Goodbye Palm Springs, Hello Vancouver

Well, the last week in Palm Springs was busy, not with packing (I don't take much back and forth any more) or closing up the house (Michael, god bless him, takes care of it all), but just saying my goodbyes to everyone.

I kept going to the gym, for the exercise as well as for the goodbyes.  I thought I'd better document it, as I am sure most of you don't believe that I actually go (I am certainly not getting any thinner....)

(See - I really am there.....)

It really is a good bunch - we have a good time, but we do work out too (some of us more than others, of course), and the company keeps me coming.

Of course, it is not likely to help much, since the rest of my time is spent playing bridge and eating...

Breakfast with Tom and Geoff after the gym (Geoff's place is quite close to the gym).....

(and before you ask, no, no one beat me up.  It is just a shadow, but good pictures of me are so rare that I decided to include it anyway...)

Dinner with friend Ken at an Indian place he found - I'm thinking it's called India Oven?  I know, I know, I am going back to the land of Indian food, but if we want these kinds of restaurants out in the desert, we need to support them, and the food wasn't half bad...

A new friend from the gym (Geoff #2) invited me for lunch at his lovely home.  It is a lovely home, too, the home I would have if I could, full of books and music and art, not to mention good company.  Here are Geoff (better looking than at the gym, where nobody - at least nobody I know - looks their best) and his partner Marvin....

Even managed a goodbye dinner with Wally and Art, in spite of their busy schedules (not to mention mine!).

We went to a new (for us, at least - I understand it has been around for ages) place called the Sunshine Cafe.  Eh.  I don't need to go there again.  Enough said.  As always, though, the company was good.  Don't the guys look great?

Finally, Friday arrived,and after our customary pre-airport meal, this time at Don and Sweet Sue's (previously reviewed in these pages).....

......Michael dropped me off at the airport.

Usually, I am reluctant to leave, but this time, not so much.  It had gotten too hot in the last few weeks - unseasonably so - and I don't do well when it is that hot.  I know it doesn't seem like it, given the number of meals I ate in the last week, but I don't even feel like eating (a lot of food got left on the plate - not like me!).  Between being cheery with friends, I was pretty listless and lethargic, and - dare I say it? - bored.  So yes, it was time to go.

The flight was as we like them, uneventful - as was the sprint through the Vancouver Airport for Customs and Immigration, and the quick taxi ride to my cottage.  And, as on the American side, my Canadian life was all sorted, only waiting for my arrival.  The place was clean, the car started, there was coffee and fixings - what more could a girl want?

After an enforced leisurely weekend (I did try to go to the office, but was confronted with a new computer, which had not been hooked up, not to mention an expired password), I was back to work on Monday.

Back to walking around Garry Point on the weekend, with a whole new set of flora and fauna....

It was great to see everyone in the office on Monday, and join the group for our customary Monday pho.....

...and (much better) Indian food at our local dive (which remains nameless because I always forget to note down the name while I'm there, and it is not memorable - the name, that is, not the food) with colleague Bea and former colleague and neighbor Eric on Tuesday....

And it didn't take long to get back in the theater routine either.  I had warned Tom of my imminent arrival, and he booked us tickets.  As we always do before going to the Jericho Theater, we ate at Enigma (it is reliable, and, as Tom says, they can cook a pork chop and deal with his garlic allergy - it is all we need)

...and saw Into the Woods, done by our favourite theater group, Fighting Chance Productions.  It was a great production - great voices, and amazing sets and costumes created out of nothing (like most small theater groups, they have no money).  I wasn't sure how it would hold up - the play, I mean - after recently seeing a wonderful movie version - but you know, live theater....well, I live for theater nights like that.  That Sondheim sure could write!!!

First week at home wouldn't be complete without some bridge, and Robin was available for our usually Thursday session, followed by a celebratory lunch in White Rock...

Followed by sushi and bridge at John's, with the boys (otherwise known as John, Dennis and Tom.  as always, a good time was had by all.)

Finally, Friday evening, colleaguees Deidre and Susan, and former colleague Deb, came to my place (might as well entertain while it's still clean!) for take out Chinese and lots of talk a laughter.

A great first week!  

It's Hot!

I'm still doing pretty much nothing.

The last (for me) National Theater Live production this season was the HD broadcast of Tom Stoppard's new play, The Hard Thing.  It is about our study of the brain, and what it means to be conscious.  Or at least, I think that is what it was about.  I enjoyed the witty dialogue and snappy repartee all right, but I don't think I understood very much of it.   And that, my friends, is very distressing to me!!!!  (I am way too old to feel stupid - I'm feeling like I don't have enough time to catch up!)

Friend Hank drove down from San Francisco - a very recently retired Hank, and looking lots better than the last time I saw him, although he is still wrapping his head around the concept - retirement, that is!

After all these many years, we don't seem to run out of things to talk about.  It is a good thing too, because we didn't do much of anything else!!!  A few days later, friends Ted and Kathleen drove down from Flagstaff, Arizona to join us.  Ted, Kathleen and Hank had gone to high school together in Hila Bend, Arizona, lo these many years ago.  I first met Ted an Kathleen about 5 years ago, when they briefly joined Hank and me in Rome, and saw Ted again when Hank and I stayed with him on our recent trip to Egypt (since retired - semi, like the rest of us - he was working in Egypt at the time).  I am quite fond of them, and was glad that they were able to join us.

We did get to a few of my favourite restaurants.  Here we are at Trilusa, the local Italian joint....

Art and Wally joined us for a meal at Billy Reed's.....

....and I even dragged them up to the tram (it was snowing up there, a first for me)....

....but mostly, we just sat on the patio and watched the wildlife and visited.....

...... which seemed to suit all of us just fine.

After they left, Hank and I got back into our usual (San Francisco) routine of reading interspersed with a movie or two.  In this case, we saw The Woman in Gold (Helen Mirren, about the return of the Klimpt painting to its rightful, Jewish, owner, some 50 years after the war, four thumbs up) and The Water Diviner (Russell Crowe acting, and first-time directing, about a man trying to find his sons who were lost in Gallipoli - I didn't know anything about this movie, and Russell Crowe not being a particular favourite, would probably not have gone but for Hank.  Turns out, it was pretty good.  And that, my friends, is what friends are for, to drag you kicking and screaming where you wouldn't ordinarily go!)

On Sunday (the 26th, for those of you who are keeping track), I returned the favour to Hank.  He is not, generally speaking a jazz fan, but I dragged him (truth of the matter was too much dragging was not required) to Melvyn's. the venerable lounge/restaurant/ Inn where jazz is to be had on Sunday afternoons.

Melvyn's has previously been reviewed in these pages. so I won't say much.  I still like the crowd (very old Palm Springs, where it would surprise no-one for Sammy Davis Jr. to come out and play), but was happier when they served some kibble with their drinks and enforced a dress code - no shorts, no jeans.  Still, the music and the drinks were good, and it was worth doing.

One last hurrah in the restaurant department - We went to a Mexican joint called JJ's Mexican Cantina on North Palm Canyon.

It had been recommended by Hank's step father, and we were pretty much required to provide a review.  Well. I would go again if I were in the neighborhood, but I am not sure I would go out of my way.  Actually, I am momentarily "off" Mexican food, so I guess it would only be fair to try it again when I am more in the mood!

On Tuesday, Hank and I went downtown to the Palm Springs Art Gallery (there is not too much in the way of culture here to throw at people, but lord knows, I do my best), after which we went our separate says, Hank driving back to San Francisco and I driving on to LA, in preparation for my Wednesday flight to Houston, where I was meeting friend Peter for the opera.

I stayed at the Concourse Hotel, right by LAX, where I could park my car and have a shuttle take me to my crack of dawn flight to Houston.

Dinner at the hotel wasn't bad either...

...and the flight to Houston the next day was just the way I like it - short and uneventful.

Peter's flight came in a bit later, and we met at the hotel, The Four Seasons in downtown Houston,  Peter is also newly retired - we're all getting to be of the age, don't you know - so I guess there won't be too many Four Seasons stays in our future, but we certainly enjoyed this one,

A nap was followed by a Bistro dinner (name to follow.  Peter?)

.....which was quite good, and, at the opera, Sweeney Todd, which was - okay. The singing was uniformly good.   (Nathan Gunn, who we had seen in the operas before, was Sweeney).  And the staging was certainly adequate.  I couldn't quite put my finger on what was wrong, but Peter did - it was just not evil enough.  Gunn is too much of a nice guy, and the staging was way too polite.  So, the consensus was that we were glad to have come, but that we had both seen better Sweeney Todd performances (I saw my first a million years ago in New York, with Angela Lansbury as Mrs. Lovitt!)


On Thursday, we went to the Munil Gallery ....

 ....we had loved it last year, and it did not disappoint.  That's all we had time for, as we needed to fortify ourselves with a nap and an early supper before the 6 o'clock curtain for Die Walkure (it is, after all, a 5 hour opera...).

(You can see it was still light at the music center when we arrived.)

And here we are, waiting for the performance..

And it was great!  The voices were fabulous, And if someone had told me in advance about the staging (cherry pickers to haul the gods around?, not to mention video scrims), I would have been prepared to loathe it, but as it turned out, it worked!  We are already plotting our return next spring for Sigfried!

Breakfast at the hotel on Friday morning.....

and then back to LA  Once again, the flight was fine.  However, it was a four hour drive back from LA to Palm Springs, normally only 1 1/2 to 2 hours!  Remind me not to do that on a Friday afternoon again!  I mean, it wasn't a parking lot, but it sure wasn't 70 mph either!   Anyway, I got home safe and sound.

So, what else can I report?  My reading has been pretty mundane - two McColl-Smith books I hadn't yet read (The Minor Adjustments Beauty Salon and Trains and Lovers), three more Maigret mysteries, and the newest Martha Grimes.  The only book of substance was Atul Gawande's book called Being Mortal.  He is a geriatric physician, and the book (it has been on the New York Times best seller list for ages) is about end-of life care and how we can make it better.  All I can say is, when I get there, someone take me to the vet!!!!  (Depressing as it was, it is definitely a must-read!)

And back to where we started, the heat.  It is unseasonably warm here in Palm Springs, and the truth of the matter is, I don't do well in the extreme heat.  I get listless and apathetic, I don't want to eat (that's not so bad....) and I sleep a lot.  Don't get me wrong, my place is cool, but the outdoors is not....

Anyway, I will be back in Vancouver next Friday - bridge games, meals and theater outings are being planned as we speak - and so my next report will be Dateline:Vancouver!  I am actually ready for the change!