You son of a beeeeeach!

The other day I was flipping through the channels, looking for something to watch and I ran across "How It's Made" on the Discovery Channel. It's essentially 30 minutes of what I thought was the best part of Mr. Roger's Neighborhood--where they went to factories and showed how they makes crayons, or I-beams, or whatnot. I know you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, I set a season's pass for it, even though there are like 30 upcoming episodes, and will no doubt cause Mr. TiVo to crash and delete other, more important things, like Justin Timberlake SNLs. I skip the boring segments, like horse-drawn carriages, and only watch the cool things, like glass eyes and gold chains. Very cool. I can't wait until they air the one about how they make flutes. I've played the freaking thing for 15 years and I have never seen one made. Sacreligeous.

Paris is back in jail. Apparently she went kicking and screaming. She's supposed to finish the rest of her sentence, 40 days. I'll believe that when I see it.

We leave in 2 weeks for sunnier pastures, for a full 9 days. Every year Derrick's family rents 3 beach houses on Newport Beach (the same beach houses every year, for the past 30 some odd years). It has certainly been the highlight of Derrick's year since he was born. It took me a few years to get into the groove of "The Beach", but I have it down pat now, and it's an ideal vacation for me. I sleep as late as I want, with the help of earplugs. See, we share a house with Grandma, and "Grandma's Club" meets here every morning bright and early, bursting with song and screams. The earplugs are my saving grace. After breakfast, or lunch, depending on when I get up, I wait for the smog to burn off (my #1 complaint about California beaches. I have many, others being that the water is freezing, the waves are too big to hang out in the water if you could anyway, there are sharks...). Then I head out to the beach and bake for awhile, keeping my face fully covered. I am well aware that when I am seventy, my face will (hopefully) look 50, but the rest of my body will look 90. Oh well. Then it's in for a shower and dinner, and then we head to the Fun Zone, an area of ancient arcade games and carnival rides. The goal of the evening is to get as many tickets as possible, so that at the end of the week, you can buy things to throw away later, such as stuffed animals, chinese finger traps, or extremely large playing cards. Or spend them more wisely, and buy Fun Dip and Airheads. Or, do the adult thing, and give them to your nieces and nephews. (But that's really hard for me to do still, since I like to buy things with them. I'm an oversized kid, really.) We head back to the house and put the kids to bed, and sometimes the adults will play games, but that's not a given. Although I hear in past years it used to be. Now, usually someone is mad at someone else, so not everyone gets together. The beach week is never without it's fair share of family drama. This year will no doubt be no different, and I'm am determined to stay out of every ounce of it. Innocent opinons can't really be shared in this family, b/c they will come back to bite you in the ass. Choose your words wisely, grasshopper.

But that wasn't the point of me bringing up the beach. My point is that, every year, we anxiously wait for the beach to come, and then WHOOSH! In a flash it's gone. For some reason the beach has quickly snuck up on me, and I really haven't even given it a single thought. Maybe it's because the beach is usually the trip to start all summer trips, the kickstart of summer. We've already been to Florida and Texas, and now going to LA is just a trip somewhere in the middle. Either way, it's a weird thing. Weird that I haven't been looking forward to it, in the sense of meticulously counting down days. But awesome that it's already 2 weeks away! It's always a great time, no matter what. This year will be slightly different as we'll be away from the beach more than usual. We're headed to an Angels game on Tuesday and then a wedding rehearsal dinner on Thursday. I'm sooooo looking forward to all that So Cal traffic.

Was that boring? Sorry.

Someone is rocking "Sweet Emotion" outside, really loud, and it just made my day. Who doesn't love Aerosmith? That officialy just started my weekend. Awesome.