Summer of 2008 Comes to a Close

This was the fastest summer ever for me. One day, my youngest daughter Amy and her boyfriend Jordan were going to the prom with a few of their closest friends a couple of weeks before the end of school, and the next thing I knew her boyfriend was heading to his freshman year Yale and she was back to homework, color guard practice and choir rehearsals.

Where did the summer go? My son Jay got out a few weeks before Amy and helped with a few tasks around the house before flying to London to start a month-long backpacking trip all over Europe. My wife and I lived vicarariously through his adventures.

My oldest daughter Gina and her husband Laszlo sort of tagged into the match in place of Jay, coming in from New York to spend a few days with us at the end of June and beginning of July. One of their friends from their years in Seattle, Rachel, came down to spend a few days with us, too, and since she had never been to Hollywood, Beverly Hills or Westwood, we went up there to look at the stars in the sidewalk, cruise down Rodeo Drive and then have cookies at Diddy Reese just off the UCLA campus.

The next thing I knew, Gina and Laszlo returned to the Big Apple, and Amy was off to the California Scholastic Press Association Journalism Workshop for two weeks, making Julie and I empty nesters. After dropping Amy off in San Luis Obispo, Julie and I continued up to Napa, which I'll write about eventually. The workshop, by the way, was really impressive. It turns out all of the journalists who taught classes and conducted field trips for essentially 14 hours a day did so without pay, just to help these bright high school kids. Amy thrived under the pressure and loved the experience.

We made a few trips down to San Diego, stopping in to see my sister, brother-in-law and nephew in Leucadia, where we enjoyed some fabulous meals and poker games, before proceeding down to Rancho San Diego to visit my mother-in-law, Julie's sister and her family. One of these San Diego trips culminated with a trip to Petco Field to watch the Padres lose the the Giants.

A few days before the Padres game, I was driving Amy home from the mall when a GMC Yukon XL ran a stop side and sent us spinning through the air, landing on the other side of the road facing the opposite direction. When the damage was assessed, the car was totalled, and I've been getting chiropractic treatments periodically ever since.

That didn't stop Julie, Jay, Amy, Jordan and I from enjoying a great day at Disneyland as sort of a celebration of Julie's birthday. These days, Jay and Amy go with their friends rather than us, so it was a real treat. Plus, they were big enough to ride all the rides. The next evening, we went to see the Galaxy play Chivas in the Super Classico soccer match. We went to see Beckham and Donovan, but it was a Chivas home game (they both play their home games at the same stadium), and they gave us free red Chivas hats. The Chivas crowd had all kinds of syncopated chants to cheer on their team, but they didn't hassle those of us cheering for the Galaxy. In the end, it was a tie.

Band camp started the day of the soccer game, and that continued every day until school started. I'll tell you what: it never got boring. You may note, however, that we didn't take our usual big vacation this summer, despite the fact that I always tell people to never let a summer pass by without a memorable vacation to highlight it. Soon, we'll make up for that.