On my recent trip to L.A., I pretty much had only one night on my own. The other three nights either involved conference activities or plans with a co-worker. So I needed to choose wisely for my activity that night.

I looked around for some comedy since I figured I would have plenty of options. I found a couple of comedy clubs, but didn’t recognize any performers and did not want to commit to the kind of cab fare it would take to get to the places I researched. Then, I struck gold.

The Upright Citizens Brigade. The venerable comedy organization had a night of improv. The theatre was pretty close to a subway station, and the 7 p.m. show only cost $5. The scheduled group, The Smokes, included Katie Dippold, who I discovered is a writer for NBC’s Parks and Recreation. I couldn’t pass up the chance to see a writer from one of my favorite shows perform.

What a great decision. The tiny theatre created an awesome experience. The actors cracked me up. The pace moved briskly. Nothing prevented the night from perfection. Not even the creepy Scientology center across the street from UCBLA.

Well, one thing could ruin it. I didn’t sign up for the list for the second show that night and the waiting list was way too long by the time my show let out. The third show didn’t start until 9:30 p.m., and I knew I would never make it that long. So I had to sate myself with one hour of improv comedy goodness.

This has certainly been the summer of travel. Whether for work or fun or some combination of the two, I have visited the beach, New York, Washington, and Los Angeles in the past two months.

I traveled to the last destination just last week for a conference, which luckily included a bunch of free time in the evenings. That helped me remember one important thing about travel.

I love hotel living.

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This summer treat from CBS is truly one of my guilty pleasures. I have not been a die-hard from the beginning, but have been a big fan for the past four seasons. I don’t obsess over the live feeds, but I do check web sites which give updates that the people who only watch TV miss out on.

Recently, I have seen some criticism of this current season, mainly from a self-developed reality TV “expert.” A tour of the house for some journalists in the midst of this season has evoked some of the backlash, apparently. I guess it’s easy to equate the houseguests lack of chess playing with stupidity. I’m kind of stunned that no one complained that the players weren’t wearing ascots and monocles as well.

As players stood facing eviction on Thursday, they did nothing but profess their kinship with the people who would decide their fate. The speeches talked about friendship and family. Somehow, that seems to bother some of the critics.

I agree that we don’t want racists and homophobes spreading their thoughts through the Big Brother house, but what’s so wrong with this version of the social experiment showing that people can actually find some common ground and get along? Why does respect - feigned or not - make the show such a target for some critics?

The bottom line is that the cast might not have the kind of people who spin their summer on television into the glamorous job of reality TV personality, which really leads nowhere except public appearances and maybe a return engagement on their show or some other reality franchise.

So Lane, Hayden and Enzo might not welcome guests to a Vegas nightclub or Peoria bar. The fact that they have moved through the game by developing strong relationships and staying out of the way of those who can’t control their ego should count for something. It’s not all about starting arguments and holding grudges.

While those who immerse themselves in reality TV may see this season as an utter dud, the television audience wholeheartedly disagrees. The Thursday double eviction show drew the series’ largest audience in more than two years with more than eight million viewers.

So the reality critics may find this season doesn’t meet their standards, but they really should provide the entire picture and acknowledge that the audience might actually find a kinder, gentler cast on Big Brother more appealing.

Since we are getting closer to celebrating our 15^th anniversary, it’s pretty obvious my wife and I are pretty compatible.

We do have a lot of the same interests, but just enough different ones to give each of us an opportunity to have some alone time. But when we went on our recent trip to Washington, D.C., I think I discovered our greatest compatibility.

We really complement each other well when planning and executing a trip. It’s almost scary.

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People laugh at me when I tell them I know I will win the lottery someday. I really do think that. It might not happen, but I believe it will. When I finished reading the novel “Lottery” by Patricia Wood recently, I knew I had to keep on believing.

The engaging book follows the trials and tribulations of Perry L. Crandall, who continually reminds readers that he isn’t retarded because his IQ score is 76, which is one point higher than the level where people are considered. He works at a boat store in Washington state and lives with his grandmother who tells him that his middle initial stands for “Lucky.” Perry has had less than a lucky life.

That all changes when he wins the lottery. Of course, this happens after his grandmother has died, leaving him vulnerable to the bad intentions of the rest of his family. Perry doesn’t help matters by showing too much trust in both family and strangers with their hands out, which leads his co-workers to take action.

I fell in love with Perry immediately. I have several family members who work in special ed, so have seen the wonderful, touching side that he shows so many times. It sounds cliche, but those classified as having a disability often have wonderful abilities that too many people fail to recognize.

I love how Wood brings that part of Perry to the forefront once he wins the money. His contributions to the store where he works brought a smile to my face. On the other hand, I found myself honestly getting mad at Perry’s family even though I knew I was reading a piece of fiction. Wood did a wonderful job making that tragic part of the story as realistic as possible.

With so many things happening around him, Perry still manages to make all the right decisions for his life. They might not be the ones w expect him to make, but they pretty much make sure that everyone gets what they deserve. All things considered, that’s all the luck any of us could ask for.

Maria and I went on a trip recently. Nothing fancy, just a weekend in Washington, D.C., to see some tennis and have a celebration for our 15^th anniversary a couple of months early.
As is our usual custom, we flew by the seat of our pants for most of our plans. That meant enjoying lunch the first night at a pub we just happen to read about in a guide book that afternoon.

I love this part of traveling. You never know what you will find when you stop for a meal in a city like D.C. In fact, on the next night, we ended up meeting the brother of a guy I went to high school with at our dinner spot.

That coincidence, however, paled in comparison to what happened on our first night. We had settled in our booth with a couple of drinks and waited for our sandwiches when I saw it.

At first, I could not believe my eyes. It had been a long day, and I wondered if my eyes were playing tricks on me, but there was no mistaking it. A family of four walked into the bar and the father, probably about five to 10 years older than me, wore something that made my jaw drop.

A fanny pack.

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Nothing makes me happier than coming home at the end of a hard day and seeing my wife and daughter. We really have a lot of fun together.

But when I get a chance to have the house all to myself for three days, I’m not going to turn that down.

Maria and Bridget went to visit some friends last week, leaving me to my own devices.

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My wife and I have had a tradition of traveling for our wedding anniversary. We have had some really great trips, but fell off the wagon the past few years. Since our 15th anniversary is this October, I wanted to resume the fun.

Luckily, we have had a very flexible definition of when an anniversary trip can take place. We headed up to New York in 2007, the last time we took one of these trips, to see a couple days of U.S. Open tennis action. Maria loves tennis, and we had a great time. I thought about repeating that trip, but then we came up with another idea.

One of the tournaments preceding the Open takes place in Washington, D.C. We have never made it down for that event, the Legg Mason Tennis Classic, so we set our sights on making that our 2010 anniversary trip.

We got tickets for evening sessions on Friday and Saturday, booked a hotel room and planned for a little sightseeing. Since D.C. is just about a two-hour drive from our house, it made for a nice little getaway.

Details after the jump

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You can pretty much always get me with a book about music. The way emotions and memories collide through song fascinates me. Almost every novel I have written or attempted to write has had some connection to specific songs.

I accidentally found “The Song Is You” by Arthur Phillips while trying to kill time at a bookstore before a meeting for work. I had, as usual, left too much time to travel so I walked around the store instead of creepily hanging out near the office where I needed to meet someone for 30 minutes.

Like Nick Hornby, Phillips takes a successful guy facing some critical decisions in his life and shows how music can affect his decisions. The difference is that Julian Donahue, the main character, faces his fate not so much through music he knows well, but instead through new music he discovers by accident.

The parallel growth of the relationship between Julian and singer Cait O’Brien keeps the pace of the book moving quite well. They never meet, but lean on each other through online interaction, telephone calls and secret signals.

What Phillips does so well is balance that part of the story with Julian’s failed marriage, the death of his young son and his eccentric brother, who flamed out on Jeopardy thanks to an accidentally inappropriate answer. That part became funnier to me when I found out that Phillips himself was a five-time winner on the show back in the late 1990s.

The book could have easily turned into a judgment of how Julian’s life has so many loose ends or an excuse for pushing grief into the corners of your life, but Phillips masterfully shows how we all need to exist on whatever plane makes us happy, even if that means neverletting the reality destroy the fantasy.

I was happy to discover that a movie based on the book is in the works. I can’t wait to finally hear Cait O’Dwyer’s songs.

I had enough to worry about on my wedding day. I had a family full of people who could embarrass me at the drop of a hat. My best man had an incriminating picture hidden in his tuxedo jacket that he kept threatening to show my wife. I didn’t need the celebrant losing track of things.

But that’s just what happened. After I did my vows - or Maria did hers, I forget who went first - things skipped ahead to the next part without allowing the other one of us to say the vows. I tried to get the celebrants attention, but it took a moment or two, so we had to backtrack and re-do the vows then get to the rings part.

That’s my favorite Maggie Hormel story. There are others, but the laughter she brought while celebrating my wedding will always top the list.

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