By the morning of March 1, 2020 I awoke to a very swollen finger. My wedding ring needed to come off quickly and it was not going to be easy. I made a call to our insurance company and was very impressed with the service. They contacted the local emergency and had me pre-registered and sent them a fax with the invoicing/filing info so that they billed the insurance directly.
It took a lot of effort and several tools to get the ring cut off of my finger. The antique black and decker roto tool with dull blade and undercharged batteries were not the ideal tool but they eventually cut through the ring. The staff also dressed my cut up palm although I had to adamantly refuse the extra work they hoped to perform as part of the claim including x-rays. Naturally I had to sign disclaimers to protect them… but I was more than certain my only issue was a swollen finger which would heal just fine once the ring was removed. And that proved to be quite true (although a year later I still do have a faint scar on my shin where I scraped my leg on the gravel).
Then we were off to Palm Springs to stock up for the month at Costco. The drive there seemed to be an endless downhill all the way, and the temperature increase of 10C didn’t dispute that. The prices were surprising to us. Many (most) items had the same $ cost as at home – but here was in US$ so more expensive! Our bill was $500 US, but that did include over $100 booze.
Booze was the one cost saving item – our acquisitions included bottles of gin ($23) and rye, red and white vermouth, a bottle of Lagavulin scotch, a magnum of Baileys ($16) as well as beer and wine (we are here for a month after all ;-). The Lagavulin was the favourite buy of the day at $65 US – there were crates of it; here it is about $145Cdn!
We had one more stop at Walmart on the way home where the prices were more affordable for sure. But the stock up included many pantry staples and should last us the whole month and that includes the week that Patrick, Andrea and Jade will join us.
As mentioned, the wifi in the house was great – as was the phone reception here in Joshua Tree with the card in my phone, with the exception of within the JT park where it is a dead zone. We also discovered that our Amazon Prime downloads were limited to US offerings and there was no TV reception in the house; which was NOT a problem!
In my feeble brain I had March 4 as the arrival date for the kids – but a pleasant surprise that they were to arrive the next day on March 2. Really glad we stocked up!!!
No photos from Michael on this day, but here are some images of where we stayed (it’s location is the yellow star on the google map above – it was ideal!
