For the past week, my Aunt Peggy and cousin Mark and his family have been on vacation in Southern California from Oregon - unfortunately, our weather was also on vacation, and it was more like the rainy weather they might have. I met up with them on Wednesday for a bit of one of Joe's baseball games (Joe is Mark's son) - before it got called due to rain. And I ended up meeting up with them again during the latter part of their day at Universal Studios yesterday. It was my first time to Universal and I have to say that if you're planning a visit, it would be hard to recommend - unless you have a big emotional attachment to their movies. It's a perfectly nice park, but its very small with hardly anything there. Given the prices, you'd be better spending the time & money at Disneyland or Six Flags. (I don't mean to sound ungrateful for the chance to go, just saying that as a bit of tourist advice for anyone heading to LA.) Luckily (for me) they had gotten free 'rainout' passes from another family that was there during Sunday's storms. Since I grew up on the other side of the country, my time with this side of the family was pretty limited while growing up, so any time together doing anything is good to me. Their week otherwise was full of Disney, baseball, and rain; hopefully the last ingredient didn't dampen the others too much.