December 2021

Chris is an amazing crafty type. He’s always doing wood working things in the shop off the garage and designing nice things for the house. Mike helps with bringing these ideas to fruition and it’s wonderful for all of us.

Our fireplace doesn’t have a mantle, so we needed something to hang our stocking with care. Chris designed a desert themed stocking hanging rack and it was installed while we were in Palm Springs this past weekend.

We love the way it turned out!

Christmas Cat has been on our Christmas Tree every year that we’ve been together. Before I met the love of my life Christmas Cat was still on a Christmas tree every year. I figure he’s just a couple years younger than me. I don’t remember where the ornament came from. His blanket is looking a little rough around the edges but he makes me smile.

We decorated the main Christmas tree this evening. The 12-foot tree in our Great Room looks wonderful and brings all five of us much joy.

Last night was the Palm Springs Festival of Lights Christmas Parade. We didn’t know this event was happening before we arrived on Thursday, but we were anxious for a bit of holiday cheer of this nature.

I made a reservation at one of the restaurants along the route and asked yesterday morning if we could be seated outside. They couldn’t guarantee an outside seat but they promised us a window seat.

We ended up eating right on the sidewalk last night. The meal was delicious and the surrounding festivities were, well, festive. It was a very nice time.

All of the floats and bands and others in the parades were decorated with flashing lights, garland, tinsel, and the like. There were many marching bands and they all played their takes on holiday music. The bands all sounded good. I mentioned to Earl that I was happy to see marching bands still doing their things decades after I was big on being in marching band in junior and senior high school. Some of the tuba players were playing with marching tubas (I’ve never played one of those) and others were playing sousaphones, which is the “tuba that wraps around you”. I played plenty of those, both in brass and fiberglass. I could probably squeak out a B-flat scale today if I was given the opportunity.

The parade was fun, the crowd was pleasant, and there was a great energy in the air. I was a little concerned about COVID, the density of the crowd, and folks not wearing masks, but that’s why we have our vaccinations complete with booster shots.

A quick aside, to enter a restaurant here in Palm Springs you must prove that you’re vaccinated or that you’ve had a negative COVID-19 test in the past 48 hours and you still have to wear a mask whenever you’re not eating. I have no issue with this. The only bump in this requirement is the Walgreens app is awful for consistently showing one’s vaccination status but luckily we brought along our real vaccination cards. On the crowd front, about 40% of folks were wearing masks while moving about on the street.

Overall we had a great time and the experience helped put me in a holiday mood.

It’s December. One of the reasons we moved to the desert was so we could enjoy life outside, in comfort, in December.

We are spending the weekend in Palm Springs. It’s not a super long drive from home; around six hours or so and it’s just up to Phoenix and then across the desert on I-10. Follow the signs for Los Angeles but don’t go all the way.

The drive was uneventful. We had a nice lunch stop at a sports bar in Buckeye (west of Phoenix) and we filled up with gas at the last stop in Arizona before crossing into California, where fuel goes up by around $1 per gallon.

I’m looking forward to the long weekend. I’m sure it’ll still be weird in this pandemic era and I’ll be striving to wear my mask and maintain social distancing. If there’s one thing I’ve learned during the pandemic is that we can no longer trust our fellow (American) neighbors to do the right thing. Look out for you and your family.

I’ll be happy to enjoy the relaxing time.