We checked out a Dodgers game for Labor Day…had to watch Manny Ramirez, one of the most powerful mashers in the game (since the end of July when he was traded from Boston he has hit 10 HR, had 29 RBIs and is batting 414!!), play before he likely moves on. It was a beautiful evening, great seats, good game. In the photo, if you look close, you can see the Goodyear blimp circling the Rose Bowl ~8 miles away while UCLA was playing Tennesse. I got a closeup look at the blimp beside the freeway somewhere around Long Beach last week. The girl who played Elpheba in Wicked (minus the green) sang the national anthem. Whitney Houston sang it best, but this was a close second.

Before the game we had dim sum in Chinatown, then Shannon’s brother Dave took us on an urban hike tour all around downtown: Chinatown, business district, Bradbury Building, Pershing Square, subway, Union Station, Olivera St…very cool city!!

Utah Utes broke into the top 25 after beating Michigan Saturday, in Michigan, in “the big house”, in front of 106,000 screaming M fans. They looked great in the first half, not so great in the second half, but clung to victory.

Went to the taping of the Craig Ferguson show yesterday. Lots of fun…he is a very funny man, very entertaining. The guests were Julie Chen, host of Big Brother, Maria Bello, actress and Shelby Lynne, singer. Last spring he passed Conan in ratings.

On the drive home I listened to the RNC. Gullianni had some good jabs, but Palin was AMAZING!! I watched the second half when I got back home. With all that pressure she was composed, funny, down-to-earth and inspiring. WOW!!

Utah plays Michigan on national TV tomorrow. Today they have the above picture on the whole top half of the Weekend Journal section of the wsj!!

Interesting choice for running mate: state high school basketball champion, beauty pagent contestant, hockey mom, graduate of University of Idaho, mother of 5.

I took the kids to Wicked last night…awesome, they loved it!!.

Four days at the beach just wasn’t enough last week, so I rode my bike back to the beach on Saturday. One of the young men I work with is working on his cycling merit badge. One of the requirements is to ride 50 miles in 8 hours. From my driveway to the parking lot at Seal Beach was 50.0 miles (per my GPS accurate to within +/- 20 feet). Four of us made the trip: two adults, two youth. It was uneventful, except for the thorn that gave me a flat in the first 2 miles. We made it in 5 hours. Shannon was waiting for us there with footlong subs, boogie boards, cold beverages and a ride home. Back home I made some Yes on Prop 8 phone calls, then we had friends over for games. My Settlers Slum continues…

My big brother turned 50 last week!!

Yesterday we helped a neighbor feed the homeless (~100) at a church in Pomona. It was a great experience.

The kids go back to school a week from Wednesday. The countdown is on.

This week we lived a few miles up the beach from Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, David Geffen, etc while we camped at the Leo Carillo State Park. It was a good time. Saw pilot whales almost every day. Sharps came out for a night. The day after they left Dan went on The Price is Right and won ~$4k worth of prizes. He will be on Oct 30th.

Shannon’s brother and his family came out for the rest of the week. Got in lots of boogie boarding, games, reading, smore eating and ~30 miles of biking on the PCH.

Gavin and Grace are doing soccer camp this week. The coaches are all 20somethings from Great Britian and beloved by their young charges.

So we have 2 of our 3 cars in the shop, then the check engine light goes on in the Campervan…ouch. The work car needs some part that might not be available till next month. The Expo is miss firing in cylinder 4, so hopefully it just needs a new coil. The Van seems to be cooling system related and seems to have fixed itself? Perfect opportunity to ride the KLR 650 to work, right? Shannon vetoed that idea.

Gavin and Grace had a piano recital Wednesday night: Grace played “Beauty and the Beast” in a duet with her teacher and Gavin played Arabesque.

Its been fun watching the Olympics. Shannon’s favorite is volleyball, Dylan and Gavin like diving, Grace and I like gymnastics, and everyone is cheering for Phelps.

He even wore socks to church. So far he likes wearing a suit…we’ll see how long that lasts. He is a great kid and we are very proud of him.

We met Portland friends at Lake Shasta for a week of houseboating. Had a blast!! The water level is way down this year and there have been HUGE fires nearby, so we were a bit concerned. No worries: that just meant there were less people. The fires were contained and the jet stream took care of the residual smoke. There was one afternoon when we got a bit of smoke on the lake, but that was it. The water was like glass as late as 11 AM some days…awesome! Dylan turned 12 and our friends daughter turned 6 on the same day, so we celibrated with ribs and brownies. Grace wakeboarded for the first time. She got up first try and stayed up for a LONG ride. It was quite a site, this tiny little thing rockin’ the great big board. She couldn’t even see over the board when she was in the water. Gavin prefers waterskiing. He got up on some skiis we borrowed and was determined to slalom like mom. He tried dropping several times, but promptly fell. Dylan tried wake skating and loved it. It’s a cross between a wakeboard and a skateboard: no bindings, rubberized surface, smaller than a wakeboard. His favorite thing to do was sit on it. At night we slept on the roof of the houseboat. Jupiter was bright in the eastern sky and the Perseid meteor shower was ramping up, so we saw lots of shooting stars. One night we counted 16 in ~40 minutes. I’ve been loving the game Settlers of Catan lately, so we played that several times. Some friends in Claremont spent 5Grr on gas houseboating at Lake Powell this summer, so we were also worried about the price of gas. The bill for houseboat gas was $150, ski boat $300…not bad. The boat ran great. It’s 20 years old, so that isn’t something we take for granted. An Italian boat racer/ mechanic in Portland told us to never get rid of it because it has such a solid hull…way better built than most boats today. I spent way more time on conference calls than I wanted to, but it was still a fun and relaxing break.

The 2008 Tour de France ends today. I watched the end of 5 or 6 stages, but then DirectTV dropped the VS channel from our package. It was cool to see 2 US based teams this year: Team Columbia and Garmin Chipotle. They are both new teams that did better than expected. One of my favorites, George Hincapie rides for Team Columbia. Levi Leipheimer, another favorite, didn’t ride this year because his team, Astana, didn’t get invited (doping issues). Cadel Evans, an Aussie, 2nd place overall last year, was expected to win, even until yesterdays time trial. All he had to do was make up ~85 seconds over a 30 mile individual time trial. He was only able to shave off 30 seconds from Carlos Sastra, so he won’t be winning this year.

This is a HUGE week for work. A multi-billion$ selling drug we haven’t had access to is FINALLY coming off patent. We have a generic version that is expected to be approved by the FDA this week which we could, if approved, start selling on Friday. It’s our 29,000 employee company’s most important development this year, so there is a lot riding on it.

Grace did the 2 week drama camp again this summer. Tonight is their performance of Charlotte’s Web. Grace is playing Avery, Fern’s brother and has a duet. She went to the camp with her triplet friends.

Yesterday we met some Portland friends at Manhattan Beach for a few hours. Shannon and I got fried. Gavin (10) made daddy proud: Civil War, an obscure Guns N Roses song was playing on KROQ, so I asked him to name the guitar player. Without hesitation he said, “Slash”. Tom Morello is his favorite guitar hero. A highlight from the trip to Canada was when all three kids were “singing” along to Morello’s guitar solo in Audioslave’s “Be Yourself” (waWawaWawa…). Priceless.

Lake Shasta is the lowest I’ve ever seen it in the ~16 years of driving by it. Hopefully they will get all the fires in the area contained BEFORE we head up there later this summer to go houseboating.