Fun and Games Dept

I’ve been wanting to go for a hike in the desert since we moved here earlier this year. Today I hiked 4 1/2 miles in Saguaro National Park East, which is a few miles from our home. The Douglas Spring Trail took me on an enjoyable journey through the Rincon Mountains. I climbed 795 feet along my hike and had a wonderful time exploring all this area has to offer.

The Expanse returns for season six, its final season. This season is abbreviated at six episodes and Amazon Prime is releasing the episodes one week at a time. I like to binge. I don’t know why we have to do things this way.

I’ve really enjoyed the series, especially the earlier seasons on SyFy and the first season on Amazon Prime. Season five was a little uneven and pulled too far away from sci-fi and to much into Dynasty in Space for my taste, but the trailer for season six shows promise.

I’m looking forward to the experience. I *love* Shohreh Aghdashloo as U.N. General Secretary Chrisjen Avasarala. Her voice commands respect and she’s one of the few characters I know that can give a world of class to the utterance of an F-bomb.

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.

The decorating of the house has begun. My husband loves decorating for the holidays and I spent the day working with him figuring out where to put the festive decorations. Bringing three households of decorations in this house takes some coordinating but we’re off to a great start. Earl will continue while I’m working this week.

Today was our first meal in the dining room of our new home.

I enjoyed a nice walk around the neighborhood this morning, exploring some dirt roads in the area. I ended up coming around the back of our property and coming along the horse trail along the bottom of the wash out back. It was a beautiful breath of fresh air.