Christmas 2001 Newsletter

THE MANY MOODS OF ALEX
IRRITATED	EXCITED	SAD
SLEEPY	HUNGRY	CONTENT
CURIOUS	DAZED	HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

2001 started out with a black monolith in our back yard and--oh wait, never mind. It was actually a quiet year, for us at least. No end to the self-inflicted tribulations, of course, but either we're getting better at doing this stuff, or just not doing as much stuff.

My great-uncle, who passed away last year, had a '94 Buick with less than 5,000 miles. (He was 91-what do you expect?) Dawn's mom needed a new car so this was perfect except for one thing: the car was in Arizona and the mom was in Pennsylvania. The first step was to get the car out of Arizona, so in March we flew to Tucson and drove the car straight home via Four Corners. Now, any map will show you that Four Corners is well out of the way, and when Dawn finally saw a map she was pretty upset, especially since she had caught a cold and was feeling awful. The funniest part, though, was that we arrived at closing time, and so we almost drove fourteen hours out of our way to see nothing. Fortunately the man at the gate let us in and we drove fourteen hours out of our way to see a concrete block in the middle of the desert. Still, we got to see the petrified forest, the painted desert, Zion national monument, slept in a wig-wam motel on Route 66, and I have a photo of Dawn throwing up on the Four Corners monument. (On Monday, Dawn called her work to tell them she wasn't coming in because she was sick. She neglected to tell them she was in Utah.)

In June, Dawn's nephew visited from Ohio. It was the first time anybody had trusted us with their kid for more than a couple of hours. (Granted, he's 16 and a football player, but still.) We showed him what it was truly like to live in California: We put 1,000 miles on the convertible that week. We went to San Francisco and Sacramento, the Long Beach Aquarium and Dodger Stadium, and even took him to a Hitchcock film at one of the downtown movie palaces. The most excitement was when we went to the beach and, despite our warnings, he decided to go into the water. He didn't have his glasses on, of course, so when a dolphin passed about 10 feet from him, all he saw was a fin, and I think he set a new speed record getting back to land.

The day after he flew home, I was doing a little yardwork and decided to remove a limb from the walnut tree. That the limb cracked, the tree shook, and I fell off the ladder onto a brick path and fractured my collarbone shouldn't surprise anyone. That I was wearing only my bathrobe might. It certainly surprised the paramedics, the admitting nurse, and the ER doctor, who asked me, "Did you change before coming to the hospital?" When Dawn explained that I often do yardwork at two in the afternoon in nothing but my bathrobe, he nodded knowingly, but I'm sure I was the butt of a few jokes that week (pun intended).

In August, Dawn finally got a bite on all those resumes she'd been sending out (two, I think, but maybe it was three): A small firm just down the street was looking for a probate paralegal, and [remaining paragraph censored by Dawn, who will only say that she loves her new job and doesn't want me antagonizing her new co-workers.]

I started riding my bike to work, thanks in large part to a new asthma drug I was taking. I haven't lost any weight and I've almost been killed twice, but it's definitely worth it. Not to be outdone, Dawn joined a gym. She said it was for health reasons, but I think that with the new job, it's the first time in ten years she wasn't going to school at night or driving two hours to get home, and she just didn't know what to do with all that free time.

But the big news, of course, was the cruise. As I mentioned last year, my mother's side of the family hadn't gotten together since 1979 and it seemed high time for a family reunion. However, given my family's, shall we say, volatile nature, we wanted this to be somewhere where people could get away, so a small boat in the middle of the ocean seemed a natural choice. The logistics were an absolute nightmare: All cruises went from Miami in the winter and New York in the summer. My uncle in Atlanta wouldn't fly and it was too far to drive to either Miami or New York. However, in October, one of the cruise lines had a sailing out of Charleston, South Carolina. I flew to Atlanta and drove my aunt and uncle there; my brother and his family flew from San Francisco, and Dawn flew with my mother and sister from LA. Dawn's only condition, after she stopped saying "not in this lifetime," was that she didn't have to sit near my family (they all snore) so I booked her seat on the other side of the airplane. Of course, the airline - with one of those really consumer-friendly automation systems - found empty seats and so moved everyone together. Both ways.

Coincidentally, my cousin on my father's side was living in Charleston, so we spent two days and had a small family reunion with that side of the family, as well. She and her husband organized the cars, the meals, and the entertainment (okay, she was the entertainment). Everyone was still in high spirits when they dropped us off at the cruise terminal on Monday at 5:30pm.

Unfortunately, those spirits were long gone by the time we actually boarded the ship at midnight. This was post-9/11 so the port had increased security without increasing personnel or equipment, so they had to manually process 3,000 passengers, and all their luggage, with two x-ray machines.

The trip was, surprisingly, uneventful. Because of the cruise, we had to cancel our Halloween party for the first time in nine years, but Dawn and I still got to carve a pumpkin. (I thought it was a contest and I was trying hard to beat the eight-year olds carving with me, but it turned out that they just displayed all of them at the midnight buffet.) On Halloween we all wore our costumes to dinner - out of 3,000 people, we were the only ones in costume. It was supposed to be a Renaissance theme but, as my brother pointed out when he saw my outfit, there are a lot of interpretations of "Renaissance." (His exact words were, "What the hell is that, Italian Renaissance?")

After the cruise, I drove my aunt and uncle back to Atlanta and I had 12 hours before my flight to LA, so I decided to fix my uncle's computer. That we gave him his first computer a few years before was almost a joke - he was 72 and couldn't figure out a coffee maker. The first time he used the mouse, he picked it up and waved it in front of the monitor! I figured it was a lost cause until, one morning, I got an email from him! Then another. Then another. By noon I had to call and tell him to knock it off.

That was three years ago, and he was still running Windows 3.1 on a 486. Since it was now 2001, I figured I should at least upgrade him to Windows 95, so I took my mother's old computer, spent weeks making it idiot-proof, and shipped it to him. Needless to say, the postal service completely trashed it - I mean, "threw it off the truck, ran over it a couple of times, and then dragged it behind them for a couple of miles" trashed it. I had been up since 5am, driven the 6 hours to his place, was up all night fixing the computer, then drove two hours to the airport, and finally -- after 32 hours -- got some sleep on the plane. When I got home, I had an email from my uncle that read, "Next time, can I get a computer with only one previous owner?"

I told Dawn we'd do something with her family next year but she just said, "I'm not that stupid."

Finally, in November, we saw the Leonid meteor shower. If you'll recall, in 1999 we flew half-way across the world and took a cruise through the Canary Islands only to see…nothing. This year, the same pundits said not only was it going to be more spectacular, but prime viewing would be right in our own back yard. It was a Saturday night so we packed up the cooler, put on our warmest clothes, and drove up to the mountains. At midnight, we hadn't seen a thing, we were freezing cold, and there was talk (mostly from the passenger seat) of going home. Then, as if to start the show, a fireball streaked across the horizon. I put down the top on the convertible and we watched an amazing show of 30-40 meteors per minute for three hours, often seeing two or three simultaneously. It was the most spectacular display of celestial pyrotechnics I'd ever seen. (And likely will ever see - the next big show is slated for 2099.)

In the morning, after an hour and a half of sleep, we were driving home and I asked Dawn, "Want to go see the Doo Dah parade?" This is an annual parade in Pasadena that was designed to spoof the Rose Parade, and featured things like the BBQ Marching Grill (who push barbecues does the street), the kazoo marching band, the Bastard Sons of Lee Marvin, The Invisible Man Marching Drill Team, etc. Dawn agreed so we picked up a friend and headed to Pasadena. We finally got home at 4pm, went straight to bed, and didn't wake up until 7am the next morning.

Next Spring, we're driving the Buick to Pennsylvania and do the Great American Road Trip. Imagine spending six hours in the car every day -- it will be just like commuting in Los Angeles.