The L.A. Dime

After the first day of the NFL Draft, I sent ESPN’s Chris Mortensen the following message through Twitter:

@Mort2u Could you speak to the character concerns of Smith and Rey Rey? WhoDeyNation has to be worried. Again.

Today, the venerable analyst actually replied to me with the following:

Mort2u Smith just young. On Rey, more teams worry about instincts than character. He’s capable of energizing team with big hits!

Thanks for the reply, Mort.  Maybe these new Bengals will be alright after all.

The Swine Flu threat in SoCal, in addition to the notion that we don’t need to burn gas, pollute the air, and spend money to have fun, has spurned a strong desire in me to just stay home with Bophster. Who has suggestions on stay and play activities for a Daddy and his 20 month-old girl?

As I dive into my “late act 2, life is all good, and everything is calm before the storm” montage, I’m wondering what your favorite cliché movie montage moments are.

For instance, DBrazz suggested the 70s Van by the beach at sunset to suggest consummation. Brendan misses the 80s saxophone score to his favorite montages. Anne wants the shot through a rainy restaurant window as our couple falls in love. What’s your favorite montage moment?

Photo by Brian Coggins

Here’s the thing about writing — it surely beats the hell out of digging ditches, but it’s with you ALL the time. No time is really down time, or off time, because the story always needs to be finished, and you should (or you think you should) always be writing it. Always. Playing with family, watching TV, eating dinner, visiting friends…it is the itch that will not go away, even if you scratch at it with industrial-grade sandpaper embedded with diamonds.

There’s a lot of guilt involved, especially on bad days when fear of the great white page, or terror at the idea of suckiness, partner up with procrastination to overwhelm you (this blog post means they’re winning). There’s also a lot of time committed for minimum to no gain. Like a running back plowing into a stacked line all day long for one measly yard. Today, up at 4:00 AM on a Saturday, I may work for 5 hours to get two pages that down the line will likely be cut or totally altered beyond recognition.  But a paycheck awaits (which is rare, I know), and it does beat digging ditches (though I’ve never done that before), and today, right now in fact, I’m gonna open up a can of whoop-ass on those twin devils Procrastination and the Great White Page (“Evil, I know thy name!”). Wish me luck.

This past weekend was a very busy, but fun one. It started with a 5k Walk to help raise awareness of, and funds for, MS. This is a cause that after Leukemia, is close to my heart as it has affected 2 of my closest friends. Together with our good friend Laurie (who’s also a co-worker) we raised $ 1,375! Sophie spent most of the walk running after her new friend Mia.

After a quick shower and nap, we headed back to Simi Valley to help celebrate Cassandra’s 5th birthday. While all the kids were busy decorating flower pots and hitting the pinata, Sophie got her exercise in the bounce house and enjoyed her very first lollipop.

Since Brad had stayed home by himself all of Saturday to write, we had a fun family day on Sunday by heading to the Renaissance Pleasure Faire with Mark & Faleena. Ever since moving here almost 9 years ago, I’ve wanted to go and even though it was in the mid 90’s by noon, we had a really nice time and might even dress up for next year’s visit.

This is stupid and silly, and kinda Hollywood Blvd. touristy, but last night, while watching Ashton Kutcher’s ustream feed as he battled CNN for Twitter supremacy, I sent him this @reply: “Cobra Kai! Sweep the Leg!” About a minute later, he gave me a shout out, and even pronounced my last name right. Tina witnessed the whole affair. We heard Demi laughing in the background. I don’t usually get crazy about celebs, but thought that was pretty cool.

In addition to our one remaining gold fish, we are also currently bird-sitting Charlie and Finley (our friend Moira’s two cockatiels). They make fun sounds and Sophie likes to watch them climb around in their cage.

March was a pretty relaxed month for us but there were a few events that I wanted to document and share with you:
- Brad snuck a gluten-free beer into our local In-N-Out restaurant for dinner one night
- We had a play-date with the Shepherds and even though it doesn’t look like it in the picture below, Roberto & Sophie do actually like each other
- Brad’s hair continues to grow, and grow, and grow, and…
- We set up a Skype account and now talk to both sets of grandparents on a pretty regular basis…Sophie yells out BaBap as soon as she hears the computer ring (her name for Grandpa Rick and Opa Manfredo)
- We had a family picnic in the park but people didn’t show up until an hour into it
- Sophie loves to run (still)
- At bed time, I sing “Alle Meine Entchen” (a German lullaby); Sophie actually rests her head on my shoulder….and I always wish we could sit like that forever
- She can’t pull her pants down yet, but she does tell us when she has a dirty diaper so we figured why not get her used to the idea of sitting on a potty

The Easter Bunny brought me U2 tickets to see the October show at the Rose Bowl!  Actually, I hear there were several bunnies involved.   Thank you Easter Bunnies, bach bach! Now, if we can only get Bono to improve his Twitter Tweets.

Long live Jemaine.  R.I.P.

Jemaine