I read a book!

I know I shouldn't sound so stoked about it, but boy am I. I think of myself as a Reader, and when weeks (months?!?) pass between books, I start to feel a bit antsy. And I don't know whether working in a bookstore caused me to avoid books in my free time (I hope that's not it, but I've known too many ice cream-hating Cold Stone employees to rule it out), or whether it was working in general that robbed me of the time or drive for reading, but it's been a while. I've been reading the weekly comics, but I'm not actually sure what my last book was. Yuck!

Oh, but all that has changed now. It's been almost exactly a month since I left my job at Borders, and I have finished a book!!! And, appropriately, the book I finished was yoinked on my last day of work, carried away from the store in the same bag that held my nametag lanyard and the assorted papery contents of my mailbox.

As a side note: there are many cool things about working at a bookstore. There are many lame things as well, but I think the cool ultimately outweighs the lame. And one of the mega-cool things that helps to tip those scales is the bookcase of promos in the manager's office. Borders gets metric tonnes of free books, movies, and CDs specifically for giving away to employees, so they can better recommend these items to customers. We're not just talking about romance novels and Wine for Dummies DVDs, either. Publishers won't send the huge releases, but many of the middling ones come in and wait to be yoinked by mild-mannered booksellers who become voracious book-readers in their off-hours. As I was cleaning out my mailbox, I found a coupon for 2 promos from the office that one of my supervisors had given me months ago for being so awesome. And, in Joe's office, I found an advance reading copy one of the books I'd been eyeing on the new hardcover table since it'd come out. Gold!

The Monsters of Templeton, by Lauren Groff, snagged my eye initially because of its interesting cover design:
And the blurb on the back of the book was enticingly vague, promising mystery, murder, ghosts, romance, and even a literal 50-foot-long lake monster. All revolving around a graduate student's search for some family secrets in her small New York town (modeled after Cooperstown). Sounds cool, doesn't it?

I read the last 75 pages of the book last night and I have to say I'm highly satisfied. It was an engrossing read, both because the characters were so sympathetic and because the mystery was so compelling. The main character, Willie Upton, returns to her small town after leaving her Stanford graduate program in scandal. And when her mother reveals that there are some secrets in the family tree, Willie starts digging through the town's library, uncovering some seriously weird skeletons in some seriously oddly-shaped closets. The Monsters of Templeton is deliberately genre-bending, but in the end I'd probably call it mostly historically fiction, with some fantastical trappings thrown in for spice.

It's Lauren Groff's debut, and, especially as the various threads of the plot are first being set up, this is obvious. Even the plot blurb in the back of the book screams MFA grad. A wiki search just told me that she's got another novel on its way; I look forward to checking it out.

Now... time to browse the (newly alphabetized) bookshelves at Casa de Higabascio for something new to read. I'm back, baby!!

A note on travel readings!

One of the things I always look forward to excitedly when there's a vacation on the horizon is, as my parents used to say, reading until I go blind.

When I was a kid, my folks would go on long road trips every August. My dad still marvels at how my brother and I were, at very young & squirmy ages, able to enjoy 6 hour car rides through the blazing desert in a VW van with no air conditioning and no music. Our secrets to success (I'll give you a moment here to grab some paper and a pen): a blanket hung up to block the sunlight streaming through the windows and stacks of books to pore through. The occasional mother-mandated gaze out the window did little to slow the voracious digestion of stories from every genre, consumed in great quantities. I have a strong memory of driving through Death Valley (DeathValley.com's slogan: "Hot enough for ya?") and getting a bad nosebleed which ruined my brother's Calvin & Hobbes book. I read Heidi in one long jaunt through Northern California and consumed a Danielle Steel book one year when it was the only book the owners of our rented Mammoth condo had left on the shelved. And the picture at the top of this blarg is of me looking for even more books in a used bookstore in Eureka, CA.

Luckily, Mike and I share a love for reading in interesting locales, which is why on our honeymoon we packed a suitcase entirely with books. Our upcoming road trip is going to be a literary adventure as well as a geographical one. And I'm particularly excited because since my last road trip I've developed an appreciation for the rather apropos genre of travel writing.

Working at Borders gave me a different way of thinking about books, especially in terms of shelving locations. So let me point out that the books I'm interested are probably not going to be found in the bookcase at the end of the Travel section, right across from the Natural Healing shelf. My favorite in the genre is The Narrow Road to the Interior by Basho (specifically the Sam Hamill translation), and is shelved in poetry. Other than that, there's the Kerouac's classic On the Road and Craig Thompson's Carnet de Voyage. Need I mention Dave Barry Does Japan? I didn't think so.

What I love so much about these books (besides the deep existential satisfaction of reading a book about travel while traveling) is seeing how people much cooler than I transpose their unique and creative worldviews on new places and situations. It's obvious that no two travelers will get the same experience out of a trip. What's really fascinating to me is how a traveler shapes his destination and his encounter with it. How different Craig Thompson's time in Morocco would have been if he had been writing haiku instead of chronicling his experiences with a sketch book! I read these books and can imagine, even for just a moment, how the authors would have traveled in my world.

So yes, I'm excited to take these fellows along with me as Mike & I roam America. Hopefully they'll chip in some gas money.

Why I will Most Likely Begin Blarging Again.

Hello! It's been a while! I've aged literally months since last we spoke. But you-- wow. You look just the same. What's your secret? I mean really!

Now that the small talk's out of the way, let me tell you why I'm here. Mike and I are about to embark on something that's equal parts fantastic, horrifying, and unbelievable. I'm calling it Mike-and-SharTours for now, but I'm sure I'll come up with something better before we leave.

But I digress. Let me help you picture what I'm talking about, using a picture:

There, do you see?

Yes friends, from March 31st until April 30th, we're going to be on the most bitchin-est road trip since Kerouac roamed the streets of America. Plan on reading a lot about it as we plan and accomplish it with the greatest of ease!

A Bedtime Tradition

I am lying on my right side. Mike is reading, and over my left shoulder his bedside light glows soft orange. My right hand is under my cheek. My left hand rests on my right bicep and my left elbow rests on my hip. My eyes are closed. I am going to sleep.

My left foot is an obtuse angle to my shin. I move my ankle, and my heel touches Mike's knee. I stretch out my leg, but my knee won't extend far enough to release the building tension in my calf. I pull my legs back up, and now my knees are touching each other. My left leg is bent up. Too high. My right leg is bent up. Perfect.

My right wrist needs to rotate. I pull it from under my cheek and now my fingers need to be extended. I grip the air. I ignore the growing fear in my chest. I am ok. I am ok. I breathe in and out and now the angle of my left arm is too acute.

I lie on my back. "Everything ok?" No. "Yes, I'm just getting anxious." The blanket is too heavy on my toes and my wrist still needs to rotate. I flex my calves and I can feel the fear spreading to my shoulders. I can breathe. I can still breathe.

I can't close my eyes tight enough. I can feel my contact lenses, and I can't blink hard enough to stop my irises from itching. My arms are too close to my body.

This is anxiety. I close my fists, and I open my fists again. I can feel my fingers and I feel my toes and my hair is tickling on the back of my neck and everything else is tight, tight, and I am afraid that I won't ever fall asleep because as much as I try to forget it the angle of my legs is still all wrong and I am squeezing my eyes tight and they are itching.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

I will wake up in the morning and I will have slept. And tomorrow night, I will have another chance to make it on my first try. For now, I only have to slow down my heart and pull my hair back and then my knees will be right and it will be ok.

Breathe in.

I am ok.

Breathe out.

I am ok.

SPOddities.

I'm about a month into my new position at Borders. Officially, I've moved from being a bookseller to a member of IPT, the group o kids who are in charge of taking stuff out of boxes and putting it on shelves. Actually, my new job is rather specialized: I get my own email address and my own desk full of interesting treasures (such as a dozen box cutters, a phone list for employees from when the store first opened, gold stickers with 79¢ printed on them), and lots of random responsibilities without any more money than I was making when I spent two hours of my average day leaning on the register, staring into space. Ah well.

One thing that's turned out to be a little weird about the SPO job is how much I now know about our regular customers. There's the obvious: emails, phone numbers, and preferred spellings of ridiculous names. But then there's the odd trivia. There's a lady who buys only cowboy romances, usually with three or four open orders at any given time. There's an old woman who seems to order based on the "I remember this, I should buy it" logic. Last time I talked to her on the phone, she described some generic plot points to me with the hope that I could name the movie for her. There's a guy who orders books about meditation that always arrive smelling of Nag Champa.

And then there's this guy:

I imagine him to be a tall, scrawny Indian fellow from England whose hair is a little to slicky and whose laugh is 40% brash and 60% mortified. And he's obsessed with Mariah Carey. Over the past two weeks he has placed about 15 orders for Mariah Carey products. Sometimes he orders twice to make sure he gets what he wants. There are the CDs you'd expect, of course: albums, best of's and the like. And there are DVDs: movies she's starred in, live concerts, and cheaply produced documentaries of her career from random music channels. And then there are the books. These books are almost all in what we in the biz call "Library Binding." Unlike normal hardcovers, with usually come with a dust jacket or something equally classy, these books have the cover art imprinted on the cardboard and then shellacked for protection. They have identical pictures of Mariah on the front and bear titles like Mariah Carey: Her Story. I imagine they are meant to inspire young girls, little divas-in-training. I do not know what my English Indian gentleman wants with them.

And, not knowing, I feel as if I know far too much.

Read my friends!

As I'm sure every single person reading this blarg knows, while Mike was at CSULB he spent a lot of his time and energy in the office of The Union Weekly, the student-run newspaper on campus. While there, he (and I) made a slew of awesome and extremely talented friends. How awesome? Well, four out of the ten members of our combined wedding party were Unionites. How talented? Well, they are, as a group, some of the best writers I've read. They're also really really funny and stupidly intelligent. They're also frustratingly underrated by the world outside the campus doors.

Take our good friend and favorite bud-bud J.J. Fiddler. When he took over the Union sports section in 2005, he revitalized a previously worthless page and made it one of the pages I turned to most eagerly each week. In 2006 he single-handedly, through the power of his editorials and a healthy amount of sheer determination, made CSULB basketball something to fill the student section over. And besides being the kind of guy people in college gear want to follow into gymnasiums, J.J. is a flat-out exceptional writer.

When The District Weekly started up in Long Beach approximately 27 weeks ago, it seemed like the perfect fit for a lot of Union alums. Their whole mission statement revolves around reporting culture and life in a Long Beach-specific context. And who knows better about Long Beach life than the amazing writers who'd spent their college careers talking about it? Certainly the editorial staff of the District, who produce a great publication, don't get me wrong, seem to miss out on some of the big things that make Long Beach not only great, but unique. It's not just all about cool hole-in-the-wall bars or art galleries. Sometimes it's stuff that makes the cover of one of the nation's most popular magazines.

In 2005 Sports Illustrated named Long Beach Poly High the top sports high school in America. Generally, my alma mater has a great athletics department that has produced national legends. Billie Jean King and Tony Gwynn both came through Poly's gates. But it would be impossible to talk about Poly sports without leaving 90% of the talking time for the Poly varsity football team which, as a public school, has sent more players to the NFL than any other high school in the country. And, though Poly is far and away the best football team in Long Beach (no bias here), it certainly isn't the only school playing the game.

Doesn't this seem like something The District, the self-proclaimed voice of the people of Long Beach, should be talking about? Or rather, since J.J. has been covering Moore League games since the start of the season, shouldn't it be something The District and its readers should be reading and paying attention to? As opposed to, say, ignoring and/or talking shit on?

Yeah, I think so too. Check J.J. out over at the Long Beach Post where he gives his mid-season Moore League report. And read him at The District too. He's doing a great job with not a lot of room to run. If this were the Union, I'd be all over that message board. Since it's not, I'll rant here instead and send my droves of readers to do my work for me.

The prices of things

So, I'm almost done with my second week back at work. It's an odd, but mostly pleasant experience to be back to a daily grind-esque sort of schedule with the wonderful addition of a real live hubby to come home to. The daily grind part is odd. I'm working 9-5 now, as opposed to the random assortment of 8 hour shifts starting at 7 am on some days and ending at midnight on others. While I was gone, there were about 6 new hires, and about 4 of the people I had expected to see again have quit. So it's a different place than it was when I left, but that's ok. I'm different too, after all.

This week I started training for my new position: Special Orders Troll of Borders at the Pike. I'm pretty sure that's the official title, although it might be "goblin." Turns out a lot of this new job involves waiting around for things to happen. There are orders to be processed in the morning, and then it's mostly waiting for shipments to arrive, usually around the middle of the day. So I think I'm going to be bored, probably a lot. We'll see... training is a lot different than the real thing.

Today I found a book called something like Long Beach in Vintage Postcards or somesuch. Flipping it open, I was struck by what a bustling area downtown Long Beach, especially the Pike and its surroundings used to be. Now, of course, not so much the case. It breaks my heart to direct inquisitive customers to the Wal-Mart up the street, but it's by far the closest music store, electronics store, clothing store, and office supply store. Lame.

Here's something that's not so lame: there was a postcard of a beautiful downtown Long Beach building that rented out apartments for $32 a month. A buddy at work pays $800 a month for his studio apartment. Bored, I figured it out. The 1925 apartment cost 4% of what the 2007 apartment does. For shits & giggles, I estimated the cost of a gallon of milk, a pack of cigarettes, and a few other common items. Then I performed the essential calculation:

5318008 x .04 = 212720.32

That's right. In 1925, the approximate cost of seeing "boobies" upside-down in the calculator was just a tad over 200 thousand. Amazing.

Boobies.