
Nisha visits SD…
Nice to have Nisha visit from rainy cloudy Seattle – on picking her up we took her straight to Tacos El Gordo for dinner… Next morning, following D’s “plan for the weekend” we went off-script to briefly visit the Salk institute, where a kind guard let us look around. Its a lovely building overlooking the ocean, and afterwards we had a quick stroll at the top of Blacks beach…no paragliders…
Then off to a supermarket D had heard about near Solana beach, where we got baguettes, cheese & pate, and headed off to the Encinitas Meditation Gardens, where we walked down to the beach for the first time… As they walked thru the garden, I watched the ocean and was very happy to see 2 whales blowing and diving twice – always beautiful…

The walk thru Annies canyon was great as usual, and many bird spotters were out and about, so I jogged back to grab my binocs… As we walked back down, we came across a chinese guy and his daughter using a large format Chamonix brand camera with bellows lens. Turns out he’s an artist and had stage a scene below us where he had written in chalk on various logs in different languages…’viru’, ‘el virus’ etc with an axe embedded in one log. He stripped off his top and went down to the logs, adjusted the axe and lay face down in the grass asking his daughter to take the shot!
We saw a few lovely hummingbirds and then via Torrey Pines, the Sunset Seat, Costco and Modern Times, got back home, coaxed Nisha to sit in the hot tub and had a lovely masala stuffed Branzino (black bass) dinner…
Next day it was down to Black beach for a nice stroll with the naked fat old wrinkly guys and, via gliderport and model gliders, to stinky La Jolla seals and birds… Grabbed a burger at Chicago Fire Grill and had a quick nap while they shopped the UTC mall…then to meet Lynne-with-an-e at Quigley Fine wine for a Meyer Lemon exchange, intro to her PhD friend, followed by quick visit to 3-4 different things in the city including the Cube of Silence protest in Little Italy and Mad Cat DJ back home for G&T, wine and the ladies chatted into the night with D providing lots of good aunty advice…
Sunday we had Dim Sum with Penny & Victor who hadn’t seen Nisha for 16+ years… Back home to make Meyer lemon marmalade (will use white sugar for next batch as brown sugar / maple syrup doesnt make an attractive looking product… The ladies did some Sumi-e and while I worked with Faisal they walked Balboa Park. After a quick beer tasting at Pure, we headed back for lamb-nu-saag dinner with Prashna…and ladies chatting into the night again…with lots more good advice dispensed…again….