Friday, July 1, 2016
San Diego Views
4:00am

Wednesday, the Mensa events did not get started until 1:30pm, so Julia and I meandered over to the mall across from the hotel. Fashion Valley Mall is huge, two story huge. I never saw so many fancy designer names in one place before. They did have a more affordable Penney's and we entered in through that. They also have a theater, so we headed over there, to learn they were showing a movie we'd been wanting to see, "Free State of Jones". It was very good. I'm not sure why some of the critics got confused by the time leap in the middle of the movie. But then the critics didn't like "Hail, Caesar", either. I'm learning, "Don't trust the critics!"

Afterwards, having learned of a gourmet organic food restaurant in the Mall, we sought out "True Food". We pigged out! The Moroccan chicken was so tasty! And they left the juicy skins on! They even had gluten free pita bread to go with the yummy hummus. The flourless chocalate cake, also gluten free, was heavenly.

We began our Mensa lectures with a talk on ocean conservation by Serge Dedina. He's worked to protect wild coast lines in California, Australia, Mexico and Cuba. Very hopeful for the future!

It was followed by a talk on advances in longevity therapies. It all sounds rather sci-fi, and nothing that will likely be available to the common man.

The following lecture on the future of probiotics was far more hopeful. They've made new discoveries regarding helpful bacteria that will help our microbiomes for greater health, physically and psychologically, pending FDA approval.

In the meanwhile, only use anti-biotics if absolutely necessary, drink kefir and eat yogurt (sauerkraut, olives and kimchi, bananas that are still greenish) and have astragalus as a tea or in tea.

We devoted most of Thursday to a bus tour "Ultimate Views" in San Diego. I loved seeing the cormorants and sea lions.

Pelicans...

Cormorants...

A sea gull flew right by me and even posed for a picture.

The kind tour leader even took our photos!