January 31st – Sunday was a very interesting day given the weather report was for severe storms, high winds and heavy rains. We decided that we would go to church and then plan the rest of our day after that. It was to get worse in the afternoon. We attended the Church of the Nazarene with Mike Miller, a friend of Neil and Carol Randall at LPBC. They had met Mike and Terri on one of their cruises and became instant friends. Mike attends the Nazarene church and Terri attends a much larger church of the Baptist persuasion. The Nazarene church is a relatively small new church plant in a growing area of professionals. Worship was contemporary in style, led by the pastor’s wife. The pastor is on medical leave, so a retired missionary pastor preached.  After service we stopped by the Miller home to pick up Terri and went off to Applebee’s for lunch. The conversation flowed freely and we found we had a lot in common, especially travel. Mike speaks at the worship service every Sunday afternoon at a nearby retirement home, so we joked with him that if he ever comes to Canada we’ll have to introduce him to my dad – who organizes the speakers at Amica.

After lunch we went back to the hotel – it still hadn’t rained much – to wait out the storm. While heavy at times, I have seen worse rain and while the high winds blew a lot of palm fronds down from the trees, they didn’t do any other damage around the hotel. Evidently, Torrey Pines Golf Club didn’t fare quite so well. Once the sun came out, we decided to venture out on a drive to see the Hotel Del Coronado. On the trip over we saw a number of palm trees down and lots of beach sand on the roads.

The Del is one of the oldest wooden hotels of its size in the US and with its distinctive red roof has become the symbol of grandeur and refinement in Southern California. George wanted to visit since some Society of Actuaries meetings were held there, although they were ones he didn’t attend. Wow!! It was unfortunate that it was so windy and cool that we weren’t able to enjoy the surroundings. We had thought of having dinner there…but at $30 – $80 per entree we decided to pass. Back to the hotel for Panera Bread sandwiches and a glass of wine!

February 1st – Monday morning we took highway 101 north from San Diego through all the little coastal towns then headed east over the San Jacinto mountains to Palm Desert. The temperature dipped down to 35* but the sun was still quite warm. At about 4000′ up we came across this sight:

We arrived in Palm Desert at lunchtime and headed to Cafe des Beaux-Arts – the same restaurant we ate at last year, on El Paseo. Our condo is lovely and will be a very comfortable place to stay for the next few weeks. The kitchen is equipped with just about everything we will need, including accouterments for soup-making. The living room is well designed with comfortable furniture and a great view of the pool. Most importantly, the bed is sleep-inducingly comfie. The shops on Paseo Drive are just a half-block from the house –  with Chico’s right at my corner!

There’s nothing like a fresh grapefruit just picked from the tree for breakfast. The tree is loaded and I get them to myself since George is not allowed to eat them because of interference with his medication.