Mexican Grill in the food court at The Oaks Mall. My local quesadilla at La Mancha Mexican & Seafood in the food court at the Pacific View Mall is way too heavy, although the basic quesadilla at Snapper Jack's Taco Shack in downtown Ventura is acceptable).
Peerless Coffee & Tea's black tea, from Oakland (I tried this tea at Ojai Pizza Company in downtown Ojai, and it was the first tea that made me want to search for teas that taste like they should be in libraries. This one tasted like a wood-paneled, gently-lived in reading room, like the Ojai Library is to me. However, the Thomas Fire caused the Ojai water supply to shut down entirely at one point, and Mom doesn't trust the water supply to get back to what it was before the fires, so advised me not to go for the tea next time when we're there. The next time we go, it'll have been a while since the fire passed through a section of Ojai, so they might have already settled the water issue, or at least set about making sure it doesn't go off again like that. Even so, after we go to WinCo next where Meridith told me that there's a tea strainer there that would be useful for me, I'm going to order the black tea sampler they have to find out if the other teas are just as good, and to pinpoint the one I loved at Ojai Pizza Company. Or I may just stroll on in next time and ask them the exact name of that particular tea. Based on what the Peerless website offers, I think it's the Peerless Royal Blend, which boasts a "smooth, fragrant aroma and flavor." And yet there's also the Assam, "a strong, dark flavor with a heavy body." Yet this was for iced tea, so it might well be their Organic Tropic Star Classic Black for iced tea. Either way, I know I've found my tea company).
Lean Cuisine's Roasted Garlic White Bean Alfredo (This, with Great Northern beans, is what got me deep into beans. They'd always been on the periphery of my life, because of my mother's love of baked beans, and especially black beans and rice, so I guess the interest was just lying dormant. I love this because of the beans and have set out to see what other beans I might like. I'm not big on baked beans like Mom is, but give me beans as part of other dishes or flavored well enough on their own (even refried beans as it turns out), and I can be occupied for quite a while on this subject alone).
A large order of angel hair pasta with pesto (basil, garlic, olive oil, cheese and nuts) and fresh basil from Presto Pasta in the Vons shopping center right down the street from our apartment (I'm actually starting to get tired of this combination, despite my love of basil, so I may try the pomodoro sauce again, or venture into marinara. I don't know yet).
Producers Dairy Premium Egg Nog from Fresno (I can only find this at our sole Ventura Walmart, but it is the best one because not only is it thick enough like egg nog should be, but the nutmeg appears just enough to show that it's nutmeg, but not enough to start to taste like it was made in a homey arts and crafts store. Trader Joe's egg nog is too thin and tasteless, and Kroger's egg nog remains too expensive here, at $3.50 for a quart, but that one was just so-so).
Hershey's Symphony bar (the creamy milk chocolate kind, not the Hershey's standard that comes in Kisses and such. This is what makes me not have as much of Reese's anything as I have in the past, so I can have this every once in a while instead).
Veggie omelette from Busy Bee Cafe in downtown Ventura (The newest addition to my list. The first time Meridith and I went to the Busy Bee Cafe, it was so-so. Meridith's fried chicken was mostly dry, and the stuffed French toast I had of peanut butter, banana, and strawberries didn't taste all that worth coming back again. But this second time, along with Mom and Dad this time for their first time, this was the right time. Better cooks in the kitchen, for one, and I tried a veggie omelette that had carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, onions, and red and green peppers. It wasn't your typical omelet because they used pieces of all the vegetables, so you got basically a golden-brown sheen of eggs all over the vegetables, which was fine with me. Broccoli and cauliflower done like this is pretty much the only way I can eat them, and I loved how well-browned the cauliflower was, along with the sourdough toast and their home fries, with smaller cubed potatoes than I normally see in other home fries. I know I'll be getting this every time we go. It felt simple and unassuming, and I liked that, too).
It's not as urgent to me as all these, but I'm also looking for a decent chocolate malt (one in which I can taste the malt, too, rather than it being drowned out by overly sweet chocolate ice cream) and a patty melt. Busy Bee Cafe has a patty melt, but after that veggie omelette, it's going to be hard for me to consider anything else (witness the peanut butter and banana smoothie from No. 1 Boba Tea for five years, and the chicken nachos from Miller's Ale House for practically all of my life, though the gap begins now. But come to think of it, there was that gap for nine years in Santa Clarita, too).
I would also like to find great grits that don't come from the Quaker Oats packets I use all the time, besides the crock of it that I liked at Bonnie Lu's Country Cafe in downtown Ojai. However, I suspect that that'll be the ultimate for me. They're not easily found here like that. By the way, the quesadilla at Bonnie Lu's places third on my list, with the exception of their pico de gallo, which is the best I've had anywhere! There are idle nights when I get lost in the reverie of the memory of that pico de gallo! To have tomatoes and onions and cilantro as fresh as what's in there, besides whoever makes it having the power of God to make it like that, I think they must have the Shangri-La of gardens hidden somewhere in Ojai.
So, with the exception of that Lean Cuisine alfredo, all this is why I'm sticking a diet for good. I don't know when we'll go back to the Red Brick Pizza right near our apartment complex, but that California Club salad I had there could surely help me stick to my diet. Despite what it sounds like, the calorie count isn't so bad on that one. They've got salad artists over there who know how to layer salads so that you're not left with a heap of romaine lettuce as you get further into the bowl. I can't wait to have that again.
I don't think I'll be adding to this list as quickly as I would have when I lived in Santa Clarita and Las Vegas (with L.A. being closer to Santa Clarita, as well as Anaheim, Burbank, and Buena Park, and Las Vegas being, well, Las Vegas, with doing things like coming up with a list like this as a distraction against the hard living there), but I know that I can look at this list for here, and be sure that I'll be getting something good every time.
At the Cheesecake Factory case, I spotted one called Chris' Outrageous Cheesecake and decided to try that without knowing anything that was in it. When my mom, my sister and I were at the Cheesecake Factory a few weeks before that for dinner, I tried the Adam's Peanut Butter Fudge Ripple Cheesecake, and that was more palatable than the monstrosity I subjected myself to: Chocolate cake, brownie, coconut-pecan frosting, and chocolate chip coconut cheesecake, to crib from the order that the layering is listed on the website. It made me wonder: Why does Chris hate people? What happened to shake that life so badly early on?
Now, I've done bad to myself over the years. In my mid-20s, I devoured tubs of Extreme Moose Tracks ice cream from Ralphs in the middle of the night, while not going to bed until 5 a.m. Yeah, I was an idiot, both to myself and to my health. In that same time period (it may have been because Santa Clarita tended to feel isolating, and what are you supposed to connect with there besides going out of the valley in order to do anything interesting?), I also inhaled so many Dr. Peppers over a span of months, that I had a worrisome caffeine problem. Mainly too much of it. Try sleeping under that condition. No chance. I finally pulled myself out of it after realizing how truly awful all this was.
But none of that was as bad as that slice of Chris's Outrageous Cheesecake. I sat at the dining room table, forking my way through it, appalled at how this one slice of cheesecake completely disrespected the sanctity of cheesecake, and decided right then and there that I need to taste again simply to enjoy it, not to just taste to shovel whatever into my mouth and go back for more and more, unthinking. In other, thinner words, I needed to get back on a diet and fast. Forget all the milk chocolate squares I had indulged in in weeks' and months' past. The worry of job hunting will do that to you. Never mind the one bag of pork rinds my mom, my sister and I shared in one shot back in early November (my love of all things pig knows no bounds, though). Forget the different root beers I had tried, and the egg nogs I had tasted in order to find the best one here (that was necessary, though, because having left Las Vegas, I no longer had the egg nog from Anderson Dairy, which, to me, was the best one there, and that's a local brand). I needed to partition my eating life once and for all. Keep it to more fruits and vegetables for my daily eating, and save the really important things for every now and then, but also know what those really important things are. Keep a list so there's never any doubt.
That list, diet-motivated or not, has varied from place to place, everywhere I've lived. In my teens, living in South Florida, I loved the chicken nachos at Miller's Ale House in Pembroke Pines. Huge portion, and I cleared off the entire platter. Extra cheese and no jalapenos always helped. Come to think of it, I also loved them in Las Vegas because there was a Miller's Ale House at Town Square. It's the one restaurant I've been to where my order has never wavered, from then to now. But those days are done. There's no Miller's Ale House in Southern California. As to boba tea places, such as No. 1 Boba Tea in Las Vegas, I ordered a peanut butter and banana smoothie from the first time we went there, to the last time five years later, no matter if we went to the one in Chinatown in Las Vegas, the newer Galleria at Sunset location in Henderson on Mall Ring Circle, or the one on Eastern, in the massive Target shopping center, which was our go-to-location.
But that's gone, too. I don't lament it because here I am, with so many new experiences, and still more to try. In Oxnard, which is one of the unhappiest cities I've ever been to, I was relieved to find that they have a Vallarta supermarket, so we don't have to schlep to Santa Clarita for one. They have two in Oxnard, and Mom and Dad had gone to the dingier one when they were visiting here, but we were lucky to bump into the much cleaner one last month when Dad was looking for a Fallas bargain clothing store. There, I discovered something that, when I have it, is better than books. Seriously. It's chicharrones which, in this case, are mainly pork fat. I'll have to get the name of this type right next time, but when I had it, I knew that this was paradise. That slice of Chris' Outrageous Cheesecake is what put me back on a diet, but those chicharrones are what keeps me on a diet because I want to be ready for the next time we go to Vallarta.
With this in mind, I've come up with a list of those foods important to me. Not the daily essentials, like bananas. I already know those. But those which I most likely would go to great lengths for if I had to, but fortunately, I don't have to for most of these. Some may require adjustments, as will be noted. But all this is who I am in foodstuffs:
Tillamook medium cheddar cheese.
Kroger blended vanilla yogurt (especially in the large tub from Ralphs. I have given up other yogurts for this one).
Grilled pork sausage spring rolls from Pholicious in the food court of the Pacific View Mall here in Ventura.
Vietnamese iced coffee from Pholicious in the food court of the Pacific View Mall here in Ventura (Vietnamese iced coffee became my lifeblood after my sister introduced me to it at 99 Ranch Market on Maryland Parkway in Las Vegas at VeggiEAT Express in their little food court. The iced coffee at Pholicious isn't as good, but it's good enough. At The Oaks Mall in Thousand Oaks, they're opening a Vietnamese place in the food court and I must try the iced coffee there. I hope for it to be like the iced coffee at VeggiEAT Express, but considering my limited options in this part of Southern California, I'm not going to get too choosy).
The ham-and-cheese croissant at Master's Donuts that is not only generously filled, but is also the longest croissant out of all the donut shops I've been to thus far in Ventura.
The carnitas quesadilla at Vallarta (the best quesadilla in the Ventura County area. The runner-up is the cheese quesadilla at La Salsa Fresh Mexican Grill in the food court at The Oaks Mall. My local quesadilla at La Mancha Mexican & Seafood in the food court at the Pacific View Mall is way too heavy, although the basic quesadilla at Snapper Jack's Taco Shack in downtown Ventura is acceptable).
Peerless Coffee & Tea's black tea, from Oakland (I tried this tea at Ojai Pizza Company in downtown Ojai, and it was the first tea that made me want to search for teas that taste like they should be in libraries. This one tasted like a wood-paneled, gently-lived in reading room, like the Ojai Library is to me. However, the Thomas Fire caused the Ojai water supply to shut down entirely at one point, and Mom doesn't trust the water supply to get back to what it was before the fires, so advised me not to go for the tea next time when we're there. The next time we go, it'll have been a while since the fire passed through a section of Ojai, so they might have already settled the water issue, or at least set about making sure it doesn't go off again like that. Even so, after we go to WinCo next where Meridith told me that there's a tea strainer there that would be useful for me, I'm going to order the black tea sampler they have to find out if the other teas are just as good, and to pinpoint the one I loved at Ojai Pizza Company. Or I may just stroll on in next time and ask them the exact name of that particular tea. Based on what the Peerless website offers, I think it's the Peerless Royal Blend, which boasts a "smooth, fragrant aroma and flavor." And yet there's also the Assam, "a strong, dark flavor with a heavy body." Yet this was for iced tea, so it might well be their Organic Tropic Star Classic Black for iced tea. Either way, I know I've found my tea company).
Lean Cuisine's Roasted Garlic White Bean Alfredo (This, with Great Northern beans, is what got me deep into beans. They'd always been on the periphery of my life, because of my mother's love of baked beans, and especially black beans and rice, so I guess the interest was just lying dormant. I love this because of the beans and have set out to see what other beans I might like. I'm not big on baked beans like Mom is, but give me beans as part of other dishes or flavored well enough on their own (even refried beans as it turns out), and I can be occupied for quite a while on this subject alone).
A large order of angel hair pasta with pesto (basil, garlic, olive oil, cheese and nuts) and fresh basil from Presto Pasta in the Vons shopping center right down the street from our apartment (I'm actually starting to get tired of this combination, despite my love of basil, so I may try the pomodoro sauce again, or venture into marinara. I don't know yet).
Producers Dairy Premium Egg Nog from Fresno (I can only find this at our sole Ventura Walmart, but it is the best one because not only is it thick enough like egg nog should be, but the nutmeg appears just enough to show that it's nutmeg, but not enough to start to taste like it was made in a homey arts and crafts store. Trader Joe's egg nog is too thin and tasteless, and Kroger's egg nog remains too expensive here, at $3.50 for a quart, but that one was just so-so).
Hershey's Symphony bar (the creamy milk chocolate kind, not the Hershey's standard that comes in Kisses and such. This is what makes me not have as much of Reese's anything as I have in the past, so I can have this every once in a while instead).
Veggie omelette from Busy Bee Cafe in downtown Ventura (The newest addition to my list. The first time Meridith and I went to the Busy Bee Cafe, it was so-so. Meridith's fried chicken was mostly dry, and the stuffed French toast I had of peanut butter, banana, and strawberries didn't taste all that worth coming back again. But this second time, along with Mom and Dad this time for their first time, this was the right time. Better cooks in the kitchen, for one, and I tried a veggie omelette that had carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, onions, and red and green peppers. It wasn't your typical omelet because they used pieces of all the vegetables, so you got basically a golden-brown sheen of eggs all over the vegetables, which was fine with me. Broccoli and cauliflower done like this is pretty much the only way I can eat them, and I loved how well-browned the cauliflower was, along with the sourdough toast and their home fries, with smaller cubed potatoes than I normally see in other home fries. I know I'll be getting this every time we go. It felt simple and unassuming, and I liked that, too).
It's not as urgent to me as all these, but I'm also looking for a decent chocolate malt (one in which I can taste the malt, too, rather than it being drowned out by overly sweet chocolate ice cream) and a patty melt. Busy Bee Cafe has a patty melt, but after that veggie omelette, it's going to be hard for me to consider anything else (witness the peanut butter and banana smoothie from No. 1 Boba Tea for five years, and the chicken nachos from Miller's Ale House for practically all of my life, though the gap begins now. But come to think of it, there was that gap for nine years in Santa Clarita, too).
I would also like to find great grits that don't come from the Quaker Oats packets I use all the time, besides the crock of it that I liked at Bonnie Lu's Country Cafe in downtown Ojai. However, I suspect that that'll be the ultimate for me. They're not easily found here like that. By the way, the quesadilla at Bonnie Lu's places third on my list, with the exception of their pico de gallo, which is the best I've had anywhere! There are idle nights when I get lost in the reverie of the memory of that pico de gallo! To have tomatoes and onions and cilantro as fresh as what's in there, besides whoever makes it having the power of God to make it like that, I think they must have the Shangri-La of gardens hidden somewhere in Ojai.
So, with the exception of that Lean Cuisine alfredo, all this is why I'm sticking a diet for good. I don't know when we'll go back to the Red Brick Pizza right near our apartment complex, but that California Club salad I had there could surely help me stick to my diet. Despite what it sounds like, the calorie count isn't so bad on that one. They've got salad artists over there who know how to layer salads so that you're not left with a heap of romaine lettuce as you get further into the bowl. I can't wait to have that again.
I don't think I'll be adding to this list as quickly as I would have when I lived in Santa Clarita and Las Vegas (with L.A. being closer to Santa Clarita, as well as Anaheim, Burbank, and Buena Park, and Las Vegas being, well, Las Vegas, with doing things like coming up with a list like this as a distraction against the hard living there), but I know that I can look at this list for here, and be sure that I'll be getting something good every time.
Monday, December 18, 2017
Southern California, Part II
Now I know that I can split my years in Southern California into two parts. It wasn't enough to find out on Bing that to get from where I live in Ventura to Downtown Disney in Anaheim is close to and a little above two hours, depending on the route. I needed to see it on a map, even a partial map, as the case was with postcards I bought as bookmarks at a cozy gift shop at Ventura Harbor Village yesterday, one of them a map of Southern California.
There's Anaheim, with Buena Park just slightly north of it. Let eyes wander past Carson, Montebello, through Los Angeles, up to Simi Valley, and diagonally to the top left where Santa Paula is, and Ventura doesn't show up. But we're up there. Going from that Highway 150 marker at the top left, back down to Anaheim? Yeah, that's a distance. So the Southern California I knew from 2003-2012, from when I was 19 up until I was 28, is practically no more for me. It's true, anyway, because the Po Folks restaurant my family and I loved so much in Buena Park closed years ago, a staple for us when we lived in Florida, where I grew up. I can't pine for what's no longer there. I can imagine that it might be interesting to visit Pasadena again at the time of the Rose Parade floats being on display the day after the parade, but would it really be worth that drive? Certainly, with how long it would take to get there, the expectations would be even higher than they ever were before. Sure, the distance is less at only an hour and 13 minutes to an hour and 26 minutes, but on one January 2nd, when we were living in Santa Clarita, we left at 5 in the morning to get there by 7 so we could get in early to see the Rose Parade floats before the crowds built up. I don't think we'd try to do the same thing from here in Ventura, because from Santa Clarita, it was closer.
I don't mind perhaps not seeing that again, nor not going to Universal CityWalk either, or even visiting the Getty Center as often as I might like. In fact, we didn't do it that often when we lived in Santa Clarita, but it was a revelation every time, of the heart, mind and soul. Even so, we are here in Ventura, I'm now 33, and things change. Life changes.
To that end, this is indeed Southern California, Part II, smaller and more focused on what I want and need in my life, what's important to me, rather than the ephemera that was Universal CityWalk and other attractions. I'm still young enough, certainly, but I'm getting older. What do I want to do? Where do I want to be? What matters?
Here, it's having an actual downtown area, which I've never had accessible anywhere we've lived. Downtown Henderson was a drive that took us past the Fiesta Henderson casino, in an area that felt like a no-man's land, and while it was pleasant enough with City Hall there and a few smaller casinos, it wasn't enough to sustain an extensive amount of time. In Florida, at least when I was there, I don't remember there being such a thing as downtown Pembroke Pines, for example. In Ventura, all I have to do is take the 6 bus, and there's the Foster library, there's the movie theater, there's many different places to eat, many of which we still have to try. There's the Bank of Books bookstore, with no air conditioning, which the library also boasts, along with the Calico Cat Bookshop, which is sweatier than Bank of Books. And set further back from the library, up the hill, are two houses I adore, one built in a Queen Anne Style just after 1900 and historically preserved (a construction company called McCarthy is headquartered there), and a two-story house for sale by Berkshire Hathaway with a half-wraparound porch. If I could hit the lottery early enough for a few hundred million, I would buy that house and the old church diagonal from it that was a bed and breakfast before it closed. That would be my piece of Ventura.
In Ventura, it's also having three local libraries now, as opposed to two just a few months ago. It's the E.P. Foster Library downtown, the Ventura College library which is closed now from two days ago until January 7th, and then it opens on January 8 for the start of the spring semester. That disappointed me because I had hoped to check out the 1998 anthology A Southern Christmas for something to read to lead up to Christmas, but with the wildfires and the campus being closed due first to the fires and then to the pervasive smoke, that didn't happen. However, I may check it out when the library reopens, because I don't think I feel like waiting until Christmas starts to come around again.
Now there's also the Hill Road Library, just up the street from where I live on the east side of Ventura, past the Government Center where I took a test to qualify to be considered for a library page position, and where I'll go again early tomorrow morning to take a test in order to qualify for a librarian technician position (essentially the people behind the counter who help with searching for books and setting up library cards for new patrons). The size makes it more of an express library, something small for the community to come in, browse, and go, for the sake of convenience. If they have a little more time, they can certainly stay. It was also the first grand opening of a library we had ever been to, and I already had two books in mind even before we went, that I knew the new branch had: The Cooking Gene by Michael Twitty and Strays: A Lost Cat, A Homeless Man, and Their Journey Across America by Britt Collins. We got into the library before the festivities began, so I made a beeline for where those books were and I got both of them. Brand-new copies. In fact, that's one of the happy things about this new library: Most of the books there are brand-new, and there's still more to come. What I couldn't find readily from other branches is well-stocked here. Plus, I can walk to this branch whenever I want, though not ignoring the Foster library not only because of my love of the downtown area, but also because they have extensive stacks, with nonfiction books dating back decades even, novels, too. I like browsing through history like that. I hope they keep that going.
Let's see what else. There's my grilled pork sausage spring rolls and Vietnamese iced coffee at Pholicious in the food court at the Pacific View Mall, halfway to downtown. The mall is considered Midtown Ventura. There's the generous ham-and-cheese croissant at Master's Donuts at the start of the Walmart shopping center on South Victoria Avenue. I've tried a few other ham-and-cheese croissants at other donut places and this is the only one that really stuffs it well. There's the donut place a few doors down from Discount Grocery Outlet far down on Telephone Road, where they automatically cut the croissant in half for me (not that I want it that way, but I like learning about the different styles of donut places in Ventura), but I prefer Master's Donuts' croissant.
Oh yes, and if you turn off of Main Street downtown onto Thompson, there's the beach right in front of you. I can't forget that part because it's pretty much the main reason I was impatient to move to Ventura when it became possible: I was born and raised in Florida, therefore born to ocean breezes, and I needed ocean breezes back, desperately so after five years in the Mojave Desert. I'm not the sort like my sister and my dad to walk in the sand or get close to the waves. I like just sitting on a bench looking out at the ocean, simply in awe. To have it whenever I want now is still a little unreal to me. I'm still getting used to such pleasure close at hand.
There's still more to come, I'm sure. I haven't yet been to the Regency Buenaventura 6, Ventura's second-run movie theater, in the same shopping center as WinCo. This, despite them still showing Only the Brave, which came from Joseph Kosinski, one of my favorite directors. Job hunting is just slightly more important at the moment.
Reading that back, I feel like I have covered everything here. I've been to every part of Ventura, I've seen all of downtown, though I still want to walk through Mission San Buenaventura at nearly the end of downtown. Yet it doesn't make me wish for Downtown Disney or Universal CityWalk, or even Buena Park, which I liked because of its heavy ghosts of history that hang there. Even knowing as much of Ventura as I do now, there's still the history to learn. That continued yesterday in that gift shop with one of the postcards I bought. When I looked at this aerial photo of Downtown Ventura, I noticed that what's now the Crowne Plaza hotel used to be a Holiday Inn. I'm not sure yet how many years back that goes, but I want to know. That reminds me that there's also the Museum of Ventura County I haven't visited yet, where I'd hope for some room for me to work in their research library. I need to call the director of that library to find out how often a position might open there because they work within the same budget that's also for the Ventura County libraries. I'd like to be steeped in that history.
I've gone all this way and I almost forgot the Salzer's Music and Salzer's Video stores, across the street from each other on Valentine Road. I've bought DVDs from both places already, while searching each time for a copy of Employee of the Month, the one with Dane Cook and Jessica Simpson. Before, it was a frantic search because I had seen a few minutes of it on Comedy Central when we were staying at the La Quinta Inn on Valentine, waiting for our new apartment to be ready to sign for, and then for the movers to finally show up from Las Vegas, and I thought it was funny as hell. Last month, I saw it in full on Comedy Central and yeah, it was still funny, but the plot was labored, and the search isn't as urgent now, but I still want to listen to the audio commentaries for it. Each Salzer's store is great to browse and get lost in for a little while, not just to search for a specific DVD.
I actually don't miss the tumult of getting to downtown Los Angeles, even for a french dip sandwich at Philippe's. I don't miss us trying to find a space in the parking lot at Downtown Disney. But I do miss Porto's Bakery and Cafe, a Cuban paradise in Burbank, and if we ever get back there, I'm not only starting with my beloved mango mousse before moving on to my standard Cubano sandwich, but I might just try their roasted pork sandwich too (owing to my deep love of roast pork, started by #1 Hawaiian Barbecue near McCarran International in Las Vegas in that Walmart shopping center), then go on to another mango mousse, and take home at least two trays of mango mousses. I'm dead serious about that.
While I don't like what we had to go through in five years in Las Vegas and Henderson, it's interesting to have a clean break between Southern California lives and for each one to be completely different. Even with still looking for a job, I think I'm more content with Part II because we're not landlocked (including our nine years in Santa Clarita, we were landlocked for 14 years, all told), we can breathe better here (except for the smoke from the Thomas Fire lately, which has lessened, but it's still worrisome for our part of this region. It hasn't come back, but it still affects all of us), and there's a slightly slower pace to life here. I still have to adjust to that, but I'm getting there. This feels like it could be the right kind of life.
There's Anaheim, with Buena Park just slightly north of it. Let eyes wander past Carson, Montebello, through Los Angeles, up to Simi Valley, and diagonally to the top left where Santa Paula is, and Ventura doesn't show up. But we're up there. Going from that Highway 150 marker at the top left, back down to Anaheim? Yeah, that's a distance. So the Southern California I knew from 2003-2012, from when I was 19 up until I was 28, is practically no more for me. It's true, anyway, because the Po Folks restaurant my family and I loved so much in Buena Park closed years ago, a staple for us when we lived in Florida, where I grew up. I can't pine for what's no longer there. I can imagine that it might be interesting to visit Pasadena again at the time of the Rose Parade floats being on display the day after the parade, but would it really be worth that drive? Certainly, with how long it would take to get there, the expectations would be even higher than they ever were before. Sure, the distance is less at only an hour and 13 minutes to an hour and 26 minutes, but on one January 2nd, when we were living in Santa Clarita, we left at 5 in the morning to get there by 7 so we could get in early to see the Rose Parade floats before the crowds built up. I don't think we'd try to do the same thing from here in Ventura, because from Santa Clarita, it was closer.
I don't mind perhaps not seeing that again, nor not going to Universal CityWalk either, or even visiting the Getty Center as often as I might like. In fact, we didn't do it that often when we lived in Santa Clarita, but it was a revelation every time, of the heart, mind and soul. Even so, we are here in Ventura, I'm now 33, and things change. Life changes.
To that end, this is indeed Southern California, Part II, smaller and more focused on what I want and need in my life, what's important to me, rather than the ephemera that was Universal CityWalk and other attractions. I'm still young enough, certainly, but I'm getting older. What do I want to do? Where do I want to be? What matters?
Here, it's having an actual downtown area, which I've never had accessible anywhere we've lived. Downtown Henderson was a drive that took us past the Fiesta Henderson casino, in an area that felt like a no-man's land, and while it was pleasant enough with City Hall there and a few smaller casinos, it wasn't enough to sustain an extensive amount of time. In Florida, at least when I was there, I don't remember there being such a thing as downtown Pembroke Pines, for example. In Ventura, all I have to do is take the 6 bus, and there's the Foster library, there's the movie theater, there's many different places to eat, many of which we still have to try. There's the Bank of Books bookstore, with no air conditioning, which the library also boasts, along with the Calico Cat Bookshop, which is sweatier than Bank of Books. And set further back from the library, up the hill, are two houses I adore, one built in a Queen Anne Style just after 1900 and historically preserved (a construction company called McCarthy is headquartered there), and a two-story house for sale by Berkshire Hathaway with a half-wraparound porch. If I could hit the lottery early enough for a few hundred million, I would buy that house and the old church diagonal from it that was a bed and breakfast before it closed. That would be my piece of Ventura.
In Ventura, it's also having three local libraries now, as opposed to two just a few months ago. It's the E.P. Foster Library downtown, the Ventura College library which is closed now from two days ago until January 7th, and then it opens on January 8 for the start of the spring semester. That disappointed me because I had hoped to check out the 1998 anthology A Southern Christmas for something to read to lead up to Christmas, but with the wildfires and the campus being closed due first to the fires and then to the pervasive smoke, that didn't happen. However, I may check it out when the library reopens, because I don't think I feel like waiting until Christmas starts to come around again.
Now there's also the Hill Road Library, just up the street from where I live on the east side of Ventura, past the Government Center where I took a test to qualify to be considered for a library page position, and where I'll go again early tomorrow morning to take a test in order to qualify for a librarian technician position (essentially the people behind the counter who help with searching for books and setting up library cards for new patrons). The size makes it more of an express library, something small for the community to come in, browse, and go, for the sake of convenience. If they have a little more time, they can certainly stay. It was also the first grand opening of a library we had ever been to, and I already had two books in mind even before we went, that I knew the new branch had: The Cooking Gene by Michael Twitty and Strays: A Lost Cat, A Homeless Man, and Their Journey Across America by Britt Collins. We got into the library before the festivities began, so I made a beeline for where those books were and I got both of them. Brand-new copies. In fact, that's one of the happy things about this new library: Most of the books there are brand-new, and there's still more to come. What I couldn't find readily from other branches is well-stocked here. Plus, I can walk to this branch whenever I want, though not ignoring the Foster library not only because of my love of the downtown area, but also because they have extensive stacks, with nonfiction books dating back decades even, novels, too. I like browsing through history like that. I hope they keep that going.
Let's see what else. There's my grilled pork sausage spring rolls and Vietnamese iced coffee at Pholicious in the food court at the Pacific View Mall, halfway to downtown. The mall is considered Midtown Ventura. There's the generous ham-and-cheese croissant at Master's Donuts at the start of the Walmart shopping center on South Victoria Avenue. I've tried a few other ham-and-cheese croissants at other donut places and this is the only one that really stuffs it well. There's the donut place a few doors down from Discount Grocery Outlet far down on Telephone Road, where they automatically cut the croissant in half for me (not that I want it that way, but I like learning about the different styles of donut places in Ventura), but I prefer Master's Donuts' croissant.
Oh yes, and if you turn off of Main Street downtown onto Thompson, there's the beach right in front of you. I can't forget that part because it's pretty much the main reason I was impatient to move to Ventura when it became possible: I was born and raised in Florida, therefore born to ocean breezes, and I needed ocean breezes back, desperately so after five years in the Mojave Desert. I'm not the sort like my sister and my dad to walk in the sand or get close to the waves. I like just sitting on a bench looking out at the ocean, simply in awe. To have it whenever I want now is still a little unreal to me. I'm still getting used to such pleasure close at hand.
There's still more to come, I'm sure. I haven't yet been to the Regency Buenaventura 6, Ventura's second-run movie theater, in the same shopping center as WinCo. This, despite them still showing Only the Brave, which came from Joseph Kosinski, one of my favorite directors. Job hunting is just slightly more important at the moment.
Reading that back, I feel like I have covered everything here. I've been to every part of Ventura, I've seen all of downtown, though I still want to walk through Mission San Buenaventura at nearly the end of downtown. Yet it doesn't make me wish for Downtown Disney or Universal CityWalk, or even Buena Park, which I liked because of its heavy ghosts of history that hang there. Even knowing as much of Ventura as I do now, there's still the history to learn. That continued yesterday in that gift shop with one of the postcards I bought. When I looked at this aerial photo of Downtown Ventura, I noticed that what's now the Crowne Plaza hotel used to be a Holiday Inn. I'm not sure yet how many years back that goes, but I want to know. That reminds me that there's also the Museum of Ventura County I haven't visited yet, where I'd hope for some room for me to work in their research library. I need to call the director of that library to find out how often a position might open there because they work within the same budget that's also for the Ventura County libraries. I'd like to be steeped in that history.
I've gone all this way and I almost forgot the Salzer's Music and Salzer's Video stores, across the street from each other on Valentine Road. I've bought DVDs from both places already, while searching each time for a copy of Employee of the Month, the one with Dane Cook and Jessica Simpson. Before, it was a frantic search because I had seen a few minutes of it on Comedy Central when we were staying at the La Quinta Inn on Valentine, waiting for our new apartment to be ready to sign for, and then for the movers to finally show up from Las Vegas, and I thought it was funny as hell. Last month, I saw it in full on Comedy Central and yeah, it was still funny, but the plot was labored, and the search isn't as urgent now, but I still want to listen to the audio commentaries for it. Each Salzer's store is great to browse and get lost in for a little while, not just to search for a specific DVD.
I actually don't miss the tumult of getting to downtown Los Angeles, even for a french dip sandwich at Philippe's. I don't miss us trying to find a space in the parking lot at Downtown Disney. But I do miss Porto's Bakery and Cafe, a Cuban paradise in Burbank, and if we ever get back there, I'm not only starting with my beloved mango mousse before moving on to my standard Cubano sandwich, but I might just try their roasted pork sandwich too (owing to my deep love of roast pork, started by #1 Hawaiian Barbecue near McCarran International in Las Vegas in that Walmart shopping center), then go on to another mango mousse, and take home at least two trays of mango mousses. I'm dead serious about that.
While I don't like what we had to go through in five years in Las Vegas and Henderson, it's interesting to have a clean break between Southern California lives and for each one to be completely different. Even with still looking for a job, I think I'm more content with Part II because we're not landlocked (including our nine years in Santa Clarita, we were landlocked for 14 years, all told), we can breathe better here (except for the smoke from the Thomas Fire lately, which has lessened, but it's still worrisome for our part of this region. It hasn't come back, but it still affects all of us), and there's a slightly slower pace to life here. I still have to adjust to that, but I'm getting there. This feels like it could be the right kind of life.
Sunday, November 19, 2017
Thanksgiving at the Ventura College Library
In just two months, from last September (I needed to have proper ID first, through my driver's license), I've gone from having only the Green Valley Library on N. Green Valley Parkway in Henderson, Nevada, to reveling in having regular access to two libraries: The E.P. Foster library in downtown Ventura (part of the Ventura County library system), and the Ventura College Library, formally known as the Evelyn and Howard Boroughs Library. The latter library is the object of my most current fervent desire.
My sister and I went there last Tuesday, walking up to an enormous, grayish structure, the outside of which always reminds me of the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. Just the way one part of the building curves around in gray and red. The Ventura College Library has almost the same feature, except that curving features long windows, and what looks like criss-crossing pipes.
At the automatic double doors that open onto the HUGE computer lab at the left, and in front of the stairs that go to the library on the second floor, there was a notice on the window next to the doors that said the library would be open on Monday, November 20 from 7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., and on Tuesday, November 21 from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., both days without a librarian available. I'd say that's ok as long as someone's there to check out books that anyone might want. I don't have to go again for a while anyway since I have my five, which is the limit not only for "community members" like me, as stated in the policies, but also for students, which I was surprised to learn because I figured that they would have unlimited access during the academic year. Go figure.
Under those hours on the notice was the announcement that the library would be closed from Wednesday through Sunday (it's normally closed on Sundays anyway, except for during the summer, when it's closed from Friday through Sunday).
After I read that, I needed a minute before we walked in to go up the stairs. I had never felt such envy in a long time. If only I could have access to the library then, which I know is impossible since I don't have any association with the people who could make it happen, and even then I don't think it would happen.
I'm just thinking about it in my imagination: The entire campus empty (it's an unassuming, small campus that isn't concerned with much on a given day), and the library completely empty except me and all those books.
When you walk in, there's the librarian's desk, big and round and can easily be at home on any starship. To the immediate right is the leisure reading sections, which are good for being surprising once in a while. Back in September, when I could finally get my Ventura College library card after we had gotten our driver's licenses in Santa Paula (with the same numbers that we had left behind after we moved to Las Vegas), I knew that the library had a copy of The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See, which I had wanted to read since it was published in March, but was stymied by there being so many holds on the copies the Henderson Libraries had. Finally, I would have my chance. And I did, thanks to that leisure reading section.
Lately, my sister wanted to read Endurance, the memoir by astronaut Scott Kelly, and she was waiting, and waiting, and waiting for a copy to reach her in the Ventura County library system. Still waiting, when we went to the college library. After we returned the books, we went to the leisure reading section, as we always do, and while she was looking on those shelves to see if there was anything really new, I found a copy of Endurance sitting on top of the stacks. She was overjoyed when I showed it to her.
But generally, having been with this library in the past two months, the leisure reading section is generally anemic. Not that I expect them to get every single new title that comes out that I want to read, but you'll find much of the same stuff sitting atop the stacks, soon after moved to the shelves below, but not much there that could be exciting to have found or bumped into. Granted, Lied Library at the University of Nevada Las Vegas always had a phenomenal leisure reading section, but it's in that memory that I have to be aware: That was a university library. University. Seemingly endless budget. Ventura College is a community college in a small town. Much smaller. The population is smaller. The college has to scrape and snarl and growl for a bigger budget from the legislature in Sacramento. Not everything is going to be so readily available or so immediately fascinating as it was at Lied Library. However, beyond wishing for a few more intriguing titles in the leisure reading section, Lied Library's selections didn't make a difference to me anyway because I never went to that library often. Yes, I could have gotten there if it was one of my family's weekend errands, but the traffic to get to Maryland Parkway every time usually wasn't worth it. And then, I would have had to keep close watch on when the books were due, knowing that there would be a three-week limit and only two renewals allowed. Then it would always have been on a weekend because Dad worked during the week, and so did me and my sister for that matter. But yes, I do wish that the Ventura College Library had all five volumes of the Collected Works of William Howard Taft, like Lied Library has. Nevertheless, it's ok that it doesn't.
But now, I can get to the college library whenever I want. All it takes is a ride on the 6 bus across from the Government Center (or the 10 or 21 if they show up before the 6. I'm only ever concerned about getting on the 6 if I'm going to the Foster library in downtown Ventura) and it pulls right up at the corner, across from the library. All I have to do is get up and walk a few yards to the entrance. There it is, all for me. It's a fair trade-off from Lied Library, which, until that final farewell visit before we moved back to Southern California, I hadn't been to in months anyway.
On the right side of the library is the reference stacks, and there are a few culinary history volumes I'd want to read a bit of if I had the library all to myself during those Thanksgiving-fueled days. I know I can't possibly read all the books the library has, not with 63,529 books, nor would I expect to. But just to be among them, to be able to feel free to wander as I wish.
Right now, I've decided to dig into philosophy, and instead of one of those overview books that profiles the major philosophers, and even not-so-major but still notable for one thing or another, I'm picking at the philosophy section in the college library at random, whatever catches my eye.
On Tuesday, it was the Second Series of Jiddu Krishnamurti's Commentaries on Living, since the library doesn't have the first volume. It's him talking with people from all walks of life, and it looked interesting enough to me. Depending on how it is, I may go back next time for the third volume (I know exactly what it is), or go at random again and see what I come up with.
I can't stand that I can't be in that library during those days, but I will definitely be there in my imagination. There are World War II books I haven't even touched yet, as well as Stephen Ambrose's biography The Supreme Commander: The War Years of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. There are the Civil War books I might dip into, as well as some general books on the American presidency that I just found on my last visit.
And that's not even getting into the literature sections, with all their attendant letters, short stories, and so many novels that I guarantee are truly discoveries, a lot of obscurities on those shelves. You won't find any hype on those shelves, and that's how I like it for my own browsing.
It's just the thought that here I am, educating myself, on a college campus but without having to be of a college campus. I love college and university campuses anyway, and lived for Fridays at 3:50 p.m. when I was a student at College of the Canyons in Valencia, California. That time marked the end of my cinema class for the week and the campus was very nearly empty, so I could walk its lengths for a little while, feeling like I owned it.
To have the Ventura college library to myself for those days would be paradise. And I know exactly where my next books are, starting from those and moving on to whatever captivates me next. Pure bliss.
My sister and I went there last Tuesday, walking up to an enormous, grayish structure, the outside of which always reminds me of the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. Just the way one part of the building curves around in gray and red. The Ventura College Library has almost the same feature, except that curving features long windows, and what looks like criss-crossing pipes.
At the automatic double doors that open onto the HUGE computer lab at the left, and in front of the stairs that go to the library on the second floor, there was a notice on the window next to the doors that said the library would be open on Monday, November 20 from 7:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., and on Tuesday, November 21 from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., both days without a librarian available. I'd say that's ok as long as someone's there to check out books that anyone might want. I don't have to go again for a while anyway since I have my five, which is the limit not only for "community members" like me, as stated in the policies, but also for students, which I was surprised to learn because I figured that they would have unlimited access during the academic year. Go figure.
Under those hours on the notice was the announcement that the library would be closed from Wednesday through Sunday (it's normally closed on Sundays anyway, except for during the summer, when it's closed from Friday through Sunday).
After I read that, I needed a minute before we walked in to go up the stairs. I had never felt such envy in a long time. If only I could have access to the library then, which I know is impossible since I don't have any association with the people who could make it happen, and even then I don't think it would happen.
I'm just thinking about it in my imagination: The entire campus empty (it's an unassuming, small campus that isn't concerned with much on a given day), and the library completely empty except me and all those books.
When you walk in, there's the librarian's desk, big and round and can easily be at home on any starship. To the immediate right is the leisure reading sections, which are good for being surprising once in a while. Back in September, when I could finally get my Ventura College library card after we had gotten our driver's licenses in Santa Paula (with the same numbers that we had left behind after we moved to Las Vegas), I knew that the library had a copy of The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See, which I had wanted to read since it was published in March, but was stymied by there being so many holds on the copies the Henderson Libraries had. Finally, I would have my chance. And I did, thanks to that leisure reading section.
Lately, my sister wanted to read Endurance, the memoir by astronaut Scott Kelly, and she was waiting, and waiting, and waiting for a copy to reach her in the Ventura County library system. Still waiting, when we went to the college library. After we returned the books, we went to the leisure reading section, as we always do, and while she was looking on those shelves to see if there was anything really new, I found a copy of Endurance sitting on top of the stacks. She was overjoyed when I showed it to her.
But generally, having been with this library in the past two months, the leisure reading section is generally anemic. Not that I expect them to get every single new title that comes out that I want to read, but you'll find much of the same stuff sitting atop the stacks, soon after moved to the shelves below, but not much there that could be exciting to have found or bumped into. Granted, Lied Library at the University of Nevada Las Vegas always had a phenomenal leisure reading section, but it's in that memory that I have to be aware: That was a university library. University. Seemingly endless budget. Ventura College is a community college in a small town. Much smaller. The population is smaller. The college has to scrape and snarl and growl for a bigger budget from the legislature in Sacramento. Not everything is going to be so readily available or so immediately fascinating as it was at Lied Library. However, beyond wishing for a few more intriguing titles in the leisure reading section, Lied Library's selections didn't make a difference to me anyway because I never went to that library often. Yes, I could have gotten there if it was one of my family's weekend errands, but the traffic to get to Maryland Parkway every time usually wasn't worth it. And then, I would have had to keep close watch on when the books were due, knowing that there would be a three-week limit and only two renewals allowed. Then it would always have been on a weekend because Dad worked during the week, and so did me and my sister for that matter. But yes, I do wish that the Ventura College Library had all five volumes of the Collected Works of William Howard Taft, like Lied Library has. Nevertheless, it's ok that it doesn't.
But now, I can get to the college library whenever I want. All it takes is a ride on the 6 bus across from the Government Center (or the 10 or 21 if they show up before the 6. I'm only ever concerned about getting on the 6 if I'm going to the Foster library in downtown Ventura) and it pulls right up at the corner, across from the library. All I have to do is get up and walk a few yards to the entrance. There it is, all for me. It's a fair trade-off from Lied Library, which, until that final farewell visit before we moved back to Southern California, I hadn't been to in months anyway.
On the right side of the library is the reference stacks, and there are a few culinary history volumes I'd want to read a bit of if I had the library all to myself during those Thanksgiving-fueled days. I know I can't possibly read all the books the library has, not with 63,529 books, nor would I expect to. But just to be among them, to be able to feel free to wander as I wish.
Right now, I've decided to dig into philosophy, and instead of one of those overview books that profiles the major philosophers, and even not-so-major but still notable for one thing or another, I'm picking at the philosophy section in the college library at random, whatever catches my eye.
On Tuesday, it was the Second Series of Jiddu Krishnamurti's Commentaries on Living, since the library doesn't have the first volume. It's him talking with people from all walks of life, and it looked interesting enough to me. Depending on how it is, I may go back next time for the third volume (I know exactly what it is), or go at random again and see what I come up with.
I can't stand that I can't be in that library during those days, but I will definitely be there in my imagination. There are World War II books I haven't even touched yet, as well as Stephen Ambrose's biography The Supreme Commander: The War Years of General Dwight D. Eisenhower. There are the Civil War books I might dip into, as well as some general books on the American presidency that I just found on my last visit.
And that's not even getting into the literature sections, with all their attendant letters, short stories, and so many novels that I guarantee are truly discoveries, a lot of obscurities on those shelves. You won't find any hype on those shelves, and that's how I like it for my own browsing.
It's just the thought that here I am, educating myself, on a college campus but without having to be of a college campus. I love college and university campuses anyway, and lived for Fridays at 3:50 p.m. when I was a student at College of the Canyons in Valencia, California. That time marked the end of my cinema class for the week and the campus was very nearly empty, so I could walk its lengths for a little while, feeling like I owned it.
To have the Ventura college library to myself for those days would be paradise. And I know exactly where my next books are, starting from those and moving on to whatever captivates me next. Pure bliss.
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