Scorching the World

I woke up at 6:30, which I think is super early, but Tom had already been up quite a while. Silly guy! He did yard work, trying to get it set up so it can survive while we’re gone for 2 ½ weeks. But most of the day was taken up with getting our COVID test. Tom thought we didn’t need an appointment because it is a drive through place, but when we got there, it was closed. Again. We found out it is only open from 8-11am and yes, you do need an appointment.     I needed sandals and tennis shoes so we went to one last shoe store and ran other errands before going for the Covid test. Our little errands ended up taking hours. My sisters were waiting for our weekly chat for a long time until we finally got home. And then after we had chatted a while, Lilian called and wanted my attention for long enough that Anne and Carma hung up. So sad.   It turned out that it was a good thing we didn’t get the test because we thought we had to have the results within 72 hours of en...

We are leaving for our vacation/trip in two days, but until now we haven’t had time to plan the trip or book hotels so I sat down with Tom and we worked on the schedule of when we wanted to be where, and booked the hotels. It was not an easy thing to do, so we worked on it until about 2pm! Tom even fixed and brought me lunch so I wouldn’t have to stop what we were doing. Tom worked in yard quite a while and I began packing. In the afternoon we went shopping and to get a COVID test that is required for entrance into Canada. Sadly, we took too long shopping and by the time we got to Kaiser, the testing place was closed. But at least I was able to find some things I need for the trip. We’re so excited.   Tom had found a movie he liked and had saved for us to watch together. It was called Killers – a romantic comedy – and was really cute. I think it is my favorite movie we’ve seen in years.   It was so nice to be able to go to bed together. We’ve been apart so much latel...

We found out last night that Anne and Carma’s flight was delayed, so the first order of business was to check what time they needed to be at the airport. They seemed to be getting conflicting information, but since it was delayed, we were in no hurry to leave the house. Then we got a message from the owner that checkout time was 11am! It was already 11:20, but since we had nowhere to go, we decided to just hang out there for a while – until he texted us again saying that the cleaners were there and had been waiting for 20 minutes!!!   It was a good thing we were already all packed and we had cleaned up the house, so all we had to do was throw everything in the car and leave. The problem was that we didn’t have anywhere to to go!   I parked down the street while we looked at options. I was also texting with Tom and he suggested we go to the Rosicrucian Museum in San Jose. It is near the airport, so we headed there.   I confess I was not interested at all in g...

We had tossed around a lot of ideas for today and finally decided that instead of going to Half Moon Bay to see the beach, we would go back to SF. We wanted to go ride the paddle boats in Golden Gate Park. So after a leisurely breakfast and morning, we went back. It was a beautiful day; perfect for riding around in a very slow boat. We rented the boat for 1 hour, and it took almost that long to go around the little lake. We saw lots of ducks, seagulls, turtles, and waterfalls. We even picked blackberries along the side. It was lots of fun!    We bought hot dogs afterwards, then headed to Berkeley. Sadly, there was a lot of traffic getting there, and when we finally found a parking place, we didn’t see any interesting places to shop or eat. We finally gave up and just headed back to Mountain View.   Carma had ordered a cover for the iPad Lilian had given her and had it shipped to Mountain View at one of the locker places that Amazon has. We went there, and she rece...

There was a lot of drama last night hearing about how far off normal Todd has become. The doctors say he isn’t sick enough to be hospitalized so they won’t take him, and he clearly isn’t sane enough to be around his children, so life is hard for Tanya right now. I feel so bad for her and for Todd. All I know to do for them is pray. We got up and moving more slowly this morning because we didn’t need to be out of the house until 9:30. We didn’t have much of anything to eat here, so we ordered food from a place, picked it up on the way and ate in the car. I couldn’t eat because I was driving, so I ate it cold after we got to Santa Cruz.   I also needed to buy gas, and the traffic was slow, so those things delayed us enough that we missed the train we had tickets for. Anne called them and they said we might be able to get on the next train.   I love the drive to Santa Cruz - the beauty of the mountains and the winding road. It brought back so many memories from high sch...

This mobile home is only a two bedroom, so Carma and I had to share a bed. That means sleep isn’t quite as sound but I slept pretty good anyway. But woke up with quite a headache and extremely tired.   When I talked to Tom last night before bed he told me that Todd had managed to check himself out of the hospital against Tanya’s wishes and against doctor advisement, and Tanya needed Tom to go pick him up. That’s really not good because he is still in an extremely paranoid state. I found out later that in the end Tom took Todd to his house because that was the only place he would go. I feel bad for Tanya and the kids and pray they were ok last night.   We had reservations to check in at the California Academy of Science at 10:30, so we needed to leave our air-bnb by 9am, which meant we couldn’t really lie around lazily this morning. We took off and, with the help of the GPS, drove right to the parking garage, walked up the stairs, and got in the California Academy of Science. I...

Again I woke up about 4am. I stayed in bed until 5:30, then showered and finished packing. I had time to go to the car and figure out how to pair my phone with the car stereo so I can listen to podcasts that I downloaded! I’m so excited I figured that out! The trip went well and I loved being able to listen to Follow Him for 2 hours! In spite of the fact that Tom wanted help with Synergy for about 15 minutes after I had planned to leave, I was making good time. So I stopped at Walmart in Los Banos to stretch my legs and pick up a couple of things I still wanted.   All was going well until I got to Gilroy and Highway 101. The gps was telling me to go south instead of north. I didn’t believe it, but I also didn’t trust my instincts enough to ignore it. So I went the wrong way for about 15 minutes, then decided the gps was looney and went back north. It kept trying to tell me to turn around, but I stuck to my guns. That put me 30 minutes behind schedule, so instead of arriving e...

We have so many things we want to get done while we are here in Torrance. We could spend a week, but we will do our best to fit it in one day. But first things first – Tanya, Trina, Ziona, Tom, and I   went to breakfast at our new favorite place here called Norm’s. Good food.   Trina only has two parking places in front of her house, so now she needed to get rid of the nearly dead Big Fat Van. Tom called around for a wrecking yard, but Trina found one that would give her $200-$300 for it and agreed to go to her office to pick it up this morning! One to-do checked off!   Tanya went with Tom to go buy her new car that they were holding for her for 2 weeks. Sadly, after driving all the way down here from Fresno and driving to the dealership, and after waiting two weeks on a car that she already paid for, they still hadn’t fixed it. After much discussion, they agreed to give her all of her money back. Sadly, that meant we didn’t have any way to get home!   ...