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2004-10-20 - 10:44 p.m.

I noticed with a shock that I hadn't updated in 31 days. I must be having LOTS of fun...time seems to be flying by like nobody's business.

Driving home from work today, I was all nice and cozy inside my warm car as the delicious rain fell in Niagara-Falls-like sheets (the windshield wipers keeping a steady metronomic beat--I wish I knew the correct Italian word for their rapid speed, got to be something "issimo"!). I think the seasonal habits of school still have a grip on me...and, after all, I DO work in a school, so that makes sense...autumn to me is more of a "New Years" than New Years, as that is the start of a new school year. So for me, this is a time of changes, renewal, new ideas, and so forth. So despite what could be considered gloomy weather by some, I feel like a springtime bunny and see this "new year" filled with possibilities.

As I was driving home, I was listening to a rock station and the DJ was complaining about going to a store that was already playing Christmas music, so he asked listeners to call in to give their opinion as to WHEN they think it is proper for a store to start playing Christmas music. The most commonly preferred date was December 1 for that. "Before that, it's too early to think about Christmas," people said. The funny thing about that is that an hour prior to hearing that, I had actually officially started Christmas shopping.

Last year, I felt that I had missed all the enjoyment of Christmas BECAUSE of shopping...I was busy with it up to the last minute and never had a moment to sit back and simply enjoy the season. I don't think I made more than a second's glance at a decorated tree or a house outlined in lights. It wasn't so much the commercialism that was wrecking Christmas (because after all, I do enjoy giving presents and nobody dislikes receiving them, so SOMEBODY has to succumb to commercialism for all that to work), but it was due to my bad timing. So last year I vowed to get my shopping done early and I made an entry ahead in my Outlook calendar to alert me to that fact. That early shopping time has now come. If I remain dilligent, by the time the stores have their decorations up and their Christmas music playing, I will be able to enjoy them instead of having to worry about what to get for so and so.

Talking about planning ahead, we have a cool new employee at the school, the Headmaster's executive assistant (the previous one retired at the end of last year), and she was telling me about how she is planning ahead for her 40th birthday. I said, "Didn't we just celebrate your birthday a couple of weeks ago? You ARE starting early!"

"Honey," she said, "you and I celebrated my 36th birthday...I'm going to turn 40 in 2008."

"Two thousand and eight? And you're starting to prepare now?"

"Well, I gotta give all my friends time to save their money!"

"What kind of presents are you expecting, to give them that much time to save?"

"Presents? It's not for presents, they have to start saving for going to Jamaica!"

I nearly fell out of my chair. "You're going to celebrate your 40th birthday in Jamaica?"

"Yeeeessss! I always celebrate my important milestones in Jamaica."

Well, she sure had something on me with that one. Good idea, though. Unfortunately, at my age, I don't think I have any more milestone birthdays left. I suppose I could be planning my funeral, but there's no point in having that in Jamaica.

But with her and others at work, I'm doing a lot more birthday celebrating. In the previous years, I never did much more than give somebody a birthday card. One or two of them (the Aquarians, as they shared that birthday sign with me), I'd take out for lunch. But this year, I have expanded my list quite a bit, starting the process of taking all of my favorite fellow workers out for lunch, or drinks after work, or whatever it seems they would most go for. One of them, a teaching partner, was definitely a "go out for drinks" person, and to make it more fun, I invited both her and the teacher she partners with, who is the first grade teacher for whom I do the Australia lectures. They were both quite excited over the deal, but so far, we haven't managed to find a day when the two of them can make it together. However, our not being able to do it so far has been a kind of blessing, because the one I invited said, "Do you know where you want to take us?" I said that I hadn't decided on a place, yet, but I had some ideas. She said, "Well, how about Vibrato...do you like jazz?"

Well, I might have masterfully masked the shock that would have flickered across my face, but I can't be completely sure. Vibrato? That sure was presumptuous.

Well, I've never been there, but let me tell you a little bit about Vibrato. Prior to my having started on a new eating program, I often wouldn't allow myself enough time in the morning to have a decent breakfast, so on the way to work, I'd stop at this roach coach up on Mulholland and have them make me a breakfast burrito (eggs, ham and hashed browns rolled up inside a flour tortilla...the only thing in that mix that I am allowed to eat nowadays are the eggs).

One time while I was waiting while the ingredients of my burrito were being fried, a man who was obviously a construction worker was also waiting there. He complained about Benedict Canyon, right across the street from us, being closed.

"Yeah, what's that all about?" I asked him, as that road had been closed for a good half a year.

"Beats me," he spat, "but it sure inconveniences me when I go to work."

"And you'll probably finish the job before they ever open that road again," I commented.

"No, you don't understand," he said, "I will NEVER finish the job...I work for Herb Alpert and he always has some kind of construction going on, mostly at his house, but he has other projects to keep me busy, too."

"You do construction work for Herb Alpert?" I said.

"I am his full-time construction worker, I work only for him."

Well, that was a new one for me. I had heard of maids and gardeners and chauffeurs and social secretaries, but your own full-time construction worker? Imagine.

The guy hands me a dark brown business card with copper metallic cursive letters scrawled across the face of it: "Vibrato Grill & Jazz, Bel Air," it said. "This new club is his," he said, "my most recent building project for him."

"Oh, it's close by," I said, noticing the Beverly Glen address. "I wouldn't have thought there'd be a jazz club up here. But I like jazz."

"Last time I was there," the man said, "Rod Stewart arrived in his new green Lamborghini."

"Rod Stewart?" I said.

"Oh yeah, it's his kind of place. The women who go there.... And Sylvester Stallone, he was enjoying himself, sitting on a bar stool."

Well, the "jazz" and "nearby" had given me the idea that I might have wanted to check the place out, but the "Rod Stewart and his Lamborghini" and "Sylvester Stallone sitting on a barstool ogling all the hot women," made me conclude this really wasn't a place for me. It was hidden up here among all the estates of Bel Air for a reason. And a quick Internet check on the place once I got to work made me toss the business card in the wastebasket. Too many dollar signs in the "expense factor" ranking in Vibrato's review.

And so for this teaching partner that I was inviting to go out for drinks on her birthday to suggest that place...well, if my momma raised me right, hers didn't.

So now it seems that the stakes and the expectations had been set sky-high, so I had to cough up a suitable substitute that wasn't going to subject me to the awkward embarrassment of trying to slip in among Hollywood's and the music industry's old guard of multimillionaires (if it were even possible), let alone make me be paying for my generosity all the way until February.

It seems that the only kind of day that both the teaching partner and the teacher would have free would be a Saturday evening...and while what I had in mind were casual, friendly drinks after work (and not at a place where I had to wear clothes by Armani), the weekend idea worked because time was less of an issue, so I suggested that where we go is what happens to be my favorite place, Ports O' Call Restaurant in San Pedro, which sits right smack on the main shipping channel of the nation's busiest harbor, the Port of Los Angeles. As I told the teaching partner, it's one of the "ugliest" settings you might ever find, because it is completely industrial, but it is also the most fascinating and wondrous. Being by the water is always nice in any case, but every time I have gone there has been an absolute delight, because cruise ships go by (Royal Caribbean, Princess Cruises, Holland-America, and Carnival all have ships using that port) and oil tankers and container ships (not to mention a lot of pleasure craft, Coast Guard boats, and a California sea lion or two, barking and frolicking in the water)...I can hardly think of anything more fascinating than to sit outdoors there having a margarita or cosmopolitan or enjoying a perfect prime rib and watching an immense container ship slide by like a moving mountain on its way to Panama, Japan, or Abu Dhabi. When that happens, everybody out there stops what they are doing to watch the ships in awe, and, if it is a cruise ship, the ship's decks are filled with excited voyagers, so there's a lot of waving back and forth, you almost think you're going on the cruise yourself!

Neither the teaching partner nor the teacher had ever been there and while they were concerned over the distance ("No worries, I'll pick you both up and you'll ride in perfect comfort!"), the idea did strike their fancy (they trust me, as they should). Now, however, it is "winter" instead of "summer" like it was last week, so I don't know if sitting outside during twilight is a good idea. Sure, we can be inside, but it's just not the same.

A couple of weeks ago, I happened to be in the neighborhood of another favorite of mine, 94th Aero Squadron by the Van Nuys Airport, and since the weather was still delightfully summer, I ate outside on their patio, which I had never done before (I had always eaten by the fireplace, instead). And that was fantastic, because you were so much more intimate with all the planes taking off and landing. Even though it was after dark, there was constant air traffic in both private jets and smaller planes like Cessnas. I really got off on the jets, but in a way the Cessnas were more magical, in that compared with the noise and bluster of the jets, they floated down out of the sky without a sound, much like kites.

94th Aero Squadron is owned by a company called Specialty Restaurants Corporation and on the back of the menu there was a listing of all the other restaurants they own...and guess what, they also own Ports O' Call, described above, (so you can watch either ships or planes!) and not only that, but they own Pieces of Eight on the shore of Lake Michigan in Milwaukee where I had taken one of my best friends and his fiance for dinner for his 30th birthday (here's a link to their picture on that occasion that just happened to be taken there), and HS Lordships, on the water in the Berkeley Marina, a place I had enjoyed when I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area. So to find one corporation owning so many wonderful places that I have been to and enjoyed in my life...well, I guess their "theory" in restaurants is after my own heart.

On the subject of being excited by large transportation conveyances, I can hardly wait for the Christmas movie, The Polar Express to come out (November 10). I don't know if trains can still excite a child of today like they did when I was a little boy, but I can hardly think of a more fitting image of the excitement of the powerful force of Christmas coming than to lie awake in bed on Christmas Eve and to hear a huge and infinitely long train come up and stop outside your house and have it personally take you in your pajamas, bathrobe, and slippers to the North Pole! (Jeff would have to arrive naked wrapped in blanket.)

Well, what I hear outside this night is the rain, but it sounds like a speeding train. This sound that I love will make for a very nice sleep. I won't even rustle my comforter, so aptly named. It's true that I do believe. And I can still hear.

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