Last Day In California

Sorry to have been so OUT OF TOUCH! I haven't had a computer to talk to since I last wrote. This is a good thing I think, to take a break from the ol' interactive TV screen and just do the REAL LIFE thing. The downside is that there is SO MUCH I want to write in here or could have. For example, at my family reunion, we stayed at the Lawrence Welk Resort, which is really a bunch of condos on a GIANT golf course, dotted with scary brass statues of Lawrence Welk. My grandma Pat made all 20 of us go to the Live Christmas Review Show, which was so OVER THE TOP and UNBELIEVABLE that you didn't know whether to laugh out loud or run screaming from the theater. As it happens, I did both. By all counts, Lawrence Welk was of a particular ilk (the polyester suits, pro-Vietnam, performing poodles kind), and wasn't necessarily HIP, but OF THE TIME. It was so surreal to see people in their 20's and 30's tap dancing and singing their hearts out to 25 Christmas numbers, that weren't even hip in 1969, much less 2005. I kept thinking, "What road leads you tap dancing at the Lawrence Welk Resort to 500 people on a Tuesday night??"

Or, when I was flying back with Janae and my five year old brother and 2 year old sister, I thought I had experienced everything, until my brother screamed at the top of his lungs, just as we were about to land, "I WANT TO GO POTTY!!"

Or how the minute I was done with family and travel and settled into see my friends in Santa Cruz, I became immediately SICK. No one needs to tell me that it was stress and my body was saying: TAKE A BREAK WILLYA?

So today is my very last day in California and it is pouring with rain. I could feel totally gipped on my trip here, but what's the point? Better to take as many pictures as I can, chalk it up to another CHARACTER BUILDING EXPERIENCE and tap dance down my OWN road.