Saturday our guests left and I had most of the day to myself. I took a long walk and captured this cholla with my iphone. I love the blue sky! I did have to make a trip to the grocery store to restock the fridge. I did a lot of cooking for my guests. My favorite dinner was our last. Chilean sea bass (my favorite fish) and steamed clams (another all time favorite.)
Sunday, I tried to do nothing after another long walk, but sit in the backyard, read and listen to podcasts — and my favorite bird Red. His singing voice is simply a joy to hear. I had a visit to the bird buddy by a female Cardinal. Maybe it’s his mate?
I’m not sure what to name her. Because of her quieter voice and color, I don’t notice her like I do my buddy Red.
Our guests were so kind and grateful. They were here to scout a nearby lake for an upcoming National Spearfishing competition. They are serious and have won world championships before. This is the second visit to the lake for one of them. Then they are coming back to stay with us the week of the competition in April. They will spend more time underwater, looking for where the fish live. I wonder if other teams prepare like this?
I kind of wish I didn’t go all out cooking for them. (But it was nice to get their compliments.)They will be back in a few weeks with the third member of their crew. I may tell them in advance that I won’t be cooking every night! That they need to know they’ll be on their own. Our casita does have a full kitchen and of course they can go to restaurants.
Another photo from Saturday’s walk. I loved the blue sky and contrast with the beautiful plant. Although I don’t know what type if plant it is.
It was windy and beginning to rain when I went outside to bring in a towel out by the pool. I didn’t want the towel to end up in the pool, or get wet from rain.
I pulled the towel off the recliner and a bobcat jumped out of the fireplace! We both were surprised. She ran to the fence and crawled through to the wash behind our house. I ran into the house. A few minutes later, she returned to the fireplace. I grabbed my camera with the telephoto lens and took a few pictures from inside our bedroom.
Olive the cat noticed her first bobcat. She got low into stalking mode — but stayed far away from the window as she watched. If it’s a bird, she’s right up against the window whacking at the bird through the glass.
The fireplace makes a cozy cat cave.
House Guests
The last house guest stayed with us for several days to scout a local lake. He’s entering a freshwater spearfishing competition. He arrived at our house with his boat and spent the next three days free diving in the lake from dawn to dusk.
He also brought us some treats from a recent fishing trip to Alaska. The freezer in the casita is filled with salmon, rock cod and black cod. There’s also lobster from his free diving off the coast of Southern California. What a treat! He’s welcome back anytime.
This is Black Cod that I cooked in foil on the barbecue. It’s my favorite fish which I used to get in Seattle’s Chinatown while I was in college. Incredibly delicious!
Things are not going swimmingly!
The past two weeks, I got back into the pool at the YMCA for lap swimming. I had stopped swimming during our wet, cold winter months ago. Then summer came and the weather was hot, which means I don’t like being out in the sun.
I was proud of myself and wanted to be consistent with swimming. Then on my swim day, the weather dropped overnight by 50 degrees! It was windy and rainy. I cancelled swimming. It warms up a bit this week, so I’ll get back to the pool.
One day while driving home from the pool, I heard INTELLIGENCE FOR YOUR LIFE MINUTES by John Tesh on the radio. It was about a Harvard study on ending your daily shower with 30-seconds of cold water.
In the study, people who ended their daily shower with 30-seconds of cold water had less sick days than those who took hot showers. I’ve heard of a trend of cold plunge lately by a number of celebrities. My college roommate’s husband said he takes a cold plunge in an icy stream at their home in Sun Valley, Idaho.
I found this information from UCLA:
What is cold therapy?
Cold therapy, also called cryotherapy, uses exposure to cold temperatures to cool the body’s tissues for therapeutic reasons. There are several ways to apply cold therapy, including:
Cold showers, which involve lowering the water temperature below 60 degrees for two to three minutes at a time
Cold spray, used to numb a small area
Cold water immersion or ice baths, or submerging everything but your head and neck in cold water
Localized ice application to treat injuries or specific muscle groups
Whole-body cryotherapy, which exposes the body to very cold vapors
Why cold showers could be good for you
Cold showers are not the primary treatment for any conditions, and conclusive research about cold therapy is still limited. But a quick blast of cold water can be beneficial when used for symptom relief.
Taking cold showers may:
1. Bolster your immunity to common colds
2. Combat symptoms of depression
3. Improve circulation
4. Increase metabolism
5. Reduce inflammation and prevent muscle soreness
6. Relieve localized pain
Our daughter used to take ice baths at swim meets in our hotel room between prelims and finals. The purpose was to flush out inflammation and increase blood flow to her legs.
Our pool isn’t heated and I could use it as a cold plunge pool this winter. Or, try the 30 second shower method. I’ll tell you how it goes.
What are your thoughts about cold showers or ice baths? Would you give it a try?
Have you tried Black Cod otherwise known as Sablefish?
Do you think you could quit social media, texts and emails and have a real vacation? Have a vacation where you’re not interrupted by your smart phone every few minutes, but instead are present in the here and now in the place you’re visiting?
I read about this concept on the Medical Express website from the UK called “Study reveals the emotional journey of a digital detox while travelling,” provided by the University of East Anglia. They did a study on how people are affected by disconnecting when they’re on vacation. People have different responses and some go through anxiety while others are more overwhelmed when they reconnect. Many people felt their experience on vacation was much better without social media if they were out in the wilderness or rural areas. People who vacationed in cities were stressed without map apps.
Here’s an excerpt:
New research reveals the emotional journey that tourists go on when they disconnect from technology and social media while travelling.
The study, by the University of East Anglia (UEA), University of Greenwich and Auckland University of Technology (AUT), investigated how engaging in digital-free tourism impacted travellers’ holiday experiences. It involved losing access to technologies such as mobile phones, laptops, tablets, the Internet, social media and navigation tools.
The researchers, who also took part in the study themselves, examined participants’ emotions before they disconnected, during their disconnection, and after they reconnected.
Published in the Journal of Travel Research, the findings show there were initial anxiety, frustration and withdrawal symptoms among many of the travellers, but later growing levels of acceptance, enjoyment, and even liberation.
The findings come as the demand for so-called ‘digital detox’ holidays is on the rise. Lead author Dr. Wenjie Cai, from the University of Greenwich Business School, said: “In the current ever-connected world, people are used to constant information access and various services provided by different applications.
“However, many people are increasingly getting tired of constant connections through technologies and there is a growing trend for digital-free tourism, so it is helpful to see the emotional journey that these travellers are experiencing.
“Our participants reported that they not only engaged more with other travellers and locals during their disconnected travels, but that they also spent more time with their travel companions.”
As well as looking at emotions Dr. Cai, working with Dr. Brad McKenna of UEA’s Norwich Business School and Dr. Lena Waizenegger from AUT, used the theory of affordance to understand the loss or gain of technological opportunities while travellers engage in digital-free tourism. For example, Google Maps affords navigation and when taken away, the participants lost the ability to navigate, which caused anxiety for some.
Dr. McKenna said the findings have valuable implications for tour operators and destination management organisations to gain a better understanding of travellers’ emotions when developing ‘off-the-grid’ packages or tech-savvy tour products.
The road to our family property.
This reminds me of our cabin in the Pacific Northwest. We had no running water but a pump. No shower, but an ice cold river, and no TV or electricity of any kind. Plus, an outhouse instead of indoor plumbing.
My parents would take us up there for long weekends and we were fully engaged with shooting down the rapids on air mattresses, fishing for small rainbow trout, and jumping off the rock into the swimming hole. Mom and dad let my brother and me invite friends and that was even more fun to share the experience with them.
Cabin in the woods.
Mom fishing in the river when I was up for a visit from California.
I caught one!
Mom used to joke that it was a perfect marriage test. She said that when we found “the one” we should spend five days to a week with them at the cabin. My husband and I went early on and we did just fine. We’re still married 34 years later, so I guess my mom was right.
Article excerpts: ‘Turning it off: Emotions in Digital-Free Travel’ Wenjie Cai, Brad McKenna and Lena Waizenegger, is published in the Journal of Travel Research on August 14, 2019.
If you’ve disconnected from electronics during vacation, how did you feel? If you haven’t tried it, do you think someday you could take a digital detox?
My kids learned perseverance and to never give up from swimming.
I got an unfortunate email yesterday. It was from an agent, who was reviewing my mid-grade novel I’ve been working on for years. Long story short, it was a no.
This is a big goal of mine, to get this book published. Finding an agent is one step along the way, and I had glimmers of hope when a couple agents were truly interested and one in particular, wanted eight weeks to take a deep dive.
When my husband consoled me I said, “I have two choices. I can quit or keep going.”
Four times since that email, I ran into messages like someone was placing a big neon sign in front of me with specific directions.
One
Dad shared that he spent almost three hours fishing yesterday. He was ready to give up, but decided to cast one more time in the last few minutes before he was due to return the boat. Yes, he caught a fish!
Two
I was looking at FB and a writer friend posted how lucky she was to find several four-leaf clovers yesterday after hours of looking. She said to never give up. Never!
Three
On Twitter, I saw from bestselling author Brad Thor a book recommendation for #Grit, a book about passion and perseverance. Yes, I’ll order it from Amazon today.
Here was part of his advice to get in touch with your feelings when you started on the journey:
“What are the reasons that I want to achieve this goal? List 2-3 reasons for why this goal is important to you. This is the simplest way to get in touch with your original set of motivations.
How will you feel when you push past the resistance you are feeling now? Think back to the last time you kicked down the wall of resistance that was in front of you. Yeah, that time. How did you feel afterwards? Proud? Like a certified O.G.?
Will you regret giving up a year from now? Imagine yourself a year from now. A year smarter, a year older, and hopefully a year further along. Is “Future You” going to be pumped about you having quit today?”
I got the message loud and clear. I’m not giving up on my goals or dreams. This is all part of the process, and yes there will be some ups and downs. It’s so cliched, but it’s also true.
In masters swimming we have a new slogan and shirts. After a hard set that I was convinced I couldn’t finish, I blurted, “Hey, it’s not that bad!”
Showing off new shirts at Piranha Swim Team’s Masters. “Hey, it’s not that bad.”
Yes, getting a rejection letter is not great, but how much better is it than quitting on a dream? Honestly, it’s not that bad.
I wrote earlier this summer how everything that could go wrong, did go wrong with our RVing experience.
We left the RV up in the cool mountains in So Cal a short drive from our home and we’ve used it as a weekend escape from the dreaded heat of the summer desert.
After our first weekend, things settled down. We found out that the flooding we experienced was our own fault as newbies. There are these valves that need to be opened in order to drain the grey and black water out of the vehicle. Who knew?
Things settled down and it’s been a nice and quiet getaway for us. We spend lots of time reading, listening to books on tape, walking, hiking and napping.
The best thing is my dad is loving it. He’s there every day when we are not. He’s made a ton of new friends—funny we haven’t at all! —and he’s able to fish to his heart’s content. At 84, he’s found a friend with a boat who enjoys fishing and his company. I’m glad the RV worked out so well for dad.
We went up this past weekend. We must be jinxed at the RV life, because everything worked fine for my dad, but not for us. First, the newly installed DISH tv didn’t work. That was my fault.I used the wrong remote and screwed it up. Then, the hot water wasn’t hot. The final straw was the heater. It went on for about 30 seconds and turned off. I wanted to escape the high desert temps, but the mountain nights in the 30s and 40s was not exactly what I dreamed of.
A view of the marina from the RV park.
I called DISH and the RV repairman. The TV guy was great and gave me a lesson in remote control use.At this moment, we’re home and dad is dealing with the water heater and furnace and will call to share the news.
