Hit For Haiti

March 11 ~ 12

News junkie is a good way to describe me..have always read several newspapers a day and even when I can't get my NY Times, I find the local papers wherever we are interesting....and we find out great things to do that we would never have find out about.

Hit for Haiti was announced a couple of weeks ago in one teeny little paragraph about a tennis tournament here in the desert.  The BNP Paribas Open is held in a fabulous facility, Indian Wells Tennis Garden (iwtg.net), that's second only  in size and fabulousness to the Arthur Ashe U.S. Open venue.  Holds over 16,000.  Anyway, following a lead from Roger Federer at the Australian Open, it was announced that Federer, Nadal, Aggasi and Sampras would play an exhibition match before the March 12 evening matches for those who held a ticket for that night.  Read that....hop in the car....head to the stadium box office....secure two good seats!

Lo and behold!  A week later it's announced that Sephie Graff, Martina Navratilova, Justine Henin and Lindsey Davenport will play a ladies match that night.  Needless to say the tickets sell like wildfire....but we've already got ours!!!!  Then the day of the event, I read Tony Bennet is now going to sing.

What an evening... quite a treat.  It begins with a lovely Salute to Heroes honoring our military and first responders.  The Palm Springs High School Band puts on quite a show and is joined by active marines in a moving tribute.

The women play first and they're all miked so you can hear every word they say.  Martina needs to start a road tour stand-up comedy routine.  She is hysterical....lightens everybody up and the chatter is non stop.

Stephie keeps losing her mike pack during play and that leads to a duct tape fix that leads to inneuendo remarks.

While the banter is quick fire and the laughter frequent, this is still great tennis. And although this has the feel of country club tennis, you are often reminded of the heights these tennis greats have achieved.  Navatrilova and Henin take the eight-game pro set 8-6. Everyone of the 16,000 fans are totally appreciative.

The men take the court and the place explodes in applause. Then Rod Laver walks on court for the coin toss!

Agassi needs to join Martina on the road tour...he keeps the trash talk going while the other three, particularly Sampras, are much more serious.  Federer gets in the mix and the verbal slings and arrows fly along with 125 mile serves and amazing gets. Sampras and Federer win 8-6.

Larry Ellison, the Oracle guru, bought this tournament last December.  The firm donates $1 million to the Red Cross Haiti relief efforts and the contribution buckets are passed throughout the stadium. Be interesting to find out later how much was donated.

Oh, Tony Bennet was terrible and sung what I thought a totally inappropriate song...."Smile" while pictures of ravaged Haiti were on the jumbotron.  That was the only downer. 

Forget about him, the evening was a total blast!

Where Next ~ A Moving Target

March 9~10
Chasing the sun in this inordinately bizarre weather year is not easy!  After three weeks in the desert, I'm getting bored.  It's a totally bratty thing to say; where we are is gorgeous and the weather, mostly lovely, but this trip is all about exploration and adventure.  I'm normally totally into wonderful, luxurious resorts, but right now I would like to get moving.  We're committed to be here until the 17th....have spent many hours trying to figure out the weather patterns so we can get to some of the places we want to see.  Everywhere is cold and some still snowy!

It's not particualarly adventuresome, but Las Vegas seems to be the answer for the next leg.  The Las Vegas Motor Coach Resort (lasvegasmotorcoachresort.com) is a sister property to the Motorcoach Country Club in Indio so it should be very nice and there are numerous things we'd like to see around there....Hoover Dam, Lake Mead and a portion of the Grand Canyon. 

We've also been in contact with the local chapter of Habitat for Humanity.  As long as we're still hanging out waiting to chase the sun, we might as well do some good.  Rick is planning to help on the build, I'm so not into that but plan to work in their retail shop.  Plans still shaping up, but have made reservations for next week. 

After that is still in flux, but here's what I'm thinking right now.  Vegas to Sedona to Bryce Canyon to Salt Lake then back to Boulder to visit Rick's family.

All of this is so weather dependent and because of the rather dicey mountain crossing, we're even considering leaving Tor in Salt Lake or thereabouts and driving the car to Boulder.  It's a moving target and will need to be regularly tweaked.

Tweaking Tor

March 6 ~ 8

Rainy weekend....good time to catch up on wash, ironing, cleaning including cleaning the carpet which was getting pretty gross looking.  We also have a long list of smaller projects that we think will make Tor even more conducive to comfortable living.

The closets have always made us nuts.  Instead of a rod, they have a rail with individual hanger spaces...187 of them to be exact.  And if you fill everyone of those 187 spaces, which of course I am, you end up with a tangle of things that cannot be hung properly since you cannot push the other clothes out of the way and straighten what you're  hanging....leads to lots of wrinkles. 

We thought this configuration had something to do with being in a RV or motion or something.  Well, we've been in some very fancy coaches recently (the last one $2.2 million!....gorgeous!) and they all had regular closet rods.  So thanks to  this rainy weekend, now we have them too....makes all the difference in the world....wish we had done this ages ago.






The other "life changing" project was actually done a couple of weeks ago...pre-Olympics.  I am an Olympic freak, have been my whole life except I will admit now it's not quite the same with every athlete drawing down hefty paychecks ....I digress.  Inexplicably the Olympics, even though they were being held in the Pacific Time Zone, were being delayed until 8p.m PST.....11 p.m. Eastern time.  Old news!  And NBC in an effort to recoup their enormous investment in the Games seemed to have about 50% of the broadcast devoted to commercials.  Even though I reaped many benefits by spending years creating ads , I can't stand it anymore. 

We have tried to have satellite TV installed in Tor and other variations on the theme....but nothing had the DVR component.  Rick solved that with the purchase of a $65 gadget that records on the laptop and works just like a TIVO.  Olympics were watched on our schedule and took half the time as we zipped through all the ads!  Downside, Rick still hasn't figured out how to hide all the wires....big prob...need a solution.

Can't believe this month that we were afraid was going to be way to long too stay in one place has passed so quickly.  Just 10 days left....a few more things we'd like to see/do here and I need to find someplace to get my hair cut again and we need to figure where we go from here!