Sonic Booms at the Beach

Someone was making early Valentines:


It's warm here, even for San Diego. Mark and I went to the beach. This is the (gasp!) fourth January we've lived here, and the first time we've ever been to the beach in January. Other than hearing several sonic booms, all was peaceful. Was it the military? Probably. Fireworks or other random exploding things? Possibly--the San Diego Chargers are playing now.

Anyway, the tide was super low, and all that packed sand makes a great natural dance floor

M & L California Beach Day

Grading, design, make a poem, walk on the beach, nap on the beach, grading, shower, beer outside in the sun, tacos outside in the setting sun, more beer, a walk home through an unfamilar neighborhood, many spring birds.

We live here, yes, but it's not like any of that happens very often.

writing projects / toga parties

I've decided to post my "free writing" at See it Everywhere. So that I have something to post and can pretend that I have readers. And it's easier to post prose than the stuff with space and line breaks that I'm also writing now. So I will post prose there. I am trying to write prose that isn't about far away places, but instead is about nice people like people in my family saying and doing rather awful things to each other. It will take me a while to work up to that, though. I'm sure I will mention Lester a lot.

Anyway.

Yesterday while I was on the beach a large group of men and women in togas came by, screaming and yelling things like "show us your tits"

(though not to me, my beach outfit is carefully designed so that no one will bother me: one piece suit, large hat, dark sunglasses, weird book. And anyway I'm pretty hot, but I'm not a 17 year old girl in a bikini,

(thank G-d)

)

They were drunk. They might have been hashers.

Beach Town Aura

I am part of the Carlsbad beach town aura as I ride my bicycle to and from yoga class, wearing sandals, yoga bag slung over my back. And it's not just that Carlsbad has a beach town aura, it is a beach town. In California.

I frequently find it alarming to live in a California beach town, but it is August, and the weather here is perfect--so I'm not alarmed, just shocked and pleasantly disembodied. How can I possibly have a body if I'm part of an aura? May and June are like February back East, but now it is nice. I will never vacation in August as long as I live here.

I ate an excellent reuben sandwich today at Mariah's in Carlsbad.

The baby finches will fledge any day now. The day or two leading up to the fledge always makes me a bit hyper and nervous. There is always one precocious nestling that starts trying its wings early and looking out of the nest with interest. This nest is in the eaves of our balcony roof (can a balcony roof have eaves?) just in front of and above our door. Every time we come or go we're eye to eye with the three baby finches.

Lester attacked his bucket today with particular vigor.

I went for a long walk after the reuben sandwich. The weather was terrible today, cloudy, overcast, and yet there were still a lot of people at the beach. Parts of the state beach had red flags posted, but people were going in the water anyway.

Recent dead animals on the beach: at least 5 seals (I've lost count), many Humboldt squid, and one pelican.

Today feels muggy. I guess we don't know what "muggy"means anymore.

I haven't seen any, but Humboldt squid have been washing ashore all month, from San Diego to Encinitas. It's not clear why they're washing ashore, although according to the Tribune, it might have something to do with El Niño weather patterns. Squid usually come north from Mexico in advance of major tropical weather. That might explain why there are so many of them here, but it doesn't explain why they're washing up on the beaches by the hundreds.

According to National Geographic, Humboldt squid beach themselves in California every few years: "In 2002 thousands of squid filled the beach at La Jolla Cove north of San Diego, California. Last month at least 1,500 of the squid ended up on beaches between San Diego and Los Angeles." Also, the squid don't seem to be washing up dead on the shores. Instead, they swim into shallow water and get trapped on the beach.

Humboldt squid are supposedly quite aggressive. They can be "elusive and cannibalistic." According to Scott Cassell, who made a documentary about them called "Search for the Red Demon," these squid will attack. "They have a sharp beak, eight muscular arms and two retractable feeding tentacles that allow them to attack their prey with more than 40,000 needle-sharp teeth at once." Ooo!

There was a spill off the coast of Encinitas yesterday. According to the Tribune it was "somewhere between 500 to 1,000 gallons of some type of petroleum product. It smells like gasoline or diesel fuel." Scott Henry, the Chief of Encinitas fire division, said the mess is the worst spill he's seen in 27 years.

I'm not sure why the firemen are the ones dealing with a diesel spill in the ocean. The Tribune doesn't say much about wildlife, except to say that thus far "there has been no discernible impact" although the Tribune did note that a kelp bed off Beacon's Beach acted as a kind of natural barrier--that can't be good for the kelp. Mostly the article talks about how the spill cancelled the Switchfoot Bro-Am surf competition, and that the fumes of the spill are toxic and could cause health problems. Yay!

I can't find any mention of the dead seals in the news. I don't remember there being any dead seals on the beach last May, but that doesn't mean that there weren't any.