palindromic birthday lunch

 

I can't tell you how exciting it was to have a birthday on 2.22.22.  And ... who would have believed that one can walk ten minutes from the USC campus, and feel as though one's on vacation?  This is Mercado La Paloma, which has a food court dominated by two separate-but-linked outlets, Chichen Itza (from which we very often get catering for departmental events), and Holbox, which has the same chef, but does Fish.  This is, of course, ideal for a couple where one of us is determinedly pescatarian and the other eats meat ... and we also had a good friend with us, and so it was a very excellent birthday lunch indeed, in the middle of what was a teaching day for Alice (and I was meeting a potential grad student) - so we had to be within easy reach of campus.  Below - my ceviche.  The only problem? - monstrously high winds, so we were nearly decapitated by a wild loose palm frond ("frond" = chunk of palm tree ...) on the way back.