What A Beautiful Noise!

Thursday, May 29, 2025

Last night Lisa and I went to an amazing musical. As, I’ve made it clear before, I’m not really into music all that much. If I have down time, I would rather fill my mind with picturing things that I could invent. Never the less, there are a few songs that I do love and Neil Diamonds music is one of them. Lisa and I have been to two different concerts of his and have loved them both. I enjoy all of his songs and some of them I love.  

Neil Diamond is now eighty four years old and he has parkinsons disease so he will not be doing any more concerts. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure he would perform until he died. So, instead of him performing, they have created a musical of his life. Let me copy here the letter from Neil Diamond that they had in the program.

The idea of a Broadway musical about my life has always been a daunting one. It wasn’t until the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease prematurely ended my touring career that I started to seriously consider the prospect.

I say “prematurely” because my heart and soul would tour until the day I die if only my body would cooperate. My friend and longtime producer Bob Gaudio had some success with his little show, Jersey Boys (perhaps you’ve heard of it?), so I went to him for some guidance on where to begin.

Bob brought in Ken Davenport and together they built the incredible creative team that became, A Beautiful Noise. When Anthony McCarten came on board, we spent hours talking. It was his idea to frame the show in the context of therapy sessions. I loved the idea and never shied away from talking about my years of psychoanalysis. There used to be a stigma around talking about mental health and thankfully through the years, it’s become an important and accepted topic of conversation.

Sitting in the theatre and watching the show has itself been therapeutic: reliving some joyful and some of the painful parts of my life, wishing perhaps that if I could only make a few edits in the script, it would change some of the reality of what I was seeing. But in the end, coming to terms with my life and accepting it has somehow come full circle.

I feel fortunate and full of gratitude for all the people in my life. It is each of them who have impacted and shaped me in their own way to get me to the place where I am now…a better man. A better father. A better husband. A better songwriter.

I’d like to thank Marcia and Jaye, this story wouldn’t be possible without you. My children and grandchildren for your most important supporting roles in my life. My wife, Katie, who encouraged me to keep going through this process and finally, to Dr. Lu Katzman, my long-time therapist who inspired this story. May she rest in peace.

Neil Diamond
September 2022

The show was amazing. It was nonstop music from the beginning to the end and the singers and dancers they had were great. Normally at these things I’m starting to look at my watch after an hour or so. This time I was disappointed when it ended. I think I will be adding some more Niel Diamond songs to my playlist.

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Neil Diamond was a premed student on a fencing scholarship with 10 credits left to graduate when he dropped out to pursue song writing.

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Video's of Me and Kira

 In my journal I can only add pictures, so when I post entries from my journal I forget about video's. Alycia took videos of me and Kira getting up on the Wake Surf  Board and I wanted to share those.

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There is an average of 300 million photos uploaded to Facebook per day.

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Sawyers Baptism

Wednesday, May 14, 2025

Alycia and Trevor and their family headed home on Thursday, May 8th and Lisa and I hopped on a plane to go to Alycia and Trevor’s house on Friday, May 9th. It was kind of bizarre to see them at our house one day and then literally the next day we see them at their house. The kids didn’t think it was odd at all. They were just glad to see us.

We didn’t fly straight to St George, that would cost around $700 for the two of us but we were able to get round trip tickets for the two of us for $80, and rent a car for $50. The gas alone would cost more than that and Friday traffic to Vegas can often take up to ten hours. Return traffic on a Sunday afternoon can take up to twelve hours. It was a great deal.

To make the trip even more enjoyable, Kira decided to meet up with us in Vegas and ride with us the rest of the way to St George. We walked off our plane and there she was.

Lucky for us, Saturday was not only Sawyers baptism, but it was also June’s dance recital. Kira, Mom and I took June to her final dance practice Saturday morning and then met the rest of the family at the church for the baptism. We show up and the first thing we hear is a distraught Alycia telling us the baptism was at 9:00 and the Bishop had gone home. It was a mass of confusion for about ten minutes but finally we learned that they had to change the schedule around and no one told Alycia, nor did they tell the stake person who was supposed to tell Alycia. We got a councilor there, and Sawyer had a beautiful baptism at 10:00, just like we had planned.

We have seen a lot of different methods that different stakes use to baptise a lot of kids on one day and the best one we ever saw was Elle’s. Rather than repeat how it was done here you can go read about it in my entry on September 22, 2023.

For Sawyers baptism they had all the primary aged kids get up and sing a song. It was fun to see all four of the kids together.

I was surprised to see my cousin Louis and her husband Marty Nygard there. Their grandson and Sawyer have become good friends, and they brought him so he could be with Sawyer for his baptism.

After the baptism, we all headed to back to Alycia’s house and ate some good food. They then took us out to the lake on their boat. That was a lot of fun.

I guess water skiing is very different now than it was back in the day I went. No one just uses skis anymore. It is either wake boarding or surfing. Alycia went first and boy is she good. She used a very short rope so she is right in the biggest part of the wake and then, to my surprise, she threw the rope into the boat. I had no idea she was supposed to ditch the rope. There she was literally surfing the wake just like she was in the ocean. It was quite spectacular. She was very happy because she was only able to do this at the last part of the last season. This is the first time they’ve taken the boat out this year. You would never know it. She got up the first time and threw the rope in like a pro.

Kira went next, she also got up the first time and surfed until her legs gave out. She was amazing.

I really wanted to go, but as I’ve got older, my body is falling apart. I was afraid that my legs weren’t strong enough and that my balance wasn’t what it used to be. As it turned out, my legs were plenty strong enough, but my balance could be better.

I got up the first try but I couldn’t navigate my way out of the white water behind the prop to the side where you can drop into the wake. After five tries my body was exhausted and I said I would go later.

After me, Trevor showed us all how to Wake Board. I then tried again and was finally able to drop down into the wake without wiping out. What a blast that was.

I even got brave enough to go one handed.

In reality, Kira and I were both on the verge of wiping out the whole time and neither of us was ever going to let go of that rope. We did both go until our legs gave out.

Trevor was amazing on his wake board, jumping completely over the wake. He was always going back and forth.

At one point Alycia’s hat blew off so she promptly dumped Trevor into the lake and went back for the hat. I tried to grab it as we drifted by, but my fingers couldn’t get a grip. Alycia then ran to the back of the boat and dived in after her hat. It was really kind of funny to see her. You’d think she was going in after one of her kids. I really wish we had a video of that.

We then parked the boat near a quiet end of the lake and swam for a little bit and then headed home. It was a fun afternoon.

In the evening, we all got to go to some high school and watch June perform her little ballet dance. Little girls are always so fun to watch dance. She did great. At these little girl dances, there is always some little girl just doing her own thing but June was trying really hard and was concentrating on the dance. Most of the girls were laser focused on their teachers for the cues on what part of the dance comes next.

Sunday morning, we all headed to church and while we were all dressed up I grabbed this picture of three of my girls. They are all so beautiful. Looking at this picture they really could be sisters.

When the Crowley’s were at our house earlier in the week, Ella told Lisa that she really wanted to learn to cook. Mom promised her that she would teach her how to make no bake cookies when we were there. I love no bake cookies.

To describe our trip home would fill a book. I will try and keep it short. Kira’s flight was earlier so she took a shuttle to Las Vegas so we could have more time with Alycia and her family. We were worried about traffic, so we got to the airport early and were waiting for our flight which was to leave at around 10:30. At some point it showed that it was delayed a few minutes and then it was delayed ten or fifteen minutes and then, all of a sudden, it said the flight was cancelled. Four or five of us immediately headed for the agent at the gate. He simply called out, the flight is cancelled, you need to head for the ticket counter to arrange new flights. And there was a stampede.

When we finally got to the ticket counter, there were more than a hundred people in line in front of us and it was moving very slowly. I figured we would get the counter at about two or three in the morning. As we waited, we got text messages giving us a free hotel room, free food and a free Lyft ride. A woman came by encouraging us to go get a hotel room and make plans tomorrow. When a disgruntled customer left the counter and yelled at us that they had no flights until Wednesday we agreed.

Our options were to a) get a refund, b) cancel our flight c) book another flight. None of those options were great because a) our ticket was only $80 and we’d used half of it so we would get $40 back, b) we had to get home and c) there wasn’t another flight until Wednesday. Not acceptable.

In the end, Lisa cancelled our flight and booked a ticket on Southwest for Monday morning at 6:30. We headed to our hotel room, slept for three hours and were waiting for our southwest flight early on Monday. And then it started all over again. Our flight was five minutes late and then ten minutes late and I could see it all starting over again. We finally boarded but just as we were getting to the end of the runway, the pilot comes on the speaker and tells us we had to go back because of we had no working toilets. We finally got left about an hour and a half late, had a good flight and then landed safely in San Diego. As we’re approaching our gate the pilot comes on again and says, “It never rains but it pours”. Because we were so late, we now had no gate. So, our one-hour flight took us three hours and most of those three hours were sitting on the plane.

So, Monday night I gave Lisa her mother’s day gift. It is a set of wind chimes.

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The earliest known wind chimes originated in Southeast Asia and China around 3000 BC.

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Alycia & Trevor

Monday, May 12, 2025

A couple of weeks ago Trevor decided that it was time to take the kids on a vacation so in typical Crowley fashion they took the kids to Disneyland with only a day or two to prepare. They got up early on May 3 and drove straight to Huntington Beach and then spent three days at Disneyland and showed up at our house late on May 6. We put the kids to bed, visited for a bit and then we all hit the hay.

On Wednesday everyone went to Sea World, but I stayed home and worked. From all accounts they had a blast.

These cleaner fish are amazing. My arms are always get swarming with the fish, but I have noticed that children don’t collect too many fish. I have decided that my skin is old, and my arms have a lot of dead skin flakes that the fish love to eat but children’s skin is much healthier and alive.

The Emperor roller coaster may be my favorite roller coaster of all time. Apparently, there were few people at Sea World and no lines. Do you see Trevor and Alycia front and center?

I guess the Crowley family was the star of the show. Ella got to feed the seals...

 and Trevor was chosen from the crowd to be the preshow entertainment.

At one point he was asked if he wanted to eat a fish like the sea lions so he stood there with his mouth open waiting for her to throw a fish. The trainer was quite surprised. Instead of a fish he got splashed by the sea lion.

I have been to Sea World many times, but I don’t ever remember the Baluga whales being trained. I guess that has changed. They now have a Baluga whale show.

The only time I was able to see the kids was Wednesday morning for a little bit before they left for Sea World. Wednesday evening when they were all dead tired and then Thursday morning before they headed home. As usual, the first thing the kids did when they woke up on Wednesday was pull out Grandma’s crayons.

Thursday morning Sawyer randomly asked me if I had a coin collection, so I pulled out my Dads collection. He was quite fascinated. I promised to get him some Canadian coins.

We all thought it was funny how similar mom and Alycia are in these two poses from one of the roller coasters.

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It costs 3.7 cents to make a US penny

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Millennial Choirs and Orchestras

Friday, May 9, 2025

From April 23 to April 26 Kira played in a total of eight performances with the Millennial Choirs and Orchestras. It is a very rewarding experience for her to play in this orchestra but two performances a day for four days in a row is quite difficult.

Piper is in the choir, and it is fun for them to perform together. They only have the children sing on two nights and not back-to-back.

I love this picture of the two of them. Piper is a little Nephite girl, and Kira looks like Maleficent with horns coming out of her head.

Of course, Mom and I had to make a quick trip out there to see them. If you time it just right, you can get round trip tickets from San Diego to Phoenix for under $50 but the timing wasn’t right for this trip, so we drove out. We left Thursday after work which allowed us to go and have a special lunch with Piper on Friday at her school. I don’t know what the occasion was, but it was fun to see her and her friends.

It was a quick lunch, all the different grades had a forty-five-minute time slot when the parents could show up and the classes for that time slot would come out eat their lunch and then the parents were ushered off the campus and the kids were sent back into the school and the next group came.

I only remember that one of these girls is called Lucy. I can’t remember the other kid’s name. The cute one standing behind Piper is named Lisa.

We attended the early show on Friday night. At the beginning of the show, they made an announcement that absolutely no pictures or videos were allowed. Of course, that didn’t stop Lisa (or Justin for that matter). That is why I am able to get these pictures.

If you look closely, you can see Kira’s forehead in this picture. That was the best picture mom could get.

We did get some good pictures of Piper though. She is the top left corner in the picture below.

Saturday morning we celebrated Pipers birthday and then in the afternoon we headed to Ben’s house.

Ben just bought ten baby chicks. They are just young enough that they are still cute. They’re starting to get real feathers though, so they won’t be cute for long.

From Ben’s we headed home. It was a good trip.

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Harvard University researchers have determined that loneliness can be just as deadly as smoking. Both loneliness and smoking impact levels of a blood-clotting protein, which could lead to severe health risks.

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A Trip to Los Angeles

 Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Last week was Lisa’s spring break. While she used most of her time off catching up on projects that have been ignored, she really wanted to take a couple days for us. She had recently learned that the Los Angeles temple has apartments that patrons of the temple can rent for rather cheap. For $60 we rented a very nice apartment.

On April 23rd we headed up to the LA Temple. Our room was very nice, it had a queen-sized bed, a nice little kitchen with a fridge, stove and microwave. A little table and a balcony. We stopped at a Costco on our way to LA and picked up a meat loaf, and after our session we put it in the oven and cooked it for dinner.

The next morning, we did two sealing sessions and then checked out the temple grounds. From what we could tell, the local missionaries stayed in these apartments as well plus the mission president and the temple president have houses on the property.
There is a nice Family History library and a fascinating visitors center with the history of the temple and its construction. In front of the visitors center they have several little statues like this one.

We then headed to the world’s shortest incorporated railroad. Angels Flight has more passengers per mile than any railroad in the world. All it does is take you up what would normally be a very annoying hill. 

They have built a beautiful shopping center at the top of the hill with an outdoor stage and at the bottom of the hill are a bunch of office buildings. I’m guessing that office workers will take the train up the hill for lunch. They charge a dollar, so if you’re climbing that hill every day, it might be worth it.

After riding the railroad up the hill and back down we then went to check out a much bigger train. Well, we didn’t actually see any trains, but we went to the Los Angeles Central Station.

Neither me or Lisa have ever been to Central Station but we have heard it is beautiful. Kira and Mandy would take the train to this station every summer and Mandy’s uncle would come and pick them up. They would stay with them for a week or so every summer.

For some reason I was expecting some big gothic type of building like I am used to in Europe, but I should have known better. This is California and this station is more like a Hacienda or a Spanish villa.

Except I swear this bottom picture is Gringotts Bank.

After checking out Central Station, we headed to Phillipe’s for lunch. Phillipe’s is where we ate when Kira and Brandons families were here at Christmas time. They have a very good French Dip sandwich.

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Cats only meow at humans! While kittens meow to communicate with their mother, they stop meowing to other cats as they grow older. Instead, they reserve their vocalizations for their human companions.

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Ragnar

Friday, April 18, 2025

On the evening of April 9th Matt and Sheena Smith arrived and spent the night with us. On the 10th the rest of the Ragnar team arrived and most of them spent the evening at an Air B&B that Justin rented in La Jolla. Let’s see if I can remember everyone.

Van 1
Fred Leavitt
Crystal Chander
Kyla
Sheena Smith
Ben Leavitt
Kira Palmer

Van 2
Justin Palmer
Alex Leavitt
Matt Smith
Jared Palmer
Shane Walton
Dave Holland (Dave caught pneumonia the week before the Ragnar and couldn't come)

The start time for Van 1 was 5:15am. That meant that we had to leave the house at 4:30. Uggh

Due to difficulty in getting Ben moving at such an unearthly hour, we actually started our run at 5:30am. I don’t know what order Van 2 ran in but we ran in the order I have listed above.

When we ran the “Hood to Coast” in Portland a couple of years ago Justin started the race in a spectacular manner. Virtually everyone who starts these races knows that it is a long race and don’t want to kill themselves out of the gate. Justin decided to give it all he had. It made for a very cool picture of him.

I wanted a similar picture, so I decided to give it all I had out of the gate as well. My picture would have been a good one, but it was dark and while I like it, it just isn’t exactly what I was going for.

I immediately left everyone in my starting group in the dust but obviously I couldn’t keep that pace up for more than a few hundred yards.

By a quarter mile the first people started passing me and by a half mile they had all passed me. About five miles into my run the second group started passing me. My run was almost seven miles

I was kind of bummed at first, according to Ragnar, my runs didn’t have any ocean views but as the day started to get lighter, I had amazing views of the San Diego Bay.

I had no van support on my run but about a mile from the end, my van was able to stop and cheer me on. I got to run through a tunnel and Ben and Kira ran with me for a bit. Van support is always fun.

Justin decided it would be fun to give each other embarrassing “T” shirts to wear. These are the shirts Justin bought for Van 1. They were definitely embarrassing.

After my run I stopped to get gas and while we were stopped a police car came by to ask what was going on. It seems odd to me that the local police would not be made aware of an event as big as a Ragnar.

I’m not sure where Van 2 is but they were apparently enjoying themselves while we were out running.

Ben running in to exchange 5.

Ben handing off to Kira.

Kira completing the last leg for Van 1’s first turn.

Kira is almost done her run.

The first major exchange (Van 1 hands off to Van 2) was at Liberty Station.

I think Van 2 bent the rules a little bit once they took over. Shane went to Costco and bought an electric scooter. He made good time on his leg.

Alex running in from his leg.

On our run, we passed Taco’s El Gordo. They are world famous. We headed back there for lunch and its reputation is well deserved.

My second leg was a bit rough. My knee was quite painful after the abuse I gave it in my morning run, but I was still able to run/walk my leg and make decent time. It was still light enough that I didn’t need to wear a headlight. Thank goodness.

Kyla ran right in front of the Stake Center, so Lisa picked up Mandy and came and met us at the church and helped us cheer her on. They then came to the exchange point at the Catholic Church on Carmel Mountain Rd.

As we neared the end of our night time legs, some supervisor from Ragnar told us that we were in last place and that we needed to modify our last runs. I guess after years of running Ragnars we have all slowed down. We started at 5:30 and to finish at a decent time, say 4:00 pm on Saturday, we would have to average 10:00 minute miles. I think we will be running modified Ragnars from now on or we need to get some young blood.

Van 1 decided to go home, have a decent sleep, and then combine some of our runs the next day. Since the major exchange point was only ten minutes from our house, we slept at our house. We stuck all the girls in the bunk room; I slept in my own bed and Ben slept in my office. The morning was quite relaxed.

Princess Lisa braided everyone’s hair, Kira and Ben played with their niece and nephew and then we headed out to meet up with Van 2. As it turns out, Van 2 ran their legs and then decided to run our legs as well. They did bring in a couple of “ringers” though. Jared’s two boys live in Temecula so they called them to come in and run some of our legs. They were making six minute miles so that helped. They also had the scooter and that helped as well until its battery died.

At this point we were at least an hour from the house Justin had rented so Van 2 decided to just sleep in the Van. They look quite comfortable.

So, instead of Van 2 ending the race for us, Van 1 now had that job. I’m not exactly sure which legs we ran but I think Kyla and Crystal ran together and I think they ran leg 34 but I could be wrong. They were both quite beat up, so they walked much of that leg. Actually, the only person in Van 1 who wasn’t beat up was Kira, she wanted to run her entire eight-mile leg.

Neither me nor Alex were in any shape to run, so Kira ran the first four miles of her leg (I think she took leg number 35) and then Alex and I joined her at her four-mile mark and we walked the rest of the way in. Even walking was hurting me, but it was so fun to walk those four miles with them. We then dropped Ben off so he could run the last few miles of his final leg, leg 36. Since he had no van support I have no pictures of him.

The entire team then joined Ben for the final few hundred yards and we all ran in. It was so much fun.

My kids

My kids again

While the shirts Justin gave Ben and I were quite embarrassing, they were extremely popular. During the entire race people would come up to Ben and I and want to take pictures with us. I have had more comments during this race than I have ever received in anything I have ever done. Hundreds of comments and dozens of pictures. Here is a picture of Ben with his look-a-like. 

While that picture is great, Bens’ favorite picture is him as a mermaid with his mermaid friends.

The medals this year were beautiful. Definitely my favorite Ragnar medal.

After we spent some time at the finish line, we all headed back to the Air B&B. It had a hot tub that felt amazing on my throbbing knee.

Mom and Lisa showed up with Alex’s kids who were very happy to see their dad. Alex and Lisa headed back home but they left James with Mom and I so we could visit a little longer. Shane and Justin had ordered a ton of delicious junk food and Shane made it his personal mission to give James enough junk food to make him sick. It didn’t work. James just loved it all.  

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50,000 of your brain cells die every day?

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