Gavin got a penalty in his game Saturday night for tripping. Dylan also got a penalty that night for hooking.
Grace’s birthday week is over. She had dinner with cousins at downtown Disney, family birthday dinner at her favorite Chinese restaurant and friends and their family over for dinner on her actual birthday.
The temp got up to 100 degrees yesterday!! It’s some kind of out of season Santa Ana thing that will go away tomorrow. It’s only 97 degrees today and tomorrow and the rest of the week is supposed to be in the upper 70s.
A win tonight advances the Canucks in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Dylan and Gavin had sucessful hockey games this weekend. Grace started volleyball with Shannon as assistant coach. She’s a natural at it and has found her new favorite sport. Mom was a HS volleyball star and couldn’t be more proud. She also started practices for the Pirates of Penzance. She is singing with the school choir, too. Thought we were going to dodge the American Girl thing, but she suddenly got interested just in time for her birthday.
Shannon and I saw Mamma Mia at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood Friday night. It was fun, but the production value was pretty low compared to the MM we saw in San Fran 7 years ago. That was the original Broadway cast.
Local signs of slow down:
Next to the 10 freeway in Fontana there are nearly 2 miles of Union Pacific locomotives lined up end to end. They’ve been idle for several months now. Near Anaheim there are miles of idle train flatcars near the 91 freeway. Only 5 films are scheduled to be shot on location in LA this YEAR. Last year there were 15. There are 2 retired air force bases in the Mojave Desert ~50 miles from where we live that have 100s of commercial passenger jets (United, American, Continental, etc) that are being mothballed until business picks up again. We drove by one of the storage areas on the way back from Mammoth over Christmas. It was weird to see rows and rows of commercial jets parked out in the middle of nowhere.
The wsj had a front page article on my car Wednesday. It’s about how the new Malibu is an example of what Detroit is doing right, but they still have a perception battle to overcome. The Malibu beat the Camry and Accord in initial quality and has won multiple awards for it’s category. We’ve loved ours: it looks good, drives nice and it’s FREE!
There was much rejoicing in the Wride household yesterday as Dylan turned in the final piece of his ancient civilizations project. Visiting Chichen Itza in Mexico last November inspired Dylan to choose the Mayans for his project. He spent HOURS and HOURS over the last couple months (with mom’s help) researching, reading, writing, typing. Monday night he put the final touches on his Chichen Itza model. Tuesday he turned his focus to more weighty matters for the benefit of humanity: “Will this bucket float with me in it?”
