Then Darin said, “Oh, um, there’s a WebKit conference on Monday and Tuesday of that week.”

Anaheim it is, then.

We decided to drive down late Tuesday night (after Darin’s conference let out) and then spend several days puttering around Disneyland and California Adventure. We took the kids here two years ago, and we figured they’d enjoy it even more this time. I really think they did. They still enjoy being there (some of their friends are already bored with it), and they were willing to try new stuff now.

Some random observations from this visit, in no particular order:

Disneyland

• My 10-year-old daughter enjoys going on rollercoaster rides as much as or more than my 10-year-old self did. Of course, one problem is: I am no longer 10-years-old, and they are not nearly as much fun. I still go on them with her though.
• Sophia would go on Space Mountain non-stop, if given the choice and the ability. I’m assuming that on our next visit to a Magic Kingdom she will have both, as she will be old enough to skedaddle and do whatever the hell she likes, parents or no parents.
• My 7-almost-8-year-old son would like all rollercoasters to cease existence as of right now, thankyouverymuch. So I don’t think his older sister will be dragging him along with her in the future.
• Captain EO is hilarious, and not in a good way. It is SO Eighties that at one point a monster morphs into a dancer with a gelled-up pouf and the audience laughed. We finally see the evil queen morph into Anjelica Huston…and immediately Michael Jackson’s head fills the frame, as though we can’t possibly focus on someone else for even a second. And the song redefines forgettable.
• Sophia said, “I couldn’t tell if Captain EO was a boy or a girl.” So many things I left unsaid at that point.
• Darin managed to deduce that the voice of the pilot for Star Tours is Paul Reubens, and the Internet backs him up. Therefore this information is TRUE.
• The kids cannot get enough of Pirates of the Caribbean and the Haunted Mansion. Some things never change. It is still funny to hear the voice of Tony the Tiger in both places.
• My kids have no idea who Tony the Tiger is. Go me!
• Two years ago, at the Haunted Mansion, Simon looked at the paintings in the spooky hallway (the ones that change from things like a beautiful lady to a cat lady when the lighting flashes) and said, “Projection.” In his 5-year-old voice, with a little boy lisp, it came out, “Pwojeckshun,” and it was hilarious. He is, of course, right. Which is kind of amazing for a 5-year-old in the first place.
• The part of the Haunted Mansion that features married couples where apparently the wives murdered the husbands: guys, violence isn’t any funnier directed toward men. In fact, it’s DISTURBING. (Oh, I see from Wikipedia I was right: I didn’t remember this bit from my childhood, and I guess I wasn’t paying attention two years ago, and it is in fact new.)
• Also a big fave: It’s a Small World! The classics, they never stop. Kind of hilarious that a bunch of dolls singing the same song over and over again would be so attractive, but it really is.

California Adventure

• Soarin’ Over California at California Adventure should be titled, “Stuff you will never have in Kansas, no matter how much Amazon Prime you have.” If you’re visiting California Adventure run, do not walk, to this attraction first.
• The Aladdin stage show is really good. I was expecting some kind of halfassed song and dance thing with a fog machine, and it’s practically a Broadway musical with special effects.
• The “Turtle Talk with Crush!” animation show is hilarious. There’s a large screen, and Crush from “Finding Nemo” swims by to talk to everyone. Then he picks out people in the audience to talk to and ask questions of. The animation is seamless—I have no idea how Crush moves and appears to be looking at various people—and the actor doing it was very talented.
• Lots of vegetarian options for meals here, btw. (Dunno about vegan, but vegetarian definitely.) Also: lots of places to get an alcoholic drink, in case you can’t get through your day without a cocktail. So if you’re finishing your day at Disneyland, bummed that for another year running you haven’t gotten into Club 33 and you really need to tie one on, hie thee across the plaza to California Adventure and drink up.

Other

• I know it’s beaten into them. I know they’re trained to do this and it’s a manipulation technique and I’m being played. But oh my GOD was every single staff member I dealt with at our hotel wonderful and cheerful. Before the trip I called to tell them that we were going to be arriving hella late, and the young man I talked to was just so happy to answer my questions and put lots of notes about my requests in my file! And every time I called the front desk the operators were so thrilled to be helping me! The technique seriously works: I felt really good about staying there! I can think of so many businesses that could take a fucking page from the Disney indoctrination technique.
• The Grand Californian (where we stayed) is really a good hotel. (Well, except for the toilet in our room, which kept malfunctioning. But I assume that wasn’t a feature.) The design is great, the distance to the parks and to Downtown Disney is excellent, and the way that so many rooms have a queen plus bunk beds just screams, “We know who our clientele are and what they want!”
• We were in the park early one morning and I saw a Disney cast member (not “employee”! that’s “cast member” to you!) walking by in costume holding a Starbucks cup. If she’d been texting on an iPhone she could have hit the Corporate Hegemony Trifecta.
• If you live in Southern California and are like, “WTF? Darin and Diane didn’t let us know they were coming?” please to take comfort in the fact that we didn’t tell anyone. We spent the entire time just as a foursome, and it worked out really, really well (better than I expected, if I may be so honest). We spent all day every day together, except for when one of us took the kids to the pool and the other one stayed in the room.
• The Napa Rose restaurant is really good. Ate there twice. I recommend the starters over the entrees, but then again, I was completely full on two starters.
• The Steakhouse 55 restaurant at the Disneyland Hotel is okay. I think the praise it’s gotten is a little overblown, or maybe people are just so happy to find a place that’s halfway decent around here.
• The Blue Bayou at Pirates was pretty good, though expensive. You have to ask to sit by the bayou though! Epic fail on our part.
• Man, has the Disneyland Hotel changed since the first time I stayed there. The first time, when I flew out from the East Coast with my family (I was probably…8?), there was one hotel. The second time, when I was 10 or 11, there were two hotels and a big lagoon where we had paddle boats. Now it’s a gigantic conference center with three towers and no paddle boats. Plus all of these other hotels (including the Grand Californian, where we stayed.) And Downtown Disney. And…well, it’s just quite impressive what they’ve done with the place.

And now the question I’ll leave you with: after you visit all of the continents (including Antartica) in It’s A Small World, you visit an area where we get a repeat of a number of the dolls…only this time, everyone’s wearing all white. Does the last section represent the Afterlife?

You were a joy to read… before twitter. Now, not so much. Seriously, have you not better things to say?

Well, the Twitter is basically a way to have something to say, frankly. I suppose everyone who’d be interested in my tweets have probably added me to their own Twitter lists, so I could probably stop posting them here. (I’m DianePatterson on Twitter, btw, in case you’re looking for me.)

But to answer your question: at the moment I haven’t found a particular raison d’être for this blog. Many of the things I’d like to talk about really aren’t fair for me to talk about much (for instance: my kids—yeah, I know, I win some kind of Mom-points for finally figuring that out) and others are just…well…

Writing: I don’t talk about it’s going with my novel on submission in New York, mostly because there’s nothing to report. I’ve done my part: I wrote the best novel I could, I got the best agent I could, and off to the races they go. I have received a few rejections so far, and while they’ve definitely been of the “Wow, that’s a glowing rejection” variety, the key word for me is not “glowing.” There’s no use trying to interpret what they meant: it’s just a “no.” And the only thing to say about that is “Next!”

I also don’t want to dwell endlessly on what’s happening there until such time as something happens. I wouldn’t do it if I were on a job hunt, and I’m not going to do it here.

If it sells, however: just try and shut me up.

I’ve finally (finally!) started work on something completely new. Although I ran it past one guy I know and he said, basically, “What’s different about that?” (Which is the key to sticking lightning in a bottle, story-wise, of course.) And that’s made me wonder about to make it that much more different. But we’ll see as I go.

TheaTUH: My full-length play, The Guest House, starts rehearsals tonight for staged readings the first weekend of October. I don’t know what to expect. Same deal as with the novel: I wrote it, I sent it in to the world, where other people like directors and actors will make something of it. Fly, little play, be free.

Politics: I’ve told Darin that if McCain wins it’s time to seriously talk about moving elsewhere. If I’m willing to brave Canadian winters, things are serious.

Honestly, how far have we fallen as a nation? We joke about torture, and the orders emanated from the top. Not a few “bad apples” (remember that knee slapper?), but from the highest authorities in the nation. There’s a story in today’s SFGate about how a group of historians and activists are trying to move now to prevent Dick Cheney from destroying government documents. What the fuck? Does anyone really understand what the collapse of Freddie and Fannie means, on top of the money we’re throwing down the rabbit hole in Iraq? (Amongst other fabulous blogs, you should check out The Cunning Realist, by a conservative economist who likens our current situation to the drastic days of the Weimar Republic, and yeah, he’s enough of a wonk to give examples why.)

I’m not going to go into why McCain is such an amazingly horrible choice as President. If you don’t know, you’re uninformed, and you should work on changing that right now.

No, I’m not a big Obama fan. (For one thing: FISA, motherfucker? What in the hell does the Administration have on all of these people to make them vote for that? And who here is the slightest bit shocked that I’d imply that?) But yeah, he’s better than the alternative.

Kids: Kids in first grade are supposed to choose books at their own reading level to read aloud to parents. Simon picked his book on Evolution, which just goes to show my 6-year-old is smarter than Sarah Palin.

Sophia is taking taekwondo, ballet, and swimming, and she asked if she could add gymnastics. (I said, Uh, no.) Given that she doesn’t eat, I have no idea where she gets the energy. I would suspect photosynthesis, except she certainly doesn’t eat vegetables.

Fitness: I restarted my gym program after many, many months off, and I love being back there. There’s something about heaving that piece of iron repeatedly that makes me say, “Yes!” I can already feel a difference not only with how my jeans fit (nyuk), but in how well I can keep up with my friends when we go running. If I can start keeping up with them all the time, that will be kewl.

I don’t want to post any progress I’m having either with the weights or the weight (ha), because, well… I’m incredibly judgemental: lots of people post on the 3fatchicks boards with a weight-loss thermometer in their signature proudly proclaiming how much they have to lose and how far they’ve gotten so far, and when the loss is all of 1.5 pounds, I want to say, Why don’t you wait until you have a number that’s statistically significant? I know this probably says more about me. But really: isn’t this blog all about me?

Movies: They suck. Seriously, they do. I actually cut back on our date nights not because of the economy (Darin’s a Director, now, btw, so he’s doing fine), but because we kept wondering what the hell we should go out and do. The last few movies we’ve seen have been: Hamlet 2, The House Bunny, Tropic Thunder, and The Dark Knight. I’m sure there was something between Tropic Thunder and The Dark Knight, but it made little to no impression on me, clearly.

Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly has been our go-to guy for movie reviews since forever, but after Hamlet 2 (which he gave a B+ and deserved more like, I dunno, a D, and that’s only because the “Rock Me Sexy Jesus” sequence was pretty funny) he’s lost about 40,000 of his Killer Movie Critic Cred points.

The House Bunny wasn’t under the impression that it was high art, but it couldn’t figure out what the hell it wanted to be: comedy, farce, parody (yes, these are all different things). And often it would change mid-scene.

Tropic Thunder was deeply hilarious in many ways, but as Ken Levine astutely noted, Pretty much only to Biz people. And a few weeks later I only remember the opening trailer with Downey’s character and the scene where Ben Stiller clearly doesn’t get that Steve Coogan has been blown to bits in front of him.

The Dark Knight: I was underwhelmed. Since apparently it was actually the second coming of Homer and Shakespeare’s love child, I’ll leave it at that.

Actually, not like a rock. Carole was there like a tidal wave is there—anyone who knew her knew that she had energy to spare, she was always doing something, always helping with something, always talking to people. She made close lifetime friends from seat mates on plane rides. She had friends from elementary school she still visited with every week. Whenever Darin said we needed to do a big project, he suggested waiting until his mom came out to visit, because she’d either take over the project or spur us on to do it. Which she did, many, many times. There was nothing she liked better than making something happen, with the more people the better.

After Sophia was born and Carole retired, she started coming out to visit us every two or three months. She was a wonderful grandma—she loved playing with baby Sophia, taking her places, getting her things.

People tell lots of mother-in-law jokes; I can’t relate. I really liked Carole.

She got sick a couple of years ago, right after Simon was born. She’d always suffered from bipolar disease, but the depression she suffered struck her harder and lasted longer than any she’d had before. Bipolar depression is not just having a Really Bad Day. It’s a complete and radical change of the person. The doctors kept working on the chemical cocktails, trying to improve the chemistry, but for whatever reason, her condition didn’t really improve.

Then a few years ago she developed cancer. First, it was breast cancer, and she had a mastectomy and chemo. (Strangely, right after her surgery she was back to her old self for a few days, even organizing a dinner party at her house for a group of friends.) She had a clean bill of health for a while until earlier this year, when her doctor discovered she had brain cancer, necessitating brain surgery and chemo; then they found spinal cancer, more surgery, more chemo. And then more cancer showed up. The choice became yet more radiation or chemo on an already weakened woman, or hospice care at home for two to six months. So Carole came home.

Darin and his brothers were already out there helping Steve out with Carole’s homecoming. The doctors estimated she probably had less time rather than more, so I flew out with the kids over the weekend so they could tell Grandma they loved her. Simon was afraid to go into the bedroom to see her, but Sophia marched right in there to say, “Hi!” There’s a lot of Carole in Sophia, and I hope she stays that way, because no one was ever alone around her. I couldn’t tell if Carole was even aware that the kids were there, but Steve told me later she definitely was.

During last weekend’s visit there was a memorial service at the temple in which a lot of Carole’s friends came to celebrate her life. Despite the difficulties of the last few years, everyone remembered the woman who’d always been there for them, who’d picked them up and gotten them going, who’d organized and arranged and gathered everyone together for every celebration, big and small. I’ve never seen a tighter group of friends and relatives than the group Carole tied together in Chicago. In the afternoon and evening Steve had a reception at his house for people to sit shiva with him. The entire house was full. It was really beautiful. Carole had a lot of people who loved her a whole lot.

As we were leaving Steve’s house that night, the kids were jumping around, telling Grandpa good night and they’d see him in the morning. And I almost said, “Hey, keep it down, Grandma’s sleeping.” It dawned on me at the last second that no, in fact she’s not. I might be having a relayed reaction to really understanding that she’s gone. It just doesn’t seem possible. It isn’t fair.

Bye Carole. We already miss you so much.

What’s amazing to me is the cult of secrecy that has successfully permeated Apple. When I worked there, it seemed like every other person had a hotline to the Mercury News on their office phone—if you wanted to know what was going on at the company, just pick up the paper. But now secret projects are apparently staying secret, even within Apple.

You wanna start a fight with me? Tell me how great the healthcare system is in this country for anyone who isn’t megarich or in the Congress. We were paying $500 a month for what basically came down to catastrophic health insurance and out of pocket for everything else.

(deep breath) (counts to 10) (back to topic)

–So last year around this time, despite being my nauseated from pregnancy and his general reluctance to travel away from me and Fia, I encouraged him to go up to MacWorld and chat with buds he ran into there and he did.

And I am so glad he did. He ran into a few people and reminded them of his existence. Which was good, because a job opened up that he was uniquely suited for and Apple Computer hired him to work long-distance. So he’s back at Apple. Doing what I can’t tell you, at least not yet. (N.B. to anyone from Apple who might read this: of course I don’t know what Darin’s working on. He hasn’t told me either.)

Both of Darin’s brothers work at Apple as well, in very different departments. Mitch works on the iPod, Scott works on Java. I have studied this text intently but there’s nothing in there about “when the three tall eagles from the park of the high lands toil in the service of Steve” or anything like that, so you can all relax.

Given that his brothers live in the Bay Area and my family lives in the Bay Area and Darin’s job is in the Bay Area, we are feeling quite a bit of pull to move back there. There are lots of reasons to go, and plenty of reasons to stay here in Los Angeles too. (A really primary one is: we have a great house here, and in the Bay Area we’d be able to afford what, a trailer?)

In case you hear some ambivalence in this journal about what our future holds, you now know why.