So It's Come to This...

The end of the year. I'm sitting at my desk in the editorial department, waiting for stuff that's not going to show up until Tuesday. As with every other workplace, ours is rather disorganized, as everyone has rushed off to have a wonderful holiday and left all the loose ends for others to deal with. I am one of those others today, and I'm trying not to grouse about it, since I'm taking tomorrow and Tuesday off, and people will be in here then, grousing about all the stuff I've left undone (though I'm trying not to let that happen).

Christmas was very quiet and low stress. Steve and I spent it together. He got me a new shaver (my old one was coming up to its 10-year anniversary), a really nice sweater with a T-shirt dickie sewn right in and, of course, socks (which are my most favorite Christmas gift: Thanks to holiday givers, I haven't bought a pair of socks for myself in about two decades, save the wild, artsy pair I bought for myself in Paris this last year). I gave Steve an automated cat litter box, since I don't clean the manual one (is there such a thing as a manual cat litter box?) I also gave him a pair of mocassins so his feet can be toasty when we sit out on the patio this winter, and the two Harry Potter movies he didn't already have. He gave me season 3 of "Lost."

My sister Kittie and her husband David gave me a sign for the patio that says "Bite Me," and gave Steve a bizarre rock person, also for the patio, that kind of looks like the central object in a Stephen King novel. I still feel like I'm being watched when I go out onto the patio, but I'm hoping that sensation will fade once I'm used to the slightly demonic stare of its glass eyes and the akimbo dentition.

Christmas Day I cooked a beef roast in the roasting pan we bought after last Thanksgiving and have not used since. I figured we had to either use it or donate it, and I didn't want to give it away. Baked potatoes and asparagus went with the dinner, which was quite nice (though I cooked it about 10 minutes too long).

Since then, we've watched lots of Harry Potter (because I had only seen the first one and had two to catch up on) and eight episodes of Lost: Season 3. Good Lord, the story just keeps getting weirder and weirder. Like my friend Gerry Hiken said about the show: "It's just wonderful: They can make up anything they want and it doesn't have to make sense" (I paraphrase him here). And I'm starting to look toward this upcoming weekend, when we will be taking down the tree and putting away the decorations and getting back to the real world. Still, the last two weeks have been quite pleasant, with two work days, three days off, one work day, two days off, one work day, two days off. It has been kind of confusing, though.

So, wishing everybody who stumbles across this post a Happy New Year. And, for God's sake, somebody leave a comment!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy New Year, Jolly Ramadan! Here it is, that time of year again (no one has to tell you what "that time of year" is). Tis the season to be dealt with, as I like to say, and we're doing fairly well, although I don't have any holiday shopping done yet. I'm just proud that the tree is up. Also, I baked two dozen cookies for Steve to take to his holiday potluck at work, so I've done the holiday kitchen thing, as well. Don't even ask what we're having for Christmas dinner. I haven't thought that far ahead.

Mom (see octogenarian entry below) e-mailed saying she missed the blog entries. So have I. I've been struggling to get back onto this blog site in order to update. I think I've finally figured it out, at least from here at home. I will spare you the technical details, but I hope it means more regular entries.

Let's start with the weekend with sister Kittie and her husband Dave. They came down the first week in December, just in time to go out for dinner at Panda Inn, a really nice Chinese restaurant here in Pasadena. Lots of rich food. Really great time.

We came back home and, after a little libation, I chucked up my dinner. Doesn't happen often. This is the second time this millenium. Felt much better afterwards. Once I convinced everyone I was feeling much better, we went to sleep.

Saturday we headed out to the Reyne Cafe up on Lake Avenue, which is our traditional weekend breakfast place. Everyone there was delighted to meet some of my relatives and said awful things about me, which touched my heart. Breakfast was lovely, and it stayed down with no problem. Then, after parting wisecracks, we were off to the Magic Kingdom and California Adventure.

I have access to four free passes a year, being a member of the press, so this was kind of my gift to Kittie and Dave (at least it explains why I didn't get them anything else for Christmas).

After picking up our passes at Guest Relations (no standing in long lines for us...just yet), we headed into Disneyland and decided upon the Pirates of the Carribean ride as our first Disney holiday experience. The park was incredibly crowded, and we cursed the hostile parents who use their children's strollers as battering rams to attack the crowds of brain-dead people standing right in the middle of everything, not quite sure of where they are. The line at Pirates wasn't too long, and after about 30 minutes, we were at the head of the line...and the ride stopped.

They kept us there for about 15 minutes, and then announced that the ride was closed. Not an auspicious beginning, but we were undaunted and headed for the Haunted House. You can see from the picture that the line was infinite. The little sign at the entry said the wait was only 45 minutes. An hour and a half later, we figured out that the sign had lied.

It was interesting that I ran into a former coworker from the Daily Journal while in line. What a flash from the past.

The Haunted House has been totally rebranded with "The Nightmare Before Christmas," and it's much lamer than the original ride. Kind of a letdown after all that waiting.

Here the day becomes a blur for me. I recall getting FastPasses for the Indiana Jones ride and spending time trying to find something worth buying as a souvenir (hopefully with a holiday theme that we could put on the tree). The general memory of the day is crowds, crowds and more crowds. And Disney-style crowd control with underpaid "cast members" waving glowing flashlight wands and preventing anyone from getting where they wanted to go.

We spent time in California Adventure, I recall. We went on Soaring Over California during the parade, so there were no lines and we got right through. Then Steve bought a Disney homey cap (wool cap to the white people out there) to keep his head warm, since the night was getting chilly.

We got there about noon and headed back home about nine o'clock. We could hear the fireworks going off in the park as we loaded ourselves into the car in the parking structure and headed home. We had all walked plenty, eaten the requisite amount of unnecessary food and had a really good time.

Dusty the Snowman

The Thanksgiving weekend was very low-keyed for us. We went out Thanksgiving for dinner at McCormick and Schmicks, a very nice place that had an excellent turkey dinner. Most of the rest of the time was spent cleaning, since my sister Kittie and her husband David are coming down next weekend to go to Disneyland. (I get four free tickets per year to both Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure since I'm in the news biz).

So we dusted and dusted and dusted some more. Things weren't particularly dirty or unkempt, just dusty. With all the little dust bunnies we generated, we could have made a snowman.

So that's about it for now. Next week's entry should be much more interesting, since it will have pictures of Kittie and David and, I'm sure, at least one of Mickey in a Santa's hat.

East Is East and West Is West

The Premier Edition of The Hollywood Reporter (as in East Coast edition) was launched on Nov. 2. Since then, I have been working a Sunday-through-Thursday work week with at least two press deadlines every day. It's not as crazy as it sounds and, again, sometimes it is.

In that same period of time, I've been adjusting to the new schedule: On Fridays it feels absolutely wonderful to have the day off (although I went in this last Friday to cover for David D., whose wife had a baby on the 11th). But when Saturday night rolls around, I have the sinking feeling of having to work on Sunday. It's not too bad, though, since I can drive into work without the rush-hour traffic to contend with, and I don't have to be there until about 11 a.m.

Steve's doing fine, except for a hacking cough that comes and goes. We both have the Friday after Thanksgiving off this year, but decided to stay close to home, since my sister Kittie and her husband Dave are coming down to visit and head to Disneyland the next weekend, so we're taking the holiday weekend to clean house and -- just maybe -- put up the Christmas tree (no promises there).

And, because no blog entry should be without a photo, here's a shot of a coin-operated, accordian-playing mime outside the Pompidou museum in Paris. I dropped a two-euro coin in the hat and got maybe 30 seconds of music. That's the French for you.

Where's the Fire?

The fire is everywhere. Check out the satellite image: all those little red blobs are fire areas. I don't have to repeat the number. If you've been reading/watching the news, you know almost a million people have been evacuated; thousands of houses lost, hundreds of thousands of acres burned.

The funny thing is I haven't seen a lick of flame. Most people who live in the city proper haven't, either. But we can see the smoke. It looks like we've bee having cloudy days with a general overcast. Only the clouds are a light brown-yellow and they are 100% smoke. If the fires weren't blazing, the skies would be clear blue.

Also, it's kicked back up into the 90s and triple digits all week. Supposedly the high will move to the east and an onshore breeze will bring cooler, more humid days; the Santa Ana winds will die down and the fires will be put out. Until then, the thick clouds and the astringent smell of smoke will continue to linger over the southern part of the state.

From my iPhone

This is totally weird. I can get on the blog on my computer at work. I can even make this entry from my iPhone, but I can't get on via my home computer. Wazzup?

Fun With the Octogenarian

On Saturday, Oct. 13, the family got together and celebrated the impending 80th birthday of our matriach, Paula Blanchard McDougal (pictured in her reclining throne). It has taken me this long to actually get onto this damn blog site so I can upload the pictures, etc.

The soiree was held at the Spyglass Inn, Shell Beach, on the cliffs of the Pacific Ocean, in the very same room where a similar bash was held for Mom's just-slightly-older-sister, Kit (not to be confused with my sister Kittie). The whole clan was there for a family dinner, with friends and associates of Mom's arriving later for hors d'oeuvres, champagne and a really smashing cake.

I took the 7:30 a.m. train up to Grover Beach from Union Station on Friday, which meant getting up at 5:15 to make the Gold Line connection. I had loaded a couple movies onto my iPhone, so I wasn't totally bored. Just north of Santa Barbara, I took some pictures through the dirty train windows (the best of which is shown here) of the trek up the coast.

I arrived in Grover Beach around 12:45, just in time to interrupt lunch for my sister Kittie and brother Steve (with his family, wife Pam and daughters Amanda and Emily) who were scheduled to retrieve me from the train station. Family members gathered (Kittie's husband Dave, brother Jim with his wife Carla and offspring Chance joining in) at the moms' house in Arroyo Grande that afternoon. I finally checked in to my motel around 5 p.m., returning to the moms' for delivery pizza and more conversation. I can't remember who dropped me off at the motel, but I hit the sack Friday at around 11:30.

Saturday I got a ride back to the moms' around 10 a.m. from Dave and Kittie. Steve (my Steve, not my brother Steve) was driving up that morning and showed up around 11:30. While brothers Steve and Jim and families went off to explore Morro Bay, Kittie and David worked feverishly on the party preparations while my Steve and I went to take in the wonders of Pismo Beach (pictured).

While eating lunch, I got a call on my cell from Evan (with camera here), creator of the DVD mentioned earlier in this blog. He was FREAKING OUT. Evan is one cool and collected dude, so it was obvious something wasn't right. He was in Santa Barbara (halfway between L.A. and Pismo Beach) and had forgotten the DVDs on his desk at home. He wanted to know if I had some of the original scans still on my flashstick drive (I carry it on my keychain) but I had dumped them off to make room for the Europe photos. He said he had his computer with him and could put together a quickie slideshow if we could retrieve some pictures.

"You've got two choices," I said. "You can turn around and drive back down to L.A. and get here late, or you can accept this, release it into the universe and come up and have a good time." He chose the latter, (the wiser choice) and we all had a great time even without the DVD which I only mentioned once that evening and is lovely I'm sure but I haven't gotten a copy and that's the last I'm going to mention it here.

We all returned in the late afternoon to the moms'. Steve (my brother) and his crew were bunking there, so they were set. Steve and I were housed at the motel and Jim and company had a short-term house rental, so we had to make an exit in order to prepare for the dinner.

We got to the Spyglass Inn just before sunset. Dinner was really nice, because we ordered off the menu, not some preset choice. This picture is a view out the windows of the party room just after dinner and just before the guests arrived for the party. During dinner, nonfamily folks in on the plan went to the moms' place and brought their two reclining chairs to the party room. Mom's was bedecked with a fan of peacock plumes and she was given a bouquet, tiara and sceptre in order to lord it over the party (see photo at top of entry). She did an excellent job.

There were several speeches (including one by yours truly, which I'm not so sure was very good), and then, as the liquor kicked in, the tone deaf began singing with the karaoke machine. Also with abandon; that's about the time I split with Steve...my Steve, not brother Steve...and the evening was pretty much over.

Sunday, we got up and went over to the moms'. They had asked us to get bagels on the way, but all the places where there had been supermarkets before were now something else (I was working with a 10-year-old mental map of the area), and the one bagel store had a drive-thru line around the building and all the parking spaces were taken. We decided to go next door to Dolly's Donuts and get a DeLuxe Assortment dozen and brought those over instead.

We got there to find that Kittie and David were coming over with eclairs, so no one was at a loss for refined sugar nor saturated fats.

All of Steve's crew (brother Steve, that is) except Amanda had left at 6 a.m. to fly back to Wisconsin. Steve (my Steve) and I headed back to L.A. at noon, giving my nephew CJ (or Christopher or Chris) a ride down as far as Union Station, where he caught the Amtrak back to Anaheim, where he's at college studying game coding.

It was a memorable party. A joy. A good time was had by all and if you've made it this far in this entry, you probably don't have a very exciting life. GO DO SOMETHING FUN!