I didn't post anything last week because I was in Palm Springs, my home away from home, apparently. It was a mix of work and personal. I flew in a week ago, Saturday afternoon, and spent the weekend and Monday with my parents. Then I stuck around for a work conference while my parents continued a two-week tour through the Southwest. All in all it was a good time, but not without its calamities. I accidentally paid double for our lodging; I injured, perhaps broke, my right pinkie finger; and our refrigerator apparently stopped working while I was gone. Also, my parents texted that they had to change their travel plans because roads in Arizona are being closed due to... snow?!
But let's start with the positive: It was great to see my parents. The main event was a trip out to Joshua Tree National Park. The eponymous Joshua tree is an interesting bit of flora. It looks like a tree drawn by Dr. Seuss. It makes for good scenery, though, and the park is quite nice. It was a good place for us to go, because a lot of the hikes are elderly friendly, and you can drive through the park and see the pretty desert imagery.
We tried to do a few other nature-y things but got stymied each time. We set out to take an aerial tram up the side of the mountain -- I've done it before and it's pretty cool -- but tickets were sold out online, and there was a line of cars a quarter-mile long just to get into the parking lot to even attempt to buy walk-up tickets. When we saw that, we did a u-ey and left. Then we went to the trailhead of a hike at Tahquitz Canyon, but it was $15-a-person to do the hike, and it looked more treacherous than my 80-year-old mother could handle. She's still pretty mobile and can walk several miles at a time, but not through rocky, uneven terrain. She is 80, after all. So, we just walked around downtown Palm Springs instead. It's pretty cool -- tons of good restaurants. We ate at a half-decent Mexican joint one night and a pretty good Tuscan place the next.
We also ate at my friends' place in La Quinta. When I said above that the trip to Joshua Tree was the highlight, I had momentarily forgotten about visiting E & M (the couple whose wedding we attended last October). They had us over for dinner Monday night, and it was terrific. They have a bungalow with an excellent backyard for eating and entertaining outside. Everything was great -- the food, the ambience, and the conversation were all top-notch. Just a wonderful night overall.
My parents stayed one more night at the condo unit I booked us in Palm Spring, and then set out the next morning for the rest of their trip. I went to a hotel for my work conference. I accidentally double-paid for our condo unit, but thankful Expedia and the villa manager were cool about it, and I got it resolved fairly quickly. The hardest part was finding the correct phone number for Expedia. They don't advertise their number on their confirmation emails, or even at their website (at least not that I could find), so I Googled it, and ended up with a couple false leads at first.
I guess the double-booking error was my fault -- I reserved two units instead of one -- but that's because the website I went through is hella confusing. It calls a full condo unit with multiple bedrooms a "room." So, I booked two "rooms" thinking a "room" was actually a room and not a full unit. I mean, would anybody ever say "Yes, I'd like to book a room with two bedrooms, please"? Look at the confirmation notice I received below and tell me if you think it reads as one condo unit, two bedrooms total, or two condo units, four bedrooms total. It's the latter, but I don't blame anybody, including myself three months ago, for thinking it's the former.
Alright, I'm quickly running out of time writing this. So, I'll have to be brief in my description of the other calamities. I played dodgeball on a team with my colleagues at the work conference and badly messed up my finger. They always have a big corporate party thing at the end of the week that features a dodgeball tournament. Usually we don't participate, but this time we did, and it did not go well. Actually, we won our first match, but then we got destroyed in our next one. I was probably our best player, and I kinda suck, because I can't throw hard anymore due to the arthritis in my shoulder. After our second (and last) match, I noticed that my right pinkie finger really hurt and by the next morning it was purple and swollen and I could barely move it. Getting old is a bitch.
Also, our refrigerator seems to be broken. When I got home, I noticed the milk was sour and everything seemed to be warmer than it should be. I put in this little thermometer we have (great gadget, by the way) and left it overnight, and the refrigerator temperature didn't go below 55 degrees, even though it's set at 35. The freezer is okay, but not the fridge. We have another fridge downstairs, so it's not the end of the world. But moving all our food to the basement before it rots is not the activity I had planned for this morning. It did kinda force me to clean out all the old stuff, though, which was long overdo. I felt like the "aunt" from that stupid Geico commercial: expired, expired, expired...
Until next time...
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