A Subscription Deferred

It was while transcribing audio of a long, business-fueled meeting last Saturday night for a Santa Clarita-based journalist who still throws me work after all these years that I started thinking about it again.

Having moved 17 times in my life, with no real solid sense of home, I started looking for one in print, something that changes with each issue, but comes from a foundation that has always been just that way in its aims. I've been reading since I was 2 and haunting libraries about as long, so surely there must be something.

Toward the end of this past summer, I found the July/August issue of The Atlantic sitting in the magazine section of my local Ralphs supermarket, directly facing plastic spoons, forks, knives, and paper plates, with napkins just a little further down.

The left-side flap glued to the cover intrigued me: "On the Nature of Complicity: Trump's enablers and the judgment of history" by Anne Applebaum." "The Looming Bank Collapse" by Frank Partnoy." "The Miracle of the Supermarket" by Bianca Bosker." "Can an Unloved Child Learn to Love?" by Melissa Fay Greene."

This magazine seemed to be a printed representation of how my mind runs. It jumps around like this issue does, but it seeks deeper insight than just the click-of-the-minute on Facebook and Twitter. I always want to know more than just what CNN blares on the front page of its site.

$9.99 is a little steep for one magazine, but it was my first time with it. I bought it, and dug into it right when I got home from Ralphs. And in those first minutes with it, I immediately found home.

There was a profile of Kevin Kwan and his supersonic fame from Crazy Rich Asians. Amanda Mull wrote a piece about it not being so criminal nowadays to have a cluttered house. James Hamblin wrote about the dangers of overvigilant hygiene. And that was even before the main pieces listed on the cover, which were not only exactly what had caught my interest by their titles alone, but they went far more in depth than I could have imagined, including Bianca Bosker writing about the formerly glorious Fairway Market in New York City, and Melissa Fay Greene discovering what has become of "tens of thousands of children warehoused in Romanian orphanages" thirty years ago.

Out of all the magazines I've read this year, this issue of The Atlantic is the only one I've kept, the beginning of a new home for me. 

It may well be the latest (and hopefully last) stretch of the process that apparently started for me in 2007, when I worked under John Boston at The Signal newspaper in Santa Clarita, as associate editor of the weekend Escape section. John had worked at The Signal for 30 years, arriving in Santa Clarita in the mid-1950s and finding such a welcoming home for himself that was never present before that. He became Santa Clarita. He knew all of the valley's history, and what he didn't know just hadn't happened yet. I was deeply impressed by that, what with my fierce passion for, and love of, history. But he was also enormously kind, with time enough for anyone who wanted it.

When I wrote what was at first to him an underwhelming humor column for Escape, he sat with me in the paper's conference room and went over it with me, suggesting how I could strengthen it. He liked the concept, but thought it could be even better. As a young writer in his early 20s, I was devastated that he didn't like it from the get-go, and I listened to his suggestions through that dark veil of disappointment. He told me to rewrite it at home that night and email it to him by the morning. When I got home, I didn't care what would become of the column. I rewrote as he suggested, moved some sentences around, deleted others, but I don't actually remember what I did or how I did it. I just did it, and paid no attention while I did it. The next morning, I found an email from him that began "JIMINY CHRISTMAS, RORY!" and went on to say how, when he first went over the column, he honestly thought there wasn't a whole lot else to my column, but the rewrite I submitted propelled it into the stratosphere.

Is it any wonder I wanted to be like him as a writer and as a man? He subscribed to The New Yorker, so I asked him if I could have the issues he was done with so I could read The New Yorker, too. He swore by Tootsie Roll Pops, so I had my own bouquet of them, too. It was similiar to how, when I was 11, I read Andy Rooney's books (I had seen him on 60 Minutes over the years, but didn't pay close attention) and was amazed that one could write about woodworking and restaurants and tools in the garage. I wanted to write exactly like Andy Rooney, and I tried, but then found I couldn't write exactly like him because I wasn't him. But John Boston was right in front of me, and even though I knew I couldn't write like him, I just wanted to be influenced by his sure sense of time and place that made him the true embodiment of Santa Clarita back then. I could strive to be the great good, gentle soul that he was and still is (that reminds me that I should call him this week).

Perhaps The New Yorker through John Boston was my first attempt to find a home in print. Both my parents were native New Yorkers, so it made sense, but I never latched onto The New Yorker. Many great articles individually, but to me, it felt too rigidly-produced. A certain time and a certain place seen only through this lens. I needed an expansion of exploration and the human spirit, even and especially in its struggle toward, and sometimes against, the light.

I read The New Yorker here and there for a year or two after John Boston left The Signal (Eventually I did, too), but then I fell away from it. Another move. And then another, and still more, which comprised five years in Las Vegas, where all that matters is trying to survive the summers and winters there (even autumn is starkly bitter in the desert), and sometimes just the day to day.

Living in Ventura, and especially the present hard year, brought back all these memories and made me think about seeking a home, even in print, that I could rely on. I felt it so completely with that July/August issue of The Atlantic, and I also felt like I had John Boston back as a regular presence in my life through those pages because he was always that interested in so many facets of life, always that engaged. I'm long done with journalism, preferring to focus on the books I want to write, but if John ever decided beyond the novels he likely wants to make the swan song of his life that he wanted to start another journalistic venture of his own (at least two didn't pan out), I'd join him. I would gladly go back into the sharp-bladed grind of deadlines for the chance to work with him again, to learn still more from him.

There's very little room in my reading habits for surprises. I know what interests me, and I know what I want to read. The Atlantic is the last platform for me that can provide those surprises, every page I turn to possibly containing something I either knew nothing about, or something I know about examined in a way completely new to me. It also helps with my attention span of late, because there are always very long articles and essays in The Atlantic, and sitting on the computer, on Facebook, on the Internet entirely as I have over the past few months has not helped. In fact, there's an anthology from The Atlantic called The American Crisis: What Went Wrong. How We Recover. that the Ventura County Library system finally got tired of me bugging them to buy and they finally bought it and had it sent to me through Zipbooks, where patrons can request titles and very possibly, it's sent to you directly through Amazon. When you're done with it, you bring it to your library of choice and they'll eventually enter it into the system and put it into circulation. 

Many of the articles featured in the anthology were abridged since the articles as they had appeared in the magazine were originally so long, and that anthology had a lot of ground to cover. It was the first time in quite a long time that I had not flinched at the sheer length of those articles and essays. I was so absorbed in all they had to say, all they had to explain, that I didn't even notice the page numbers fluttering by, as I sometimes do. That's also how I know I need more of The Atlantic in my life.

The audio of that business meeting ran a smidge over an hour, and I was about halfway through it last Saturday night when I stopped yet again. Parts of it bored me, so there was a perfect right to take a break here and there. And it was then that I decided to wander over to The Atlantic website, where I became curious about that big red "Subscribe" button at the top right of the front page.

$59.99 for a 1-year print and digital subscription. Admittedly, a few weeks ago, I paid $54.99 for a two-year subscription on ItsYourTurn.com, where I play Battleship, which is called Battleboats there. But with that subscription, and the year I still had on my current subscription to ItsYourTurn, that extended me to November 29, 2023. And I go there every day, playing nothing but Battleship, so $54.99 stretches infinitely.

But $59.99? I could do it for ItsYourTurn, but I'm also still only working a part-time job while trying my hardest to land a full-time one. The price includes access to the digital side of The Atlantic, including the archives, but if I spend hours on a computer beyond my job search, my book reviews, the transcriptions, and my own writing, it's usually because I've discovered a web comic that I want to read all the way through from the beginning. This time, it's Terminal Lance, the Marine Corps comic. I did the same with Girls With Slingshots many years ago, and even bought the entire run in print. And I also did the same with Questionable Content, around the same time as Girls With Slingshots, which I still read today.

But The Atlantic's archives? It's tempting for a few topics here and there, but not extensive screen time. It reminds me of when I bought The New Yorker's entire archive in the late 2000s, which came on a hard drive that you hook up to the computer. I was that interested back then, but ultimately, I couldn't do it. Reading is more comfortable to me in my recliner than on this computer chair. 

So $59.99 for 10 print issues for one year, and the archive of which I might use only a little bit. I wasn't sure. But then I saw the Academic Rate option: "Students and Educators save 50% on an Atlantic subscription." Well now! I work for Ventura College! I have a college email address! I'll use that!

I clicked on the Academic Rate ($29.99 for one year) and then I left it in that tab on my Chrome browser and got back to the transcript. A little while later, I thought again about The Atlantic subscription, but wondered about something in the Ventura County Library system, and I went to the catalog. 

Before the pandemic, magazines were readily available at all libraries, including the weekly issues of People that my sister swore by, and which she hasn't had since early March, as the libraries were first closed down entirely and then opened up only for patrons to walk up to the entrance to pick up holds brought out to them by library employees. What about the magazines?

I looked up People first, because my sister would have a lot more to catch up on than I would, as she had been checking out every weekly issue before the pandemic. And there it was at different libraries: All the issues that she had missed, and even ones stretching back to 2008 if she so wanted. But more importantly, I noticed that there were many issues checked out. They're letting patrons check out magazines! Put them on hold like books, like DVDs, and you can have them too! I wasn't sure they were, what with magazines taken out of doctors' waiting rooms and such with the risk of transmission through the magazines. I didn't know if it would be the same with libraries, but apparently not.

So I put the latest two issues of People on hold on her card to get her started (we'll probably pick them up this coming Saturday), and then I went to look for The Atlantic.

Same thing! I can read all the issues available thus far, and then decide if I want to go for the academic subscription, or just wait for the library to bring in each issue. I have a comparatively minor interest in Harper's Magazine because Edmund G. Love published his article "Subways are for Sleeping" there, which became the full-length book of the same title that I spent $34 to claim lost at the Valencia Library, back when it was part of the L.A. County library system. I wanted it for myself, having read that particular copy from the Norwalk branch often as a student at College of the Canyons, usually in lieu of doing my math homework in the cafeteria there. And I found that the Ventura County library system has Harper's, as well as The New Yorker. So I have my magazine subscriptions now, freer than I thought it would be, and I can exhaust those first. The New Yorker doesn't have an academic rate, and is way too expensive besides (best to stick with the library system's holdings in this case), and neither does Harper's, though they're more reasonable for a subscription if it ever came to that. But as it will take time to go through all these holdings in the system, I'll see what transpires in my magazine reading over the next few months, also if the library system continues to get these magazines or they give them up. Then I'll see what I might do about The Atlantic. I'm just happy to have the chance to read them freely, and really, it would be more appropriate to consider a subscription after I land substantial work.

Where Are You in Your Mind?

Last night, while trying to get to sleep, I fretted about having so many ideas for nonfiction books and adult novels and YA novels and picture books and still more, and yet I haven't made much headway on any of them. Not out of laziness or ambitions being bigger than my abilities, but I guess it's the paralysis of choice. At least in the way I saw it before thinking about it more this morning.

I wish I could live in a library. Not necessarily a public library. Probably a college or a university library on a sprawling campus (the best kind), with enough space for regular exercise, walking and perhaps eventually even jogging, and a supermarket nearby, maybe some fast-food joints, a bookstore here and there (not only on the campus) to see what's being sold in the area based on what's continually in stock, and perhaps a movie theater or two. In this, I think about Lied Library on the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) campus, which is all on Maryland Parkway, which I consider the most vibrant corridor in Las Vegas, which, if continued to be developed properly, could be one of the great hopes for the city perhaps being known a little more for something else than what it already is and always has been. Further down is the Boulevard Mall, which includes 99 Ranch Market, Goodwill, Ross, Seafood City, which is the local Filipino supermarket, and a Wing Stop Sports bar which, if you know Wing Stop, is much larger than your average Wing Stop, with lots more individual tables, TWO soda dispensers, an honest-to-god bar with alcohol, which is considered amateurish by Vegas standards, and big flatscreen TVs all around. I would have wanted to live at Lied Library, if not for the extreme desert heat and cold that I endured for five years. But that library, my god. Not only was there always more than enough room to walk the UNLV campus, but in the two times I was there as a substitute library aide at Paradise Elementary, which is also on the UNLV campus, I got lost on my way back from Lied Library to the school, before starting work there at 10:30 a.m. Both times, I didn't think I'd get there on time.

The stacks inside Lied Library are so massive that they're located on three successive floors, four if you count the serpentine design of the Leisure Reading section on the first floor, which I never noticed until the final time I was there, as part of our family's farewell tour of Las Vegas, which was cut short at the Wynn on another day when the movers called and said they were going to come to move us out on Sunday, and it was Friday. I was impressed by the sheer number of interesting titles in the Leisure Reading section, which, being in a university library, was far more extensive than Ventura College has in its Leisure Reading section, but it's no less interesting here.

The stacks with call numbers A-HJ are on the third floor, HM-PR on the fourth floor, and PS-Z on the fifth floor, all under the jurisdiction of the Library of Congress classification system. And with what they have, with all the presidential history books I could ever want, translated novels from different countries, every subject that could pop to my mind on a given day (from architecture to music history (especially 1970s music) to various biographies and memoirs and still more), I could easily spend the rest of my life there if such a thing were possible.

And yet, there are other libraries throughout the country, too, such as the New York Public Library (the main, famous one) and other university libraries which very possibly hold as much, if not more as Lied Library. Chances are many of them do, though. It would serve to make me indecisive, but there are considerations which limit me, such as weather. Nothing on the east coast since it gets too cold in winter. Same with the Midwest and in the Great Plains, tornadoes and such, so I wouldn't want to root myself there either.

But that's what it comes down to: Roots. I don't have any. We moved so many times throughout Florida, twice in Santa Clarita (although we did end up in Saugus for eight years, after our first year in Valencia, but there wasn't much in Santa Clarita that made me feel rooted, although I do miss Stater Bros. supermarket), and five times in four years in Las Vegas, owing to various bleak circumstances, such as neighbors next to us and above us smoking constantly and the smoke seeping into our apartment, which caused us to move out after that year), as well as last year at Via Ventura here in Ventura, which ended with our dogs having a massive flea problem because they never properly treated the grounds, and now at the new Island View Apartments, behind the Ralphs supermarket. It's interesting, what with a fourth-floor rooftop deck that takes in a lit-up view at night of Oxnard and Camarillo, further to the west, that's far more impressive to me than the Las Vegas and Los Angeles skylines.

Therefore, to be connected to a place? To know it intimately? To feel a sense of civic pride in it? I don't know how that works, nor do I think I'd want to learn. Not that I think we'll move again so quickly, although I hope we don't, as it would be interesting lately to be in one place for more than one year, and by that I mean one apartment complex, but we didn't have a choice from Via Ventura to Island View. We had to get out of Via Ventura, which looks progressively worse and more desperate to bring in tenants since we left. Maybe there's a chance with Island View. There are a lot of problems within the apartment, which are actually much better than what we came from at Via Ventura and before that in Las Vegas. But they do take their sweet time in addressing them. When the Santa Ana winds howled through recently, an incredible draft blew through the gaps in the front door, which made the vertical blinds in front of the sliding patio door billow and I really felt it, since I sleep in the living room, my bed there and my bookcases nearby, towards the back door (it's a two-bedroom apartment, so my parents have the master bedroom, and my sister has the other bedroom). I like it because my TV serves as the living room TV and I've got the kitchen right there. What more could I want for a room? But that front door, which is actually considered the back door by the complex, since what is actually our front door, with our number on it, faces a hallway that leads to doors that open into garages also for rent by residents, needs weather stripping. I'm guessing right now, even though the manager of the complex came with the head maintenance guy last week to look over exactly what we needed adjusted and repaired, they'll run out the clock leading up to Thanksgiving and then let it sit until after Thanksgiving. Hopefully they'll address it afterward, but it's been sitting for so long. Even so, still better from all that we came from, including a bungalow in nearby Henderson, Nevada that had shoddy, stringy carpeting, black mold behind the washer and dryer, and a leaking air conditioning unit from the ceiling that not only required us to put a bucket underneath to catch the drops, but which broke down before the hottest day of the year that year, after a few times in which the shitty maintenance crew there insisted that nothing was wrong with it. It seems to me that matters of shoddy maintenance, as well as delayed maintenance, seem to only exist in the western United States. Never had that in Florida. Can't go back, though, what with hurricanes getting worse, and as a native Floridian away for so long, I've most likely lost my immunity to the humidity.

Anyway, through all of this, it took many years to realize that books, and moreso libraries, have always been my home. I seriously considered a career in aviation, first as a commercial pilot, and then an aircraft mechanic, and then a mechanic for Air Force One, before then trying journalism, which, even though I'm proud of what I did there, I left because I didn't want to live on an ulcer farm. And it was afterward that I realized how much libraries have been there for me. I started reading when I was two years old, and I particularly remember, before Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida in 1992 (we lived in Coral Springs, and only got the feeder bands, but they were fierce), worrying about not being able to return The Little Mermaid soundtrack on audio cassette to the Coral Springs Library, since they had closed right before it was due, and any fines that might accrue because of that. Fortunately, I don't think there were any after they reopened. I also remember ignoring my math homework from Broward Community College on Friday afternoons when I was in the Southwest Regional Library in Pembroke Pines, diagonally across from the then-tiny campus, in favor of looking for movies to watch on the weekend, which was how I discovered The Fabulous Baker Boys, starring Jeff Bridges, one of my favorite actors, which became one of my all-time favorite movies. In fact, since my dad dropped me off early at BCC before he went to work as a computer and business education teacher at Silver Trail Middle just down the street, I was always there before the library opened at 7 a.m. and spent my entire semester there before we moved to Southern California. Subsequently, I failed that college Algebra course and had to retake it when I registered at College of the Canyons in Valencia.

There are lots of other stories like that, and libraries have always been my one true home like that. Oftentimes, in my head, in my imagination, I go to those libraries I've loved. I spend time in the stacks at Lied Library, I walk through the Whitney Library on Tropicana in Las Vegas, proud at how they always consistently met the needs of that at times-downtrodden community, and reluctantly ignoring the awful, distracting tile flooring at the main Clark County Library on Flamingo, also in Las Vegas, to admire their paperback collection, as well as their eager interest in so many other subjects in the hope that others will be interested, too. I also look at photos on Yelp of the New York Public Library, as well as photos from inside other university libraries and imagine myself there. In each one, I feel like I'm home. It's why I like living in Ventura. The Ventura College Library is my favorite place in Ventura and between that and the holds I always have from various locations in the Ventura County library system, I'm never short of books.

All this helps me to not panic so much over all that I want to write and haven't begun yet. Those works can be a second home for me. Characters to meet and follow, ideas to expand on. Places in my imagination to explore, unusual things I've thought about that I wonder if others think about, and the only way to find out is to write them and see who reads them. It's more difficult, more challenging than simply opening up a book and reading, but I want to try. Our main computer here in this apartment doesn't feel as much in a dungeon as it was in that apartment at Via Ventura, so that's a start. Plus there's a lamp next to it and it actually becomes cozier at night. So there's some encouragement. Just try. Get up and try. And with enough effort, these stories I want to tell can come to feel like my life with books and libraries. Another place in my life to fondly call home. And I know it will never move.

Desire, Long After a Meal

As a Las Vegas resident, it was often difficult to get to absolutely everything that the city offered in food, at least that which interested me. There'd be that long stretch of summer in which practically hibernating in one's apartment with the air conditioning running 24/7 was critical, at least until 9 or 10 p.m., when you'd strategize about what to put in the cart at Smith's or Vons that wasn't so critical in refrigeration, and then try to get deli last so that it wouldn't be so affected by how warm it still was outside. Ice cream you'd have to rush home, and forget doing that during the day because it would immediately melt. It's why we never bought cans of shaving cream during the day, and then even when we were looking toward summer, we'd stockpile them so we wouldn't have to buy them as often. Otherwise, they would have exploded when bringing them from Target to the car. And in winter, sure you could stay out a little longer if you were bundled up enough, but the desert cold is still uncomfortable enough to make one laser-focus enough on what's already known. In most cases, it would be a long, pilgrimage drive to IKEA with the heater on full blast in the car.

So based on the weather in Las Vegas, and how hard it was to live there most of the time, in apartment living and in work, options were comparatively limited, but no less interesting or reliable. Vietnamese iced coffee came from the VeggiEAT Express counter in the small food court at 99 Ranch Market on Maryland Parkway, near Ross and Goodwill further down, which backed right into the Boulevard Mall on the same property. Although I've heard since we moved that VeggiEAT Xpress closed at 99 Ranch Market, I worshipped it. Every time I went there, I knew I was getting heavenly Vietnamese iced coffee and always the warning when I ordered it without ice that it would be too sweet. I didn't care! We went to 99 Ranch Market once a month, maybe twice, and I wasn't wasting the chance. I knew I could go there and it would always be excellent.

And then there was roast pork from #1 Hawaiian BBQ on Eastern Avenue, which was next to the street that was the main artery to the Walmart shopping center, next to the back of one of the runways at McCarran International. This particular Walmart was one of three options for us. There was the one on Marks Street in Henderson, a slightly sprawling shopping center, which always had the Sunset Station hotel tower in full view, as well as a 99 Cents Only store further down to the right that had more books than I've ever seen at any other 99 Cents Only store, in Santa Clarita and in Ventura. I think it was because this store, as well as the Whitney Library on Tropicana and the main Clark County Library on Flamingo, was attuned to people's needs during the summer. Being that we couldn't go out much, if at all, during those torturous hours, they knew what people might want and they supplied it. I got the sense that more people read in Henderson, even in Vegas, than they seem to here.

There was also the one on East Serene Avenue, which had a Wienerschnitzel nearby, an Office Max next door, and a Home Depot on the far right end of the property. That one was the more serious of the Walmart Supercenters in Las Vegas. It didn't loom like the one on Marks did, and in fact, I have an idea for a novel set in that one. And it didn't have the momentary distraction of planes taking off next to you at the McCarran one while you got out of your car and locked up before going inside. You simply joined the subdued herd and went in to get whatever you wanted. That was the domestic game, though. If one Walmart didn't have what you were looking for, you went to the next one, and then the next one, and always kept track of which Walmart had what, in case you didn't want to spend too much time in one.

Anyway, about the roast pork, I knew that was the ultimate for me. They did it well there and it was the only place I'd swear by for roast pork. Same with Capriotti's Sandwich Shop and their Bobbie, with turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and mayo. Once in a while, I'd drift to the Slaw Be Jo (roast beef, provolone cheese, cole slaw, Russian dressing and mayo), but 90% of the time, the Bobbie was for me. I love Jimmy John's here in Ventura because they don't show off like Jersey Mike's does, and their sandwiches are often better, but I still miss my Bobbie. However, I never want to go back to Las Vegas, for anything, so the Bobbie will remain a fond memory.

It's different in Ventura and its relatively nearby environs within the county. Take tomorrow, when I have to go to the Ventura County Community College District office in Camarillo for a test for an Office Assistant position. The office is on East Daily Drive, and about a block or two from it is an intimate strip mall that contains Basil & Mint Vietnamese Cafe. Now, when we moved to Ventura, I swore by the Vietnamese iced coffee at Pholicious, which has since been renamed Pho & Tea, in the food court at the Pacific View Mall. But the first time I had to go to that district office for a test for another job I didn't get, we discovered that strip mall, that Vietnamese restaurant, and I was curious. Could they possibly have Vietnamese iced coffee? And what was it like?

As it turns out, if I must compare Vietnamese iced coffees between the present and the past, the iced coffee at Basil & Mint is worlds better than the iced coffee at the VeggiEAT Xpress counter at 99 Ranch. After the second or third time, I learned from my favorite waiter there that they make the iced coffee every morning, using Cafe du Monde coffee from New Orleans and condensed milk of course, and it's the coffee that makes it because of the chicory. Now, I could buy the coffee and the condensed milk and try to make it myself, but I prefer to anticipate it. I don't need it all the time, and I know, having been to Basil & Mint four times, that there is absolutely no chance I could be disappointed by it in the future because the owner of the restaurant is entrenched in Camarillo, as his cousin owns Bigstraw Boba on Verdugo Way, in that leafy shopping center, near the Old New York Deli & Bakery. And there, at Basil & Mint, I always get a Vietnamese iced coffee right when I arrive, and then another, to go, on the way out. That's my tradition there.

I also think about the sandwich I had from Westridge Market in Ojai a few weeks ago, when my mom, my sister and I went up there for the day. It was a baguette sandwich, from Boars Head, an Italian sub, as they called it, with Genoa salami, pepperoni, capocollo, lettuce, tomato, their deli dressing, red onion, and provolone cheese. I'm not into Italian subs, and I only try a bit if someone else in my family gets it, but this was the most perfect sandwich I had ever had. I didn't know much about baguettes before this, but I think it is the perfect sandwich bread because it requires the sandwich maker to be subtle, not to overload it, to offer flavors not often considered, and to meet the demands of the bread. It all has to work together and not spring apart because there's too much between the baguette slices.

I won't ever forget that sandwich and I'll hope to have it again the next time we go to Ojai, if we don't end up at Ojai Pizza Company again, or even Bonnie Lu's, a country cafe that has pico de gallo that I swear was made by fairies. I've never tasted other pico de gallo so fresh like theirs is. That sandwich taught me that it's not enough to simply make a sandwich. You have to think about the bread and you have to think about the ingredients you want to combine. My other favorite breads for a sandwich is straight rye and marble rye. I can't imagine any other kinds for a sandwich and the only time I make an exception is for a standard peanut butter and jelly sandwich with whatever bread we have in the house, which is usually wheat bread. But even with that simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich, that baguette sandwich still looms in my memory.

I know it's the consistent weather here that allows for such ongoing desire to have what one loves in food. The second best Vietnamese iced coffee, to me, is at Boba Smoothies in what they call the Rose Shopping Center on North Rose Avenue in Oxnard, that strip of stores facing, yes, a Walmart. In fact, we go to that Walmart because our own, much smaller Walmart, doesn't have everything we need, although our own Walmart is still our go-to for disposable razors, toilet paper and paper towels, and I hope they stock Producers Egg Nog this year, although they don't stock much else of the Producers brand anymore, which is still around. It helps that we have it across the street from us, along with Trader Joe's, and our apartment complex is located directly behind the Ralphs supermarket.

That particular Vietnamese iced coffee from Boba Smoothies is sharp and involving like Vietnamese iced coffee should be, whereas the one at Pho & Tea in the Pacific View Mall is sometimes drowned out by the condensed milk they overuse. Even at the Pho & Tea at The Oaks mall in Thousand Oaks, where the prices are higher, there's still the risk of getting the same kind of Vietnamese iced coffee as at the Pacific View Mall, namely because the same company owns both malls, and it's the same owner for both locations.

There's a contrast to all this, of course. Last night, we had takeout wings from Wing Stop, and I decided on an order split between their Louisiana Rub and garlic Parmesan, instead of all garlic Parmesan like I usually get. I'm not fond of Wing Stop. It gets boring and the only reason I got a different order than usual was just to see what the Louisiana Rub was like nowadays. Not out of genuine curiosity, but just something different to look at and get it over with. After I finished, it all disappeared from my mind. No further thoughts like the Boar's Head baguette sandwich from Westridge Market in Ojai, no anticipation for it again like the Vietnamese iced coffee from Basil & Mint. Wings don't interest me much, which is probably it. Give me pork, give me turkey. In fact, with turkey, it always interests me how different places roast it, what they use. We don't cook a whole turkey for Thanksgiving. We generally order a roasted turkey breast and it looks like this time it will be from Sprouts, provided my father orders it by the end of the week, which is what he wants, but man, we're getting down to the wire on that. Even so, I never get tired of turkey because of the different ways that I can find it. And I think I know why all this continually fascinates me.

I never knew who made the Vietnamese iced coffee at VeggiEAT Express at 99 Ranch Market, since it was always already in containers in that glass door refrigerator on the wall behind the register. It had likely been a while since we'd been there and I just wanted it. With the roast pork at #1 Hawaiian BBQ, I sometimes thought about when they might have put it in the oven to roast, what might have been done to it beforehand, but that was it. Once I got my order, I didn't care any more about the methods to my dear madness.

Here, I know. I can imagine them making the Vietnamese iced coffee at Basil & Mint after the waiter told me all about it. I can imagine the care that went into it, because I can taste it. I don't know who made the Italian sub that I bought at Westridge Market, but it's clear that they love sandwiches. In fact, that sandwich is what shifted my list of my favorite foods. My top two are quesadillas and nachos. My third used to be Fettucine Alfredo, but that one sandwich is what put sandwiches at #3, knocking Fettucine Alfredo to #4, if I even still go for it. I know it was also the setting at Westridge, when we found a table nestled behind a sharp "U" shape of bushes outside the store, that looked out at those majestic Ojai mountains that always make me think, "Who the hell needs TV?" For that lunch with my mom and my sister, there was also deviled eggs and orange milk that Meridith had wanted to try from a glass bottle in that refrigerated section. She and my mom had had sushi, but all that mattered to me was that sandwich.

Here, within food, it's also the people. Here are people in Ventura County who care. In Camarillo, the rest of the Basil & Mint Cafe menu, besides the Vietnamese iced coffee, is phenomenal. I love their sandwiches there, especially their pork offering, and I can sense the dedication from the kitchen, the pride in their work. Here in Ventura, there are good people. The ones at Jimmy John's are not only fast, but they know exactly what's wanted in each sandwich. They must glance at that order receipt right away and then commit it to memory in a split second.

Oh, and CJ's Barbecue in this Ralphs shopping center! I nearly forgot about the rib tips and the black-eyed peas there! Pork rib tips, which was already a plus with me, and they do some magic to those, too, but it's clear that whoever does it has been fascinated and completely in love with barbecue for years. And their deep, rich, salty flavoring for their black-eye peas makes it my favorite side.

See, we're not a demonstrative town. We won't hype anything up like Los Angeles hypes things up all the time, from movie premieres, to expensive Apple store openings, to whatever else requires media coverage. You have to look for what might interest you and then decide, on your own, what's worth your time. There are no outside influences, and that's what I like here. And when you find it, you hold onto it. I don't know who actually makes the ham and cheese croissants, for another example, that Master's Donuts sells across the street from me, but they're the best I've had in Ventura County. If it's actually the ones who run the store, more power to them. I'm not entirely sure because when we ordered one of their enormous donuts in order to thank the movers that we had on the morning we moved from Via Ventura to Island View Apartments, behind Ralphs, it was a croissant box that looked like a shipment box, from somewhere deeper in Southern California. So maybe they do order the ham and cheese croissants to sell in the shop. Even so, they know quality. They're aware of what's wonderful, what would raise their profile even more than it already is.

It's also like Luna Grill, which is in the Vons shopping center, which I worshipped when we lived nearby at Via Ventura. I haven't been there in a long time since there's been other, closer (and not so close) distractions, but besides their gyros quesadilla being one of the best quesadillas I've ever had, they have baklava wedges that I swore by. In that small kitchen, though, they definitely don't make those. They come from Baklava King in Santee, in San Diego County. And this is another example of people here caring, of wanting what matches the quality of what they already serve. Someone probably fielded offers from different bakeries that make baklava, and decided which one would be best for Luna Grill. And it is indeed as if they made it themselves.

It'll be the same with Thanksgiving. Yes, we're likely having the roasted turkey breast from Sprouts, and the cornbread stuffing from the Trader Joe's box, and the cranberry sauce from the Trader Joe's jar (the best I've had in so long), and probably green bean casserole and the usual candied yams, as well as pumpkin pie, wherever that might be coming from (I haven't decided yet, although I did like the pumpkin pie we got last year from Vallarta Supermarket in Oxnard, which came from the Jessie Lord Bakery in Torrance, but I might want to try a different one), and very possibly apple pie, too. But I will still read up on how others are celebrating Thanksgiving, what they like, because there is always an interesting combination of flavors to be found in any Thanksgiving feast and actually, despite quesadillas, nachos, and sandwiches being my favorite foods, my favorite meal is a Thanksgiving feast. Not even an hour and a half at Golden Corral (which had its grand opening in Oxnard today, so we'll be going soon) can top that. And there again, I wonder about all those who make this possible. The knowledge. The passion. The care. That's what it means here in Ventura, and I'm glad to have it.

Trial and Error at Ventura Harbor Village

Two weeks ago, my father and I went downstairs to the elections department in the lower plaza of the Ventura County Government Center in Ventura (conveniently down the street from where we live) so he could register to permanently vote by mail.

While we waited for his application to be processed, I got to talking again with the delightful bearded guy behind the counter and the subject came around to Ojai, where he had grown up. I told him that whenever we went to Ojai, namely my mom, my sister and I lately, we always go to Ojai Pizza Company, which my mom loves for the pizza and which I love for their iced tea, which comes from Peerless Coffee & Tea in Oakland. I love the Ojai Library for its wood-paneled reading room atmosphere, and that iced tea matches the atmosphere, although I can't bring it there because they don't allow it in there, or any other food or drink. But while I do drink it, I imagine myself in the library in it, no matter if we're in Ojai Pizza Company or eating at the beautiful park nearby.

The elections guy told me that his favorite thing at Ojai Pizza Company is a calzone with pepperoni, pineapple and extra black olives. It appealed to me because I love calzones, empanadas, any foodstuff that's enclosed. Even McDonald's apple pie once in a great while. Then I raved to him about the pico de gallo that comes with the quesadilla and possibly more at Bonnie Lu's Country Cafe, also in Ojai, about how that pico de gallo is not only the freshest I've ever tasted, but it had to have been made by some means of a magical alchemy or by fairies themselves in the kitchen. There's no other explanation for how spiritually incredible that pico de gallo is, and obviously I've never forgotten it.

But even as we talked about that pico de gallo, and how he told me, shockingly, that he's never had it, I was thinking about his calzone recommendation. We haven't been to Ojai Pizza Company, or even Ojai itself, since before the sheer fright of the Thomas Fire that also bore down on Ojai. We figured to let time pass after the fire for everything to get back to normal in Ojai, including the water supply (for my iced tea), before we ventured back there. But life got in the way. Me and my sister's constant job hunting. My father ending up in the hospital again owing to a kidney infection and a severely low white blood cell count. Him gradually recovering from that eight-day stay and getting back on chemotherapy. More job hunting. Looking to live somewhere else in Ventura, namely the apartments behind Ralphs. Us exploring in full what might be available there and eventually finding the unit that's right for us, with about 30 square feet more than our current apartment, and slightly more space to work with, including more walls than we imagined, which means more spots to hang pictures, based on the mirror-image apartment we walked through on the second floor of the building across from our new apartment, which showed us what we will have. The apartment complex is still under construction, with so many interiors still to be done, but ours should be ready by mid-July.

So much to do. So little time to return to our favorite haunts, including the Oaks mall in Thousand Oaks, which I consider the best mall in Southern California. But we want to try as soon as possible before things get really busy, before we move again, before we essentially start living a new life in which Mom has said that the only reason she'll move again is to the beach if we ever have that opportunity, most likely by winning the lottery. Otherwise, this is the place, not least because it's her castle, as she said, along with an apartment number that matches her birthday, the first time the number of an apartment is for her. It's always been for the rest of us.

Thus, at that counter, I thought about that calzone. It appealed to me since I love black olives, any kind of olives really, a genetic gift from my mother. I could go for that at Ojai Pizza Company. Or maybe not. We haven't been to Ojai since last October or November. It will be easy to cover ground at the Ojai Library again since I'll look at the new releases, which are better than what the E.P. Foster Library in downtown Ventura offers, and certainly better than what my local Hill Road Library has. I'll look at the expansive back wall of novels since there's always something there that pops out to me. But a pepperoni, pineapple, and black olive calzone? I've tried the pizza at Ojai Pizza Company, but I've grown attached to the vegetarian sandwich they have there, which is zucchini, mushroom, red onion, roasted bell pepper, black olive, and tomato. I don't ask for any extras. I love it just the way it is. So would it be worth trying that calzone, risking it being just ok, despite my love of calzones? Probably not, because of how long it's been since we were there. If we go to Ojai soon, and then again before the end of the year, then maybe I'll try the calzone. That would be the better plan.

It was the same at Ventura Harbor Village yesterday. The trial the past two times we were there is that the arcade hadn't fixed my beloved Galaga machine, only beloved because Galaga's on it, not necessarily the machine itself. The second-to-last time we were there, the image was all stretched out, and I couldn't even see the ship to determine where I was at the bottom of the screen, to try to dodge the aliens' weapons. I could see what I fired, but I was moving left to right and right to left blindly. Then the last time we went, the machine was off, out of order, and I left a note on an index card on the machine, from the perspective of the aliens and the fighter, imploring the arcade to fix it because, "Have you seen Wreck-It Ralph? Do you know what happens to arcade games that are out of order and are then not fixed? Help us!"

After eating at Andria's Seafood Restaurant, which my mom loves for their homemade tartar sauce and cocktail sauce (it was my parents' 36th wedding anniversary and Mom saw that as the best place to celebrate. She was right), Meridith and I stopped at the arcade on the way to Coastal Cone for ice cream to see if the Galaga machine was fixed. It was fixed as best as could be. I could see the fighter, although where you look to see how many lives you have left, you could only see the tip of the nose of the fighter. If this was the arcade at Sam's Town in Las Vegas, or at Sunset Station in Henderson, or the arcade at The Orleans in Vegas, I would have complained. But this is Ventura, a small town. I'm grateful just to have a working machine, although I haven't been back to Golf 'n Stuff on Walker Street near where we live lately to see if that Galaga machine is still there. Those are the only two that I know I have. That's good enough for me. But I need to know that they're working, that they're still there. And this one was, though I didn't go for it right away, not only because we were going to have ice cream, but I found three credits someone had left in the Pirates of the Caribbean pinball machine, and I wasn't going to give up that opportunity.

The errors came with what I had at Andria's and at Coastal Cone. I didn't have to think long and hard about what I was going to have at Andria's. Clam chowder. I love clam chowder and Andria's clam chowder is nice enough. Having fresh clams in it makes a wonderful difference of course. But the error in this latest visit was that I ordered a piece of Andria's fish, which they don't list specifically as they do their cod and halibut. The fish was fine, but it turns out I didn't need a piece of fried fish alongside my clam chowder. The clam chowder had been enough, and Meridith shared some of her fries with me. She likes their fries there, since she can dip them in tartar sauce to block out some of the potato taste (she doesn't like potatoes, but there are certain kinds of fries she likes), but gives me the more mealy ones. Of course, there are potatoes too in the chowder, but to me, the fries at Andria's are the best in Ventura, just like the fries at Raising Cane's were, and most likely still are, the best in the Las Vegas Valley. Next time, it's just clam chowder for me and if Meridith happens to order anything with fries again (this time it was calamari and it was much better calamari than the last time we went), I'll have a few. I don't need a big piece of fried fish alongside the sanctity of Andria's clam chowder.

Then there was the error at Coastal Cone. I had been looking at their menu online the two nights before we went, wondering what to order. On May 31st, we had gone to Baskin-Robbins in the 99 Cents Only shopping center on South Victoria for their $1.50 scoops, which they do every 31st in a month. I had a scoop of butter pecan there, and a scoop of Mom's Makin' Cookies, which turned out to be one of their best flavors. Brown sugar-flavored ice cream, chocolate chip cookie pieces, chocolate flavored chips and a cookie dough batter ribbon. The butter pecan there? I forgot how utterly bland it was and was forcefully reminded this time. I needed butter pecan back, especially the Thrifty version that's offered at Coastal Cone. To me, that's the best one.

But then I saw on the menu on Coastal Cone's website that they had a 1950's Malt, which is vanilla ice cream, double malted milk, and Hershey's syrup. I love malts, and this sounded perfect. But vanilla? With how infrequently we visit Coastal Cone, I wasn't going to waste $8.50 on vanilla (the prices went up at Coastal Cone and at Andria's, likely because whoever owns the Ventura Harbor Village property raised the rents). And I've also returned to my love of brownies (not excessively, since I'm losing weight pretty well right now, not least because of all the stress I've been going through in the past year and a half, and Dad's latest hospital stay helped me drop a few pounds immediately), so there was also a chocolate walnut brownie ice cream flavor there. Perfect! I'd get more of a texture of something despite ice cream being blended into an almost-liquid. Some blended-up walnuts, brownie pieces. It sounded good! Yes!

Of course it sounds good before you have it. The ice cream itself is good, when it's ice cream. And I got my malt, a double scoop, but walnut pieces kept getting stuck at the tip of the straw along with fake-tasting brownie pieces as it turned out, and I realized I had squandered my chance at Coastal Cone. I should have gotten two scoops of butter pecan in a cup (I'm not one for cones, unless the cone is something really special, and their fish-shaped waffle cones are smaller in person than they're shown online), and I would have been very happy with that.

I've tried butter pecan in a malt at Coastal Cone before, and for me, it just doesn't work. I need the texture of the ice cream and the pecans located prominently throughout. If it was any other ice cream place, say somewhere in L.A. that basically requires a two-day drive from Ventura (everything is further away here than it was in Santa Clarita, and if we have to make such a drive, then I want the Getty Center or Philippe's French dip sandwiches in downtown L.A., or Langer's Deli well before some ice cream place), then I'll try a malt again at one of those places since I don't care about the ice cream as much as I do at Coastal Cone and also at Ojai Ice Cream, where those ice creams are homemade.

Next time, it's only clam chowder at Andria's and only butter pecan ice cream at Coastal Cone. Galaga works, thankfully, and after Coastal Cone, I played it four times. I know that every kind of ideal one seeks is a process of trial and error. And I have it down at Pho & Tea at the Pacific View Mall, where I always get Vietnamese iced coffee and their pork sausage spring rolls. Next time, I might venture toward a Vietnamese grilled pork sandwich, but I know already that it's good, since I had it when I was first experimenting there, back when it was called Pholicious, when I was looking for what was right for me, besides the Vietnamese iced coffee, which I know is always right, and which is the only coffee I ever drink, to the exclusion of all other coffees. I suppose it's a good record, though, being that I've nearly hit upon what's right for me at Andria's within two years (the year before we moved, and nearly a year that we've lived here in Ventura) and at Coastal Cone. In this town, in this region, it's accessibility, based on how often you get to each place. In Vegas, it was easy. 99 Ranch Market on South Maryland Parkway was almost right there, for my Vietnamese iced coffee, and #1 Hawaiian Barbecue on the outskirts of the Walmart shopping center at the back of McCarran International on South East Avenue was almost right there, for my roast pork, and they could always be had. Here, you take time. You really think about things. After the interesting distractions to be had in Santa Clarita and moreso outside of it, and in Las Vegas, Ventura strips your life down to the bare essentials, and it's scary at times. But here, you really do figure out what matters and what to do next and where to go next. At this point in my life, it feels right, knowing what truly matters while looking for my place here.

Tuesdays in Limbo

If you ever visit Ventura, arrive on two different days, for contrast.

I recommend mid-Friday afternoon, to start, because as the day goes on, the town gradually unwinds. By the time you get to 6 p.m. on, before the town begins to close down, there's an unhurried vibe that's especially lovely downtown amidst the restaurants, such as Dargan's Irish Pub and Restaurant, as well as the antique shops and the consignment stores, and certainly the bookstores, too, especially the Calico Cat Bookshop, which you should try before it closes at 5. It's nice just walking down Main Street, to California Street, where the Erle Stanley Gardner building stands stately on the corner. This is where Gardner hashed out the first few drafts for his first Perry Mason novel. Stand here at dusk, looking up at the building, and you feel a sense of history that lingers, which seems rare in Southern California. But it's here for you to look at, to think about, and not just by the plaque next to the side door of that giant concrete dignity.

The same feeling is almost as prevalent at the Pacific View Mall, particularly in the food court. It feels muted, almost defeated, but there's a kind of quiet you'd be hard-pressed to find in very many other malls. Macerich, which also owns The Oaks mall in Thousand Oaks, which I consider the best mall in Southern California, seems to leave the Pacific View's second floor to the ravages of time, what with how they don't seem to make an effort to attract new tenants to empty storefronts up there. The Oaks has The Open Book, my favorite bookstore in this region, and for that reason, I was given a $25 gift card to it as one of my recent birthday presents. The Pacific View Mall could use a bookstore, too, because inasmuch as there is the beach in Ventura, and downtown Ventura with various interesting shops (and window displays! I love living in a town whose downtown area has window displays!), and Ventura Harbor with its attached Village, it doesn't take long to cover everything Ventura offers. I like having it that way, without the constant rush and hype of Greater Los Angeles. I lived with the tumult of Las Vegas for five years, and before that, nine years of living 30 minutes north of Los Angeles in Santa Clarita. While there were visits to Anaheim and Pasadena and Buena Park and Van Nuys and Woodland Hills and so on from that, I always flitted between towns. In here and then gone. To IKEA and then gone. To Downtown Disney and then gone. I never knew those towns for themselves, although Buena Park with its heavy ghosts of history continues to fascinate me, and I've recently become interested in Burbank, after going back to my palace temple that is Porto's Cuban Bakery after five years away. Not to live there, or in Buena Park, but just what it is. For example, I had no idea that Warner Bros. Studios is just down the street from Porto's, at least not until this visit. I thought it was further out.

Every night, Ventura gives you space to think, to plan, to possibly even relax. I've never lived in any town before that allows it. But while it's a stringent space of time any other day of the week, Friday nights just gently unravel to whatever you want to do. You could even get the same feeling browsing the magazine racks at the Barnes & Noble on Telephone Road. Even just walking around Ventura Harbor Village before getting ice cream at Coastal Cone has the same effect.

On the flip side, there's Tuesdays in Ventura. Markedly different from Tuesdays with Morrie, in that Morrie was more alive than Ventura is on a Tuesday. This is actually more fascinating to me than Friday nights in Ventura. There is nothing in Ventura on a Friday, and by that I mean that Ventura on a Tuesday is the physical manifestation of being in Limbo. This is where you go if you want a preview of what that might be like, if your religion insists that Limbo is part of the afterlife.

The town is a total blank. There is absolutely no energy you can sense from the cars driving on Telephone, not in Ralphs, not in Walmart, not at the harbor, not at the mall, nowhere! I think of the ghosts that burst through the windows at the ceiling during "Once Upon a December" in the animated Anastasia, but without the dresses or anything else colorful. And this lasts all day! I don't know if this is the town's day for regrouping, but you could go from one end of it to the other and then on to State Route 126 to Santa Clarita without having a sense of what Ventura is.

Maybe it's the town's way of insisting that residents and visitors alike take this one day to add their own spark to the town, to see that spark for themselves, unencumbered by what the town usually offers. You know, do your own thing, find your own bliss, and don't let us bother you. I like that possibility, but it gets disconcerting for those of us who live here. It feels like a possible Twilight Zone episode in which the town disappears beneath your feet.

Ok, so I've gone on and on about that, but Ventura is reliable in that when Wednesday hits, it's back to business as usual. It rises again and covers everything. But I know why this consumes me. Adding to what I mentioned above about flitting in between towns, I've never known one town on its own terms. I've used a town, a city, for the resources it has for what I need, but I've never thought about it on its own. Never any reason to. But here I am, away from the noise of bigger cities, the demands, those expensive experiences that you must have that only benefit those who are selling them. I have my libraries, especially my beloved Ventura College library, and I know where to find my equally beloved Vietnamese iced coffee. That's all I need. And it's new to me to slow down like this, but I think I can get used to it.

The Library for Wandering

I have here two lists, written on ramen noodle sticky notes (yes, really. I got them for cheap at the Box Lunch store at The Oaks mall in Thousand Oaks). One is of three books I had intended to check out from the Ventura College library when I go there next, such as another academic analysis of Don Quixote titled Don Quixote: The Knight of La Mancha, and Peanuts and Philosophy, part of the publisher Open Court's series of pop culture and philosophy books.

The other list takes up three and a quarter ramen sticky notes, and are other pop culture and philosophy titles from the same publisher available at the college library that I thought I might also be interested in, such as The Princess Bride and Philosophy, Monty Python and Philosophy, Facebook and Philosophy, and 12 others.

I realized that this is all wrong.

I checked out Futurama and Philosophy from that list, and couldn't get through it. Some of the essays were thin as it is, but I realized that this isn't the way I want to learn about various approaches to philosophy. I already have a stringent, though wide-ranging, list of books I want to read from the Ventura County public libraries. They're all holds that I pick up at the Hill Road Library, which is convenient for that, but not so much for browsing. I'd do that at the E.P. Foster library downtown, but despite being curious about their separate science fiction section, I haven't been there for a while because I know what I want to read at the moment.

In my pursuit of science fiction, I thought I'd simply look it up in the Ventura College library catalog and go page by page, checking out every single book over time that has even the slightest whiff of science fiction. The first one was The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, apparently an enormous presence in Chinese science fiction.

Huge mistake.

I can't dive in like this. I need to start small. I need short stories. I need anthologies. I need to find out what within science fiction interests me and pursue that, while occasionally stopping in for those that don't quite interest me, but might still be worth a read. I can't be going into (currently) heavy novels like that one and just expect to fall in easily. I need time to know what feels right for me. And I have two anthologies, one that I bought from The Open Book at The Oaks mall, and the other Infinite Stars, an anthology of space opera and military science fiction that I checked out from the Hill Road Library, a copy sent to me from the Ojai Library. I'll start with those, finish the latest issue of Asimov's that I bought at Ralph's last month, and go from there.

Being that my Ventura County library stacks are already well-planned, I shouldn't be doing the same at the Ventura College library. I need at least one library that I can simply wander, and I should be taking advantage of this particular library being open again for a new semester, open to me. Yet, I did notice that there's a science fiction and fantasy essay collection from Ursula K. Le Guin called The Language of the Night in the college library that I want to seek out. And in the philosophy realm, I have been curious about Epicurus for a long time, and the college also has a few books about him. That's where I should be going.

But as to the other three slots available on my card, I need to feel free. Just take it all in. Examine the stacks closely. Find out what I spark to that I may never have considered before. Yes, I want to read Robert A. Caro's epic biography series about Lyndon Baines Johnson, and I know that the college library has all the volumes available. I bought the first volume from Calico Cat Books before I was able to get a college library card, so I need to read that first. So maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to start on those soon enough. But I should be going in again without a plan, like it was the first time after I had plucked The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See off the top of the Leisure Reading stacks, after waiting for months to read it (I had it on hold at the Henderson Libraries, and then we moved). I had no idea what the rest of the library contained, no idea what else I wanted to read, and I simply wandered. I need to do more of that. This is one library that requires that kind of time, to tour my mind through these stacks and just be. Just let go and be carried by the books.

Besides, this is the first time anywhere that I've lived that I've had access to a college library. Despite my feverish love for the formidable Lied Library at UNLV, we didn't live near enough to it to go all that often, and in fact, we didn't. The usual traffic from Henderson to Maryland Parkway, plus the seemingly permanent construction zones along the drive, as well as the campus charging for visitor parking, didn't make it worth it. This one just takes a short bus ride. That's it. And once off the bus, you face the library building dead on. Pure convenience.

It's time to start truly living in these stacks. I can't wait to feel at home again by this.

Sondheim Through Time

On Sunday, January 26, 2014, my family and I, two years into living in Las Vegas, with three years to go, went to the Stratosphere for free admission to the Stratosphere Tower, being offered to Nevada residents for that day. We had gotten there in the early afternoon, bypassing the long, snaking line of tourists waiting to pay to get in, with the intent of staying at least through the early evening, to see a Las Vegas sunset from that vantage point and how everything begins to come alive from that point. Knowing that, I decided to bring along the biography Stephen Sondheim: A Life by Meryle Secrest, writing about one of my heroes.

Today is Sunday, January 14, 2018, 12 days shy of it being four years since I started reading that biography (I remember this because my Goodreads account, on my Currently Reading shelf, still has the listing for that biography all the way on the bottom, with that date, the oldest listing I have on that shelf). Not that the biography was bad from where I stopped (All told, I read about 30 pages while we were in the Stratosphere Tower, distracted by the 360-degree view), but since then, it's been for lack of trying, distracted by other books, wanting to stretch out what I don't know yet about Sondheim, watching Six by Sondheim countless times, as well as DVDs of two productions of Company, the original staging of Into the Woods as well as the movie, Sondheim: The Birthday Concert and a few others. It's a lot more fun to see his work in action, which has been the distraction. But still, I want to know how he came up with all those musical treasures. I've given this long weekend over to reading about some of my favorite people, and books by some of my favorite people: Phil Collins, through his memoir Not Dead Yet; this Sondheim biography (I have Sondheim's own two books, Finishing the Hat and Look, I Made a Hat, and I might delve into those afterward), Armistead Maupin's memoir Logical Family, and possibly The Autobiography of Jean-Luc Picard by David A. Goodman and Uncommon Type: Some Stories, Tom Hanks' first book, all short stories centered on typewriters.

This particular Sunday is time travel in memory at its most head-snapping. I spent a good chunk of the afternoon today finishing Not Dead Yet on the patio of our apartment here in Ventura, in unseasonably warm weather. On weekends, when we're not out, Dad tends to watch marathons of The Golden Girls and while a great deal of it is well-written, I get sick of hearing it all the time. So to the patio I went, unfolding the sole brown lawn chair we have out there.

And yet, on that Sunday in 2014, I had a jacket on, even inside the tower because we were planning to go outside, to where some of the tower's main attractions were, namely Insanity, which dangles riders out over the Strip while furiously spinning around, and X-Scream, which plummets riders to the edge of its tiny track, and then rises up and pushes them back, doing it a few times. Next to the exit of Insanity is the best view of some of the rundown apartment buildings surrounding the tower. By that time, we had moved twice already, from the Valley Vista All-Age Mobile Home Park on Cabana Drive in Las Vegas, to the Pacific Islands Apartment complex in Henderson, all the way in the back, blessedly removed from traffic noise, but cursed by heavy smokers in the apartments above us and next to us, which seeped into our apartment. The complex did nothing about it because "everyone has the right to do whatever they want to do in their own apartment." However, after the remodels they did of the apartments as they became vacant, which surely cost them a pretty penny, I wonder how they feel about that now.

I started reading Stephen Sondheim: A Life when we had found seats in front of one section of this view, in the distance the screams of those bungee-jumping from the top of the tower (we got near to that area, too, and watched the process over and over and over. The ones who set up those were jumping were impressively precise. This wasn't a careless, cigar smoke-filled attraction. There were real lives involved in this and those employees were aware).

The view was overlooking Dad's school then, Fremont Middle, and this is where we would be for a while. Because of the offer, and the visitors in that long line coming up here, the tower was crowded, so you get seats where you can find them. And this was good enough. I was paying attention to what I was reading about Sondheim's childhood, about the indeed separate lives of his parents, but not as attentive as a fawning fan should be. Of course, it was the view, one that's impossible to see anywhere else like this in Las Vegas. I didn't imagine myself as Godzilla, stomping all over the city. I hadn't gotten to that point yet, when living in that valley became harder. I was just amazed at how far the concrete horizon spread. It didn't feel as crowded as Los Angeles looks from a similar height, but it was insistent. Bring in the tourists, let them leave, but try to pen in at least some of the residents because a great deal of them will still get away. As it was for us.

This Sunday, in 2018, I began rereading the beginning of the biography on our first patio, on the left side of our apartment (the one on the right side of our apartment gets too dirty too quickly, with pigeon feathers from those nesting in the crevices that the roof line of these apartments offers, as well as the pigeon shit that falls onto the patio from up there. This complex is none too quick to try to rectify the apparent health problem that could result from that), a corner view that faces part of Telephone Road, as well as a view of those walking on the sidewalk across the street, in front of the Peppertree Condominiums. When the temperature is as warm as it was today, and the wind is wispy and just a little bit talkative, it's perfect. Yesterday had the best weather we've had in five months of living here, and today was just a bonus.

It's quite a distance from trying to grab seats wherever they became available in the Stratosphere Tower. This town is much quieter than Las Vegas could ever hope to be in certain parts, so besides why I started the Sondheim biography this weekend, it's also the perfect atmosphere for it. I can concentrate here. I'm not distracted by any such view, nor any potentially drunken souls (none of that either where I live), nor any constant clamor to buy souvenirs (I had my fair share even while living in Las Vegas. I had two t-shirts listing the names of all the casinos on and off the Strip, myriad sets of playing cards, and I still have my Cosmopolitan t-shirt from before the faceless new owner, the Blackstone Group, killed off its confident, artsy spirit). Sure, walking around the inside floor of the Tower and outside where those rides are is not exactly the best place to be reading a significant biography of Sondheim. I know that. But for that many hours, usually seeing what there is to see in less than an hour and then picking out what I like the most to spend more time with, it just seemed reasonable to bring a book in case there was a stretch of time that I wanted to say that I had read a little something in the Stratosphere Tower. I might well have been the first person to bring a book there, knowing the tourist value of the place. That always worked better at Siegfried & Roy's Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat at the Mirage, where it became my tradition to bring Paper Towns by John Green with me to read (I wasn't as into the place as Meridith was because of the dolphins, but I loved that relaxed atmosphere that encouraged visitors to sit a while if they wanted and worry about nothing), but here, why not have the chance to sit in front of one of the windows offering that expansive view, read for a bit, and have that view to look at for a while. I think it could elevate a great many novels.

I know that's not what Las Vegas is for, for pretty much everyone who comes to visit. In fact, it's not even what it's for for most of those residents. But for me, it was just to have a moment of artistic accomplishment in front of me in the way of that biography, to read about how someone else did it. I don't have the same ambitions as Sondheim, although I do want to write a few plays, but my admiration for him is boundless.

And here, in Ventura, it feels like a universe away from Las Vegas, and that's how I like it. There's more time in this town to simply be, to explore whatever you feel like in books, in being on the beach, in strolling downtown, whatever you can think of. Vegas always threw everything at you, all at once. It wasn't as frenetic as Los Angeles, but if it wasn't work you were worrying about, it was the weather (it was frigid that January, hence the jacket), or when to go food shopping (especially in the summer at 110 degrees, when you had to go as late into the night as possible so the milk would last until you could get it home), or the cigarette-smoking neighbors on their patio whose smoke always drifted right to where you could walk out into the rest of the neighborhood, and so much else. This town is better for the rest of Sondheim. I can read about his life more seriously here.

Perhaps one of the reasons I hadn't read much of the Sondheim biography that Sunday in 2014 is because it was the one time in what became five years in Las Vegas that the city felt completely calm to me. I could look at it from above and feel like maybe, just maybe, I could manage to live here. Of course, that was before the cigarette smoke in our apartment got worse, and before we moved a few more times within Henderson. But for that one day, it was possible, although I do think it was the first time I had seen any city from such a height, 1,149 feet up. It even made Las Vegas seem reasonable. Seem. The reality never matches it. It's at least better here.

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.

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.

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.