Saturday we went to the Getty to check out an exhibit of Rembrandt sketches I heard about on the radio. Apparently he didn’t sign his sketches and had dozens of students that did similar work, so many sketches were falsely attributed to him. Over the last 30 years specialists have systematically come up with ways to figure out the artist behind the sketches. They paired similar Rembrandt and student sketches side by side and explained how to tell them apart. Most of the time it was immediately obvious: Rembrandt’s usually had fewer strokes and shading but conveyed MUCH more feeling. Even the landscapes. Very cool exhibit!

Next we went to Universal Studios which is about 20 minutes northeast of the Getty. It wasn’t too busy for a Saturday: 20 minute wait for the Simpson’s ride, 30 minute wait for the Studio tour. The studio tour highlights: Wisteria Lane, Skull Island from latest King Kong, flash flood, earthquake and the tour guide. We finished up at the animal show where Shannon was selected from the audience to get pick-pocketed by the parrot from Ace Ventura. She held up a dollar bill and the bird flew across the stadium, grabbed it and flew back. With that and her conversation with Craig Ferguson a couple nights before, she made quite a splash in Hollywood this week. We went to the taping of Friday night’s Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson Thursday evening. The guest was Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite). It was fun, but we missed out on the musical performance by Corinne Bailey Rae (saw her in the parking lot) and the commedian who both taped with the afternoon show. That audience also got a Sirius satellite radio with a 2 month subscription. They also cut our close-up audience shot! We were sitting right behind a pregnant lady who they zoomed in on during the email portion of the show. Also cut: CF kept trying to get Heder to swear, but he wouldn’t do it.

Friday I went snowboarding at the resort up the road from our house. They got 5 feet of snow last week, so I was anxious to get up there. I had to work last weekend, but Dylan went snowboarding with his cousin and uncle Saturday, the first clear day after a week of snow. The ski resort is only 10 miles away, but it took them 4 hours from when they left our house until they were skiing!!! Could have almost been to Mammoth in 4 hours. They had to put on chains, even though they had 4WD and the ticket line takes forever. They still had a great time. Friday my biggest delay was the line for lift tickets: 45 minutes. The snow was still in great shape and the lift lines weren’t bad. REI has discount passes, so a day pass was only $25.

Ty went home from the hospital yesterday. He had his first round of chemo and starts radiation therapy on Thursday. The surgery last week removed a large Wilms tumor that was growing on his kidney. It had spread to his lungs and stomach, making it look like the more aggresive form of Wilms. They sent samples to Chicago to identify exactly what type he has. The good news is that he has the more favorable type, the bad news is that he is still facing ~8 months of treatment. He has excellent odds for a full recovery. Shannon spent most of last week in Sacramento. Within hours of getting the news Lois (Ty’s grandma) was on a plane and Shannon was on the road to go help. The day before his surgery Ty had ~60 visitors at the hospital…including many children. The day of his surgery his ward and extended family fasted (there is another fast this Sunday). Ty is a HUGE football fan…knows all the NFL teams, players, records, etc. He (and all 3 of his brothers) played football last season. One of his coaches had the Oakland Raiders send him a personalized, autographed ball. When he loses his hair from the chemo his brothers and the deacons in his ward are all going to shave their heads in support. Grace is growing her hair out for Locks for Love. Check out the link in the right column to his caringbridge.org site. They have had 3000+ hits in the first week! During such a tough time, Don and Maria have been comforted and strengthened by an outpouring of love and support.

Shannon is looking forward to seeing Twilight this morning.

Things I’m looking forward too:

U of U (will they wear the black gear again? I vote for RED) vs BYU TOMORROW!!

Playa Dolophine

GNR: Chinese Democracy

Finding out if MAN RAM will stay in So Cal…..Angels perhaps?

The day our high flux reactor in the Netherlands fires back up!!

For all those times when you think “I just don’t measure up…I’m doing
it all wrong” just think of me!

My solution to eliminate my own person guilt and the sadness
of 2 of my children over Charlotte… the chocolate lab puppy we had for one week, was to
get 2 bearded dragons. It was to be a wonderful learning experience of
life. Well, I killed the male yesterday. Yes I fried him in the hot
sun. I was at piano with G and G while Dylan, under my direction, the
person he trusts most, (we’ll see if he still does) warmed up
the lizards in the sun so we could feed them when we got home. We were
welcomed with tears and then of course wails of tears and uncontrollable
sadness from Grace. What an IDIOT I am.

So 2 hours later when we’re finally sitting down to dinner we continue
our discussion of the lizards and it turns out the kids are done with the
remaining lizard. Gavin is actually done with all pets. Grace chose
her Christmas present: a life-sized, stuffed dog over keeping the lizards. Did I mention
I spent $300 yesterday on supplies. I’d much rather have that in the
bank than kill another lizard.

I have had a good laugh over this one. This is not my “mother of the year”
year but it is the year of the pets…Did I mention we’ve come full
circle and whoever wants a Beta fish may have one to name and watch it
move in a bowl.

Gavin had a birthday party at a local game shop called Gameology. After that it was back to the house for In-N-Out and a Mario Kart tournament. Gavin was born on Mother’s Day and next year his birthday is on Mother’s Day for the first time since he was born. Shannon got a free camera and other gifts for giving birth on Mother’s Day.

Shannon and her mom both got a gourmet breakfast (see nearby photo) in bed to start the day off. After that it was church, Jazz game, then over to David’s for a feast. My mother is a HUGE Jazz fan. After slipping on some stairs, which shattered her wrist and gave her a concussion, she went home, watched the end of a regular season Jazz game and THEN went to the ER.

Big THANK YOU to all the mothers in my life!

It’s great having mommy back. Shannon went to see her parents in BC for 5 days. She had a great time visiting, relaxing and playing games.

Yesterday afternoon we drove in to Hollywood to get tickets for Wicked. Gavin and I are going with Margo and her family later this month. We walked Hollywood Blvd for a bit, had some food, then went to the Griffith Observatory. We saw a star show and looked around for a bit. The whole observatory just reopened a few months ago after a complete remodel. It’s cool, especially for our budding astronomer Gavin. A marine layer of fog rolled in and blocked the stars, so we will have to go back to check out the giant telescope they open to the public. We also have tickets for Kathleen Edwards at a little club in Hollywood and tickets go on sale this weekend for The National/ Modest Mouse/ REM at the Hollywood Bowl.

Grace has been studying the pioneers and jumps at the chance to play dress up. She wore clothes Shannon’s mom saved that Shannon used to wear to church back in the day. As a 6th (?) generation descendant of Mormon pioneers, Grace is a Daughter of Utah Pioneers (DUP). We have a running joke in the family that Grace can take Shannon as a guest to DUP meetings, but Shannon can’t go because her ancestors missed the cut off for DUP classification by ~ 10 years: they waited for the train.

The day after Christmas Shannon’s sister and family (husband and 4 boys) came to town pulling a Toy Box trailer full of 2 quads and 5 motorcycles. The next day, along with Shannon’s brother Dave, his two kids and their Christmas quad and motorcycle, we headed off to Johnson Valley which is a huge tract of BLM land ~25 miles this side of Barstow. Final tally: 3 dads, 7 boys, 2 girls, 3 quads and 7 motorcycles. It was a blast!! When we got there it was FREEZING cold and windy. We set up camp, rode for a while, then built a fire and had steak and potatoes for dinner. We watched Harry Potter 5, then went to bed. I slept in the Campervan. The propane heater kept it at a comfy 70 degrees while it dipped below freezing outside. I put nobby tires on my KLR 650. It is better suited to street riding, but it performed admirably on some pretty rugged trails. I bashed the skid plate pretty hard several times and at some point I smashed a bracket that connects the rear brake pedal to the frame. Should be an easy fix. At the end of a 20 mile ride we had a “race” across a dry lake bed. I got up to 70 mph and held it there while Don caught up to me and blew by at 90 mph on his new Yamaha WR450F. I thought about assuming an aero position and chasing him, but passed on that idea. Dylan loved shooting his new pellet gun and riding his cousin’s Honda 80s. Gavin launched his rocket that he got last spring and loved flying around on Hannah’s quad. Grace’s riding was limited to a short ride on my bike with me. She was all about archery and watching movies on this trip. I told her I would pay her $2 if she could hit a box with an arrow. Seemed like a safe bet, but she quickly got the hang of it and I had to cap her payout at $10. The weather improved over the next two days. We climbed a pretty sizeable peak with the boys. Back home the ladies shopped, went out to eat, went to movies, built furniture, hung paintings and relaxed.

So my taste in music magazines has evolved. From the late 80s to late 90s I subscribed to Rolling Stone, I even saved every issue. This always bugged Shannon: stacks of magazines in the bedroom, in the office and boxes of magazines in the attic. I figured they were collectors items that I could sell some day. With the move I ran out of time. A local “Sell It on Ebay” shop wouldn’t take them so I ended up RECYCLING ~200 issues. I liked the music reviews and LOVED the occasional PJ O’Rourke (Happy 60th today!) articles. I let my subscription lapse because they took themselves too seriously, were too corporate, too focused on the past and too politically liberal. I moved on to BLENDER after RS. It had fun features: 25 songs to download now, ask the artist, a mythbuster type column that examined urban myths about various songs, artist life expectations: how long a given artist should live based on assorted risk factors, etc. They have fun lists: 100 worst songs, 100 greatest moments in rock, etc. It’s a little too pop-culturey. I picked one up before a flight a couple months ago, flipped through it in 5 minutes and didn’t see anything I wanted to read, so I recycled it on the spot. I’ve moved on to Paste magazine (proudly embracing middle age). It’s tag-line is “Signs of Life in Music, Film and Culture”. They focus on indie rock, folk and country. Each issue includes a CD of artists you’ve never heard off. For a few more days you can name your price for a subscription (ala Radiohead’s latest album) here. Don’t tell Shannon, but after buying it at the airport for about a year now, I finally subscribed. I was hooked after the 800 word essay on the merits of GNR’s “Sweet Child of Mine”. They have good music reviews, but I don’t trust their take on movies. Fun occasional feature: Rock Lexicon: “BLOGNOGG: Albums, artists or serendipitous onstage collaborations that are welcomed like booze at Christmastime by the blogging community…, BIRD NERD: The attention-starved, liquor-whipped troglodyte in every audience who hollers multiple requests for ‘Free Bird’ all the way through the set. At a Daft Punk show”. Check it out.

Here are my Top 10 songs right now, in no particular order:

“Who Knew” by P!NK

“Society” by Eddie Vedder on “Into the Wild” soundtrack. Beautiful, haunting song.

“Grey in LA” by Loudon Wainwright III

“Ordinary People” by Neil Young. 18 minutes long!! Best NY album in years. Saw him at the new Nokia theater last month. Amazing show!! Mulitple “Bird Nerds” on hand. Neil said “Yeah, I’ll be breaking into that in a minute”.

“North American Scum” by LCD Soundsystem. Loud, fast, funny.

“Rockstar” by Nickelback

“Home Sweet Home” by Motley Crue. Gavin has a piano song this week that has a similar melody.

“I’m Still A Guy” by Brad Paisley. Clever diatribe against metrosexuals. Whole album is GREAT!

“Tell Me What We’re Gonna Do Now” by Joss Stone featuring Common.

“California Dreamin’” by Queen Latifah. Beautiful voice, great album.

Everyone but Dylan has been sick over the last couple weeks. Grace was first: strep throat, missed a couple days of school then me, then Shannon, and now Gavin is missing his second day of school this week. Dylan’s team won their playoff game last night. The championship game is Saturday.

Shannon is being honored by the Oregon Association of American Mothers at a dinner gala tonight. She now prefers being referred to as “Most Honorable Mother”. It’s made her an easy target: S: “Is it terrible if I make grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner again?” Me: “I’m gonna call the committee”. S: “Am I a terrible mom for letting the kids watch TV all afternoon?” Me: “That’s it, I’m calling the committee!” All kidding aside, she is an excellent mother and deserves to be Mother of the Year. She isn’t comfortable with the whole self promotion thing, but sees this as an opportunity to get more involved in the community. At least Britney Spears has pulled herself out of contention this year.