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I hope your day was as enjoyable as mine! Jim brought Sal and Don to the desert for Thanksgiving dinner, along with his three kids....Yay!!! To my surprise I got hugs and kisses from all three of the kids when they arrived! Even from the Tim Man!

I was thrilled with that and even more thrilled to welcome everyone into my new desert home. John was here and had to drive over the mountain, or around it, or maybe through it, but he was here. He lives closest to me actually....just on the other side of that mountain...about 1.5 hours away. Unfortunately, it took everyone else about twice that time to get here. Thank you, Jim!

I know I wouldn't have wanted to make the drive back to Orange County for Thanksgiving, so I was very pleased and surprised (not to mention Thankful!) when Jim suggested having dinner here. I loved having everyone here...wish I'd thought to take pictures! What a dunce I am. The pictures I have are compliments of Jim, so naturally he's not in any of them. Thank you, again, Jim.

The rest of the weekend I lazed around with the furkids watching HGTV. It was cold inside. Outside it was a beautiful 70+ degrees, but inside it felt like 60.....brrr! I took advantage of the cool days, (yes, 70+ degrees is cool!), stayed in sweats, cleaning and putting away my fall decorations. Then I pulled all the crap out of my closet that I'd hidden in there before company came....and started sorting through it again. I've been here for 3 months and I'm still organizing....but I'm trying to do a better job than I would normally do. I sorted through years of scrapbooking magazines and craft supplies in my front closet. It looks great now....my own little craft closet.


I love scrapbooking. I love the paper, and the embellishments, and putting everything together to make a great layout..... I just don't do it often enough. I haven't scrapped a page in almost a year....and I'm getting antsy to get back to it and send some pages to Gina as well. I have a gazillion pictures from years back that I'd like to scrap someday.....what a job that would be....It would be fun to condense them though, into something more memorable than a cardboard box.

This ain't too bad...

I'm sitting on my balcony overlooking the pool and watching Frasier track down a cricket that's chirping away in the corner behind my ficus tree. (I think he got it!) It's warm and peaceful, even with the sound of voices coming from the pool area.

I really loved living in Huntington Beach...(not to be confused with living "at" the beach), but it's overcast a lot and pretty cold...not like the weather most people think of when they think of California. At least not what I think of. I think of being warm like I was when I first moved out here in 1980. I guess I was younger then. Well, I'll pay for all this wonderful weather next summer when I have to live through 3 months at 100+ degrees.

My Bougainvilla is blooming. It was one of the first plants I bought when I moved here, hoping that I might be able to keep it in bloom even though I have no direct sun. The blooms that were on it two months ago when I bought it are still there, and now it has new blooms! I'm so stoked. Yay!




And my white Bougainvilla that dropped all of its flowers is beginning to bloom....

Hummingbirds, flowers, cats at my feet...

I really love the simple things in life.

Wind Turbines in Palm Springs

Wind Turbines in Palm Springs
Originally uploaded by Ladd

Found this great shot of the turbines on flickr. I love seeing them when I'm driving through the desert. For some reason they're oddly sad, and yet romantic at the same time. I know I'm not completely crazy....thousands of people stop and take pictures of them every year. It's a breathtaking sight.

So why am I here again?

Oh, yes, because the boss made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Ha! The desert. 2.5 hours away from EVERYTHING. They must be kidding! This was back in April when I agreed to "check it out" and said "no". I had made the trip on a Saturday morning....2.5 hours in the car...just driving and driving and driving. It was never going to end. Finally, the wind turbines appeared and I knew I was close....You know those turbines....they're in every Hollywood movie that has a desert scene (Less Than Zero, to name one)...windmills in the middle of nowhere - hundreds of them on the landscape...maybe thousands. I was close to a town....Yay! I saw an exit ramp to a town...then another, and another, and there it was....Palm Desert. A little jewel in the middle of nowhere. A green oasis with Palm Trees and lush landscaping. The sky was clear, the sun was shining. It was a beautiful day!

(See the sprinklers watering the grass? That's the real stuff. The grass in the median is synthetic, but the plants further up are real. Go figure.)

I drove directly to one of the apartment complexes that I had checked on over the internet. It was a great place, Tuscan style, only five years old. The manager must have spent an hour with me....showing me every floor plan they had, telling me all about how she moved out here from OC when she was 50, didn't know anyone. Traded in her old life in OC working as an executive secretary at McDonnell Douglas, to live out here and work at a low paying job at the Marriott. Now that took guts. She was great...made me feel right at home. I had a friend in the desert! I actually knew someone in the desert, someone from OC like me that was...shall I say...mature? So without looking back, I headed home and told my bosses that I couldn't do it. No way, no how. Too far. Too remote.

Two weeks later I was still thinking about this little place. A new office, a new home, a new outlook....and sun....yes, sun. Oh, and did I mention money? Yeah, they offered me money....works every time.

So here I am. I opened the new office in a small industrial area. I have one technician, a warehouse, and ten accounts in Riverside County that we were handling from OC. I would sure like to get some new business but it's going to take time. Things are quiet but my day sure goes by fast.

Fire Update

This is how the sunrise looked this morning on my way to work. I usually see clear blue sky. The mountains are so close you think you could touch them. The wind has changed direction and is now blowing the smoke into the Coachella Valley. It's hanging around the mountains, making the sky look just like a day at the overcast beach. It's depressing....no wonder I always felt so gloomy in Orange County. But what I have here is nothing compared to my friends in OC and San Diego. They're living with the worst of the ash and smoke.

The office was so quiet this week. I think the fires have taken precedent in everyone's life around here. I'm just amazed at how this has affected the entire Southern California area. The damage is overwhelming.

Another Day of Fires

It's not getting any better. Our San Diego office is surrounded by fires. Jeff and his family are prepared to evacuate their home in Escondido. This morning I watched the news as a couple dozen homes in Arrowhead burned to the ground. The fire around Irvine is still burning. All of the fires are still burning, and there's not going to be any improvement in the weather conditions until tomorrow. This is so very sad.

California Burning

We're on fire again. All over the place. Malibu. Arrowhead. San Diego. Orange County. Yes, Orange County, where I just moved from and had to be this morning. I drove in yesterday afternoon while the Malibu fire was happening. It was windy but not too bad, until I hit Orange County. It was really blowing. All night long you could hear the wind howling like a cold winter storm. It was another infamous Santa Ana Wind condition that managed to knock down a power line in Malibu. That line sparked a fire and the wind took it from there. As if that wasn't bad enough, some a$$hole arsenist started a fire in Irvine last night, where two of the guys I work with live, and my bosses mother lives. Two of them evacuated. I've been watching the news and it looks like their homes will be okay. What a scary feeling that must be...being asked to voluntarily pack up and leave your home because it might burn down! The sky around the office in Irvine was so smoky and orange. You could smell the smoke, see the ash in the air. It was bad. Really bad.

I'm glad to be back home in my valley where the sun is shining, the sky is blue and the air is clear. I felt a little bit of guilt as I drove through the smoke filled air and outta there! Just a little.

Read all about it... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21405632/