Year end review-2020-Part 1-January

Although I normally jump right into January for my yearly reviews, I must cover a few events that occurred at the end of 2019 that fore- shadowed things to come in 2020.  
So let us go back a couple of months to the RV trip we took in October of 2019. Knowing that we would be travelling in Arizona, we thought that by waiting until October, we would be able to avoid the worst of the summer heat. We were wrong. Our plan to do 2 Adventurequests in Tucson and Phoenix were thwarted by the 100 degree+ temperatures. We had the dogs with us and knew that neither they nor we would enjoy the game in that kind of weather. Other than that, we did have a lovely trip (Christy joined us for the first part and then went off on her own) but we decided to postpone the quests until my birthday in January when we figured that it HAD to be cooler.

Also, at the end of 2019, we celebrated with family members (whose privacy/identity I want to respect) as my niece completed her Vidal Sassoon cosmetology course and became a licensed cosmetologist. The family had been living in Santa Monica for a year in order for my niece to attend the school there. Santa Monica is a mecca of international tourists/travelers and very close to the LA International Airport and port of Los Angeles. I think this may have played a role in later events.

In the beginning of December, my daughter, Christy and I went with my sister-in-law and niece to a special holiday event at the Descanso Gardens in La Canada, called “The Enchanted Forest of Light”. It was a magical experience and we had such a good time together that we wanted to try and do something else together during the holidays, like a drive to view Christmas lights. But as we tried to plan that, we kept having to put it off because my sister-in-law wasn’t feeling well. . .

As we postponed one week after another, she kept saying that no one could figure out what was wrong with her. She had a cough. her chest hurt, she was nauseous, her ears felt plugged and she just could not kick whatever it was. She took antibiotics, tried cough medicine (although the pharmacies were out of the prescription kind), and got a steroid shot in her ear, tried to rest, even took down their Christmas tree, thinking it was exasperating the problem. But nothing seemed to work.
My sister-in-law is so conscious of her health and takes such good care of herself that it was really strange that this thing hung on to her like that. She ended up being sick for a full 12 weeks. . . (more on that in part 3. . .)

Enter 2020 . . .

January

As the year began, Vladi and I started planning our most ambitious RV trip to date. Our only reservation was in West Virginia on Memorial Day weekend to be part of a family reunion with my cousins, Janeen, Frankie and Merilee; my Uncle Charles’ daughters, whom I had never met, but knew of through letters that they had sent me in 2003. Anyway, Vladi and I figured that if we were going all that distance, we should visit other people that we (I) know in the eastern time zone. And we might as well add a few other people in along the way. . . So, we started mapping out our route and notifying people of our intentions. We also posted a map of the USA on Facebook, with pins indicating the cities that we hoped to visit. We were excited.



From Jan. 16 to Jan. 22, Vladi and I took a road trip in the car without the dogs to complete our mission of the 2 Arizona Urban Adventure Quests as well as visiting Albuquerque to purchase some copper artwork I had seen there that I wanted to use as décor on the outside of our house, oh, and to celebrate my 61st birthday. We stayed in Airbnb’s, which were terrific, and we had a blast. And yes, the weather was much more pleasant, even though we got caught in a little bit of drizzle in Phoenix, some of my favorite pictures were of the fun we had trying to pose like the statues in front of the Herberger Theater Center there. Vladi and I shared a lot of laughs as I tried to balance on one foot and raise my other leg and arms to the correct angle. And he had his eye on the statue that didn't require any of that for his pose!

One of the things I love about the Urban Adventure Quests is finding unexpected cool things within the cities that we visit. In Tucson, there is a place called “Ben’s Bells” which I was drawn to because of the name. It is a little non-profit organization whose mission statement reads:

"The mission of Ben's Bells is to teach individuals and communities about the positive impacts of intentional kindness and to inspire people to practice kindness as a way of life."

How cool is that? We saw their artwork throughout the city.

Even though we didn’t do a Quest in Albuquerque this time (we did one on a previous visit), we had a great time there as well. We went to dinner with Faith, whom we are friends with through other life-long friends, the Heaton family, and she chose a Japanesse restaurant where we met for dinner and boy, was it good! It was one of those places where the chef cooks your dinner in front of you and those guys not only know how to cook, but they are also terrific entertainers! So fun!

For my birthday the next day, Vladi and I went out for Mexican food (my favorite!) but we only got a picture of my cake.

Vladi had a great big soup to start his dinner and couldn’t finish his entrée (which he said was really good,) so we packed it up to go but then he forgot to take it with him. He was disappointed when we realized it the next day.

The next day we sought out the shop where I had seen the copper figures that I couldn’t stop thinking about. It was in the area where we had done the Adventurequest and it wasn’t hard to find. But it was hard to make a decision about what I wanted. There were so many beautiful pieces. I ended up getting pieces that followed a southwest/desert theme, including a sun, a group of wild horses, a howling coyote, a saguaro cactus and (a little off-theme) a trio of hummingbirds. They are so beautiful and I was very pleased with myself when we got them in place on the house. I have always admired things that people in our neighborhood decorate their houses with, so I was happy to finally join their ranks. This is how it turned out:

Continuing our trip, we stopped in Winslow, Arizona for lunch and we had to take pictures on the corner where there is a tribute to the Eagles song that made the place famous.

After having a great lunch, we continued on to Phoenix where we did another Adventurquest (see favorite pictures above) and then we headed home. We had a ton of fun, as we always do!

That very weekend, we participated in a surprise party for our friends Ralph and Janeen’s 50th wedding anniversary. Their daughter Deonna and grand-daughter Misty did the planning and had been working on it for several months. I provided a lot of photos from our 30+ year friendship. It was at BJs Brewhouse on Sat. Jan. 25. It was so good to see that all 6 of their kids made the effort to be there, plus most of the grandkids. It was a special day.



Ralph & Janeen and their 6 offspring

 

 The first group plus spouses, significant others and kids.

The next day, we joined Ralph and Janeen at Ralph and Sara’s Airbnb near the beach in Oxnard to play some games and spend some time together. While we were there, one of us got a breaking news alert (probably Vladi) that Kobe Bryant had just died in a helicopter crash, along with his daughter and others on their way to his sports academy in Newbury Park. It was a shock. First, because Kobe Bryant was in the prime of his life, second, because it was so close by (the crash was in Calabasas,) and third because it was so unexpected. Anyway, we still enjoyed our day, but we were a little subdued by the news.



That same day, Christy and my niece spent the day together at an annual hair expo in Long Beach. They had a great time and made plans to attend together every year.

It was a pretty glorious January.