So, it’s been a bit.  And I got married.  And I have a new job which is interim and I’m hoping will be permanent in a couple of months.  It’s really hard and I work a lot and am tired a lot.

Also, We got our yard done and lots of work on the interior of the house.  Did I mention we got married?  Oh, and then there’s that whole election bidness in a couple of days.  No on 8, k?

But, friends, I’m here for a short while today to speak about a grocery store.  Yes sir.  Yes ma’am.  All those other things, they take time and thought and care.  This is just about happy in the ‘hood.

I’m not the first to notice.  Sandra Tsing Loh, who I would probably follow into the fiery pits of hell should she ask, noticed. Twice.

I don’t know where Loh lives in the part of the Valley she refers to as “The Nuys” to give it new cache.  But I’m close to Fresh and Easy.  Remarkably close.

Today, my spouse slash wife (of two weeks) slash partner (of fourteen years) and I went there.  Oh it is a bright place.  With Jam.  And chips that taste like Doritos.  Except, and here is the clincher, they’re SPINACH and ARTICHOKE kinda-Doritos.  Maybe I should have told you to sit down before I told you that.

It occupies a space that used to be a Ralphs.  Not a good Ralphs.  just a ralphs.  It’s not any longer.  Soy milk.  Fresh fruit.  Teeny pies.

It may not be love, but color me intrigued.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…

Fresh and Easy

It’s a neighborhood market.  In my neighborhood.  My my.

Hugs and kisses and lots of foons,

Sporks.

On Tuesday, Honey and I decided to play hooky. There simply isn’t a better place for playing hooky than Disneyland. Imagine your eight year old self. You want a day off. You want to do something superveryfun. What could be more superveryfun than Disneyland? Sex. But you’re supposed to be imagining your EIGHT year old self. If you thought about sex a lot then, I don’t want to know about it.

Theoretical fingers in theoretical ears… Lalalalalalalalalalalalalala Done with eight year old sex thoughts.

Ok, I won’t give you a whole travelogue, but here’s a highlight/thought list.

*They can dress it up all they want, but Innovations (in Tomorrowland)=superverylame.

*The redo of Space Mountain is awesome. It seems faster and you can’t see the track any more. It’s like a roller coaster in space. Wait, it IS a roller coaster in space.

*Disneyland rides with pictures they take and then try to sell you do NOT take flattering pictures of me. Nope.

*This image is funny and is on almost every ride. I kept trying to be these people. My body won’t do the things it suggests.

*Cynthia, who was having a birthday and brought her coffee onto Thunder Mountain in the pouring rain, reminded me of how great people can be. I don’t even know her and we rode behind her on the ride for all of three minutes. Still, she and her friend Susan rocked.

*As a child, I was DEEPLY disappointed to have spent one of my E-tickets on 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (aka the submarines). The 35 minute wait we experienced on Tuesday did not improve my liking of it a lot. It was ok, but it was the longest wait of the day.

*I kind of loved (actually really loved) the Tiki Room. I’d never been there before. Full props to Disneyland for not tearing it out. It would not have been worth an E-Ticket, though.

*Fewer full props to them for tearing out the gallery above New Orleans Square for the new luxo-suite. I did like the Disney employee at the “Disneyana” store who described the gallery space as “having moved on to its next life.” She did this all why I dripped onto the rug, having gotten soaked in the rain on Big Thunder.

*We didn’t bottom out our Small World boat! I’m also pleased to report that Small World is less annoying at the holidays, because they intersperse Christmas songs with the eponymous song. I’m not a fan of either, but less of both overall makes it more bearable.

*I was pleased to do Tomorrowland first. Why we always do Adventureland first is beyond me. I’m a big T-land fan, Innovations notwithstanding.

*Bring back the People Mover.

*Indiana Jones has gotten more jerky. Panic attack inducing jerky.

* I know, I know, SOMETHING has to make you want to go to California Adventure, but why oh why can’t Tower of Terror be in D-land? I heart it but not enough to pay $20 more to ride it.

*I wish we had parked on the Daisy level instead of the Mickey level. I’ve never much cared for the mice. The ducks, I like.

*La Casa Garcia has really good albondigas. Really good albondigas tastes especially good when you’re wet.

*I would say I need a rain coat, but I live in Southern California.

*The best part of the day? All of it, of course. What’s not to like? A day with my Honey at Disneyland.

I like my inner eight year old sometimes. She has good ideas.  Besides, my outer 39 year old can afford to buy her extra E-Tickets.

At the tiki, tiki, tiki, tiki room…

So I was in my vehicle yesterday waiting to turn left. I glanced over at the cars turning right onto the street I was on. It’s a normal Valley street. Big intersections, plenty of room. There are advantages to living in the quintessential post-War environment. 1950s car were big and so our streets are wide.

This 1953 Studebaker, for example, was 20 feet long. And it’s a coupe. My FJ, just for comparison, is about 15 feet long. A Prius is about 14 feet. Big cars of the 50s meant big streets. Frank Lloyd Wright said we needed it, you know.

Anyway, I was watching these folks turn right and I noticed they were all leaning over as the turned. How odd, I thought. Then I turned left and realized that I, too, had leaned. Not as much as the people I was watching, but I still leaned.

Now, while I’m sure we all like to keep our equilibrium, it got me to thinking…how important is it to stay upright at all times? It’s not like you’re going to fall over in the car. And, really, if you are going to fall over in the car, you have a lot more to worry about the simple uprightness.

So, here’s the question–are you a car leaner? If so, why? Be honest and share out in comments.

Every year Honey and I travel north 80 miles or so to Carpinteria. Carpinteria is a nice beach town north of Ventura and south of Santa Barbara. In other words, it exists in a zone far enough away from Los Angeles to feel different. Away.

I like going places that feel away. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I like our house and our space. I like them despite the asshole neighbors who had a couch dumped in front of their house and, rather than calling the city, moved it in front of our house. Like we wouldn’t notice that it had been across the street until last night and now, had, by some miracle, just up and WALKED itself in front of our fence. Sometimes, therefore, I need to get away.

My favorite getaways are fundamental but not hard to achieve. It may be why I like Catalina Island so much. Drive to San Pedro, get on a boat, and you are SO away. But they still have a Vons and my cell phone still works. Hell, you haven’t even left Los Angeles County on Catalina.

Anyway, we go to Carpinteria every year. Early October. Why? Well, why else? The Avocado festival!

I’m sure that some of you now have visions of something grand, indeed. Festival! Avocados! They go every year! There must be magic there.

Eh. It’s pretty much the same every year.

Here’s an overview:

There’s a giant inflatable avocado with sunglasses.

It’s right outside the official California Avocado tent. Inside, there are illustrations of avocado type…

Signs for your own avocado orchards to deter thieves…

My favorite part of the tent is the avocado costume contest. The kids at the Carpinteria Elementary school make quite the effort.

That’s Carmen Miravo and a Golfer Avo, if you couldn’t tell. Both prize winners, I should note.

Outside the tent, there are a couple of blocks of fair. Get a henna tattoo, buy some silver jewelry or those weird psychedelic spinning things.

There are two stages, one with “guac n’ roll” and the other more eclectic. I noted with some (ok, a lot) of dismay that the first band yesterday on the guac n’ roll stage was signing Christian rock. As is befitting a festival based on food, there are lots of avocado choices, many of them tasty. We usually go for tacos with guacamole, though this year I did contemplate a guacamole and tri-tip sandwich. We also get some guacamole and chips, though have yet to try the guacamole made by the high school cheerleaders in the kiddie pool. I’ve yet to try to avocado ice cream.

We wander the fair and look at the t-shirts. One year we bought a poster and one year an avocado themed napkin-holder.

Once we’ve had lunch and picked out a Reed avocado to make guacamole with later in the week, we’re done. (This year we got a Nabal instead. Such rebels!)

Is it fun? Sure. The fun, though, is found in the familiar. We do the same thing, we eat the same food. We wander past the same booths (for the most part). Things change a little. Last year we bought a rug shaped like a surfboard. This year I bought a bracelet made out of old forks.

On the way home this year, we stopped at the outlet mall. Last year, we took the train. So there is a little variety. Just a little. I guess that’s the way I want it.

Yesterday I returned to my car in the parking lot in the hell that is the greater Los Angeles basin right now. It was hot and I was cranky after having taught Wednesday night. Night classes are great in lots of ways. In others, they’re not. Three hours of teaching tends to make my feet and throat hurt.

Scout-the-dog has a really bad habit of waking up early. Thursday mornings are especially bad for this, as they are our neighborhood trash day. He likes barking at the trash trucks. Ok, to be honest, he just likes barking. Scout-the-honey and I call him the “barkist.” When he’s out there barking and Biscuit is churning up circles in her attempt to chase off the planes on their approach to the Burbank airport, it all seems a little mental.

Anyway, Thursday morning, he was barking and I was not sleeping and by yesterday afternoon I was close to my limit. It didn’t help that I had spent all day dealing with a rather tragic circumstance, calling offices on campus I normally don’t call. I did what I could and got things to where I wanted them to be, given everything else, but it wasn’t an unpleasant matter.

So, I decided to go home a little early.

I slogged out to the parking lot to discover that a minivan had parked within about an inch of my truck’s door. On a campus as big as ours, there was no way of finding the minivan driver. I spent a minute or two trying to piece together what office the driver might be in, based on stickers. Having a “Star Student at XXX School!” was hardly predictive of the driver’s role on campus. Nor was the affinity for soccer. What could I do, really, walk into every office in a seven building radius ad ask, “anyone here a soccer mom with an above average child?”

Here’s my FJ, for those of you who don’t remember it.

So I opened the passenger door and looked in. It seemed to me that I had two choices. First, because the back seats were folded down, I thought I might try to crawl across the expanse of rubberized interior and sort of dive into the front seat. When I though that through a second time, I realized that I didn’t so much want my head on the floor and my feet in the air.

Here’s the back view. This is not my FJ. If it were, you would see books on CD slopping around and scratches on the rubbery parts from bikes being put in the back.

Here’s what the front interior of an FJ looks like. This is also not my interior. If you use your imagination, you can picture mine. Add CDs, dog hair, Coke Blak bottles, a bike bottle, and a cute grey and yellow Timbuk2 bag.

I sat in the passenger seat for a while, then turned the car on. No need to try whatever I was going to try without AC. I started with trying to get my butt moved over first, followed by my legs. Then I remembered what that great faker, Bear Grylls said on Man v. Wild, which is that your legs are strong. So I slung my left leg into the driver’s area and then scooted my butt over with it. Now straddling the center console, I had pulled out the rubber cup holder interior, kicked the parking light indicator, changed the A/C from face to defrost and I had a cramp in my thigh.

An aside about Bear Grylls, who turns out to have stayed in hotels and tried to “tame” already tame horses. Scout-the-honey said he was a faker. I should listen to her more often.

Anywho, I managed to get my right leg into position, though more things were displaced (my bag, the other rubber insert for the other cupholder, the other Coke Blak bottle, the radio control, etc.)

I put the car in reverse and silently wished the minivan driver’s kids well for a hot soccer weekend. All’s well that ends well, I guess. I’m just glad I went with the scoot over mode rather than the dive into mode.

Happy long weekend. My all your second thoughts prove successful.

Honey and I like a restaurant in the heat pit they call the Valley that we both refer to as “Fancy.” Fancy is not. It is a really good Mexican restaurant, the older, but smaller sister to another really good Mexican restaurant right around the corner. (I’m trying to give Valley/L.A. people a hint about location).

Fancy has seven or eight tables inside and another six or so outside. The food is reasonably priced, fresh, and good.

Fancy? Not really. Your order from the counter, get your salsa in little plastic buckets, and they call out your number in Spanish and English. The folks who work there are nice and it’s one of those L.A. places where people from all sorts of cultural backgrounds sit next to one another, including those who by birth should know good Mexican food. It’s next to an express lube place. Why do we call it Fancy? Because it is. To us.

Fancy is on the way home from work for me and since Honey has been commuting by bike, I’ve been trying to take up more of the cooking slack. My two choices tonight were cooking fish and picking up Fancy.

So, I walk into Fancy and there’s a line. I get in it and stand for a few minutes as it inches forward. Then out of nowhere, a young woman in truly ridiculous shoes steps in front of me and says, “I was in line.”

I look at her in shock and amazement. “You were?”

She gestures impatiently behind me. “Yes, I was over there.”

I turn to look and realize that she had been sitting (though I did not and could not have seen her) in a chair five feet away from the end of the line hidden behind a stack of high chairs.

“You were sitting there?”

“Yes and that was how I was in line.”

I glance down at my feet (clad today in Teva sandals) to think for a second and notice that she is wearing five inch teeny spike white high heeled sandals.

Now, what I want to say is:

“If you didn’t have on those stupid shoes, you could actually STAND in line like the rest of us.”

What I actually say (trying to sound deeply contemptuous):

“Oh.”

I’m so brave in my head.

Fancy still tasted terrific and Honey enjoyed her tostada without ever having to see those stupid shoes. The sacrifices I make for love. It’s how I’m so brave. In my head.

While waiting for to-go food at Panera:

Guy walks up and sits down in the “to-go” waiting area and sings a snippet of R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion.” He turns to his companion and says:

“That’s the first song I ever knew as a kid that I thought had deep meaning. I mean, like, I was really impressed that I figured out that the lyrics meant something and weren’t just words. I totally thought I knew what it meant.”

(pause)

“I didn’t. I’m still not sure I do now.”

(pause) Sings a bit more.

“R.E.M. is deep, man.”

Later that same evening, I indulge in a self-torture habit, which is looking myself up on ratemyprofessors. Only one comment from last semester has appeared. It’s from a deaf student who I KNOCKED myself out to help, but she just couldn’t understand the material. That may have had something to do with the fact that she NEVER watched the interpreter and tended to chat with her neighbor in ASL.

Here’s what she said:

“She is good teacher very understanding with concepts of the class teaching but with the written test she is so picking and myself being deaf i am struggle with grammers that she is picking with but i do understand the class concepts but written so picky so she gave me D+ She does 3 papers and 2 written test that overall for semester.”

Understanding comes the way it comes and in its own time. Or not. Damn grammers.

Deep, man.

I don’t have a bad commute, all things considered. I’ve lived in three cities in my life, all with notorious commutes. In fact, a recent New Yorker article mused on the worst commute cities in the U.S. noting that Washington, D.C. (city #2 for me), San Francisco (never lived there, but would like to), New York (nice to visit), and Los Angeles (city #3 for me) all have bad commutes that are exacerbated by geographical impediments (mountains, rivers, bays, and the like). The worst commutes, the article contended, are those that are bad simply because of planning. The two cities cited as simply bad because transportation engineers and urban planners let everyone down were Atlanta (city #1 for me) and Houston (drove through it once, didn’t get stuck). Anyway, despite having lived in three of the six worst, I’ve never had a horrible commute. I say this even while mentally counting bus commuting when I was in graduate school in the “not horrible” category.

My current commute is fine, though I can’t use the L.A. freeways to any good effect in it. It’s a surface street commute and one that I would like to do by bicycle sooner rather than later. Gas in L.A. running $3.45 right at the moment and all.

In the less fit that I should be zone than I’m in now, I’m driving. I waver in and out of what I like to do while driving. Sometimes I can be an NPR person. Sometimes I’m a sports radio person. When it occurs to me, I plug in my ipod.

I’m currently in a phase. A books on CD phase. These happen every so often. Sometimes, the right kinds of things prompt it, like Sarah Vowell writing a new book. What I like to listen to is not at all the same as what I like to read. I love Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events on CD. I read the first book (yes, I know they’re for adolescents), but not any of the rest. I adore them on CD. Adore as in I’ll pay full retail adore. I like being read to, I guess.

I would never read the Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child Pendergast novels, but the versions on CD I love. Partly, of course, my adoration is a function of the narrator. Tim Curry in the former case and Rene Auberjonois in the latter. It’s not just that, though. I need to be able to follow. It needs to be lively. Violent is ok (the Preston/Child books are certainly that), though not necessary or even sought.

All of which brings me to the current phase. I’m listening to the Number 1 Ladies’ Detective novels by Alexander McCall Smith narrated by Lisette Lecat.

The stories are lovely, hearkening back to the feel of Miss Marple, but with Botswana, rather than St. Mary Mead as the setting. It’s a long way from one place to the other, but the feeling is similar even if the time and place are different. Mma Ramotswe, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni of Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, and Mma Makutsi are all fully realized characters, but realized in a gentle way that feels at once old fashioned and comfortable. My grandmother, a great fan of the “soft” mystery, would have loved the series.

It’s funny, I think, when things make you nostalgic for places you’ve never seen. But the tone (and narration) of the books is such that I find myself wistful for the Botswana that was.

I find myself wondering about going there.

In case you wonder too (and who wouldn’t?), South African Air (a member of the Star Alliance, so you can use your United miles) flies frequently from Johannesburg to Gaborone. Delta now offers direct flights from Atlanta (if you can get to Hartsfield-Jackson given the traffic) to Dakar and then on to Johannesburg. The flight to Jo’burg is about $1800 and the flight to Gaborone is 1880 Rand. (That’s $270, just so you don’t have to look it up). By the by, $100 will get 628 Botswana Pula.

We should put animals on our money, too. Not eagles, though. They’re overdone. I’m thinking squirrels or pigeons. Maybe deer and possum, too.

Anyway, if anyone wants to join me for a trip to Gaborone, let me know. We should rent a tiny white van like Mma Ramotswe’s and see what there is to see. I’m hoping to see a Hoopoe or two.

If you’re not up for a Southern African excursion, and you like a soft mystery of the old-fashioned type, narrated exquisitely, try the series out. It may make your commute a little brighter, too.

This week I had a flat tire on the freeway. My tough little truck has BIG tires. Honey and I and a nice passerby guy who had just moved to L.A. (natch–no “real” Angelino would stop) changed the tire. No single one of us could lift the damn thing. When I went to get a replacement (gash in the sidewall), I found out that tires are $210 EACH. They say you buy cars with your reptile brain. I want. Truck pretty.

Don’t get me wrong, I like my truck, but it seemed less than smart when I can’t change the tire by myself and the replacement costs that much.

The other day I was washing out Biscuit’s water bowl. She had fresh water. She walked over to the mud puddle I created washing the bowl out and started to drink. I called her to the clean water. She sniffed and lapped at it for a second. Then she went back to the puddle. Water. Mud. Drink.

I’m about to go off to a meeting where I have to faciliate a high-end discussion. My boss’s boss asked me to do it. Hope I can get to higher order thinking. Given the way things have been going, I’d take the under.

Honey has had her driving privileges pulled again. See her blog for more details. She’s going today to have her EEG done again. I gave her a scarf to wear. We had scarf night last night and I draped all the scarves I could find over my head. In ways that scarves aren’t supposed to go. My mother likes to give me scarves. It makes her feel as if I may one day become the daughter she wanted. I don’t wear them. I put them in a drawer with my socks.

I made my mother very happy when I had along talk with her about various ablutions for the skin. I think she showed me every skin product she had ever purchased. And my mother (like her daughter) is a consumer.

Honey, in fact, pointed out that I should tell my therapist about my tendency to buy things. My therapist suggested that I buy two workbooks some time ago. I promptly bought them. I can’t bring myself to “work” them. Last time we talked about it, my therapist said I should just read them, that I didn’t have to have pen or pencil in hand. Follow through can be a weakness for me. But, boy, do I know how to use and abuse Amazon.

Anyway, back to driving… Driving in L.A. isn’t fun generally. It’s a built in excuse for lateness. “Traffic” followed by a head shake will get you out of most lateness problems. Still, I want to stop driving so much. I’d love to commute by bike, but I’m a person who sweats. Southern women aren’t supposed to sweat. They’re supposed to “glow.” I sweat. So riding a bike to work might be unpleasant in the global warmed SoCal summer.

Speaking of global warming, I heard a piece on NPR yesterday about the rising CO2 levels causing poison ivy to grow more and become more toxic. Tomorrow it’s supposed to by in the 90s and I have to wear my academic regalia for commencement.

Treecup wore anti-perspirant on her face when we got our PhDs.

When I had my prom, my mother handed me a bottle of baby powder and told me to “use it.” When I asked her where to put it, she wouldn’t answer. The answer tomorrow may be all over. Nobody look under my robe, ok?

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