Well Friday finally arrived, and with it warmer weather once more. Hooray, it was a lovely warm sunny day today, and I got new orthotics made by a podiatrist down here, then we headed off to the La Quinta Art Festival. They warned me not to wear the orthotics more than 4 hours, and that was totally true, by 3 PM my feet were sore.
But first- before the art show we returned a defective item to a music store and then, craving a cup of coffee, we stopped at a nearby Mexican restaurant, and had coffee then early lunch, it was the Rodeo Cafe and we ate delicious food. It's on San Pablo near Hwy 111, just north of 111.
La Quinta is south of Highway 111, maybe about 3/4 hour from home, or a bit more, and it's a pretty site for the festival, it's held at La Quinta Civic Center Campus, which is a lovely art filled park area with a big pool in the center, and the art is all around there throughout the park, it was their 30th anniversary.
As you might remember from our previous years, we really enjoy this festival, it's very high quality art, clay, glass work that is incredible, jewelry, painting, furniture, lovely wood working, tons of sculpture, high end clothing and scarves, it is very broad in scope, and all contained inside this lovely art filled park with the lake in the middle. It is sensory overload, and we lasted about 3 hours. Actually it was a perfect day for the event, it was about 80 degrees with a hint of a breeze, and being Friday perhaps not as busy as it will be over the weekend. We didn't buy a thing, a bit uncommon for us, but it's nearly time to leave for home, and we have purchased enough already for our small trailer home here.
Back tracking a bit, on Thursday we had our regular coffee and donuts, but almost directly afterwards we did an earthquake drill throughout the park. We may have said that our park is almost on the San Andreas Fault, so a big earthquake is a distinct possibility for us here. There is an emergency plan in place for earthquakes or other disaster events here in the park, so we had our first run through yesterday.
Lary and I were block captains, which meant that as soon as we heard the sirens go off we set the plan into motion.
First we dropped, covered and held, then when the shaking stopped, (it never really started!) we hopped in our golf cart which luckily hadn't been damaged, and started to make our rounds of the 18 or so units near us here in the park that we had to check on.
One of our neighbours was critically injured, in fact the card on her body said she had no pulse, so we had to make the tough and very uncomfortable decision to leave her and go on to check the rest of the units for damages and casualties. No more emergency scenarios luckily, which we then tried to radio in to command central, but our radio didn't work. drat it, so we had to zip up there and report in, and get another walkie talkie to use.
A few of our units were unoccupied, or empty, but the others were fine, with their green "WE'RE OK" sign up in the window, and that was kind of the end of the first emergency drill here in the park. Weird how exhausted I was after that time, and how awful it felt to leave our neighbour on her floor, nearly dead (according to the scenario written out for us) and go on to see what else there was of concern for us.
As a result of that exercise we think we will take the CERT weekend course held here in November when we come back next winter, which teaches you how to respond and take responsibility and action in an emergency situation which might arise. CERT is certified emergency response training.
After that I helped set up for the poker afternoon here, it takes about 1/2 hour or so to set it up in the clubhouse. Then the poker afternoon started at 1 PM, there were 41 players, and I helped take the money, count it, prepare the cash prizes, serve the ice cream at break, and otherwise help as needed til the poker afternoon finished at 3:30 PM or so.
Prizes were given out to 4th place, and also a high hand prize, all in cash. Getting the tables set up, the chips and cards ready, chairs out, and then the same in reverse, it is quite an operation, and I am enjoying helping every second Thursday when we don't have flute lessons.
After that we had Happy Hour at the Emergency preparedness coordinator's house, and talked about the exercise, and how it went, reviewing what was good, and not so good, and giving input about the next one. It was very interesting to hear everybody's different experiences.
Wednesday I had gone with Wendy over to Ivey Ranch, they had a fashion show and ladies luncheon, and we both enjoyed ourselves, and girl time together. Sat with 3 American ladies, and we were 4 Canadians, 3 from BC and one from Toronto. Nice fashions but very very pricey, and also with sequins on every piece, which isn't my style at all really. The owner of the clothing shop was a bit of a strange person, at times she even criticized the models who were all volunteers, which I thought was in very bad taste. Oh well, it was fun and interesting.
But lunch was yummy, green salad and chicken salad, chicken sate to start, and dessert. And wine. And female company. Our husbands were busy carving over at Catalina, trying desperately to get their blue jay bird carvings finished by the end of this month, which may not happen, in fact doesn't look likely to me at all.
They are making life size blue jays, and that is a lot of carving and detail work, not to mention painting it all. Lary has been working on it a bit at home here, too, when he is not in his carving class.
After the ladies lunch and show, we went and poked around a bit in Revivals, a second hand shop over on Hwy 111, but didn't buy much at all.
Tuesday here was soup day, the second to last one, and then in the evening we went to a Chinese auction over at Catalina Spa park, it was a fun evening of browsing through other folks' cast offs, bidding on them all, and bidding on some silent auction things.
Lary managed to get a gift certificate for a pizza, and another gift cert. for 6 hamburgers at Catalina spa. I think I brought home a bag holder for grocery bags to keep in our cupboard.
Tonight we used the gift certificate and had a yummy pizza in Desert Hot Springs.
Tomorrow Saturday we hope to go to College of the Desert, and then in the evening there is a Casino night here in our clubhouse, we will attend and play bingo as we don't play poker. Lots of things to do still, but things are winding down, and will be over at the end of March, people are starting to talk of returning to their more northerly homes, and leave here during the hot summer time.
There is only one dinner left, next week, St. Patrick's corn beef and cabbage dinner and dance, and then we will kind of shut down the clubhouse til folks come back in October or November. There may be people here during the summer, but not many, and there is no organized entertainment or the like during that time.
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