It started out as a plan for a family reunion.

This would be a good place I said, to do a family reunion. The ‘sometime‘ was implied.

My in-laws (you may remember them from an earlier episode, in fact many, known collectively as in-law vs outlaw) have one of those family reunion traditions. Sometimes we do these every couple years, sometimes not. And always, it’s a case of, who’s gonna plan it, who’s gonna say they’re coming, who’s gonna show up, who’s gonna pay for the ones who can’t afford it.

We’ve done ’em close – monterey, tahoe – or far, idaho, utah, oregon. And every time it’s a funny, silly drama, the kind you only get in families. Disorganization, mis-communication, flakiness. yet, always, we have a good time.

I don’t fit with these people – they come from mormon stock, though a lot of them are not mormon anymore. But if you watch Big Love, when they show you the LDS people, you could be looking at some of my more-distant mormon in-laws. They’re a straight-arrow bunch. And I’m – well, I’m the outlaw. The pirate. The biker. The counter-culture guy. They, truly, have no idea who I really am, unless some of them are reading this space.

Yet, they’re good folks. There are some crazies in the bunch, even if they’re non-drinking, never-gotten-stoned types. There are some who own guns, some who ride motorcycles. There’s a group who have a real taste for mayhem. Sober mayhem, but mayhem all the same.

But – ultimately – they’re family, and family means disorganization.

So a few months ago, we were at Disneyland, and staying at a nearby hotel, and I said, instead of the usual places, we should do the family reunion here, next year, a year after. Whenever, it’d be fun.

And I mentioned that in passing to my mother-in-law, who somehow converted that to now because that’s how she is.

Everyone said, yeah, we can do that, great, we’re in. There are a lot of big Disney geeks in teh family – some of ’em much bigger disney geeks than I am. So it was a no-brainer, they were fully into it. A date was picked, motel rooms booked. Everyone, even the arms of the family that usually drop out, said they were in, coming from Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah.

And you can see where this goes.

One by one, they dropped out, like a set of dominos. Oh, wait, we can’t do that week.

Until it was back down to pretty much just the LA locals (the lovely couple whose wedding I attended before my Fiji trip two years ago), my family, my in-laws.

But you know, we had the rooms booked, so it turned out to be a very small family re-union. And so, next week, I’ll be in sunny southern CA, getting sunburned in line for It’s a small world. Alas, Pirates is down for now – they’re adding Jack Sparrow to the ride, an idea I don’t like. But maybe this time I’ll get time to talk to Jack Rudy about a tattoo I want, and in any case, not working is always, always a good thing.