"Yesterday's Dream": December 13th: Happy birthday to me!

December 5th is my birthday. The plan was for Rebecca, Matt, Wendy and I to get together, but the coronavirus took care of that plan. Southern California was on a "Stay at home" order. I had a hard time rationalizing that my birthday party was essential travel. So we did a virtual birthday party with Rebecca which was still fun. I am here in Encinitas every day with Matt and Wendy so I consider us a household.

I had bought some very good steaks when they were on sale, and we decided this was a good time to have them. Per my request, Wendy made her excellent gluten free brownies.

As always, the brownies were great!

Rebecca on Facetime

Rebecca got Wendy's recipe so she could make some brownies for herself in Studio City. We Facetimed with Rebecca and watched a movie together. It was almost like being together,...well almost but still very enjoyable.

My birthday present is a new picture puzzle. 1000 pieces! That should keep me going for quite a while.

View from the ocean shelf usually under water

I love walking the beach when it is low tide and the tidal pools are exposed. Yesterday was an exceptionally low, low tide. In the picture on the left I am standing far away from shore. At high tide the water will be all the way up to the rocks and no beach is visible.

I took a lot of fun pictures.

The water was crystal clear and there were a lot of invertebrates visible in the small pools.

I was able to get a lot of good pictures of anemones partially open. Typically they are closed up tight. The picture below shows how they protect themselves with little shell fragments when they are closed up.

Partially open anemone

Closed Anemones covered
in shell fragments

The water was so clear, it doesn't show in the pictures.

It's unusual to see anemones opened up in the tidal pools so I took many pictures! Here are some of the better ones.

The tops of the tidal pools are covered with live mussels. They can close up and survive until the tide comes back in.

The sea gulls seem to like the low tide. I guess they find more to eat. There were plenty around. They are not skittish at all! When walking the beach they act like, "Well I was here first!" And in fact they were.

Rebecca had been experimenting with some online meal options. There are a lot available and Hello Fresh is designed for someone who likes to cook. You select three meals from quite a few options and they send everything to your doorstep needed to make the meal. Rebecca was able to send a free trial to me because she is a customer.

I ordered a Tex Mex enchilada meal, a crispy parmesan baked chicken meal and a BBQ pork burger meal.

Tex Mex enchiladas baking

Enchilada

I made the enchiladas first at Matt and Wendy's and we all agreed they were delicious!

Crispy chicken Parmesan

Next I made the chicken parmesan and it also tasted great. The meals tend to have a lot of saturated fat, carbs and sodium. Wouldn't say they are good for a steady diet but enjoyable. Haven't done the Pork Burgers yet.

Three years ago Linda bought a ginger bread kit house for us to build as a Christmas project. She typically supplied us with more projects than we completed and the gingerbread house never made it to the top of the list. This year, Wendy said, "This is the third year we've had the ginger bread house kit. We need to make it." So Matt started the ball rolling. The frosting seemed a little too dry and he had difficulty getting the sides to stick together. Hmmmm, maybe because it was three years old? Regardless, he was persistent and got the house together.

We let it dry overnight and I took over the decoration.
When I put the little gumdrops on top, the roof collapsed! But after all of Matt's hard work, I gave it one more try. Reconstructed the house and finished decorating it. Success

Completed ginger bread house

A few days later when I went to work on a shirt with Wendy, I noticed the gingerbread house was ... moved? Seems the gingerbread house had another roof issue.