Having a good Easter morning, and heading out for brunch in a few minutes.  Hope y’all are enjoying the holiday too.

Flashing back a bit on Easters Past courtesy of the site’s archives.  Brunch seems to be the theme.  While the puppys both respected the tale of a giant rabbit bringing snackies, the reality usually boils down to who we’re with and how the eggs have been prepared.

Didn’t sleep well at all. I think Diego’s fidgety anticipation of a giant rabbit bringing colored eggs stuffed with bacon (his beliefs, not mine) kept him up, and in turn that kept me up. Randy however, is somehow still out cold.

Not for long though. In an hour or so we’ll be heading out for an easter brunch in Laguna with old friends. Kinda like an Easter sunrise service in that we’ll be on the beach too close to the hour of sunrise, but we get a private booth, and well, get served. Some of the people there will undoubtedly look like the risen dead too.

Since you’re here though, enjoy some photo flashbacks of Easters past: 1995 or 1996, 2005, and 2007.  No object lessons, no ghosts, just fond memories.

Nice to do Sunday brunch this morning at a new local restaurant.  The Aloha Waffle at the Village Kitchen and Pie Shoppe’s new Escondido location (they’ve been an old standby in Carlsbad for years) was a pleasant surprise.  Don’t turn your faces like that!  Blueberry waffles rock, strawberry waffles rock, banana pancakes rock, and now I know that pineapple waffles rock.

The way the economy’s been going there have been a lot more closures than openings around here in recent months, and gas prices don’t invite Sunday drives like they used to.  Nice to have tasty options in what may even be walking distance.

I’m all about the Sunday brunch.  Big meal with no time constraint and few, if any, pretensions to balanced nutrition.  In its ideal state it includes nice weather for the outdoor coffee and spreading of the Times.  But I am an amateur.  I am unworthy.  This is how it should be done.

Having an amazing long weekend.  We were back up in Topanga Canyon this weekend so I went out to scout the fire damage that we fled three weeks ago, shortly before we evacuated our own home.  Drove the length of Topanga Canyon Boulevard down to the Pacific Coast Highway, then turned up toward Malibu.  Saw none.  Just this pesky ball of fire that caused me to pull the car over and sit and gawk for half an hour or so. 

Followed that up with a very nice brunch this morning that was only marred when I spewed my coffee reading the L.A. Daily News.  The L.A. Unified School District’s produced a supplement touting their progress and achievements including a quarter-page profile of their Couch of the Year.  Unfortunately Micky’s Brown Couch was not the winner, but some guy working in the athletics department.   

Home now after some power shopping.  Outlet malls can be dangerous places.

Despite numerous challenges, mostly Angelenos forgetting how to behave when traffic signals stop working, we did make it to brunch.  Power outages, windblown debris on the highways and periodic tirades against local radio newsreaders all helped make the drive “interesting.”  Several newsreaders were clearly at a loss trying to do something beyond read segues between taped feeds and the depth of experience of those exiled to Sunday morning drivetime was unfortunately obvious.  Like, ohmygawd, there like a big fire in Malibu, like, and its like near Mel Gibson’s home…uhhh…uhhh…back to you Tiffanyamber.  Thought about pulling off to help with the evacuation of Pepperdine, but the need for caffeine and cholesterol defeated even my altruistic nature, and made it to brunch without even stopping for Red Cross snacks at the Zuma Beach evacuation center.

Home now.  Fires appear to still be spreading around Southern California, and there’s a lot of smoke to the east of Casa, probably from the Ramona blaze.  Right now it looks like Spinner‘s route to work is cut off by one of the smaller fires.  Hurricane-force Santa Ana winds are going to make this place miserable for a few days.