We had some weather here in San Diego on Friday. A cold front blew in Thursday evening and brought rain with it. The weather guessers said the rain would start Friday, but it started Thursday night. Over the next 24 hours or so, nearly an inch of precipitation fell. Southern California needs the water, but that was a heavy rain storm by local standards.

The cold front lingered over the weekend although the skies were clear and sunny. The thermometer hovered around 60 degrees for the daily high. Overnight lows were in the mid to upper 40s. It seems unusually cold to me, but looking at the almanac, I see the average high temperature for December is 65 degrees and the average low is 48 degrees – making December the coldest month here on average.

I looked back at this blog to December of 2015 and found it was cold last year too. This week the forecast calls for a warming trend with highs reaching the low 70s before another cold front arrives for Christmas weekend.

We had planned to drive up to Menifee in the rental car on Saturday to have lunch with my step-dad, Ken. He called me in the morning and cancelled saying he had some kind of stomach bug and wasn’t up to company or lunch. We’ll go up there next weekend.

In the afternoon, Mission Bay RV Resort had their annual holiday celebration. They decorated the little grass park area by the snack shack and served pulled pork with beans and potato salad – $7/plate.  We went over there with Sini around 4pm and claimed a table in weak sunlight. We were joined by our friends, Kris and Tom Downey (Open Road 365). There was a guy on a small stage in a white suit and gloves and hat with his face painted white. He would alternate between standing still as a statue and playing guitar and singing. He must have been freezing.

We sat together and talked while we dined and were amused by the attempts of a crew to start fires in portable fire pits. They were trying to light large pieces of wood – logs that had been split into halves and quarters. But without kindling, it wasn’t going to work. They started with newspaper, which burned hot and fast, then went out with the logs barely smoking. Then they tried cardboard – with about the same result. A guy came over with a propane burner on a long tube – it looked like a mini flame thrower – and I think he was successful after several minutes on one of the fire pits. They wanted to cook s’mores over the camp fires. We were cold and cut out of there a little past 5pm.

Donna picked up a few beers for me while out shopping. On Saturday night, I watched the football game on NFL Network and had a seasonal beer from Port Brewing in San Marcos – a town I where I bought my first house in north San Diego County – called Santa’s Little Helper. It’s an Imperial stout. Whenever you see the word Imperial in a beer description, it means it’s a strong ale. This was true for Santa’s Little Helper – it’s 10% alcohol by volume (ABV). It’s a bit heavy with notes of coffee and chocolate.

Santa’s Little Helper

Sunday was another day of NFL football for me. I watched the Kansas City Chiefs lose a heartbreaker when Tennessee kicked a field goal on the last play of the game. Then I tuned in the Chargers game. My Dish Network receiver started losing the satellite signal intermittently for a few seconds. Then the downtime got longer and longer. During the second half, it lost the signal completely. I spent about an hour and a half chatting on the computer with their technical support trying to figure out what was going on. I missed the entire second half of the game. The Dish technical support was no help at all – he had me doing the same tests and checking the same settings – which I had already done before I called them – over and over again.

I followed the play-by-play on my laptop and commiserated another last-minute loss with an IPA from Stone Brewing that Donna bought for me. It was one of their “Enjoy By” series of ale. These ales are meant to be drunk immediately, not stored or aged. Some big, high-gravity, high alcohol beers are better when aged – just like wine. This IPA had an ABV of 9.4%, but it was meant to be enjoyed by 12-25-2016. It was an unfiltered IPA with a pale hazy appearance. It was a good beer, but I think the “Enjoy By” releases are gimmicks rather than a specific brew process.

Enjoy By IPA

Today we have clear blue skies. The temperature is supposed to reach 70 degrees this afternoon. Donna and I have eye exams scheduled – other than that I have no plans for the day.