Flew to Los Angeles for Labor Day weekend. Narrowly escaped the Saturday morning shutdown at LAX. In hindsight, given our total cost and door-to-door time it probably would have made more sense to drive. Maybe next time.

Spent lots of good time visiting with my uncle and cousins. My uncle seems to be holding up as well as can be expected. Having failed to pass his most recent driver's license renewal test, he's left to wreak havoc via bicycle or moped. My aunt and uncle's house, the site of 20 years' worth of memories for me, is up for sale and has received a few offers. Hard to contemplate that as I walked through it. But it obviously isn't the same place at all now with Marie gone, and it wouldn't make sense for the family to keep it. The finality of it really seems to drive the point home though: there's no going back to the way things were.

Stayed in Santa Monica and wandered around the familiar places a bit: the Pier, 3rd St., and old Main. Ate well, both with family and around town. (No visit to my old neighborhood would be complete without breakfast at the incomparable John O'Groat's. — I'll leave it to enterprising readers to Google it for themselves. No sense making the lines any longer than they are already! :-)

Briefly visited a couple of museums. The Japanese Pavilion at LACMA is truly a beautiful thing to see, both content-wise and architecturally. I can also report that the sinking mammoth in front of the Page Museum is still managing to hold its own against the tar after all these years. (Don't we all know that feeling?)

In all, it was good to be back in a familiar place. Lots of little things have changed. But it's still where I grew up.