February 6th – It has taken a few days, but I think I’m finally winding down from the busyness of life in Mississauga. The past three days have been quite restful, especially today.

Thursday was our first golf game – at a small par 3 executive course in La Quinta. The price was right at $25 and the distance was walkable at 2200 yards. We played with two women, one of whom hails from Vancouver area. They are both widows and took up golf together last year. We were all fairly well matched in terms of skill level and enjoyed the outing. Lunch was at an American-style restaurant called Eureka!.

Friday, George went for a walk in the morning while I shopped along El Paseo. Chicos and the Black and White Market did quite well by me. I stopped at Williams and Sonoma looking for some sauce for our chicken with reduced sodium…and found a really nice Mediterranean one. The grocery stores here do not cater to people on low salt diets and the best we can do in most cases is to purchase 33% reduced sodium.

Today, George went for a guided walk in the desert while I stayed home to work on some accounting stuff for LPBC. I purposely chose not to go because we’d been advised that the walk was rugged in some spots. I’m trying to keep the arthritis at bay! During the walk he found out about HAT – the various types of vegetation that are hoarders of water, those that avoid water and those that tolerate water. The guide also told them about the Cahuilla tribe and how through the various seasons they moved up and down from the valley to the mountains to make use of the various types of vegetation at different levels. Golf, from Phoenix, took up the rest of the afternoon.

Tonight we headed out for dinner at a restaurant recommended by Fred Pamenter. It was the most unique meal ever! Cafe Italia is a very small restaurant in a local plaza. We went for the early bird special – a four course meal for $20. It was a good home cooked meal but the best part was that during dinner various servers serenaded us with familiar show tunes. We thought it was quite appropriate to be in a musical restaurant while the Mississauga Festival Choir was presenting their Festival of Friends concert at home. All the servers combined to sing together Be Our Guest just before we left. What a fun evening.

We have both continued to work on our French skills, using Duolingo, each evening. George is further along than I am and has moved on to Mango on the Toronto Library website for further practice. We found out the other day that one of his cousins who will be accompanying us to France is bilingual, so that will be helpful.

The good news tech-wise is that I finally figured out how to get Scrabble working on my iPad so the score in the real Scrabble is now one game each.