Gathering Together

M & J's daylong journey to the desert went well, with arrival occurring after a half-dozen intermediate stops along the way. When I look at a map, it's a pretty direct flight path from PA to CA, but it gains distance when it's via Chicago, then LAX, not to mention the added hours spent sitting in an airport terminal. We left the local 'port for a nearby restaurant because a 5 pm arrival meant the peak of the cross I-10 logjamb, which occurs between 6-9 am and 4-6 pm. OF course, we ordered too much food, so packing up our to-go boxes, we finally headed across the freeway to my little abode in the desert dusk.

Earlier that morning, finally deciding that the pinkish lavendar color was not working, I repainted the closet doors the same color as the walls, an excellent decision with which my dotter agreed. I left the small stripes of ribbon trim I glued to the gold door frame, softening the brassy metal in the main colors for the interior decor. I explained that the new door got caught up in the holiday rush, so would not be installed until the coming week, but my dotter likes the new colors and agreed that the access to the outside is going to be a plus feature to the floorplan.

(Update: I talked to the Valspar rep, who explained that the return policy on their paint does cover performance issues, but not color selection. He asked me to send him the receipt for a full refund, which I have done. He's going to contact Lowe's and reinforce the policy about performance refunds as he explained that about 95% of their paint products are mixed colors, which means that no one could ever return a paint product if refunds were based solely on color choice.)

Dotter and I grabbed a bottle of wine and headed outside to the chiminea for the wind-down to bedtime, as well as the opening of the b'day gifts: 2 pieces of jewelry and 2 boxes of See's candy. When I had queried pumpkin or pecan, as in pie, the response was, "See's candy," both boxes of which disappeared into the guest room and have not resurfaced. For a twelve-year-old, it's a challenge to understand that yes, it's only 8 pm in CA, but that means that last night, it was 11 pm, and the time change added to 10 hours of travel would add up to a crash and burn ... soon. We made it to 9 pm before all lights were out.

T'day, it was totally fun to cook with dotter, play a few games with g'son, and then clean up the ensuing kitchen mess. Dotter went for her run, still prepping for the charity event she entered, while g'son and I drove to a friend's house to borrow a couple of bikes. He wanted something to do, but CA law requires a helmet, so off to K-Mart down the block. I also taught him how to make a Mexican left-over casserole, which features tortillas, onions, cheese, black olives and left-over chicken, turkey, pork or beef. We'll heat and eat this meal Saturday evening after they come back from visiting dotter's hometown and some local friends.

I also had bought a couple of Nintendo games to keep g'son company, but my selections weren't so hot, so another trip to K-Mart to find a specific game he discovered in one of the airport terminals. Yep, they had one game left, which I bought and is a great success. However, when we put the DVD into the player for the Star Wars film, it wouldn't play. It didn't just freeze; it also skipped randomly through scenes and restarted the beginning a couple of times. We tried it on the laptop, but it wouldn't play, so another trip to KMart for a replacement, which also would not play in the DVD player. We hooked up the laptop again and crowded around the coffee table, but honestly -- no one could hear the sound!! We tried 2 different sets of external speakers, but still could not hear a word the characters were saying, so I grabbed the guest room TV from the office and we huddled around the little TV with the built-in DVD player and nice, LOUD sound, and watched the movie, which was pretty good.

As dotter says, "They began the series again with new, young characters, so we can have even more SW sequeals as all of these characters age!"

Today, they head up the hill for a visit with dotter's dad and his new family, which includes a son g'son's age. I have some housecleaning to do, as well as some prep work for Monday's classes, which means I can putter about a bit. They return tomorrow evening, which gives us Sunday to share before they depart early Monday morning.