Rummage Sale at Almar Acres Saturday

Saturday we had the annual rummage sale in our park, it was from 8 - 1, and was very busy and successful. Lary and I played a few flute pieces for the entertainment, and overall we enjoyed
the lovely warm sunshine and the perfect day. We bought a bit of stuff from the sale, and towards the end they were handing out big brown grocery bags for a dollar, and you could fill them up with goodies that were left over and would go to charity or the dump. I paid the asking price for stuff up til then.

The park sold baking, served eggers for breakfast, then cooked burgers, and sold sweets and ice creams very cheaply indeed. There was a huge table of baked goods for sale, and sodas and chips to go with the burgers. Tons of stuff got sold.

It was so amazing to see, and the proceeds go to our park for improvements and special projects.

There was furniture, bikes, appliances, our whole clubhouse was a sale area, clothes, purses and bags, bedding, toys, Xmas decorations, and furniture outside. People came from all over, and our friend Bob Gromling played easy listening Country and Western music on his guitar, and sang lots of tunes.

After the sale finished, we went back to Catalina Spa and had a swim in the pool, it was lovely and warm, as was the air.

That evening we went over to the Gardens shopping area off El Paseo, the swanky shopping area down here that is like Rodeo Drive in L.A., but much smaller. There was a young Brit guy playing a gorgeous saxophone there, we paid $12 and that got us 2 small glasses of wine, and a cheese and fruit plate, and the hour long concert. Wine started at 5:15 PM, concert was from 6 to 7 PM. It was held on the lawn of the shopping area, that lawn area has gardens and breath taking bronze sculptures of children frolicking. It is lovely, but by 7 PM we were well and truly frozen stiff.

We had Wendy and Dave with us, and we went over to IHOP and had dinner, Wendy had a coupon for each of us, then came home to our temporary and pitiful rental park model at Catalina Spa. We have a double size box spring held up by 2 construction bricks and a board, with a queen size mattress on top of it, and Di observed that it was a little like a self dumping log barge, if you got too close to the unsupported edge or end of the mattress, you got flipped out of bed. And we have an invasion of mini ants, they offered us a bottle of windex to help us with that plague!!!!! Nice accommodation indeed, and we paid $65 per night for the palace!!!!!

Sunday it blew quite hard, and some of the roads into and out of Palm Springs were closed due to drifting sand which covers the road, and makes it very hard to see where the road is, and where you are going, too. We loaded up our car, and Lary took a few loads back to our own park model, we had our luggage and clothes from our Mexico cruise with us still.

Our trailer has just been totally painted, ceilings bright white, walls pearly white, and cupboards, drawers, doors, valances all a warm beige, and it looks so nice. We were just thrilled to see it finished, and we moved back in, painty odor or not.

We feel as if we are living in a goldfish bowl though, we gave our 2 layers of drapes and sheers to the charity shop before our paint job, and we ordered vertical blinds to coordinate with our paint, but due to a SNAFU, the original fabric we ordered for the blinds wasn't available, and when we got home from the cruise, we had to choose new fabric, so we set the production of the blinds back considerably, but they should be here at the end of this week.

We won't miss the dreadful dump we were staying in at Catalina Spa, it was truly pathetic.

We stayed home and didn't do much at all for the rest of Sunday, the wind was kind of howling, and it had turned quite chilly, and in the evening we watched the SAG awards.

Today Monday we went to the clubhouse for a meeting to plan the Board meeting agenda for next week's meeting, it got quite unruly over the issue of whether to close our front gates or not during the daytime. Currently they are closed, and it's quite inconvenient for people who come to visit, and for the tradesmen who come to the park.

But then again there has just been another golf cart stolen from the park directly across the street from us again, and on Weds night past, a young fellow jumped over our fence, and was caught in our park by one of the owners. He said he was after his soccer ball, but there wasn't one, and his 2 pals ran off when he was caught.

Then after that meeting we came home, changed into shorts and t shirts, and walked out into the desert across the street, and hiked up to a rocky rise, where despite the wind blowing quite hard, we both played our flutes for a while, and then came down and met a lady from a neighbouring park whose husband sells High Spirits flutes, so we chatted all about flutes and flute heroes, flute players, flute makers and the like, and it was very nice to meet her. They are at Desert Pools, pity they are leaving tomorrow or we would have offered to get together with them. They are full timers from Wisconsin.

Later we went into Desert Hot Springs, our flute pal Chip had given us some grapefruit, lemons and oranges, so I want to make some lemon loaf and use the fruit. And we bought some very nice chairs for our deck, they were $25 each, and have nice arms, and are kind of a meshy vinyl fabric, they seem very nice and should be perfect for Happy Hours if it warms up enough to sit out there.

Our weather is changing, going downhill again, tomorrow it's supposed to go down to nearly freezing overnight, and very chilly during the day, in the 50s or 60s, but by the weekend it should return to the 70s that we have been enjoying recently.