And… breathe. No more visitors for a while. I fear the snarky comments of my Wii Fit trainer; eating, drinking and watching movies with real friends somehow took priority over strength training and yoga with an imaginary friend.
We did do the Chinese New Year Treasure Hunt* and though our team performed better than last year we didn’t get in the top five this year. We also didn’t get a team name prize, much to our disappointment**. But we all had a lot of fun, and didn’t get rained on that night (amazing!). The promised “beautiful weather in February” did not materialize, though; it was pretty much overcast and damp all the time. It still is. Still, it beats -40.
And the Ferlak and I got to go see elephant seals at Año Nuevo Park.*** Here are some pictures. It was raining off and on, but it was still pretty cool. I only had the mediocre cell phone camera so the pics of the seals are not as impressive as they should be. The big bulls are about 5,000 pounds and can move surprisingly fast. They are also loud.
And a kind gentleman took a picture of us, all sneaky-like:
After the seal pups are weaned, they are called “weaners”. Really! They stay on the beach until they’ve grown enough to swim; for a while they are so fat that if they do get into the water they just bob up and down like buoys. And the mortality rate for pups is really high, about 90% over three years, so sometimes a pup can feed from multiple mothers who have lost their own pups. Seal milk is something like 55% fat (like triple-cream Brie) so these multiple-feeding pups get almost spherical and are called “super-weaners”. That made me unreasonably happy**** but we didn’t get to see any super-weaners, alas.
Oh, and the post title comes from a song about the elephant seals of Año Nuevo.
* R:tAG didn’t; he lounged in coffee shops and watched the parade.
** “The Man From U.N.G.U.L.A.T.E (United Network of Grass-eating Udder-bearing Livestock And Taurine Enforcement)”
*** Not Ano Nuevo. The tilde is crucial.
**** And it also made me think of Bob the Kitten, who was the feline equivalent.
Wow, lots of snow in London. When I was living in Brighton circa 1993 it snowed only about 1” (very unusual) and the place shut down. My flatmates and I stayed home, made snacks, and watched from our fifth floor window as drivers unfamiliar with the physics of ice slid around the corner of our square and smacked into the iron railings around the centre. Good times, good times.
We had guests and fun the week before last. We will have guests and fun next week.
Things our just-past guests introduced to us:
- The Fall in Blu-ray. Absodamnlutely amazing.
- Max Raabe. I now really really like Oops, I Did It Again. Who knew that all it took was covering it in 1930’s German nightclub style?
- Making hair falls out of scrap yarn.
- Four player Little Big Planet.
- An awesome salad with chicken breasts, dried cranberries, goat cheese, avocados, and sunflower seeds.
- Commentary: The Musical.
- Blu-ray and its effect on fifty five inches of liquid crystal love (thanks, Ferlak)
- Beautiful weather in January
- Elephant seals
- The Chinese New Year’s Treasure Hunt
- Our new robot. We have a useful robot! I love technology!
- Beautiful weather in February
