Xmas day, Corona del Mar, California

Ernie and I spent the last couple of weeks visiting family and friends in So Cal. I learned that two weeks of this sort of visiting trip, when it doesn't include a significant amount of "doing stuff" such as going places and seeing things as we would normally do on vacation, is WAY too much for us. Even with good family and friends.

Everyone's choices seemed to be based on whatever was easier and more low-key. Xmas dinner was simple and small. I love cooking Xmas dinner in my mother's kitchen. Her house is really open and light and her kitchen is bright and easy to work in.

Before dinner we drove down to the beach to watch the sunset:







Kind of discombobulated, when I left I was still kind of sick and now that I'm back I'm not (that I can tell so far.) What I'm noticing is that I keep starting activities and thoughts with "because I'm sick, I need to....." and since I haven't felt that way for two weeks, it's startling. Hopefully that will clear up during the next week before I go back to work. It's sort of like I only remember how to evaluate my tasks in that context and can't summon up more rational evaluation criteria.

Maybe I'll just assume everything is easy and be less obsessive about planning for everything that might go wrong because anything going wrong would be a DISASTER.

Movies recently seen

_Garden State_ - Natalie Portman, Oh My God. Who knew she could act? Not only act, but make you fall completely in love with her in that Drew Barrymore way? It was a traditional love story with sort of cleverly and amusingly non-traditional characters. Sitting in Newport Beach watching it, it made me miss New Jersey.

_Saved_ - I enjoyed it, no one else liked it. Good performances and Mary-Louise Parker just gets better and better. Very predictable, though.

_Harold and Kumar go to White Castle_ - I haven't laughed this hard at anything in a long time. If you realize that really, fart jokes are always funny, then this is the movie for you. It acknowledges and jokes about all sorts of stereotypes and it's not offensive because it's accurate. It also just gets more and more over the top in ways you wouldn't predict, in a very very gleeful way.