We're sunning ourselves in Southern Cal. Cool (in the high sixties), but beautiful. Okay, my husband and daughter are sunning themselves. Okay, our daughter is sunning herself. I am sometimes sunning myself and also working. And so is my husband. We'll get a real family vacation this summer, hopefully. But for me, at least, given the choice between editing papers and working on a magazine at home vs. viewing the Pacific, bet you can guess what I chose.

Yesterday we hit Disneyland. That's, um, we and the whole entire rest of the Southwestern Un-i-ted States. Ohmygoodness. And it isn't even spring break week here!

Having been to both Walt Disney World and Disneyland within the span of two weeks, I have to say the former rocked the world and the latter is a lot more like Six Flags. Smaller. More crowded. Landlocked. Less clean than its Florida counterpart. And less impressive fireworks than EPCOT, but then it's hard to beat explosions reflected on a massive lake.

Still, our girl never once complained about waiting 55 minutes to get a three-minute ride on Space Mountain. She did Pirates of the Caribbean twice. (She adores Johnny Depp.) And she thrilled her mom by recognizing more languages than I did on the "It's a Small World" ride (kudos to Reiko for teaching her elementary Japanese). The refurbished small-world ride was one of the day's highlights for me.

Today we all did some beachcombing--mostly rocks here. No shells. Lots of seaweed. But then I came back and worked, and the father/daughter team stayed to film surfers. I did stop a surfer dude to ask why so many of them passed up great waves. He explained that a solid wall falling all at the same time is unideal, even if huge. It has to curl at an angle so the surfers can shift left or right to keep themselves in the ideal part of the wave for staying vertical. Who knew?

If only everybody had an ocean across the USA!