65 degrees of Christmas

• Christmas Eve morn: beach walk + an earl grey latte with an old coworker, catching up on the past year
  
• Christmas Eve day: in mom's kitchen prepping for dinner ... I make a passable chopper, a useful dishwasher, a good recipe reader, a handy lettuce washer
  
• Roasted pecans with sea salt are freaking delicious (from someone who can barely stand them raw)
• Sunset skies of electric salmoned pink over the deepest, truest blue ocean waters
  
• Christmas Eve dinner with 5 -- great food (eaten in flights, due to unknown guest arrival time ... because said guests did not call when they were leaving as they were supposed to ... hi, Justin!), great stories, fun gift exchange (note: apparently only I, a word person, can count in this family ... we said ONE gift each, people ... ONE)
• To highlight one random materialistic gain ... I got a polka-dot scarf! Polka dots! Yay! PolkaPolkaPolka. Note: Someday, I need to learn the polka. Perhaps in 2010? Anyone well-versed who'd like to teach me?
  
• Given time difference, I begin serious fade around 9 p.m., approximately when we were finishing dinner, with the gift exchange yet to come ... the delicious individual chocolate bread puddings, hot from the oven, had to be ignored until the next day due to food/overall fatigue ... the dessert gods cannot be pleased
• Christmas Eve eve, ended late, me sprawled on hardwood floor in front of fire, only semi-conscious
  
  
• There aren't really going to be 65 of these, you know
  
  
• Christmas Day dawned crisp (for San Diego) and clear ... off to perhaps the one uncanceled yoga class in San Diego with my dad ... we arrive 45 minutes early, look around a shopping mall parking lot ... decide to kill the minutes at the beach down the road
• Beach down the road is predictably stunning and lovely
• Yoga class is also lovely ... breathing, good, must remember, breathing, good
• We seek post-yoga bagels ... alas, post-yoga bagels are not to be had (darn holiday)
  
• BUT, IHOP is open! Hello, blueberry pancakes (I seriously considered the gingerbread ones. Seriously.)
• Then, downtime, lovely downtime. A major amount lying in the sun with Missy, the Del Mar Calico ... then we migrated to the bed ... then it got SERIOUSLY, like greenhouse warm
• Then, the lure of the beautiful day outside, the sure knowledge of lovely yet COLD Boston awaiting, leading me to ... that lovely place down the road
  
• Beaches crowded with people walking, playing, surfing
• Closing note, dinner at the La Jolla Shores hotel, beachside windows displaying waves breaking along the shore. Me wearing a new deep-red, appropriately festive, wool hoodie (y'know, the classy kind)
  
• Seriously good lemon ricotta ravioli and "the best scallops I've had in my life," sayeth my dad. Not bad at all. Ooh -- almost forgot -- eggnog martini. Good stuff.
  
• Now, some bullet pointing. And to-bedding.
  
• A final weekend in 60-something sun, then home, ah, home!
• Really wondering how many bullets be here ... enough to count??
• The more random tidbiting ... my brain isn't working in quite those ways as of yet. More to come once the processor moves along/kicks in/takes effect
• Ooh, right, for anyone still potentially following the Web naming, I'm down to: damnfinelines.com, wordbiscuit.net and fluidwords.com. If that doesn't feel like progress ... trust me, it is.
  

I hope each and every one of you got (and gets) what your heart most desires....