home

we are home from San Diego now. Easy flight, nothing to report there.

BTW, if at any future susboid gathering, the host(s) want a lemon meringue pie, let me know. It's a specialty of mine; I make it once a year for my dad's birthday; his mom used to make it for him, and then my mom did it for a while, but handed it over to me when I was 8 or 9 years old. (My mother's growing health conscious diet made *making* such a pie beyond the pale, but not eating it....)

It's a good pie. It's on *no one's* diet plan, being high in sugar, carbs, gluten, possibly-undercooked eggs in the meringue, and butter (in the pie crust). I can concoct the basic part sof the pie at home, but host(s) must have a good oven for baking the meringue once it is assembled, and some way of keeping party guests out of the general vicinity while the assembly and baking happen.

Of course, around here it won't be made with lemons freshly picked from the family home's garden...

seals

In La Jolla, at the "Childrens Pool", the harbor seals come onto the beach to rest. This started years ago, and now there are enough of them that it has turned into a free tourist attraction. The area where the seals are is roped off so people won't disturb them. It is actually pretty amazing how much people respect the message to leave them alone (then again, they stink, and they have very sharp teeth, and carry parasites and bacteria that are very dangerous to people.)

We visited them on Christmas Day, and in spite of the day and the bad weather, there were hundreds of other people visiting them too.

They are very catlike, in that they spend most of their time napping, and have great whiskers. The older seals ignore people, but the young ones kept staring at us.