Life and Times in SoCal

Spring 2022

Well, the holiday season is now over, and we have started tax season here in the good ol’ USofA. It’s not until you live here you realize how many seasons we have got!!

But looking at it another way it means that the cold weather of winter is behind us, and we are looking forward to it getting warmer through the spring into summer. Although, we have had one of the wettest starts to the year since records began. We had over 8 inches of rain in a week through January and more rain and “cold” weather in February with some very strong winds.

Both Julie and I managed to catch (is that the correct term) COVID in mid-January. We had to go into isolation for 10 days so that meant working from home and not going anywhere. We both had mild symptoms, as a lot of others have reported like having a bad cold, we still have some lingering aftereffects, runny nose, dry cough and sinus congestion but thankfully nothing too debilitating.

We were due to go to Las Vegas at the end of February to see Van Morrison, unfortunately this was cancelled as Van didn’t feel the COVID issues were sufficiently reduced to have the gig! We managed to bank our flights and accommodation and we got the ticket money back for the concert, so we will use these later in the year, as the saying goes, “Vegas is the answer to any question”!

Julie and I celebrated our 17^th wedding anniversary on February 26. We decided to spend the weekend at the Mission Inn in Riverside a National Historic Landmark and feature of Riverside and Southern California. It’s a beautiful hotel with great restaurants and bars. Our favorite is the Presidential Lounge, known locally as the Presidents bar it honors the 10 Presidents of the United Sates of America who have stayed, visited, honeymooned and even got married at the Inn. It also hosts the festival of lights at Christmas and other festivities through the year, overall, a great place to visit.

It will be Julie’s birthday in April it’s a rather special one ending in a “0”! I have booked for us to stay at the Hotel Del Coronado on Coronado Island in San Diego. It is a beautiful hotel that is one of the few surviving examples of an American architectural genre: the wooden Victorian beach resort. It is the second largest wooden structure in the United States. If you click on the link above you may see a movie of Julie & I, driving along in a vintage Corvette, haha! We will be having a dinner cruise around San Diego Bay on the Saturday evening and generally having a very relaxing time. You can check out the live beach camera here and see if you can see us!!

 Soon we will have our first visitors of 2022. Meg and Alfie will be with us for 2 weeks from mid-May, with Dominique, Jordan and their families here in late July, Diane & David here in Mid-September. We are going to Las Vegas hopefully to two shows, on the first night we will be seeing Donny Osmond and on the second night Rod Stewart this should be a great weekend. Chris and Wendy here in Late October, and we are going to the Hollywood bowl with them to see the Zac Brown Band one of my brothers’ favorite artists, we are in the Garden Box Seats where we will have a picnic and wine during the concert. We will not be like some who bring candelabras and flowers for the tables, at least I don’t think so! We are also going to Florida in early May to see Chris and Wendy and will be back in the UK in mid-June it’s going to be a busy summer!

Through January, we started to get to work on the front garden (or yard as it’s called here). We have decided to reduce the amount of ground coverage plants and replace with succulents to reduce the amount of water we use; this is both an environmental decision and a financial one. It has been heavy going, the foliage that was in the ground has very deep roots and is very difficult to pull out, not to mention then I must dig a hole for the new plants, they need to be big enough to give the plant a chance to flourish. The ground has been “baked hard” by years of hot sun and little rain, so I’ve had a workout digging the holes.

I have also sold my motorcycle; I made the decision as feel I’m now a little too old to be riding around on an aggressive sports bike and riding a bike here in the summer is too hot. Still, I had fun with it, but life moves on. As you will recall from earlier posts I bought an electric car at the start of 2021, a Tesla Model Y Long Range. I did over 12,000 miles in the first year for a cost of $7.25! Partly due to the deal on free supercharging and partly for having solar panels on my roof. I calculated if I still had the Ford, it would have cost me around $2,100 in gas (petrol) for the same miles and that cost would have been increasing. As of today – March 7, 2022 - gas prices in SoCal are $5.46 per gallon. I know that’s still cheep compared to the UK but its very expensive here when you consider that that average vehicle gets about 20 miles per gallon! 

If anyone reading this and looking for a vacation spot you are more than welcome to come across and set your base at our house, we are currently free between Mid-August to Mid-September, I promise I won’t ask you to dig any holes!

Great to chat with you all again, stay safe and be kind!

Ciao, Paul & Julie

March 2022