Here I am in Ventura County, where I have discovered that Southern California does not know how to cope with water falling from the sky. It’s been raining all day now, and drains are backing up and cars are hydroplaning and people are carrying umbrellas as if they were dirty diapers on the way to the trash bin. The exit from Santa Rosa to Highway 101 was almost completely blocked off when we tried to get onto the highway, and we had to drive through a puddle that was so deep the water nearly seeped into the car under the bottom edge of the doors.

Truly an exciting way to start another day of training mollusks on the proper use of their new shell polishers.

Since I’m a library student, and since my job is probably going to send me to just about every county in the State of California, I’ve come up with a neat idea for souvenirs: whenever I go to a new county, I’m going to get a new library card. My goal is to get a library card from each county in California that has a library system. Today I walked to the Ventura branch of the Ventura Public Library and picked up my first card. I’m sure that when I’m done, this will be a truly awe-inspiring collection, and I know that my story will be a source of hope and enlightenment to people all over the world.

Meanwhile, teaching the use of shell polishing equipment is not necessarily the most challenging of tasks, especially when there are no mollusks about to attend the classes. But at all times, we must maintain a professional appearance, which is only appropriate: that means no reading, no playing solitaire on my laptop computer, and so on. But I’ve found I can play with my new cell phone, which is relatively small and unobtrusive and easily concealed in my hands.

So I discovered some neat features; and the most exciting is that I can send and receive e-mail right on my phone. So after signing up my cell phone e-mail address to receive breaking news alerts from CNN, I sent an e-mail to my wife to say Hi. She wrote back to me shortly, filling me in on her doctor’s appointment and the rest of her day.

And in that e-mail, she wrote, “YOU ARE SUCH A NERD!”

She seems to have based this on the very flimsy evidence that I collect library cards and like to find out all of the cool features on my new cell phone.

Very flimsy evidence indeed.