Took advantage of the nice weather yesterday evening by spending some quality time with Samantha. We had a rousing game of squeaky toy fetch.

Then we wrassled. ( I won).

Then had a lovely five mile walk along Bolsa Chica at Sunset.

Oh, and another book I've recently read, that I totally recommend, is When Skateboards Will Be Free - A Memoir of a Political Childhood by Said Sayrafiezadeh.

While images of athletic and Hollywood celebrity decorated the rooms of his classmates, the walls of Said's youth were adorned with fierce glares from heavily-bearded revolutionaries. As the son of an Iranian father and Jewish-American mother--two souls united by a commitment to an impending socialist revolution--young Said spent his childhood working to make the comrades proud. He hawked the movement's rag, embraced a moniker of "the little revolutionary," and even embarked on a confusing trip to Cuba to spark his political awareness. (He was appalled by the lack of sanitary bathrooms).

When Skateboards Will Be Free describes a politically-charged childhood with an innocence that forces smiles in unexpected places and reveals the heartache of a home soaked in idealism. They weren't poor because they had to be poor, they were poor by choice. Said's father deserted the family when he was young, but his mother continued to carry a torch for this man she never divorced. He, of course, enjoyed a string of idealistic young babes, while she awaited his rare communications. She was an educated woman, (her brother, Mark Harris, wrote Bang the Drum Slowly), who chose to live in dilapidated apartments with her son in Pittsburgh and NYC, while they waited for the revolution.

The arrival of a socialist state not only promised to bring skateboards in bubblegum-bright colors to the masses; it also pledged to repair the rifts within Said's own home.

It's a memoir worth reading, even though I found it on an Oprah book list.