At the time of our last reunion I was still living in Los Angeles, toiling in the Hollywood trenches as a writer while my wife finished up her medical residency at UCLA. Shortly after that she took a job in Northern California and we moved to Napa where they grow lots of grapes and it seems you can always pick up some award-winning bottle of wine at any corner market or 7-11 in town. We've spent ten years in Napa and Joanne's still practicing medicine but my job has slightly changed. Yes, I still manage to frantically type out a few pages every day but with the arrival of our two daughters (now ages 3 and 6) I've taken on a second, all-consuming job: Children's chauffeur.

Fortunately our girls are moderately cute and say "please" and "thank you" if reminded several dozen times, so driving them around for endless hours each day can be enjoyable. And somehow between delivering kids to schools, dance classes, gymnastics, swim lessons, Girl Scouts and all the rest I've managed to sell a couple of TV movies and have actually gotten three of them made. I still get down to meetings in Hollywood and experience all those standard writer's perks like witnessing actors, directors or producers mangle and destroy your storylines and dialogue yet the job remains great fun. Of course with TV movies there's one basic truth: It doesn't matter how good or bad the film is or if the audience is cheering or throwing expensive household appliances at the television screen in disgust. If your TV movie gets on the air, the bottom line is this "your residual check's in the mail". And those checks sure come in handy paying for all that gas for my chauffeur's gig back home.

Joanne and I and the kids look forward to seeing everyone in Ames July 30 & 31, 2004.