Wooed in the Supermarket

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Allen Ginsberg.

I hear the supermarket's a good place to get a date. In Vons this afternoon, I fell in love with a gorgeous eggplant, and just had to ask it to come back to my place. Luckily, the eggplant agreed.

I have no idea what I’ll make with it—probably parmesan—but not today. I want to admire it for a few more days, in much the same way Rosie O’Donnell once said she wanted to hire Tom Cruise to do work around her house, just for the show.

Summer fruit looks to be all done for this season. The trays that had held lofty pyramids of white nectarines and massive peaches the last few months have been replaced with apples. Don’t get me wrong, I love apples—I really do—but it was mid-eighties today. Those apples must’ve been flown in from below the equator. Summer can’t be over yet, can it? Bryan and I haven’t grilled enough dinners. We need more Saturdays in the backyard with Time magazine and glasses of cranberry juice. I want to take Louie on more nighttime walks, and feel the just-cooling air on my skin. In college, a roommate and I used to run through the campus sprinklers behind our apartment on late nights that were still nearly eighty degrees. Can I do this in our complex?

But the last few mornings have been so foggy it’s almost mist. It clears, but soon it will be clearing later and later in the morning. By the time May gray comes around—with the next summer hiding behind a tight corner—I will be thirty-one. Is that too old to run through sprinklers? What peaches and what penumbras!

"In-N-Out Burger" by Stacy Perman

I love working at Miramar College. The students are engaging, the staff is supportive, and there's an In-N-Out down the street.

This book is a look at the history of a family-run company that has historically been extremely tight-lipped about their goings-on. And the history is the stuff of a family saga filled with jealousy, money, drugs, heaps of lawsuits, and some fanatical Christianity for good measure. The Mondavis have nothing on the Snyders.

But this is also a book about a company that has never wavered on "quality, cleanliness, and service." And they pay their employees respectable wages.

At writing conferences, speakers often talk about the primary goal of a story is to keep its reader turning the pages. This book, with its many plot twists and turns, kept me reading and thinking "Just one more chapter and then I'll stop. Just one more chapter. Just one more..."

Lights Out

Today, my electricity went out. Whereby I mean my library card expired.

I couldn't log in to my library account, and it was like I was suddenly left without power, water, or some other equally crucial utility. Like my DVR.

This had happened a few years ago, and I just had to go to the library, show proof of residency, and my card was reactivated. Before this, I hadn't known that library cards actually expired.

Here are a few other things you might not know about libraries.

With a San Diego city library card, you can go to ANY branch library and check out books. I got this question a lot during my thirty-six-in-sixty-six. "Doesn't your hand get tired from filling out all those card applications?"

And once you check out a book from any branch, you can likewise return the book to any branch.

I'd always admired the Del Mar library from afar, lamenting the fact that it wasn't part of the city of San Diego. But then I got an email one day from Chula Vista's head librarian, who told me that, with proof of California Residency, I can get a Chula Vista library card for free (out of staters can check out books, too, they just have to fork over a mere twenty bucks). So I checked, and with San Diego residency, you can get a SD County library card that's good for Del Mar and the thirty-three county branches. The Del Mar and Chula Vista libraries are now both on my list of places to be visited.

So I did visit all thirty-six libraries in thirty-six days. But if all I wanted were the books, I didn't have to venture past my local branch. You can request a book from any other branch and have it transferred to a branch of your choice for pick-up.

Beginnings and Endings

Today, the Tri Club has a new President. Very soon, it will have a new Membership Coordinator. After a three years in the position, it's a good time for me to move on.

When I was growing up, my mom used to say that I had a problem with beginnings and endings. I think I had a problem with beginnings and endings that I didn't want to happen. I am completely content to be leaving this Tri Club post.

It is fortunate that people go through different phases. A few years ago, I might've considered it a personal failure that I no longer want to constantly be training for a race. But I've come to realize that if people did continue with something indefinitely, they probably wouldn't discover anything new--they wouldn't progress or evolve. And if they did discover new things, soon they wouldn't have any time to sleep, so chock-full would their lives be. I don't believe there's ever a point of no-return. And while I also don't believe in quitting prematurely, I believe that there is always something new, whether they are a skydiving nonagenarian, or a thirty-year-old writer.

"Olive Kitteridge" by Elizabeth Strout

This book is awesome. But what I want to talk about isn't the linked short stories within these covers, but the author interview that follows them. In it, not only is Strout interviewed, but her fictional character Kitteridge is, too.

And it's a complete joke. These stories have pathos that crash over you, again and again, like a set of tidal waves. As a reader you really go somewhere with Olive and her town of Crosby, Maine. But then to reach the end and begin the interview, hoping that Strout might explain where these characters came from and how their sum narrative arc was choreographed, and instead find Olive has been cheapened to coy remarks to the interviewer and Strout--well, I felt taken advantage of. Like Ralphie from "A Christmas Story," where Annie's secret message is a crummy commercial for Ovaltine.

In one of these stories, a character rips pages out of a magazine that contain a short story that reminds her too much of her sorry state of affairs. In reading this interview, I wanted to rip it out of the book so it wouldn't contaminate what is truly remarkable writing.

Technical Difficulties

I know. I can't believe I'm going to give up this car in three weeks, either.

I Heart Austin Palmer

And you thought I was done with cursive.

Earlier this week, the ESOL teacher whom I'm assisting said she pays extra attention to her penmanship when writing in cursive on a student's paper. She said many English language learners aren't very familiar with cursive. Which is not something I'd thought about before.

Most cursive and print letters are similar, which I'd imagine make things pretty simple for an English language learner. The uppercase Q is a perfect quagmire, but most letters aren't as difficult. Like the "M" or "m". If you could recognize the printed versions, you'd probably recognize their cursive counterparts.

I think it was my dad who sent me an email forward with sentences consisting of words with some letters out of order. But, because there's enough that's correct, you can read the sentence perfectly well. Your mind makes the correction. (I tried to find a link for this, but wasn't successful. Anyone know what I'm talking about?)

While I like writing and cursive, my cursive is actually a hybrid of cursive and printing. I sort of took the letters that I like from each type, and made my own writing. But this could be difficult for ESL students. So I tried to make my comments only in cursive. Except for my capital "F"s. Too fussy.