2020 Summer Bucket List - How Did I Do?

 

It was the longest summer I can remember. Regardless, as of tomorrow it is officially over, so I'm back to report on how I did with my 2020 COVID Summer Bucket List, which you can review here.

July-August Bucket List

1)  Attend a SUP Yoga class.  Yes, Done!!!  This was both easier and more fun than I'd anticipated. The moves were decently easy, with positions warrier one and warrier two being the hardest we attempted on the SUP's. On land, I find yoga positions warrier one and two to be pretty easy, but on a SUP they were an entirely different animal all together!

 

Here is my SUP class posed in warrier two-

If you look carefully, you can see two students in the, oops, water.
Our yoga teacher said to consider it cooling off, not falling in, LOL.

2)  Make an appointment with bathroom design consultant. Yes, Done!!!  Signed, sealed, and delivered. We are well on our way to seeing all four of our bathrooms completely redone/remodeled before the end of the year.

 

We selected this silvery gray quartz with white veining for all of our bathroom countertops.

3)  Attend a drive-in live concert.  Yes, Done!!!  We enjoyed a Beetles tribute band, and it was fun, but too pricey at $125 per car. It may be that we are jaded just a bit at being able to enjoy similar caliber bands for free during the summer when it seems like there are concerts in the park happening everywhere, so I think we'll wait for those to return vs. ponying up big $ during the pandemic.

4)  Try two new grilling recipes.  Yes, Done!!! We made the first two of these three grilling recipes that the wonderful Laura from The Occasional Nomad recently shared, and they were each delicious! 

5)  Try two new cocktail recipes.  No!!!  Without the ability to enjoy fun cocktails at a restaurant, generally with friends, I found myself lacking motivation to tackle them at home. Additionally, I find it much harder to tolerate hard alcohol as I get older. Hard alcohol now generally results in my wanting to take a nap!  

6)  Meet friends at our harbor for a socially-distanced picnic dinner.  Yes, Done!!!  We've enjoyed several get togethers with friends, one couple at a time, and each one was lovely. There was plenty of room to spread out, and plenty of activity to look at in the harbor. This one will be a keeper for sure, even post-pandemic.

7)  Explore Laguna Beach's new Forest Avenue outdoor dining promenade.  Yes, Done!!! It seemed like a big deal when I added this to my Summer Bucket List in July, however, since then pretty much every restaurant around here has been successful in creating large outside dining spaces, so I wasn't as impressed as I'd expected when I walked Laguna Beach's new promenade. I guess that's a good thing in the long run!

 

8) Refresh our used brick fireplace.  Yes, Done!!!  We went from this . . .

To this . . . 

9)  Attend an organized bicycle club ride.  Yes, Done!!! And ironically, and absolutely perfect COVID activity because we saw, literally, no one! The ride information was all online, so we downloaded the ride sheet, drove to the start, and surprise, saw absolutely no one from the bicycle club the entire day. What was fun/different from when we ride on our own however, was the different side streets the route took us on. We much enjoyed the variety from our normal straight line on-our-own bike rides, and will be back to ride again with the club once the pandemic has eased and folks can gather again.

10)  Run four miles.  No!!! My very poor excuse is that it's been to hot to run this summer, so I will move this item to my Fall Bucket List.

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How about you? Did you set any summer goals, and if so, how did you do?

Currently 09/15/2020: Is This What A Goldfish Feels Like?

By now, the entire world has likely heard about the wildfires burning throughout the western United States. And while we have no wildfires burning here in Orange County currently, we are not getting off scot free as our air quality has been affected for days, with a couple more still to go. We are in the AQ zone designated as 'Unhealthy For Sensitive Groups,' which is neither my husband or myself, so we've been continuing to get out and be active, but primarily at the ocean where the breezes are constant and the air seems better.

This might be an illusion, by the way!

I grew up in Southern California, and my earliest memories are three fold- 1) I remember the heatwaves of our summers, during which we'd sleep under just a sheet with a plug in fan blowing in our face, 2) I remember the terrible smog and how it caused my lungs to burn when I'd breath in too deeply, and ) I remember the wildfires, and the gray skies and awful ashes that would cover our cars and yard during the very worst ones.

All three of these improved over my lifetime due to 1) Air conditioning, 2) Stricter standards on auto emissions among many other changes (Clean Air Act, etc.), and 3) I moved to a less wildfire-prone region.

So this week is the first time in several decades that we have felt the impact of our seasonal wildfires, and it has been a struggle to be sure. Clearly, much less of a struggle than for those people fleeing, evacuating, losing property, or being stuck in areas with truly awful air quality, but a struggle none the less.

Our solution/coping mechanism has been to spend as much time as we can near the ocean in the cooler daytime hours. We've been huddling in the house otherwise this week, with A/C on and windows closed, hence the cute little goldfish photo above. I desperately miss the fresh air flowing through the house that we've gotten used to since moving to our hilly coastal location some three years ago, but I know that this too shall pass, so instead I'm trying to focus on the little tasks I've been procrastinating in completing due to the call of the outdoors. 

'This to shall pass' is my mantra currently.

Otherwise, Currently I Am . . . 

Reading  My first science fiction novel ever, The Mote In God's Eye by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. I have read several Ray Bradbury books previously, but they are so exquisitely written it's hard for me to think of them as science fiction. This novel, however, is definitely straight up boiler plate science fiction. It's our current book club selection, and at 556 pages, it's loooong, so initially I was very grumpy about having to read. However . . . somewhere around page 100, I appear to have gotten hooked in spite of myself, and I am now finding myself unable to put it down.

I admit that, just possibly, I've been wrong about the genre of science fiction.

Cooking  Lots and lots this week, resulting in so many leftovers I may not end up having to cook much for the next few days. On the menu has been Greek salad, BLT & Avocado salad, grilled pork chops smothered in Balsamic sweet onions, pollo asada, and tonight, this King Ranch Chicken Casserole from Eating Well magazine.

Baking  A favorite brownie recipe that I make over and over again because I almost always have the needed ingredients on hand, it's super easy, and it freezes nicely. Because, sugar addict over here so all baked goods get frozen asap for my husband to then enjoy one by one at his leisure.

Planning  For several, yeah, trips. We are leaving at the end of the month for a 10 day RV'ing trip along California's Central Coast, where the air should be clean, the surf should be strong, and the wine harvest flowing. Seriously, we do this trip pretty much annually because the coastal hikes are simply sublime, and there are wineries literally everywhere. Even during COVID this trip works because we are generally on our own and isolated while hiking, and wineries tend to have beautifully uncrowded patios on which to enjoy wine tasting.

Then, pretty much immediately upon our return, we'll be getting on our first airplane since COVID arrived, flying to Metro DC to visit our youngest daughter and family. Upon arrival we will all head south to Richmond, Virginia to enjoy a VRBO stay while celebrating my oldest granddaughter's 6th birthday. 

We are much looking forward to both much-needed trips.

Looking Forward To  our bathrooms remodel kicking off soon right after we return from the above trips. They are going to be beautiful once finished, particularly as compared to how they look now. In fact, here is just one of the Before's for your viewing pleasure. The wallpaper has since been removed, but still, you get the idea . . . 

This is our upstairs guest bathroom, and I am very sure our guests will enjoy it
muuuuuch more once we are finished with the remodel.

Enjoying  Our daily walks at the beach. The one thing feeling like we are enclosed inside when at home has done is to motivate us to get outside each and every day. Yesterday we enjoyed a wonderful six mile walk along the bluffs of Crystal Cove in Newport Beach, today we are walking six miles through our harbor, then back via Doheny Beach. Tomorrow the plan is to walk the shorelines of San Clemente just a couple of miles to our south. We feel ridiculously fortunate to have so many options for getting outside given the current situation with our wildfires.

As much of this as we can get currently, please!

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That's it for me this week. What's going on Currently where you are?