Today Lary carved over at Catalina Spa, and I went to my second drumming lesson over at Annie's place. Another interesting session, most of us use djembe African drums, they are quite attractive, and have a nice sound too. We had fun doing all sorts of stuff.
Tonight we saw our last film of the Palm Springs film festival, it was Bill Cunningham, a New York fashion photographer, who is a very unique individual. he rides around New York on a bike, and he has been photographing about 50 years or so. He has one or two regular columns in the New York Times paper, and he lived for many years at Carnegie Hall, in very rustic surroundings indeed. He is very eccentric, never married, seems quite a humble though very self possessed man, and his photos are just incredible.
He confesses to love women and fashion, he certainly loves the energy of N.Y. though he said he's had 27 bikes stolen over the years, he's on bike #28. He was previously a milliner of some repute there in N.Y. and is a real character, which comes through loud and clear in this film.
He is still alive, and we believe still taking photos and writing his columns for the N.Y. Times paper.
Many of his work colleagues and friends over the years were interviewed. He also has photographed the gays/ guys in drag there, and he appears to treat them all very respectfully indeed. He loves to wear the blue jacket that the working men wear in Paris, as his clothes are often damaged by his camera.
We learned quite a lot about him, I don't think that many people he knows really know about his living conditions or personal life much at all.
Tomorrow we pack, have coffee and doughnuts at the clubhouse, have a flute lesson at Annie's with our new electronic amp and mikes, and get ready for cruise departure day the next day.
I am really looking forward to being warm during the daytime once again, it is just starting to creep up in temperature, but tonight I was wearing my wool coat, gloves and scarf while we waited in line for the film to start.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Film today - Acquainted with the Night
Today we went off to the fifth film, a Canadian one made by Michael McNamara, the title is above, and it was very interesting, a documentary about things that happen during the night, flights of bats, Northern Lights, Day of the Dead celebrations in Mexico where the people decorate the graves of their deceased family members, then stay overnight visiting the graves, remembering their dead departed.
Very positive in general, there were some shots of people being offered viewings of the distant stars through telescopes set up for them. And other scenes of religious adherents ringing bells, and cymbals. And there were some scenes in a National Park in Utah where they measure the light at night, to see if there is an increase in light pollution or not.
It went to many different places around the world where they have interesting things that occur in the darkness of the night.
The only thing I didn't enjoy was the bar scene in Toronto, and then the fights that occurred after the bars got out, and the scenes of the low life in jail after they were put there for fighting and causing damage. That I didn't enjoy. But the bicycle policemen in Toronto were very interesting to listen to and watch while they did their jobs controling the bar patrons during their drinking hours, and then when the bars closed. There were also shots of police on horseback controling the bar patrons after closing hours.
The music and songs were wonderful, and most of the scenery was fabulous too.
Some of the things were very educational, like a man talking to people about the benefit of bats, trying to dispel the myths about bats being fearsome.
Tomorrow I have a pedicure and then a drumming lesson, and Lary carves his owl at Catalina Spa. The next day we both have our flute lesson, and pack for our cruise.
The painter came over tonight to chat about our job, we gave him our color choices and talked a bit about the logistics of the job. He'll start this weekend with the priming, and then do most of the job once we are back from our cruise.
Ginny Fernandez will you please email us after you read this? I don't have your email address in our address book down here.
Very positive in general, there were some shots of people being offered viewings of the distant stars through telescopes set up for them. And other scenes of religious adherents ringing bells, and cymbals. And there were some scenes in a National Park in Utah where they measure the light at night, to see if there is an increase in light pollution or not.
It went to many different places around the world where they have interesting things that occur in the darkness of the night.
The only thing I didn't enjoy was the bar scene in Toronto, and then the fights that occurred after the bars got out, and the scenes of the low life in jail after they were put there for fighting and causing damage. That I didn't enjoy. But the bicycle policemen in Toronto were very interesting to listen to and watch while they did their jobs controling the bar patrons during their drinking hours, and then when the bars closed. There were also shots of police on horseback controling the bar patrons after closing hours.
The music and songs were wonderful, and most of the scenery was fabulous too.
Some of the things were very educational, like a man talking to people about the benefit of bats, trying to dispel the myths about bats being fearsome.
Tomorrow I have a pedicure and then a drumming lesson, and Lary carves his owl at Catalina Spa. The next day we both have our flute lesson, and pack for our cruise.
The painter came over tonight to chat about our job, we gave him our color choices and talked a bit about the logistics of the job. He'll start this weekend with the priming, and then do most of the job once we are back from our cruise.
Ginny Fernandez will you please email us after you read this? I don't have your email address in our address book down here.
NEWER GOLF CART
Went to another movie at the Palm Springs Filmfest yesterday morning it was called "Runway". It was a really cute story set in Ireland. A South American pilot crashed his airplane, an ancient B26, outside a small Irish village. One 9 year old boy could speak a very little bit of spanish but he acted as an interpreter throughout the film. He was actually a mini con man because he changed everything the Columbian said to suit himself. Eventually the villagers repaired the plane and built a runway. Some bad guys were after the Columbian but it all worked out for the best. A fun story and if you ever get a chance to see it it comes highly recommended. One of the good things about the filmfest is talking to other people in line with you and getting their reviews of films they have seen. There is always a lineup so there is always a chance to chat.
Had a service call booked for our old golfcart. It was in need of some repairs and also would need new batteries soon. To make a long story short, we will trade the old one in on a much newer one with new batteries. It will be delivered after we get back from our cruise, on the 24th of Jan. Will get a proper cover for it at College of the Desert flea market.
Off to another film at noon today. Will fill you in on it when we get home.
Had a service call booked for our old golfcart. It was in need of some repairs and also would need new batteries soon. To make a long story short, we will trade the old one in on a much newer one with new batteries. It will be delivered after we get back from our cruise, on the 24th of Jan. Will get a proper cover for it at College of the Desert flea market.
Off to another film at noon today. Will fill you in on it when we get home.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Sunday night older movie made by Monte Hellman
Tonight we went over to see a movie made by Monte Hellman, one of his earliest movies, called the Shooting. It was totally weird, and was one of Jack Nicholson's earliest. He had been a director I believe, and perhaps had had a hand in writing the movie. Monte Hellman spoke, and he had made 4 movies in that year.
The plot was as follows: It had a tracker who was hired by a woman to take her to a place on horseback, no reason given. There was very little dialogue, and Jack Nicholson appeared during the movie, following the woman, also not explained. At the end of the movie the woman shot the tracker's brother, and that reason wasn't explained either. Both Jack and the woman were very violent, also no reason given.
Neither of us was very impressed with the film, but before in the lineup we met a very nice lady from Chicago who was staying at the Welk Development where Sal and Russ had been, her husband had died last August at 63 while they were in Yellowstone on holidays, and this trip had been planned before his death, so she came out here, kind of in his honour. And I think to get away from the snow.
Another one of the film days we had also met a nice pair of men who live here locally and we'd been chatting to them too. Waiting in the lineup for the film to start you get a chance to talk to your neighbours in the line. It's fun to discuss the films.
Earlier today we had gone over to Desert Hot Springs to Radio Shack and bought cable to connect our amps to the mini microphones, so we were torturing the neighbours out on our patio with our amplified flutes, both sets worked well, we both had wee mikes attached to our flutes, and were amped. Worked well for us. But then the wind came up and we got very cold, so came inside.
Yesterday, Saturday we had gone up to the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument to their monthly art show as Annie was out there playing all day, so we joined her, Lesley Currie was there playing from our flute circle, and we got a chance to play a bit, and I bought a small bird whistle from Annie. We also stayed and helped Annie and her neighbour a very nice lady pack up Annie's car with her, she had it full to the brim with flutes, didges, whistles, CDs, and all sorts of other stuff. Her big amp weighs a lot. Lucky that she has a Honda Element so it can take a lot of stuff, and it was really full. It all is somewhat fragile too, Annie packs it all up very carefully. It's like a jigsaw puzzle going together.
Then we attended a dinner and dance at the clubhouse here, it was put on by the board of our park. There are elections coming up but we will be away on our cruise at that time.
The music was a bit loud, but we danced a bit to the music of Remember When. The Hermans, Mike and Pat, were at our table with an older couple from Cat Spa, and Ted, Paulette's husband was with us for the meal, Paulette wasn't feeling well so was at home. Pat Herman recommended to us the fundraiser, a House Tour to be held by the Children's Discovery Museum of the Desert, she thought it was to be in February. She said that the houses are just incredible, and that many of them aren't even lived in more than a month or two each year. We will look into that.
The plot was as follows: It had a tracker who was hired by a woman to take her to a place on horseback, no reason given. There was very little dialogue, and Jack Nicholson appeared during the movie, following the woman, also not explained. At the end of the movie the woman shot the tracker's brother, and that reason wasn't explained either. Both Jack and the woman were very violent, also no reason given.
Neither of us was very impressed with the film, but before in the lineup we met a very nice lady from Chicago who was staying at the Welk Development where Sal and Russ had been, her husband had died last August at 63 while they were in Yellowstone on holidays, and this trip had been planned before his death, so she came out here, kind of in his honour. And I think to get away from the snow.
Another one of the film days we had also met a nice pair of men who live here locally and we'd been chatting to them too. Waiting in the lineup for the film to start you get a chance to talk to your neighbours in the line. It's fun to discuss the films.
Earlier today we had gone over to Desert Hot Springs to Radio Shack and bought cable to connect our amps to the mini microphones, so we were torturing the neighbours out on our patio with our amplified flutes, both sets worked well, we both had wee mikes attached to our flutes, and were amped. Worked well for us. But then the wind came up and we got very cold, so came inside.
Yesterday, Saturday we had gone up to the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument to their monthly art show as Annie was out there playing all day, so we joined her, Lesley Currie was there playing from our flute circle, and we got a chance to play a bit, and I bought a small bird whistle from Annie. We also stayed and helped Annie and her neighbour a very nice lady pack up Annie's car with her, she had it full to the brim with flutes, didges, whistles, CDs, and all sorts of other stuff. Her big amp weighs a lot. Lucky that she has a Honda Element so it can take a lot of stuff, and it was really full. It all is somewhat fragile too, Annie packs it all up very carefully. It's like a jigsaw puzzle going together.
Then we attended a dinner and dance at the clubhouse here, it was put on by the board of our park. There are elections coming up but we will be away on our cruise at that time.
The music was a bit loud, but we danced a bit to the music of Remember When. The Hermans, Mike and Pat, were at our table with an older couple from Cat Spa, and Ted, Paulette's husband was with us for the meal, Paulette wasn't feeling well so was at home. Pat Herman recommended to us the fundraiser, a House Tour to be held by the Children's Discovery Museum of the Desert, she thought it was to be in February. She said that the houses are just incredible, and that many of them aren't even lived in more than a month or two each year. We will look into that.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Busy Friday at the Palm Springs International Film Festival
Whew, this was a busy day, we started off our first film at the Palm Springs Art Museum, the theatre there is called the Annenberg, and we watched the most terrific film, made by a German man. It was Kinshasa Symphony and told the story of how in the midst of complete poverty and chaos in the Congo, in Kinshasa, one of the 3 biggest cities in Africa, a symphony was formed, comprised of the most normal and least likely people to be playing symphony.
Watching them play amidst such rustic surroundings, and against such incredible odds, was so uplifting and positive. Their lives are so dreadfully poor and challenging compared to ours, and yet they were playing Beethoven's 9th symphony, and the dedication was a real marvel to behold.
And the film maker gave a bit of a talk, and answered audience questions afterwards, due to his documentary film, he has been able to raise more money to sponsor more instruments for the players, they are all part of a kind of church there. The poverty and living conditions were totally gruesome, but very average people seem to have been lifted above their misery to rise above it and put on the wonderful music, and even inspire others to try thinking about classic music.
The second film we saw was at Camelot, after we had lunch at Annenberg cafe, outside in the chilly air, but surrounded by lovely free standing sculpture art. It was called Fifty Nothing, and both Lary and I found it a bit dull, 2 guys having a bit of a mid life crisis in L A headed out to Palm Springs to spend a weekend, and all that entailed. Not as impressive as the first film, though we sure enjoyed seeing lots and lots of shots of the Palm Springs area. At each film you have a chance to rate it on a scale of 1 - 5, 1 is excellent, 5 is not.
We both have a set of 6 tickets for films, and that cost us $54 each. That got us vouchers and we exchanged those online for the specific films we wanted to see. And the process also went very smoothly when we went in to the Film Festival office to pick up the tickets for our specific films, they just hit the button with our name, and out popped the tickets we had requested. Slick.
After watching that second film we headed over to Annie's to the monthly get together of the Coachella Valley flute circle, as usual an incredible evening with gorgeous music, Lesley gave a kind of demonstration of how differing combinations of keys of flutes played together created different moods. Then we all played, and it was such fun once more. There were some new people there who we hadn't met before, Mundo and Janice, Diane, Babs and her guest Loretta (?), we really enjoyed the evening there, and plan to meet as a flute class, myself, Lary and Chip next Thursday. Annie is playing her flutes up at the monument tomorrow, we may go and keep her company and play a bit if she wants that.
I had been at Annie's on Weds for the first of four drum classes, that was very interesting, led by Sharon Stevens, who is a certified Remo instructor. We put my new frame drum outside in the warm sunshine to shrink up a bit, Sharon said it wasn't very tight. Seemed to do the trick, and Annie lent me a Djembe drum, which you hold between your legs, with the bottom end of it off the floor for better sound. We all beat out our names as a memory game, after we had learned that the centre of the drum makes a deeper sound, and the edge is higher pitched.
Then she started a beat with her big drum, and we each added another "color" by adding our own beat that we had to continue to play, going around the circle we all added our new beats, and played them together as a group, then one by one we stopped our beat, it formed kind of like a wave of sound, and was very interesting indeed. Annie and Al were students, we were quite a big bunch of folks playing drums, very stimulating for me. When you try and think too much, you forget what you are doing, if you just let it flow you do much better.
Sharon also tightened a djembe drum, it is called pulling diamonds or something like that, it is adjusting the strings that hold the skin or head of the drum tight. It seemed to take a lot of strength in your hands and fingers to do that, it was fascinating to watch, and very effective. What you make when you adjust the strings are groups of diamond shapes.
Thursday we were just heading out to Annie's for our flute lesson when she called to say she was feeling very sick, so we stayed home, I played my flutes outside for a short while. And I cleaned some stuff out of the shed, too, and threw it away in the garbage.
Read an entertaining article talking about the new landscaping and outward facing triangles that are jutting right out into the busy road on the main thoroughfare of Desert Hot Springs. They are catching unsuspecting drivers unawares, and many folks are doing lots of tire and wheel damage on these stupid jutting out triangles, which really narrow down the road, too, not to mention impede and constrict traffic.
Apparently during the floods the triangles filled with water, and washed out the new plants and the watering for them too, not to mention these triangles were next to impossible to see under the flooding rains, and caused even more inconvenience for people that challenging day.
Watching them play amidst such rustic surroundings, and against such incredible odds, was so uplifting and positive. Their lives are so dreadfully poor and challenging compared to ours, and yet they were playing Beethoven's 9th symphony, and the dedication was a real marvel to behold.
And the film maker gave a bit of a talk, and answered audience questions afterwards, due to his documentary film, he has been able to raise more money to sponsor more instruments for the players, they are all part of a kind of church there. The poverty and living conditions were totally gruesome, but very average people seem to have been lifted above their misery to rise above it and put on the wonderful music, and even inspire others to try thinking about classic music.
The second film we saw was at Camelot, after we had lunch at Annenberg cafe, outside in the chilly air, but surrounded by lovely free standing sculpture art. It was called Fifty Nothing, and both Lary and I found it a bit dull, 2 guys having a bit of a mid life crisis in L A headed out to Palm Springs to spend a weekend, and all that entailed. Not as impressive as the first film, though we sure enjoyed seeing lots and lots of shots of the Palm Springs area. At each film you have a chance to rate it on a scale of 1 - 5, 1 is excellent, 5 is not.
We both have a set of 6 tickets for films, and that cost us $54 each. That got us vouchers and we exchanged those online for the specific films we wanted to see. And the process also went very smoothly when we went in to the Film Festival office to pick up the tickets for our specific films, they just hit the button with our name, and out popped the tickets we had requested. Slick.
After watching that second film we headed over to Annie's to the monthly get together of the Coachella Valley flute circle, as usual an incredible evening with gorgeous music, Lesley gave a kind of demonstration of how differing combinations of keys of flutes played together created different moods. Then we all played, and it was such fun once more. There were some new people there who we hadn't met before, Mundo and Janice, Diane, Babs and her guest Loretta (?), we really enjoyed the evening there, and plan to meet as a flute class, myself, Lary and Chip next Thursday. Annie is playing her flutes up at the monument tomorrow, we may go and keep her company and play a bit if she wants that.
I had been at Annie's on Weds for the first of four drum classes, that was very interesting, led by Sharon Stevens, who is a certified Remo instructor. We put my new frame drum outside in the warm sunshine to shrink up a bit, Sharon said it wasn't very tight. Seemed to do the trick, and Annie lent me a Djembe drum, which you hold between your legs, with the bottom end of it off the floor for better sound. We all beat out our names as a memory game, after we had learned that the centre of the drum makes a deeper sound, and the edge is higher pitched.
Then she started a beat with her big drum, and we each added another "color" by adding our own beat that we had to continue to play, going around the circle we all added our new beats, and played them together as a group, then one by one we stopped our beat, it formed kind of like a wave of sound, and was very interesting indeed. Annie and Al were students, we were quite a big bunch of folks playing drums, very stimulating for me. When you try and think too much, you forget what you are doing, if you just let it flow you do much better.
Sharon also tightened a djembe drum, it is called pulling diamonds or something like that, it is adjusting the strings that hold the skin or head of the drum tight. It seemed to take a lot of strength in your hands and fingers to do that, it was fascinating to watch, and very effective. What you make when you adjust the strings are groups of diamond shapes.
Thursday we were just heading out to Annie's for our flute lesson when she called to say she was feeling very sick, so we stayed home, I played my flutes outside for a short while. And I cleaned some stuff out of the shed, too, and threw it away in the garbage.
Read an entertaining article talking about the new landscaping and outward facing triangles that are jutting right out into the busy road on the main thoroughfare of Desert Hot Springs. They are catching unsuspecting drivers unawares, and many folks are doing lots of tire and wheel damage on these stupid jutting out triangles, which really narrow down the road, too, not to mention impede and constrict traffic.
Apparently during the floods the triangles filled with water, and washed out the new plants and the watering for them too, not to mention these triangles were next to impossible to see under the flooding rains, and caused even more inconvenience for people that challenging day.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Quartzsite trip today, the world's largest flea market
At 8 AM (ouch) we headed out toward Quartzsite, AZ, a trip of approx. 2 hours, due east of here along Highway 10, us and Wendy and Dave in our car. Wendy and Dave's park hadn't had electricity for about 2 days, and that isn't so good in the chilly weather, the furnaces are a huge drag on RV batteries when you have no electricity, it's the fans that gobble up the power. There is a monster coach motorhome beside them, from Alberta, and they run a generator, and will let Wendy and Dave plug in a power cord to power their rig if need be.
Arrived there just after 10 AM, it's at the intersection of Highway I-10 and AZ Highway 95, and we kind of separated to look at the stalls, many of which were just being set up. Some vendors had been there since American Thanksgiving, late November, others just arriving now. For Quartzsite it was quite quiet, no lineups of traffic, no problem to park right near the vendors. There is a large RV parts store, many many vendors of tools and kitchen gadgets, many bead vendors for jewellry, and clothing, flags, food stalls, and another huge component of Quartzsite is rock hounds, with rocks from the whole world over. There are huge amethyst geodes that you can nearly walk into, you'd need a large mortgage to buy one of those and a very large house to house it, but oh my it would be so nice to have one, (or more!)
We covered three areas basically, Tyson Wells, Rice Ranch, and then west of that was the incredible rockhound area, it might be called Desert Gardens Gem Show, which is paradise for many of us who have no idea what is under the crust of the earth, or contained inside many of the boulders we see.
We hit this rockhound area last, and late in the day, AZ is one hour different from us in CA, they are one hour ahead, so at 4 PM CA it's 5 PM in AZ. Also it was pretty cold in the shade, I wore a fleece coat, a knitted scarf and a warm sweater under that to keep me warm. Vendors in the sunshine at this time of year are lucky, those in shade not so much.
Wendy and I both bought some jewellry beads and findings, even though I left my jewellry making stuff at home this year. The beads aren't usually strung, they are just on long plastic cords that you need to replace with wire or silk cord later on, and a clasp when you make up your necklaces or whatever. I bought a made up necklace for $2, and another long string of coral chips, for $8. Also some pretty earrings.
Lary bought me a pretty white sweatshirt with a pink collar, with hummingbirds on it, very nice indeed and it fits!!!!!!
Lary bought some practical stuff for our kitchen, like an instant read meat thermometer, and he found a pretty metal art Kokopelli statue, for $5. I found another Kokopelli for the wall, and a quail for the wall, perhaps on the shed door outside on our patio.
Then Wendy and I met a super nice man from Alliance, Nebraska who does metal art, and I bought a quail family and a small owl sitting on a barrel cactus, they are both free standing small iron sculptures, so they are for out front of our house here.
The man's name is Garry Underwood, he's called Dry Creek Design, and what a talented man he is. He sculpted an iron burro, life size, with all found bits of iron, even a pistol, a wrench, all found bits and pieces. It' s so incredibly lifelike, you would swear it could just walk over and butt you. He took us inside his tent area, and showed us his album of creations, he also makes rustic furniture. The burro was for sale, $4,500.
He had made a dinosaur from iron bits, and he showed us a cattle skull, all iron metal. He was a rancher, and he welded all his life, now it's his passion in his "not so retirement". He comes to Quartzsite for about a month, and leaves a junky old trailer there all year in storage when he is home in Nebraska. What a creative individual he truly is.
Big opening is this coming Friday, basically the place is a massive couple mile long flea market, divided into different locations, like small neighbourhoods each one, at the intersections of 2 major US highways. They call it the largest outdoor swapmeet in the USA. It has a Gem and Mineral Show, a Sports Vacation and RV Show, a QIA Pow Wow, and it very interesting.
Every year we make at least one pilgrimage there, to pick up some stuff, and wonder at the funny and incredible place. Our time of visit varies, this is likely the earliest we have gone in the year. Later on it gets pretty hot, and the whole thing pretty well winds up at the end of February with a Bluegrass Festival. There are many many trailers and RVs near there, boon docking or rough camping, out on Bureal of Land Management land. The RVs cover the gamut from the good through the bad and the downright ugly. It is incredible what ghastly condition some of the trailers and RVs are in, they may be only for storage, but you even see folks clearly living in their cars, pickups or vans. On the way home we had the most lovely bright red/orange sunset in the west.
Lary was pooped after more than 4 hours of highway driving, some of it in the dark, plus the day walking all over Quartzsite, so we had dinner in DHS at the Thai Palms place, the same one that was flooded and shown on the nightly news when they had the flash floods last week or so. They had only been closed one night after that, at dinner time.
Forgot to say that on Monday we had taken our extra end tables up to the local charity shop, they had leather tops, a lower shelf, and a nice drawer, but they took up too much space in our small living room. And we took our 2 working TVs, as they were extra to our needs also.
And after that we had gone into Palm Springs to pick up our film tickets for the Palm Springs film festival, we had 6 vouchers each, for $54 package per person., and then we exchanged the numbered vouchers online for films of our choice, but we needed to pick up the actual tickets, so in we went. It was very slick and smooth how they punched in our name, and out popped the 12 tickets for the different movies. Sadly 2 very good movies were already sold out, and we didn't want to line up for rush tickets for those films, as we have quite a few other things going on at the moment, too.
Then we went over to Catalina Spa to have a kind of final briefing about our Mexican cruise, we leave Jan 14 til the 23rd, and we'll be bussed from the gate of Cat Spa right to the ship, and same goes when we return. Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, La Paz and Cabo San Lucas are our ports of call.
Right after we return from the cruise we'll move over to Cat Spa into a rental park model trailer, so that our place here can be totally painted including the ceilings, a job which will take the professional painter about 6 days. It will be way better not to be sleeping in the work zone, and the smelly drying paint. Much easier for the painter to down tools at night, then just pick up where he left off the next day. He said he'll cover all furniture with plastic, and move what he needs to move, only challenge is that the size of the place means that he can't exactly move stuff very far, there is no other room available in the whole place.
After the painter finishes we will have the new vertical blinds installed, they'll be nice beige textured blinds.
Bye for now, don't forget to email us even though you are reading this. We miss the news from home, and your own personal news too.
Again Happy New Year to our readers.
Arrived there just after 10 AM, it's at the intersection of Highway I-10 and AZ Highway 95, and we kind of separated to look at the stalls, many of which were just being set up. Some vendors had been there since American Thanksgiving, late November, others just arriving now. For Quartzsite it was quite quiet, no lineups of traffic, no problem to park right near the vendors. There is a large RV parts store, many many vendors of tools and kitchen gadgets, many bead vendors for jewellry, and clothing, flags, food stalls, and another huge component of Quartzsite is rock hounds, with rocks from the whole world over. There are huge amethyst geodes that you can nearly walk into, you'd need a large mortgage to buy one of those and a very large house to house it, but oh my it would be so nice to have one, (or more!)
We covered three areas basically, Tyson Wells, Rice Ranch, and then west of that was the incredible rockhound area, it might be called Desert Gardens Gem Show, which is paradise for many of us who have no idea what is under the crust of the earth, or contained inside many of the boulders we see.
We hit this rockhound area last, and late in the day, AZ is one hour different from us in CA, they are one hour ahead, so at 4 PM CA it's 5 PM in AZ. Also it was pretty cold in the shade, I wore a fleece coat, a knitted scarf and a warm sweater under that to keep me warm. Vendors in the sunshine at this time of year are lucky, those in shade not so much.
Wendy and I both bought some jewellry beads and findings, even though I left my jewellry making stuff at home this year. The beads aren't usually strung, they are just on long plastic cords that you need to replace with wire or silk cord later on, and a clasp when you make up your necklaces or whatever. I bought a made up necklace for $2, and another long string of coral chips, for $8. Also some pretty earrings.
Lary bought me a pretty white sweatshirt with a pink collar, with hummingbirds on it, very nice indeed and it fits!!!!!!
Lary bought some practical stuff for our kitchen, like an instant read meat thermometer, and he found a pretty metal art Kokopelli statue, for $5. I found another Kokopelli for the wall, and a quail for the wall, perhaps on the shed door outside on our patio.
Then Wendy and I met a super nice man from Alliance, Nebraska who does metal art, and I bought a quail family and a small owl sitting on a barrel cactus, they are both free standing small iron sculptures, so they are for out front of our house here.
The man's name is Garry Underwood, he's called Dry Creek Design, and what a talented man he is. He sculpted an iron burro, life size, with all found bits of iron, even a pistol, a wrench, all found bits and pieces. It' s so incredibly lifelike, you would swear it could just walk over and butt you. He took us inside his tent area, and showed us his album of creations, he also makes rustic furniture. The burro was for sale, $4,500.
He had made a dinosaur from iron bits, and he showed us a cattle skull, all iron metal. He was a rancher, and he welded all his life, now it's his passion in his "not so retirement". He comes to Quartzsite for about a month, and leaves a junky old trailer there all year in storage when he is home in Nebraska. What a creative individual he truly is.
Big opening is this coming Friday, basically the place is a massive couple mile long flea market, divided into different locations, like small neighbourhoods each one, at the intersections of 2 major US highways. They call it the largest outdoor swapmeet in the USA. It has a Gem and Mineral Show, a Sports Vacation and RV Show, a QIA Pow Wow, and it very interesting.
Every year we make at least one pilgrimage there, to pick up some stuff, and wonder at the funny and incredible place. Our time of visit varies, this is likely the earliest we have gone in the year. Later on it gets pretty hot, and the whole thing pretty well winds up at the end of February with a Bluegrass Festival. There are many many trailers and RVs near there, boon docking or rough camping, out on Bureal of Land Management land. The RVs cover the gamut from the good through the bad and the downright ugly. It is incredible what ghastly condition some of the trailers and RVs are in, they may be only for storage, but you even see folks clearly living in their cars, pickups or vans. On the way home we had the most lovely bright red/orange sunset in the west.
Lary was pooped after more than 4 hours of highway driving, some of it in the dark, plus the day walking all over Quartzsite, so we had dinner in DHS at the Thai Palms place, the same one that was flooded and shown on the nightly news when they had the flash floods last week or so. They had only been closed one night after that, at dinner time.
Forgot to say that on Monday we had taken our extra end tables up to the local charity shop, they had leather tops, a lower shelf, and a nice drawer, but they took up too much space in our small living room. And we took our 2 working TVs, as they were extra to our needs also.
And after that we had gone into Palm Springs to pick up our film tickets for the Palm Springs film festival, we had 6 vouchers each, for $54 package per person., and then we exchanged the numbered vouchers online for films of our choice, but we needed to pick up the actual tickets, so in we went. It was very slick and smooth how they punched in our name, and out popped the 12 tickets for the different movies. Sadly 2 very good movies were already sold out, and we didn't want to line up for rush tickets for those films, as we have quite a few other things going on at the moment, too.
Then we went over to Catalina Spa to have a kind of final briefing about our Mexican cruise, we leave Jan 14 til the 23rd, and we'll be bussed from the gate of Cat Spa right to the ship, and same goes when we return. Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, La Paz and Cabo San Lucas are our ports of call.
Right after we return from the cruise we'll move over to Cat Spa into a rental park model trailer, so that our place here can be totally painted including the ceilings, a job which will take the professional painter about 6 days. It will be way better not to be sleeping in the work zone, and the smelly drying paint. Much easier for the painter to down tools at night, then just pick up where he left off the next day. He said he'll cover all furniture with plastic, and move what he needs to move, only challenge is that the size of the place means that he can't exactly move stuff very far, there is no other room available in the whole place.
After the painter finishes we will have the new vertical blinds installed, they'll be nice beige textured blinds.
Bye for now, don't forget to email us even though you are reading this. We miss the news from home, and your own personal news too.
Again Happy New Year to our readers.
Monday, January 3, 2011
Lovely New Year's party at the clubhouse here
Friday night we asked Wendy and Dave to join us for the New Year's celebration here in our park, prime rib dinner, and they said yes, so they came over here just before 6 PM and we went on up. The Savage family had cooked prime rib for 100 people and the hall was beautifully decorated too.
We were allowed to put our table service on the tables earlier in the day, and there were 2 other couples besides the 4 of us at the table. Another couple was from San Diego area, Oceanside, and they were just in the park getting their unit ready for renters coming in from Canada. They were lots of fun, Ed and Barb. The other couple was a bit more elderly, Wendy talked to them, I didn't have a chance really.
Happy Hour was 6 - 7 and then dinner was served, all the servers in tux shirts and black pants, the ladies in the same but skirts or slacks. They all looked so nice. The beef was cooked as you wished it to be, you could choose your cut, and green salad, and green beans in sauce, with a roast potato and then a fruit cobbler, yum yum.
Lary and I had volunteered to do serving dessert and cleanup, so we did, then there was a man playing a guitar, and he was quite good, tons of folks including us danced a lot. We 4 left before midnight there was quite a bit of screeching and it got to Lary, so we came home here and toasted in the New Year with champagne, and watched the celebrations in New York with Dick Clark, Ryan Seacrest and that crowd, time delay I guess.
Next day we were both super lazy, it was very cold outside and we stayed in and did very little, went out at night for Mexican dinner in Desert Hot Springs.
Today Sunday we went over to Catalina Spa for the music jam, but we hadn't signed up to play, we just listened and enjoyed the music. Then we stayed for their burgers, ate with Dave and Wendy and had a drink back at their trailer. I took down most of our Xmas decorations.
Tomorrow we're off to Desert Hot Springs to get rid of our extra end tables and two TVs that we have in the shed, they all are in fine condition but we only need one TV, and we need the space in the shed cleared out so we can get our suitcases for the cruise, coming up soon, very soon.
There is an info meeting about the cruise tomorrow over at Catalina Spa, and likely they will have our boarding passes and stuff that we need. It is a bit different going in a group, as they do the worrying for us, we just show up, load up and take off. We are delivered right to the ship in a group, which takes the pressure off us quite a bit. Some folks from our park here are going on the cruise, as are Dave and Wendy.
That's it for now. Our micro cube amps arrived already, but Annie has another idea for a personal amp that you wear. I am kind of leaning toward keeping these as they are kind of tried and true and I know how to use them sort of, whereas the Vortex system is new totally to me.
We'll see, Weds I have the beginning lesson of 4 in a drumming/percussion course I am taking at Annie's, Sharon is the leader, and then Thursday we start again with our flute classes.
We also got Tix for the Palm Springs film festival, we got 6 vouchers each, and tonight we exchanged them online for reservations for 6 shows in the next week or 10 days, it should be interesting, we are all over the map for subjects of what to see, I don't wish to see thrillers or dark stuff, but there are lots of foreign films that look very interesting.
It's down to freezing overnight now, and during the day in the low 50s or so, so pretty cold for here. Brrrrrrrr. No pool time for me at the moment the air is too chilly, even though the water is nice and warm, when you get out it's darned chilly. Don't want to catch a cold before the cruise.
We'll go to Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, La Paz and Cabo San Lucas, first 2 spots we know, the second two we don't know at all. Should be interesting, and warmer, lots warmer, with luck.
It snowed up in Yucca Valley which is nearby, but higher than we are here in Palm Springs Coachella Valley area. And in Idyllwild up the mountain from us there is deep snow. Ick.
We were allowed to put our table service on the tables earlier in the day, and there were 2 other couples besides the 4 of us at the table. Another couple was from San Diego area, Oceanside, and they were just in the park getting their unit ready for renters coming in from Canada. They were lots of fun, Ed and Barb. The other couple was a bit more elderly, Wendy talked to them, I didn't have a chance really.
Happy Hour was 6 - 7 and then dinner was served, all the servers in tux shirts and black pants, the ladies in the same but skirts or slacks. They all looked so nice. The beef was cooked as you wished it to be, you could choose your cut, and green salad, and green beans in sauce, with a roast potato and then a fruit cobbler, yum yum.
Lary and I had volunteered to do serving dessert and cleanup, so we did, then there was a man playing a guitar, and he was quite good, tons of folks including us danced a lot. We 4 left before midnight there was quite a bit of screeching and it got to Lary, so we came home here and toasted in the New Year with champagne, and watched the celebrations in New York with Dick Clark, Ryan Seacrest and that crowd, time delay I guess.
Next day we were both super lazy, it was very cold outside and we stayed in and did very little, went out at night for Mexican dinner in Desert Hot Springs.
Today Sunday we went over to Catalina Spa for the music jam, but we hadn't signed up to play, we just listened and enjoyed the music. Then we stayed for their burgers, ate with Dave and Wendy and had a drink back at their trailer. I took down most of our Xmas decorations.
Tomorrow we're off to Desert Hot Springs to get rid of our extra end tables and two TVs that we have in the shed, they all are in fine condition but we only need one TV, and we need the space in the shed cleared out so we can get our suitcases for the cruise, coming up soon, very soon.
There is an info meeting about the cruise tomorrow over at Catalina Spa, and likely they will have our boarding passes and stuff that we need. It is a bit different going in a group, as they do the worrying for us, we just show up, load up and take off. We are delivered right to the ship in a group, which takes the pressure off us quite a bit. Some folks from our park here are going on the cruise, as are Dave and Wendy.
That's it for now. Our micro cube amps arrived already, but Annie has another idea for a personal amp that you wear. I am kind of leaning toward keeping these as they are kind of tried and true and I know how to use them sort of, whereas the Vortex system is new totally to me.
We'll see, Weds I have the beginning lesson of 4 in a drumming/percussion course I am taking at Annie's, Sharon is the leader, and then Thursday we start again with our flute classes.
We also got Tix for the Palm Springs film festival, we got 6 vouchers each, and tonight we exchanged them online for reservations for 6 shows in the next week or 10 days, it should be interesting, we are all over the map for subjects of what to see, I don't wish to see thrillers or dark stuff, but there are lots of foreign films that look very interesting.
It's down to freezing overnight now, and during the day in the low 50s or so, so pretty cold for here. Brrrrrrrr. No pool time for me at the moment the air is too chilly, even though the water is nice and warm, when you get out it's darned chilly. Don't want to catch a cold before the cruise.
We'll go to Puerto Vallarta, Mazatlan, La Paz and Cabo San Lucas, first 2 spots we know, the second two we don't know at all. Should be interesting, and warmer, lots warmer, with luck.
It snowed up in Yucca Valley which is nearby, but higher than we are here in Palm Springs Coachella Valley area. And in Idyllwild up the mountain from us there is deep snow. Ick.
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