It is precisely one week ago today that I was nearly involved in a high-speed accident happening directly in front of me on the highway headed north. Today I had a different unexpected brush with danger.
I was hiking in a state park that I quite like (hiking pictures coming later), the one adjacent to my dear friend R-ka, aka Former Neighbor Girl, and about an hour from my car when I saw a largish orangeish golden-brown dog loping not far in front of me on the trail ahead. Kind of labrador-sized, if shorter, with pit bull ears. As I was walking along scanning the trail ahead for its owner, I realized that it didn't run like a dog. It ran like a cat. It ran a lot like my own, much (much) smaller, orangeish golden-brown cat, in fact. Just as these thoughts were occurring to me, it heard me walking, stopped, turned its body perpendicular to mine, and turned its head back to face me. And I saw that it was a mountain lion. It's funny, all the years I spent hiking in northern California I was pretty attuned to the possibility of mountain lions being nearby, and there was this one trail intersection in one of my favorite parks in Oakland where every time I ran or hiked through it I was sure that a mountain lion was about to leap out of a tree and onto my back. But I never saw or heard or smelled anything remotely like a mountain lion. And here, not even thinking about it, was one right in front of me. I didn't feel a rush of fear or anything, just thought "huh, that's actually a mountain lion." Before I had a chance to raise my arms and look bigger and menacing (Step One of "attempting to ward off a mountain lion attack"), it stared at me for another few seconds and then slunk off the path and down the hill.
There was a jogger headed my way, and I told him what I had just seen, and we stood and waited for about five minutes and then went by the spot together, talking loudly. He was carrying a little knife, precisely for the purpose of fending of mountain lions, actually. He'd seen a jaguar once in Belize, and we compared notes (jaguar = scarier, it seems). When telling R-ka about my sighting over tea about a bit later, she convinced me that I should now always hike with pepper spray. Which I always think of as an anti-rape kind of thing, but apparently is also pretty useful at warding off large territory-being-enroached-upon-and-pissy-about-it cats. I wonder if they have post-Christmas sales...
This is the best thing I saw in Ventura on my day trip with Dr. J. the other day. Shouldn't there be some expression of "anti" sentiment somewhere in there? We did see a crying baby inside...
Today heading north on the 101 (note my native-like use of the definite article) to see Dr. J. out in Ventura County I almost got involved in an accident. If it weren't for my defensive driving skills (I was several car lengths back from the people involved, not on the cell phone, and not messing with the radio) Pepe and I could have been really hurt!
It was one exit north of mine, I had just merged in from our left entrance, and was heading towards an underpass with striking WGA writers on top of it (it's not far from a major studio). I was slightly distracted by them marching overhead, but apparently the guy one lane over was even more distracted, because he clipped the back of the car in front of me in my lane. I didn't see what happened with that car because I was focused on his skidding, doing a 360, slamming into the dividing barrier, and coming to a halt jutting partway into the left lane. I was one lane over and slammed on my brakes, checking my mirrors to see if I could move further to the right, which I couldn't, and do you know the guy in the truck behind me was blasting his horn at me? Did he not notice the major crashing action happening just in front of us? My main concern was the delivery truck (like milk-truck sized) to my left, but that driver managed to swerve and avoid the skidded/crashed guy and retain control, and there was enough space in front of me for him to do it. So I kept on going and took the next exit and called 911 (first time ever!) and reported the crash, which was underneath like 50 striking writers, all of whom I imagine have cell phones and most of whom had surely already called it in), did some deep breathing, got some gas, informed the lovely Dr. J that I was going to be delayed, and headed back on the highway.
While en route I got stuck behind an SUV that was periodically weaving into the left lane and then returning to our lane. This is a really dense zone of highway, so there wasn't a lot of space -- the driver was really almost hitting people. This not 20 minutes after the first accident just 5 miles back! I finally shot around her to the left and saw that she was on a cell phone and writing stuff down on an envelope that she had propped up on the steering wheel. Once I had a safe distance in front of her I checked in the rearview mirror and saw her drifting over to the left once more. It was unbelievable. But I felt like if I called the CHP again, they would put me down as a crank or something, I mean, they had just taken my name for the first accident, and also I hadn't been able to get her license number. So I just kept on going and left that accident waiting to happen behind me. Maybe I shouldn't have.
Then, once Dr. J. and I set out on our mini day trip up the coast, we were almost hit in the gas station by an anorectic teased-haired bleached-blonde 60-something woman in tight purple clothing and lipstick, driving (kind of) a Mercury with a truck-like backup warning (thank god, since she was backing right into us). Unreal.
I am hoping that bad driving incidents come in threes and that I am all set for a while. I bought myself some consolatory shoes in the outlet mall nearby before heading home (they are really quite cute), but still feel kind of shaken up and not sure what to do about it. One thing I think I won't be doing for most of tomorrow is driving, that's for sure.
Last night I went to my first really LA-style event, and I'm trying to decide how I feel about it. A friend of mine is doing graphic design work for this entertaining store that fronts a child literacy program, founded by this novelist guy, and with parallels in other cities (my favorite is just around the corner from Stovielet in the Mission). It's a great store, anyone in town at some point should go visit it, since it's filled with excellent products imported from the past and future (including Robot Milk, Viking Odorant, zero in a box (brought to you from Baghdad in 413 AD), robot emotion chips (boredom; happiness; envy; schadenfreude) and dead languages in a bottle. In November, I decided this program should be my charity of the month, mostly because I had just been talking about it with my designer buddy and so didn't have to do any research (it can get kind of depressing to poke around and think "who deserves my (still paltry) contribution this month?" given that there is so damn much that needs fixing, even if you're staying local), and got the nicest personal e-mail in response, thanking me for my (paltry) donation and inviting me to the opening sneak-peak party. And I thought, "Why not?" If I'm an "official friend" of the program now, I have as much right as anyone to go to this thing, which my friend referred to as "the celebutard sneak preview party."
And it was packed out with more movie and tv people than I personally have ever rubbed elbows with (sometimes literally) in one place. I suspect that there were lots music and acting people floating around that I didn't recognize, but generally the people I saw that I recognized are ones who have been involved in more indie or offbeat work that I like, including persons A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, and I (and several more that I can't remember at the moment). One guy who brushed elbows with me came in with a friend of his who had also been on a show that I love -- just a few months ago when I was gorging myself on DVDs of the show, I was so upset by his villainy that I actually dreamt that he turned out in the end to be a nice guy. When I accidentally elbowed him as he walked behind me, I turned around to apologize and realized with a (not visible, I'm sure) start that he was a "celebrity" that I had "dreamed about." So teenagery! So odd! And so I decided that I really couldn't say anything in apology.
What was of particular interest to me was who talked to who (people who had worked together seemed to stick together in groups), and also how people were both recognizable and quite ordinary at the same time: I live in a neighborhood filled with good looking people dressing to be noticed, and so no one here looked particularly out of the ordinary in any way. Really, they looked just like people at concerts I go to, or parties I go to, who I see on campus, or just walking around town. But of course how ordinary can they be, because I actually knew who they were, while I was just a nobody standing on the sidelines, observing everything with great interest.
After this early-evening festival I grabbed some tacos from a truck around the corner and chatted with with my friend about art, bilingualism, and the high life, and then headed on over to a completely different party in not-quite-Beverly Hills; small, intimate, with high-end food and alcohol on real plates and in fancy glasses, filled with intellectuals and artsy types. A few of the guests were high school classmates of one of the hostesses, and somehow her high school yearbook materialized. I flipped through, mostly to see how the people in the room had changed over the last few decades, and recognized two people in her year as actorly types (one was a big teen star in the 80s and so only had a tacky poem on her page in lieu of a glamour shot). I was then pointed to two tabloid heroines in their 2nd and 4th grade incarnations, back when they looked sweet and innocent, and there was no clue that they would grow up to be debauched objects of media frenzy. It made me realize how, once you're in certain echelons of money or artistry (and here maybe read "successful artistic enterprise") just how pervasive "celebrities" can be. But mostly it had me thinking on the drive home and now this morning about mediated presentation, and the sheen that it can lend to almost anyone. Maybe it's less so now with all these reality shows, none of which I have ever really watched, where "ordinary" people are on TV, but there is definitely something about watching someone on your television or movie screen or computer screen and then seeing them in person that lends them a certain cachet. And I want to think more about just what that might be. I've had it myself during fieldwork, where I was on television a few times and on the radio twice, both in that minority language that I was learning and studying, and although when I watched them all I could think was about 1) how much my front teeth stick out - why didn't I have braces as a child?, 2) the fact that I really really do look Mexican, especially on camera, and 3) my poor linguistic performance (so painful!), these appearances definitely did burnish my semi-glamorous sheen, and I would meet people every few weeks who had already seen or heard me and were impressed by it. I even get it with my friend's hands, which incidentally appear in weekly films he makes of this ongoing art project he has going, and which definitely have some sheen of fascination attached to them now (at least for me). Which weirdly doesn't entirely extend to the rest of his body -- a perfectly fine body, but one that doesn't appear in his mini-videos. I went to a Central Asian concert about a month ago, and each group that performed was preceded by a contextualizing film in which they were photographed in situ, interviewed, shown performing locally, and more. And while I think it was done in part as a time filler, I think it was also calculated to burnish these performers, to get a small "hey, I've seen them in a movie!" response, even though said movie ended 30 seconds before the performance began. Surely there is theoretical work written on this floating out there -- maybe I should go look for it.
In other human behavior observational news, I find myself once again playing (for the third? fourth? time in the last year or so) the assessment game: a) not interested, b) ambivalent, or c) just German(ic)? (A friend has more than once played the parallel game: gay? or just Israeli?) It's annoying! And leaves me unsure how to calculate my own stance and behavior. (I am leaning towards the "not caring" side of things at the moment, although from what I have seen, German men are great once you actually have them in a relationship.) In a little "those who can't, teach" moment, I'm putting together readings now for the "intercultural communication" portion of my upcoming class -- I wonder if there's anything on intercultural courtship out there that would make for good reading for the kiddies.
Despite my trip to the local farmer's market on Monday, where I bought a giant sack of vegetables, resolute to start eating super-healthy once more (although the final weeks of the year maybe not the best time to try and get back into the good shape I was in over the summer), tonight I found myself completely unable to summon up the energy to cook. After eating my takeout chow fun (not great, but not bad, and not cooked by me!), I cracked open the fortune cookie and read this: "If you think you can, you can."
For once, this fortune was surprisingly in tune with my life (the lucky numbers beneath it, maybe not so much). Because just an hour previously, I had had a real breakthrough in my yoga class, the one taught by my favorite teacher. He had us partner up today and spend almost the entire class facing our partners, which involved really surprising amounts of eye contact (uncomfortable and difficult even with my glasses off, which is impressive) and also paying close attention to what your partner was doing just across from you. Towards the end we did this sequence of poses that culminated in this one pose, the half moon (ardha chandrasana, for you Sanskrit scholars out there) that I generally have a really hard time with. Here, it's supposed to look like this (if you stretch me out by like another 9 inches and completely alter my BMI, plus also I was wearing this hot pink and black vintage Esprit tank top and not gauzy yoga goddess wear baring my steely abs):
I tend to fall out of this pose before my hand makes it all the way up, because my super-flat feet make it really really hard to maintain my balance solidly and long enough. But today, mirroring my partner, who has no problems with the pose (apparently), I just popped right in. And held it the entire time. On both sides. It was great, I think by the second side I was just smiling broadly until we returned to our original "warrior" pose. And felt somewhat elated for the rest of class, and right up to now, actually. She was very kind, my partner, and had clearly slowed down to help me, but just the act of focusing so much on her and following her through somehow removed whatever mental block keeps me from full realization all the other times. Which I had been thinking this whole time was a physical limitation, but apparently it's all mental. Or at least mostly mental, I mean, my calves were burning and my feet surely not as steady as my arch-blessed neighbors. Meanwhile, we were so in sync that by the end of class we were even breathing together, which felt even more intimate than the eye contact, really.
All this made me wonder on the walk home what the other ways are in my life that I do this to myself, psych myself out of a certain kind of looseness and openness and availability by overthinking. Not that I want to overthink this to boot. But maybe I can find a way to incorporate this somehow into my daily living, and when embarking on something difficult just think "I can do it" and then just start doing it. I bet that would help a lot. I'm going to be the little engine that could! Or a Greek goddess of Victory. Oh, the positivity! God knows the world could use it right now.
That is, my class is over (final papers all read, grades logged with registrar), and so I have immediately started working on my next class. Which doesn't start until January 7, but I am managing a team of four teaching assistants -- which reminds me, I apparently need to take a mandatory online 2 hour sexual harassment course sometime in the next few days -- and so need to get everything in shape now so that I can try and actually take two weeks off from working. Which I haven't done for, oh, if I start to calculate the number of years I will become very sad so let's just say, a while. I am the kind of person who is not so good at "relaxing" when tension-inducing tasks are hovering over her head like a legendary Greek sword, so the more I get done now, the better I will feel.
There's a lot of energy that goes into making a syllabus, at least for me (actually, even making a crappy syllabus takes a lot of time and energy, I'm sure) -- it's a little bit like outlining a book, since each class tells a story and has a narrative arc, and you need to figure out the best way to tell that story and how much you can expect people to read each week. I find that if I put the outline together well, then each week's lectures fall into place a little bit easier, both because they build on the preceding ones, and also I have a good idea of where I'm going. I'm feeling pretty good about how this last class went, mostly because I've gotten so much positive feedback. As in three different colleagues and four graduate students told me that they'd heard great things about the class, and at yesterday's department party almost all of my students thanked me for the class and said nice things about it. So I'm thinking that while I'm feeling good about my teaching skills, I should forge my new syllabus while the iron is hot. Or some such.
It would be a lot easier to work from home if a) the apartment were back to its pristine pre-party state, and b) they weren't jackhammering up the entire sidewalk across the street (leading me to wonder once again why there have not been improvements in jackhammer technology in recent decades -- surely there is a better way to tear up concrete and pavement). One party prop that I am reluctant to throw away/recycle is this fabulous beer bottle, purchased along with some other Eastern European beers, mainly for their Cyrillic lettering. One was a Ukrainian beer called Slavutich, the second was a Petersburg beer called Leningradskoe (so Soviet!), and this was the third: Now, you can probably already figure out what it says from the giant criss-crossed pistols that make up part of the logo, but again a mini-Cyrillic lesson: P = r, C = s, H = n, lambda = l, and don't worry about that b after the lambda. And what does that spell! Arsenalnoe, which is the adjective form of Arsenal, and by the way you can see it's 7% alcohol = 14 proof, as compared to say, Bud Light, which is 4.2% alcohol, or 8.4 proof. Now this is a beer that did not exist when I lived in Russia -- I switched to beer about 3/4 of the way through my fieldwork, playing the girl card and saying things like (imagine high-pitched girlie voice here), "I can't drink vodka unless there's juice in it! Maybe I can just have beer," thus saving myself, kind of, from miserable hangovers and illnesses the days after the nights I would be hanging out with guys to try and get gender-balanced data. Back then, the most popular beer, at least among the people I knew, was a beer called Fatty, which was advertised in a series of tv commercials in which a fat beer-drinking guy would return home from a drinking bout with his buddies to find that he'd been gone a really, really long time, like months or years in the outside world, and when his wife would say in an annoyed tone, "Where have you been?" all he'd say was "Drinking beer" (it rhymes in Russian). In my experience, a drunk Russian was like 2 seconds away from violence, I mean, I saw many a fist fight break out over what appeared to be absolutely no provocation at all, and I remember when winter coats came off and I started seeing lots of casts on men's right hands, which I first attributed to breakages caused by slipping on ice but eventually realized was probably due to punching. So the idea of having a beer with guns on it, masculine as it may be, seriously creeps me out. Mr. Monster (who in two seconds figured out that the pictured yard-sale figurine that I've been calling "Articulated Businessman" is actually Christian Bale in American Psycho) said he wanted a t-shirt with this logo on it, and while I kind of feel like I owe him for some cool art he made me recently, I think this would be a bad idea (especially on a tall Teuton with really short hair).
Other entertaining things viewed recently include this window in the wholesale garment and textile district downtown (J-ka and I saw a cake stand display in Venice that was remarkably similar, but I forgot to photograph it), and this model in a store window in my old neighborhood in Spookytown. I wonder how the store owners feel about certain deceased Ethiopian emperors? I'm thinking "pretty good."
Last night I threw a Vodka and Latke party (renamed at the beginning of the evening as the (Frozen) Vodka and Latke party, because I was for once smart and decided to not do everything the hard way, and bought Trader Joe's frozen latkes in lieu of standing by a stove frying all night, and boy, let me tell you it was the right decision). It was pretty good, although greedy-for-numbers hostess that I am, I kind of wish more people had showed up. The problem with a Friday party is that people are tired at the end of the week, but there's this band that I adore that I really want to see tonight, so I tried to squeeze it all in to one weekend and smaller attendee numbers is just the price I had to pay, I guess. So I got to bed at like 3:30 and was recently awakened at around 8:30 (nothing like a poke in the head that says "feed me!"), and while I am waiting for the digestion of some leftover latkes, just consumed for breakfast, to kick in and maybe get me back to sleep, I thought I'd do some blog catchup.
J-ka was in town several weeks ago -- actually, she was in San Francisco for a wedding and then kindly detoured back to New York via glamorous Hollywood -- and on one unusually warm day of her brief visit we headed to Venice Beach for some r-and-r, in short supply in both of our lives at present.
We were happy to not be working. And to be catching up on the already-several-days-old New York Times. The beach was nearly empty, despite it being a perfect mid-November day (80 inland, 70s at the shore), and we imposed ourselves happily on the open spaces. As always, there were lots of excellent shorebirds to watch. These ones below are so cute that they kind of make me all gooey and teary-eyed, they're like wee little squeaky animated cotton balls with wings and did I mention how cute they are? With help from a colleague I have learned that they are piping plovers. But better than knowing the name is watching them run:
Are you getting a sense of the cuteness? There were also willets and wimbrels gracing the shore, lots more of the former, and finally remembering to bring my binoculars meant I was able to see them in more detail than usual, although sometimes the faraway view was more aesthetically pleasing. Perhaps most exciting, given my mammalocentric nature, was watching a pack (herd? pod?) of dolphins frolic just past the wave break. There were four of them, and they swam about for hours. I think the fishing must have been good that day, because the pelicans seemed to be living it up in the same spots as well -- in fact, sometimes I would see a splash and quickly focus in with the binoculars and see that it had "only" been a pelican, and then would feel guilty that I was more excited to see a dolphin than a pelican. And then feel ridiculous for feeling guilty. Ah, the humanity! Other, less animate, sea creatures were also aesthetically pleasing. We took a walk around sunset, when the light did all kinds of amazing things to the low-tide zone, (I like how you can see the faintest remains of earlier footprints here) and things started to get absurdly beautiful in this cliched, picture postcard kind of way. I mean, really, it's like a joke. I wonder if the seagulls could tell how beautiful it was. But I'm pretty sure the surfers knew. All that picture taking seemed to do something bad to my hand. I'm glad I was able to drive J-ka back to the airport on time! It's all better now, btw, if less fragrant in a citronly kind of way.
So, the last two weeks I have been mostly on the East Coast, first for Thanksgiving (not pictured) and then for the big conference for my field, this year taking place in Spookytown, believe it or not (also not pictured). Too much eating, socializing, and in the case of the conference, thinking. And watching men posture and peacock around, and hang enormous theoretical constructs on thin and somewhat absurd data, sometimes apparently ill-comprehended as well. These things wipe me out, both family events (those mostly in a good way, although the weight of parental expectations, especially vis-a-vis grandchildren and permanent jobs, can be, well, weighty) and the professional ones. Plus there's all the explaining of self, life circumstances, expectations, etc. etc. for both sets of people, where I want to put a good spin on things, and at present mostly can because really things here are quite lovely except for the part where my future is, for a change of pace, completely uncertain. All that self-reflection and self-presentation leads to too much existential musing, which is just plain bad for you. The family stuff is generally not so stressful, but I always leave these conferences feeling hugely ambivalent about myself and my place in the world, and in the field, and whether I should be in it at all. So many people I like and so much thinking and writing and teaching about stuff that I think is cool and interesting and worthwhile! So much posturing and absurdity and little expressions of unkindness and hierarchization, and in the business meeting, so many freaking people who have had the option to hire me and have not done it! It can be a bit much. To put it mildly.
But as I remembered yesterday, also exhausting can just be the physical demands of schedules themselves. For the family stuff, it's long travel to NY and then excessive driving to various family places on high-traffic days in a high-density kind of place. For the conference, it was not just travel back east, but then trying to balance socializing with Spookytown friends I left behind (for those of you not there you may recall that the social life was just really shaping up right about the time that I left) with conference socializing and attendance. I didn't get in until like 1 every night, in part because I was still on California time, but had to get up by 7 every morning because I had to be there every day at 8 or earlier for various obligations. Yesterday was particularly exhausting -- I got up at 4 am PST and didn't get back home (as in LaLa Land home) until 12:30 am PST, with a conference panel, conference shmoozing, socializing with Set A of friends, socializing with Set B of friends, flight to airport A, flight to airport B, and then drive home.
I think I'm only upright because I kind of moved to East Coast time. I had all these ideas about today involving a talk on campus at noon, lecture prep for Wednesday, and more, but now I am thinking that really a great part of it should be spent horizontal and incommunicado. Starting now maybe...
Shouldn't there be some expression of "anti" sentiment somewhere in there? We did see a crying baby inside...
I tend to fall out of this pose before my hand makes it all the way up, because my super-flat feet make it really really hard to maintain my balance solidly and long enough. But today, mirroring my partner, who has no problems with the pose (apparently), I just popped right in. And held it the entire time. On both sides. It was great, I think by the second side I was just smiling broadly until we returned to our original "warrior" pose. And felt somewhat elated for the rest of class, and right up to now, actually. She was very kind, my partner, and had clearly slowed down to help me, but just the act of focusing so much on her and following her through somehow removed whatever mental block keeps me from full realization all the other times. Which I had been thinking this whole time was a physical limitation, but apparently it's all mental. Or at least mostly mental, I mean, my calves were burning and my feet surely not as steady as my arch-blessed neighbors. Meanwhile, we were so in sync that by the end of class we were even breathing together, which felt even more intimate than the eye contact, really.
Now, you can probably already figure out what it says from the giant criss-crossed pistols that make up part of the logo, but again a mini-Cyrillic lesson: P = r, C = s, H = n, lambda = l, and don't worry about that b after the lambda. And what does that spell! Arsenalnoe, which is the adjective form of Arsenal, and by the way you can see it's 7% alcohol = 14 proof, as compared to say, Bud Light, which is 4.2% alcohol, or 8.4 proof. Now this is a beer that did not exist when I lived in Russia -- I switched to beer about 3/4 of the way through my fieldwork, playing the girl card and saying things like (imagine high-pitched girlie voice here), "I can't drink vodka unless there's juice in it! Maybe I can just have beer," thus saving myself, kind of, from miserable hangovers and illnesses the days after the nights I would be hanging out with guys to try and get gender-balanced data. Back then, the most popular beer, at least among the people I knew, was a beer called Fatty, which was advertised in a series of tv commercials in which a fat beer-drinking guy would return home from a drinking bout with his buddies to find that he'd been gone a really, really long time, like months or years in the outside world, and when his wife would say in an annoyed tone, "Where have you been?" all he'd say was "Drinking beer" (it rhymes in Russian). In my experience, a drunk Russian was like 2 seconds away from violence, I mean, I saw many a fist fight break out over what appeared to be absolutely no provocation at all, and I remember when winter coats came off and I started seeing lots of casts on men's right hands, which I first attributed to breakages caused by slipping on ice but eventually realized was probably due to punching. So the idea of having a beer with guns on it, masculine as it may be, seriously creeps me out. Mr. Monster (who in two seconds figured out that the pictured yard-sale figurine that I've been calling "Articulated Businessman" is actually Christian Bale in American Psycho) said he wanted a t-shirt with this logo on it, and while I kind of feel like I owe him for some cool art he made me recently, I think this would be a bad idea (especially on a tall Teuton with really short hair).
and this model in a store window in my old neighborhood in Spookytown.
I wonder how the store owners feel about certain deceased Ethiopian emperors? I'm thinking "pretty good."
And to be catching up on the already-several-days-old New York Times. 
The beach was nearly empty, despite it being a perfect mid-November day (80 inland, 70s at the shore), and we imposed ourselves happily on the open spaces. 
As always, there were lots of excellent shorebirds to watch. These ones below are so cute that they kind of make me all gooey and teary-eyed, they're like wee little squeaky animated cotton balls with wings and did I mention how cute they are? 
With help from a colleague I have learned that they are piping plovers. But better than knowing the name is watching them run:
although sometimes the faraway view was more aesthetically pleasing.
Perhaps most exciting, given my mammalocentric nature, was watching a pack (herd? pod?) of dolphins frolic just past the wave break. There were four of them, and they swam about for hours. I think the fishing must have been good that day, because the pelicans seemed to be living it up in the same spots as well -- in fact, sometimes I would see a splash and quickly focus in with the binoculars and see that it had "only" been a pelican, and then would feel guilty that I was more excited to see a dolphin than a pelican. And then feel ridiculous for feeling guilty. Ah, the humanity!
Other, less animate, sea creatures were also aesthetically pleasing.
We took a walk around sunset, 
when the light did all kinds of amazing things to the low-tide zone, 
(I like how you can see the faintest remains of earlier footprints here)
and things started to get absurdly beautiful in this cliched, picture postcard kind of way. I mean, really, it's like a joke.
I wonder if the seagulls could tell how beautiful it was. 
But I'm pretty sure the surfers knew.
All that picture taking seemed to do something bad to my hand. 
I'm glad I was able to drive J-ka back to the airport on time! It's all better now, btw, if less fragrant in a citronly kind of way. 
