We never did see a desert tortoise during our recent Joshua Tree rambles. After reading all about it in this somewhat heart-breaking sign, I take that as a good thing. No need to make a life-and-death decision for an amazing creature, doing its best to survive.

Meanwhile, thank you to everyone for the sweet and kind and funny and loving notes regarding the changes here that I've been writing about. It's weird to live out loud like this, but after sharing my love of Malibu with you for more than four years now, even weirder to pretend it's not happening.

And now -- a digression.

Every time I type the words desert or dessert, I hear my sainted high school English teacher (hello -- teaching teenagers) say you have to get to the deSert before you can have deSSert,

I'm pretty sure that factoid is taking up the space in my brain that's supposed to know the answer to 7x8.