Hello, friends,
Feeling refreshed after having a dinner of leftovers, a nice shower and watching The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension with the girls.  They tolerated it pretty well - it *is* an 80's movie and very quirky.  I remember watching it more than once in college and liking it, and thinking tonight that... it's weird.  But it's part of my youth and I thought they should see it once, anyway.  There are definitely some good lines in it, and I love it that it doesn't take itself too seriously.

This one will be shorter than the one for Saturday, because we didn't do much yesterday, which was nice.  Over breakfast we watched our church's Livestream service, which is 10:30 at home, and we were up by 7:30 so it worked out perfectly.  After church/breakfast we drove out to La Jolla to go to the beach.  We parked in this little cave of a parking garage, and there was no attendant on duty.  It took us a while to find a sign that said we could pay on the way out if no attendant there. 

We walked down to the beach, through not too much traffic and lots of construction, and were surprised to find the rocks covered with sea birds, including pelicans.  A little farther south we saw our first sea lions, and stopped to watch them sunning on the rocks.  Continuing on the path by the water, we came to an area where we could go out to get closer to the animals.  We didn't get too close - probably no closer than 20 feet - but the sea lions didn't seem to notice.  Farther along there was a [collective noun] of sea lions lying on the beach, fairly immobile in the sun, surrounded (a bit too closely for my comfort) by tourists. 

I looked up the collective noun for sea lions and came up with several:  bob, colony, crash, flock, harem (females), herd, hurdle, pod, raft, rookery, and team.  These on the beach probably were closest to a "crash," because they were crashed out.  We did get down on the beach, but we chose one that was sea lion free, so as not to have to deal with proximity of wild animals, no matter how cute.  My elder kid and I waded a bit; the younger one didn't want to get her feet wet, but I said this might be the only time she'd be able to say she touched the Pacific on this trip, so she did. 

We walked down to the Children's Pool, and there was a harbor seal on the beach.  The PA at the lifeguard station blared that the seal was ill and recovering, and for people to stay 50 feet away.  It would have been nice to have someone policing the other beaches a little better.  At one point we saw a white woman go off and scream at a bunch of Asian people (whether native San Diegans or tourists, I don't know, but I suspect tourists, because locals wouldn't have gotten so close to the sea lions, I would think).  She called them idiots and railed at them to "leave the sea lions alone" until most of them left the beach.  While I applaud her sentiment (to protect the wildlife), I cannot condone her methods.  I wonder if any of the tourists will remember the US as the place where the crazy white woman screamed them off the beach.

That brings up something else I've noticed on this vacation:  while my fellow tourists may not be always very pleasant to be around, I've found the hired people to be extremely pleasant, from the store clerk at Michael's (we had to stop for origami paper) to the information people, to the period-dressed folks in Old Town, and the Zoo and Safari Park employees - everyone has been very kind, more than I've found in other places (save when we were in the UK last year and only had one person be grouchy with us).  It has been a nice experience so far from that perspective. 

After a couple of hours, we decided to go back home.  We did sit for a good 20 minutes on the way back to the car and watch the sea lions frolicking in the waves, including leaping and body surfing.  It was so cute to watch them all glide together through a wave, even though only one or two would end up on the beach.  Some of them were lying on the beach and letting the waves roll them over as well.  It was such fun to watch. 

We found an attendant when we returned to our car and paid him, then sat in beach traffic for 20 minutes just trying to get out of town.  I'm taking advantage of the time change while I can to get us all up and out early so we can find parking, etc.  So far it has worked heavily in our favor, with good parking spots and crowds only increasing as we're ready to leave. We went back to the house for a little while, then went to Costco to get gasoline (what a line, egad) and a few other things, then stopped at Michael's (as stated above) to get origami paper because we forgot ours.  We had dinner and did laundry - the washer and dryer are on the back porch, interesting - and then watched dumb Youtube videos for an hour or so before bed (James Veitch, Monty Python's Dead Parrot and Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, etc) because it's important to ground my kids in the classics.  :)

time for bed,
good night

wb