Joan on the Road...of Life

Mary invited us to join in some Homecoming activities at U of Redlands so we headed up there for lunch. She suggested The Eating Room in downtown Redlands. I'd recommend you try it:) It started as a bakery and expanded to a breakfast/lunch restaurant that also does afternoon teas. Very funky decor. I had a spring green salad with chicken, dried cranberries, mandarin oranges, sugared pecans and cranberry vinaigrette dressing. Gave me new ideas for salads at home. Mary wanted to check out the bakery goods but I can't resist yummy treats so I passed on that!

There was a free organ concert performed by Frederick Swann in the chapel. We went to that while Mary worked on setting up her booth with sorority sisters. I know I've seen Mr. Swann before but can't remember where. The concert was excellent. Here's a view of the setting and imagine the thundering base tones or the delicate tinkling chimes of the pipe organ.

We meandered around the campus quad, visited the student store, played silly games at a few of the booths and then watched the parade. Mary's sorority, Alpha Sigma Pi, had a truck/float in the parade. Great college fun! You can see pictures from the afternoon on my Picasa Album.

We met several of her "sisters" and are pleased to see her with a nice bunch of girls. After another snack provided by U of R we headed for home and watched The Hustler...in honor of Paul Newman but a downer of a movie.

I should also mention that we are watching the World Series. Don't know who I'm rooting for but it's pretty good baseball :)

Posted by Joan at 11:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We headed to the library on Monday but found it closed. Then went online and found we can't order books online anymore. Guess they are economizing. We did a little shopping and made our plans for Tuesday. That was a long day.

First we checked out The Blind Man to see if we could get one of our window shades "restrung". Yes, for $35. Well that's better than $200 for a new shade.So that will take a week to get done. Then we headed out to the RV Recovery Room in Riverside to pick up a new base for my recliner/rocker. $35 for that. Seems that the ball bearings got jammed up and I could no longer swivel easily. It's a Flexsteel chair that takes lots of abuse from me so I'm very happy to have it fixed.

We took some Christmas presents to storage to get them out of the way, picked up a few old VHS tapes and then headed for a new, big Fresh and Easy store down the street from Naomi. Our intent was just to get some oranges but we left with $60 of good food. Ceasar Salad, Tomato Bisque Soup, ribs to BBQ, tuna for sashimi, shrimp, oranges, fresh salsa...we've been very pleased with it all. Fresh and Easy is a new concept in stores that's expanding here in SoCal.

I wanted to watch our old series of Game, Set and Match that was on PBS years ago..based on the books by Len Deighton. So we put in the first tape...and both fell asleep! Guess we'll have to start that over. Also got a couple of books at the library and I really got lost in the first one I opened--Pajama Girls of Lambert Square by Rosina Lippi. I love a book that captures me and takes me away to another place and I feel like I know the characters. This book did just that.

Yesterday I cooked the ribs (baby back pork ribs) in the crock pot. First you rub the ribs with a spice mix, layer the rib sections in the pot with onions, and BBQ sauce, add a half cup of water and cook on low for 8-10 hours. During the last 2 hours you cover with more sauce. I never get going on time in the morning so I do the first 2 hours on high. That equals 4 hours on low. Speeds up the process and lets me sleep in and have breakfast before I start cooking :) It's still pretty hot here so we decided to put the crock pot outside! And...The ribs were delicious!

We tuned in to the first game of the World Series just to see if it would be interesting. Wound up watching the whole thing but not being too excited by it. There's nothing like watching "your own" team in the series. Maybe next year :)

Posted by Joan at 10:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We always enjoy a family celebration and today was another special one. Naomi, the oldest grandchild, celebrated her 27th. She's still young enough to tell her age :) Here's the Birthday Girl and her little helper, Evan.

We played a lot of music, mostly oldies, and Evan showed off his dancing skills. He loved "We Will Rock You" and really got into the stamping and clapping. Then he threw in a little break dancing and somersaulting. Wonder where he gets all this talent ? :) Thankfully, Uncle Jim captured it all on video!

As daughter Renee said, one thing we do real well is get together and eat :) Jim brought his Asian coleslaw and Thai dressing (which is actually a recipe from daughter Laura). I think everyone had 2 bowls of that. Then Renee and Tom prepared pizza with all kinds of toppings for the Birthday Girl. Tom cooked a couple of the on the Weber Grill, the rest were done in the oven with Pillsbury thin crust. All were delicious!! We really stuffed ourselves.

Then we relaxed around the fire pit on the new deck. It was a lovely coolish evening and the fire was just the right size to warm our toes. After the pizza settled we had the birthday cake ceremony. Evan was so precious singing to his Mommy :) (And we missed you, Jimbo!)

Naomi had requested my Old Fashioned Coconut Cake so yesterday I spent time at Renee's baking and frosting the cake. It turned out a little flat (cooked it too long) but the flavor was great. I do love to bake cakes! Everyone seemed to enjoy it even tho it was a bit "depressed" in the center.

We ended the evening watching the Red Sox go down in defeat to the Tampa Bay Rays. Guess there will be no World Series watching for us.

There are times in these family gatherings when I look around and my heart overflows. How can I be so lucky to have such a nice bunch of kids? Laughing, singing, dancing, joking, teasing....I have to take a deep breath, smile and click a mental picture to capture the moment.

Posted by Joan at 11:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The big RV show in Pomona was on this week so we headed out early today to see what's new in the RV world. We arrived at 10:15, near the opening time and spent most of the day there. Wow! What a difference in attendance! I think there were more salespersons than customers. (Salespersons because we had two women guide us through their RV selections.)

The show is still pretty good sized with more trailers and 5th wheels. The first coach that caught our eye had a huge deck set up on the roof. Yikes! You wouldn't catch me up there but Jim climbed the ladder :) I was impressed with the appliances--all residential. But it was manufactured by some company, CT something, owned by a Crean family member (Fleetwood) and we'll have nothing to do with Fleetwood so scratch that.

We were impressed with the layouts of some 36' Winnebago, Tiffin and Newmar coaches. We did stand on the veranda of the Country Coach recently featured in Motor Home magazine. What a crazy and wasteful idea. Must be for people who don't want to get their feet dirty. Imagine how many more things could go wrong. All sellers were offering huge price breaks. But none of them were perfect. I knew I'd come home and say I love my little coach.

What we did find were some vendors to provide some needed upgrades that we'll be working into our budget. My recliner has lost some of it's ball bearings and we met the owner of the Recovery Room in Riverside where we bought it. He'll be sending us a new base for $20!

One of our day/night shades is about to break a string which means a real hassle to fix it. We found the American DUO shades vendor who is also the RV DECOR guy located in Castaic. We can order the DUO shades and he gave us some ballpark figures on carpeting or wood floors. He also does cabinets so we could replace our oven with a couple of drawers. Also found a couple of carpet/ upholstery/ cabinet vendors here in Riverside County. So that part of the day was very helpful.

We did walk out with our hands full of goodies. A Sham-Wow package (soaks up to 5 times it's weight in water right before my very eyes!), a motion detector outdoor light, two electric cord reels that look like lifesavers, a Christmas present for Evan, some Geico playing cards with the Gecko on them, two little flashlights for free, and a bunch of literature that will give us a free weekend here and there.

It was pretty hot and dry. Fortunately, many vendors had free water bottles so we would feign looking at their coaches, sit inside where the air was on and drink water. I was pooped out by 2 pm but Jim still had vendor info to collect and a couple of coaches to see so I sat in the shade and listened to the salesmen kibitz and give away their selling secrets :) For lunch we had 2 brats, 2 chips and a bottle of water for $23!! Just as bad as the movies. We could have had all-you-can-eat soup and salad at the Olive Garden for $15! But they've got you trapped.

So we probably dropped a couple of hundred there and then went to Applebee's for dinner. That was to avoid the traffic on the 10 at 5 pm! Well that's a good excuse. We broke training and had a margarita and veggie pizza appetizer along with our Grilled Shrimp and Spinach Salad. I had a Chocolate Mousse Shooter for dessert.

All in all a very fun but tiring day. I was so happy to get home and take off my shoes :)

Posted by Joan at 09:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Naomi invited us for dinner on Sunday. She wanted to make a big pan of lasagne...never did that before. Neither did I! So of couse we said yes. How much fun is it to be greeted by a little kid running to you yelling "Nana" and throwing his arms around your legs :)

The first thing we had to do Is see Evan's room and play for awhile. He dumped out a bunch of plastic building blocks a constructed a tower. TADA!!

Then we batted a softball around his room and played with his miniature car collection. Cars, trains, trucks and baseball kept us all occupied for awhile. Evan didn't have a nap so he got a bit cranky here and there but with a few diversionary tactics we all got him through the evening without too many tears. At one point he says, "you guys are freakin' me out!" That was after he climbed up to the desk and got his "homework" and a pencil, telling us we had to be quiet while he did his homework. (Can you believe...3 years old and he has homework of tracing his name?)

I looked over Naomi's shoulder while she put the lasagne together. I was surprised the recipe called for uncooked noodles. OK. So she layered it all together and covered it with foil to bake for an hour. We both had our doubts how it would turn out. But it was great! We did agree it needed a little more sauce but the flavor was very good.

We feasted on chocolate ice cream for dessert. I think that was the only thing Evan really ate. He is verrry picky and of course was too excited with company to sit down and eat. We enjoyed dinner, playtime with Evan and visiting with Brad and Naomi.

The weather predictions for yesterday and today were for Santa Ana winds. That means dry, gusty, dusty wind at 40-60 mph. So we put the big awning up and secured the chairs. No wind last night. Then about 9 this morning, suddently a blast of wind hit, the sky was filled with dust and leaves and the trees were bending. That lasted for an hour and then everything was still. So we hopped on our bikes for the morning ride and just got done when another blast came along. That lasted most of the day. As the sun sets the wind usually dies so now it's pretty calm but I think we're in for another blast tomorrow. It's fanning fires around Los Angeles and snarling traffic with downed trees. I'm heading in to Irvine tomorrow so I'll need to watch out for flying garbage :)

Posted by Joan at 08:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Grandson Bryan came to visit on Friday. We're so lucky to have such great grandkids...just really nice people. He probably felt like he got the third degree! You know. How's school? How's work? Any special girls in your life? What are you going to be when you grow up ;)? He handled them all like a pro!

We went to lunch at Carol's in Bailey Winery, one of our favorite Temecula spots. Sitting outside in just about perfect weather with a glass of wine and good food...how much better can it be? I broke out of my salad mode and had a delicious BBQ Pork Tenderloin sandwich. Bryan had the burger and fries which were homemade and yummy.

Friday night we finished up the John Adams HBO series which was very good but has some graphic scenes of operations that I just could not watch. Otherwise...well done and worth watching. Yesterday it was pretty cool so we embarked on an evening of Lonesome Dove, another HBO miniseries. I made a chicken salad (because I had leftovers that needed using). I loved it and Jim said it was OK. He had two helpings even though he doesn't lke chicken salad.

Halfway through the movie evening I realized that I needed to squeeze some oranges for breakfast juice. Jim brought me in a dozen oranges and I had the juice done very quickly. I was comparing my cooking and food prep capabilities in my little "covered wagon" to the facilities the cook had in Lonesome Dove. Yikes! Glad I live now. I stand in awe of those who broke ground and settled new territories. What a life they had!

Posted by Joan at 11:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Remember the gas station broken dish disaster? We got replacement plates and bowls out of storage but still were missing the pasta bowl set. Not an emergency but a good mission for a hot day.

We headed out to Temecula in hopes of finding replacements. Bed, Bath & Beyond, Linens & Things, Macy's, Sears, Penney's.....no joy! Well we did find a couple of sets for $60 - $100. Not willing to pay that much.

In between all those stores it seemed opportune to stop for lunch so we enjoyed the Grilled Shrimp and Spinach salad at Applebee's. Jim says that lunch out was my real reason for suggesting this quest! :)

After several hours of searching we were ready to call it quits but decided to stop in at Sam's Club because Tom mentioned we could get some good frozen crab there. We hadn't been to Sam's in awhile so decided to cruise the aisles and see what they had that we needed.

Voila! Tuscany Pasta Bowl Set for $22.95!! Just what we needed.

Now I've seen more exciting designs. In fact, in Door County I saw several beautiful sets. But that was then...this is now! Timing is everything.

We use these dishes a lot for large dinner salads like my Crab Louie and for juicy dinners like stew. Very handy when placed on a large plate for eating in our lounge chairs and watching a movie :)

One thing we noticed in our shopping was the nearly empty stores and parking lots. Business has got to be waaaay down. As are the gas prices! $3.39 yesterday. Good thing something is going down because our stocks sure are. :(

Posted by Joan at 10:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

....the party's over! The Angels are out of the playoffs. But we had fun watching a couple of games with Renee, Tom, Bryan and son Jim. We put our team shirts on and tried to send the team good juju but to no avail. Well, there's always next year and Spring Training.

I took a salad along for dinner tonight...a Dooney salad, ala our daughter Laura. When she makes a salad you never know what she'll throw in and it's always great. Mine included iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, cuke, red onion, yellow pepper, apples, grapes and pecans. Zach was doubtful that this would work but assured me he'd try it. Two bowls later he proclaimed it great!

Friday, on a whim, we went to a movie...American Carol. Don't waste your time. We thought it might be clever but it only had a couple of really good laughs, otherwise fairly stupid. Too bad because it had potential. And the movie prices...Yikes! $7 each plus $5 for popcorn. I imagine it will be another five years before I get Jim to go to a movie again :)

Saturday was cool and rainy so we took a little shopping trip to Camping World. We were on the hunt for new curtains for the front of the MH. We had looked at the ready-made ones before and passed them over but after getting a couple of quotes for $400 plus the $125 price tag at CW looked pretty good. So we took a flyer and bought them. The length is nearly perfect but there's extra width on each side. That's easily fixed by cutting off the excess and then finding a machine to rehem the side. Our old ones were looking pretty ratty so it's great to have these new ones. They are less opaque so the front is brighter but still lots of privacy.

Nothing else much new....just scanning slides, reading books, bike riding, cooking and watching some C-Span and a movie now and then. We bought the HBO John Adams series at Sam's Club. What a great series. We should finish that this week and I know we'll be watching it again. Great history.

Posted by Joan at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A pop-up ad on my computer rescued me from cabin fever. When the temps are 100 I really don't like to be outside but then I feel cooped up after a few hours inside with all the windows closed. So when I noticed a pop-up ad for Macaroni Grill I thought to myself...self, we need to go to the mall!

We headed for Temecula and Macaroni Grill about 1 PM. It was not very crowded which was unusual. The ad mentioned a Lunch Trio of salad, entree and dessert. I'm up for that :) I had Caesar Salad, chicken/spinach canelloni and chocolate cake. Jim was undecided on pasta and then the waiter mentioned that he could "create his own pasta". That worked for him....angel hair, tomatoes, garlic, onions and basil. Now I could do that! Of course, one of my motives was eating a big lunch means I don't cook dinner.

I intended to meander around the mall but all we did was shop in Penney's drapery department. We really need to do something with the front drapes in the MH. I picked out a thermal backed material and got a quote....around $400 ballpark. I'm not sure I want to spend that much when I'm not sure of the material. Guess this needs more pondering.

We stopped at Trader Joe's to look for frozen crab to make Crab Louis salad. No dice on that but as usual we walked out with $40 of other items. TJ does have really good frozen fish so we got a meal's worth of Orange Roughy and lots of nuts and dried fruit for snacks. Incidentally, the parking lot at TJs was not crowded either. Is this a sign of the times?

I was anxious to see the baseball playoff with the Angels VS the Red Sox. Oh well! The Angels lost. Hope they improve and get over their jinx (they've now lost the last 10 playoff games to the Sox.)

Today was laundry day and I've learned how to make it pleasant here at Golden Village. I pack everything in the car including a book. Take it all to the laundry, get it started, set my phone alarm and then sit by the pool and read. Verrry pleasant. It was breezy and not too hot. Looks like the weather is going to cool a little and we'll get to the October averages of 85 and 55. My kind of weather:)

Posted by Joan at 03:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Since we don't have a dog I feel the need to have some sort of connection to the animal world so why not a birdfeeder...again :) But this time it will be a hummingbird feeder. I never had one of those. We picked up a feeder at WalMart and mixed up the packaged nectar. Dummy me. I chose the extended proportions which are probably 6 water to 1 sugar. I don't think the birdies like it. They come by, take a quick sip and leave. Sometimes they come up close to the window and flutter for a few seconds. I think they're trying to tell me something!

So I brought the jar back in to refresh the juice and make it more appealing. Internet research says that if the juice is not sweet enough they have to expend too much energy to get an adequate amount. Pretty soon they get tired of working so hard and leave. I think they tell the other birds not to waste their time at my feeder :) I'll see if the new juice makes a difference. Maybe I'll get some good pictures.

Besides the hummingbirds the shrubs behind our sitting area are filled with birds that sing and fly by all day. The towering palm tree beside us is home to our mockingbird and a woodpecker. If I put out a seed feeder I know we'd have lots of activity but that also might bring rodents for the overflow seeds. I'm not anxious to do that.

The only other wild pets we have here are rabbits. So far I've only spotted one. Last year there were so many running around I thought they might be a menace. Now I'm wondering if the park had a rabbit eradication program :) But you know rabbits! If there are two there will soon be twenty.

Posted by Joan at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)