Bethjoy.com

I have just spent nine days in California. Or it was really more like seven days in california with two days of flying to and back from it but the total trip length was nine days.

The first stop was the home of my good friend Sarah Massatt where I proceeded to make a movie with her, her brothers, and one of my brothers. I enjoy saying “I went out to California and made a movie”. Actually I now can say I’ve made three movies in California as this was the third VonFange/Massatt Movie collaboration and it was quite fun. I played the role of Zanara, Lady of Fire. It was a different role for me because she wasn’t a princess and was actually a villainess of sorts. The whole movie was unusual in that it had no real hero or good guys in it and was some what of a tragedy. But it was quite funny with many comic misfortunes falling upon the heads of the evil king who was the main character.

After a pleasant visit at the Massatts we traveled North to the real purpose of our trip, the 2007 Von Fange Family reuinion. We have a family reunion once every two years so it is quite special. Although everyone had backed for hot, sunny california, the whether was cold and cloudy. Yes, it even happens in California by the sea. I wore the same pair of long pants all three days and gazed wistfully at my beautiful new sandles and capri sets I’d purchased. The final day I just caved in and wore my sandels so I could show off their pretty new stylishness. They have the special “Wedge” heel which is quite fun and stylish.

The visit was very fun. I heard a lot about my grandfather who died before I was born and about how creative he was. He could just take miscellaneous spare parts stored in the garage and build an air conditioner that would cool said garage. He could make wonderful things and deeply loved his children, His sister came to the family reunion and told many stories about him which were very interesting to hear. Once there was a bicycle race in town but he didn’t have a bycicle, so he built one! And he won the race!

While at the family reunion we went to see a large aquarium that had many spectacular varieties of sea life in it. There was one fish, I think it was the sun fish, that just didn’t look real! It was so strange and weirdly shaped it looked like something out of a cartoon. And a mature adult one of those, I was told, could be ten feet long… I wouldn’t particularly want to meet one. I also got to see a tuna fish. When I think of tuna fish I think of small cans and sandwhiches and since the pictures on the small cans show small fish I naturally assumed that the tuna fish was a small fish…It is not a small fish! I’ve now seen several in person and the smallest of them would make a whole lot of little cans of tuna fish!!!

After much memory sharing, visiting, and sightseeing my immediate family and I drove to Yosemite to see the big trees and other things in the park. We drove through many beautiful mountainous ways and beautiful valleys as we went into the park. I regret to state that I was either asleep or playing my Gameboy Advance through most of it which was how I handled just about all of my California traveling time. I did think most of what I saw was very impressive though.

I enjoyed the gift shop. Many beautiful and interesting objects were there, like a hat that looked it had a raccoon perched on top and a very pretty purple pencil case… and I didn’t buy anthing there. It was astounding, my entire personal spending on the trip was less than four dollars, most of which was spent on gifts for other people. Pretty much all I got for myself was a $0.51 squashed penny of the big trees at Yosemite.

Oh the trees! They were indeed magnificent and very, very, very big. Coming back here the trees look quite a bit smaller in comparison. THe main thing about this was that we actually hiked about four miles amongst the trees. To anyone who knows me they will know that this was a really, really big thing for me to do. Especially since I did it with very little “I’m tired and ready to go back now”. Pretty much I only did that three times. The first was mild when we reached the agreed on stopping and turning around point and it was desired to go on, and I was the one who said it was okay with me to go on. The second was a lot further on when I was getting tired and a saw a way to the return path and didn’t think that the trail was leading where it actually did. THe third time was a ways later when it really was time to be heading back and I had no interest in going further and seeing the clothespin tree as the loving couple was quite enough for me and I would have been perfectly content to just have seen the grizzly giant which was the first landmark tree we had seen.

After Yosemite it was time to drive back to the Los Angelous area to get to the air port we were flying out from. And we encountered traffic in LA… After spending an hour to go about two miles we have decided that the traffic at home is actually very nice and fast moving and not so bad really.

At long last we returned home and I am quite happy to be here. I hadn’t used the internet since I’d left so naturally I was very eager to rush to the websites I’d been missing and find out what had been going on in my absence. Now I just neeed to unpack and do a myriad of other far more important things than what I’ve been doing… So this is enough posting for now.