Futtock: One of the curved timbers that forms a rib in the frame of a ship.

I know it is not summer yet but it sure feels like it and I am anxious to go home and cannot do homework therefore I am creating a new summer blog. And it has a pretty lighthouse on it.

I had a wonderful weekend and wish to write about it. Why is that? I don't really know. What is it that compells me to represent a whole weekend with a few paragraphs of poorly written English words?

Thursday
Ashley and I headed home Thursday night after my last class, where I received a "much better" on my essay. The irony of a "much better" is that it isn't as good as I wish it was. I finished up some homework and we went to bed, ready for a fun and exciting weekend.

Friday
At 8am Mr. Mark began honking the horn and we were out the door by 8:10, ready to beat any traffic that dared to get in our path on Memorial Day weekend. In Camarillo we stopped at McD's for breakfast and continued over freeways and through windmills to Hadley's, some fruit-and-nut store with every type of dried fruit or chocolate-covered whatever you could think of. We came out carrying a weekend's worth of trail mix, cashews, chocolate-covered espresso beans, and candy sticks. Oh I forgot to say that the Hills came with us on this trip. Shelley is Mrs. Nancy's best friend, along with her husband Andy and their three kids Matthew, Spencer, and Lauren. So we had lunch with them at A&W, where my feast of a corn dog and onion rings began my healthy eating for the weekend. Once in Palm Desert, I sank into a lounge chair on the porch of the condo on the edge of a golfcourse, sighing, "this is the life." After about five minutes it got too hot and we went to the pool. During the days we played games like Five Crowns, Clue, and Gin Rummy. Every night we played games like Balderdash (hence comes the title of this post), Picture password, and Cranium and of course had lots of ice cream. We had eight adults if you count Chip so it was a good group.

Saturday
For lunch we dined at P.F.Chang's a delicious Chinese restaurant. We all shared everything and I was the only one who ate with chopsticks. Then we saw the new movie Madagascar and then went to Borders to buy the soundtrack so we had music to dance to anytime we felt like dancing. More pool time, game time, food time.

Sunday
Another day filled with more fun. I got about a third of the way through my book, The Timetraveler's Wife. It is interesting, but right now it is kind of slow. Andy made good chicken and risotto for dinner. Is it really possible to be in a good mood the whole weekend?

Monday
We sadly said goodbye to Palm Desert and went to Disneyland! Once again we left at 8am and headed to the happiest place on Earth! I bought a season pass (go to the far end and the line is way shorter-- in fact I think there are a lot of tricks to Disneyland to avoid lines because we hardly were in line the whole day.) We began our day at California Adventure at the famous Tower of Terror in Hollywood, twice. The best part of that ride is posing for the camera at the top while everyone else is screaming. Then we Soared over California and had clam chowder for lunch in San Francisco. Then we hopped over to Disneyland where it is sort of decorated for its 50th anniversary. They have a room full of neat stuff like the original plans and old pictures and maps and tickets and such that I think you could spend half the day in. We went on a bunch of rides and took pictures in a bunch of the things that are painted gold for the the 50th anniversary. We rode the monorail in the private room in the very back and then went back to CA Adventure for a silly parade. We finally left in the early evening and I slept half the way back and watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory for the other half. It took less than two hours to get back! Yay for no traffic!

*Pictures to come in the not-so-distant future