3 Words You Don’t Want To Hear On Vacation (unless you are skiing). That is the forecast that was scrolling across the TV screen during the morning news when we woke up Tuesday morning. They were predicting lots of rain in LA and snow on I-5 over the Grapevine. Luckily we already had one great day at Disneyland under our belts. Monday we got to the gates first thing in the morning. Gavin is now tall enough for all the rides and Grace is tall enough for everything but the “California Screamin’” rollercoaster. We all started out on the Matterhorn (family tradition), then Space Mountain (still my favorite). After that we spit up for a couple hours. The girls looked for princesses while the boys hit Indiana Jones, Thunder Mountain and got FastPasses to Splash Mountain. It was packed. Judging by the Ducks and Beavers hats and sweatshirts, it looked like half of Oregon was there. At 4 the Rennies joined us at Disney’s California Adventure. We all went on the “Tower of Terror”, “Monsters Inc” and (most of us) the big rollercoaster that goes upside down. Great rides (except MI). It started sprinkling a bit around 7. That night we stayed at the Clarion, 2 blocks from the park entrance ($50 on Hotwire).

Tuesday morning, undaunted by the forecast, we went back for more. We got these cool passes at Costco that get you: 3-day pass to Disneyland, pass to SeaWorld, pass to San Diego Zoo and a pass to Universal, for the price of a 2-day pass to Disneyland and a pass to SeaWorld. With the 3 day passes we could get into Disneyland 1 hour early. We got a lot of rides in with the early admission and fewer people in the park. In the afternoon Grace, Shannon and Gavin had lunch with the Princesses along with some friends (the Willes) from Portland. Dylan and I rode the big coaster and had lunch without the Princesses. By then it had started raining and was pretty cold. We all went on “Soaring over California” and headed out. “Soaring” simulates flying over California on a hang glider. You strap into a chair that moves around in front of an IMAX screen in sync with the movie that flies over the coast, thru the Redwoods, down ski slopes at Tahoe, over an orange grove, under the Golden Gate, etc. You also get small blasts of scents to match the scene: pine trees, oranges, etc. Very cool! Shannon and I went on it last year at the EPCOT center.

Eight is a landmark birthday in our family. Dylan chose a pet snake for his 8th. Gavin wants to be an astronaut, so we were talking about a trip to Kennedy Space Center for the two of us. We haven’t been to Disneyland for a couple years, so he chose a family trip to So. Cal for his birthday. We left Friday morning and drove to Shannon’s sister Maria’s house near Sacramento. It was sunny when we left Portland, but raining in Cali. Saturday, after cousin Robby’s basketball game, it stopped raining and dried up enought to ride the motorcycles, tractors and quad. Tons o’ fun. There was lots of mud to get stuck in and practice mud bog rescues.

From there we drove to LA on Sunday where we spent the night and evening with Shannon’s brother Dave and his family in Claremont. Found out I RULE at Scene It Music.

Wow another teenager!!! Glad you’re doing well and enjoying lacrosse. You’ll have to school Dylan next time we see each other! Have a great day. We love you

Dylan played great at hockey last night. He had been frustrated the previous two weeks when they were short players on the other team and the games ended up being scrimmages. A teenager that normally refs would play on the other team and steal the puck from Dylan’s team and over-zealously help out the other team. Two of Dylan’s pet peeves: losing and games that “aren’t fair”. (Important life lessons: life isn’t fair and you can’t always win.) Both times he came home in the foulest of moods. Last night there WERE enough players and he really stepped up his game. He scored two goals on a huge goalie, attacked the puck and put the hurt on some big kids. He has been asked to play on the traveling team, but everything is on Sunday, so he is sticking with Monday nights. That was the same problem with ice hockey.

Baseball practice started for Gavin last night. He is on a fun team with his buddies from school.

Dylan got a ball python for his 8th birthday almost 2 years ago. He has always been a reptile fan, so “Drake” was a good fit. He is a low-maintenance pet: eats a live mouse every other week, poops every other week and gets his cage cleaned once a month. Our last pet before Drake was a beautiful, but slightly psychotic English setter named Lucy. She was mellow and great with the kids, but if she got out the front door she would be gone in a flash, chasing birds for hours. She got to be a bit much while I was getting my MBA, so we gave her to a neighbor.

Gavin’s 8th birthday is coming up in May. He chose a family trip to Disneyland.

Margo and Jim have another teenager in the house as of today. My parents have 7 grandsons and only 2 granddaughters (Karli and Grace). Shannon’s side is almost 2-1 boys: Bob and Lois have 9 grandsons and 5 granddaughters.

Finally found a pharmacist for the opening at our pharmacy. The nationwide search started last August. Fortunately, the pharmacist that is leaving is willing to stay until the new guy gets going. If you want to know what to be when you grow up, newly graduated pharmacists are making $100k+ and getting $5-30k sign-on bonuses. There is a big and growing shortage of pharmacists. In 2000, the last time I had to find someone, it took a full year.

Polypharmacy: “when too many forms of medication are used by a patient.” That’s me this week. Last week Gracie had a cold that she passed on to Shannon. After just congratulating myself for going all winter without getting sick, I got a bug. I thought it was a cold, so I tried Airborne. When that didn’t work I tried OTC Allegra from Canada thinking it might be allergies. Canada and Mexico have less restrictive laws on over-the-counter meds, so I stock up when we go. I still had the leaky faucet thing going on in my nose. Grace didn’t like the tissue stuffed up my nose look, so I went nuclear with the OTC Amoxicillin from Mexico. Looks like I had another sinus infection which I seem to be genetically predisposed to. I feel better today, but still not 100%.

We woke up to snow this morning! There was 2-3″ on the lawn and nothing on the roads. The kids school was on a 2 hour delay. They made the most of it out in the yard. Art night at school was supposed to be tonight, but it was posponed due to weather. Dylan and Gavin are going to play piano for 10 minutes each.

Papa sent some rocks from Utah home with the boys at Christmas time. Many of them were from a rock hunting trip I went on with my dad, Janene and a plane mechanic over 20 years ago in Utah west of the Salt Flats somewhere . After school today the boys cracked open a few looking for topaz and other treasures. They found some crystals and some silvery substances.

Yesterday I worked early, so after finishing up a birthday gift project we went to a matinee of “16 Blocks” with Bruce Willis and Mos Def. I thought it was entertaining, Shannon thought it was just OK. We were going to go running after, but Shannon is fighting a cold.

Monday morning on the radio I heard that Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins were playing the Aladdin Theater that night, so after work I went and got a ticket. The Aladdin is an old movie theater that has been converted to a concert hall. Its tiny and a great place to see a show. Their tour bus couldn’t go up I-5 because of avalanches, so they had to go back to Sacramento and fly to Portland. Their opening act didn’t get to fly, so they got some local guy and his cousin to warm up the crowd. The singer had a guitar and the other guy had a mandolin. They sounded good. I was right up close on the third row. Jenny Lewis was amazing. She has a beautiful voice, writes witty songs and jams on the acoustic guitar. The Watson twins looked like something out of a Twin Peaks episode. The had great voices as well. The rest of the band was a bass player, slide guitar, rhythm guitar and drummer. Highlights for me were: “The Charging Sky”, “Rabbit Fur Coat” and a gospel song they sang at the end. It was worth the sleep deprivation.

You can download the whole album FREE (except “Handle With Care”) here. Check it out!

It’s been a slow movie season as usual for this time of year, but this week I saw two great movies. Both are coming soon on DVD, but I wanted to see them on the big screen. Thursday night I went to Neil Young’s concert movie “Neil Young: Heart of Gold”. He has always been a favorite, but he got a little outspoken politically on his last CD “Greendale”. “Prairie Wind” is right up there with “Harvest Moon” and “After the Goldrush”. It’s really mellow, acoustic and country-tinged with a lot of steel guitar. He wrote it shortly after his father died and before he had surgery on a potentially life-threatening aneurism, so it’s alot of reflective, beautiful songs. The concert movie was filmed over two nights last fall in Nashville at Ryman Auditorium and directed by Jonathan Demme. He plays all of the new album and several older songs. He is a great performer. One of my all-time favorite concerts was his tour for the “Freedom” album. Social Distortion and Sonic Youth opened. Every October he puts on the Bridge Benefit concert in San Jose to raise money for a school he runs for special needs children. We went to that a few times when we lived in SF.

Yesterday I took the kids to “Howl’s Moving Castle”. It came out early last summer, but I never made it to see it before it left the theaters. Portland has several theater pubs where you can order pizza and eat off tables in the theater. All four of us saw it at the Laurelhurst theater for $5. Grace loves the other movies by the same guy (Hayao Miyazaki): “Spirited Away”, “Castle in the Sky” and “Kiki’s Delivery Service”. Like the others it’s hand-drawn Japanese Anime with gorgeous scenes and an interesting story. The detail in the village is amazing. It moves slow by American standards but we were all drawn in the whole time. It is about a girl who gets a spell cast on her that turns her into an old lady. Christian Bale does the voice for Howl. It comes out on DVD Tuesday. Joe Morgenstern of the WSJ turned me on to these movies and several others that I otherwise wouldn’t have seen. “Howl’s” made his top 20 for 2005. Some others that I saw that were in his top 10: “Grizzly Man” a documetary about a weirdo who lived with grizzly bears in Alaska every summer until one of them ate him. “Harry Potter 4″. “Millions” fun story about a kid who finds a duffle bag with hundreds of thousands of dollars has an interesting, misguided side story with some Mormon missionaries. And “Walk the Line” that I hope gets some props at the Oscars tonight. He loved “16 Blocks”, so I’ll have to check it out next week.

Dylan started lacrosse yesterday. He enjoyed it and is looking forward to his first game.