Everywhere we go it seems like they are selling strawberries. They
start selling early in the morning and are here until they sell out,
usually around 2:00 to 3:00. They are fresh picked daily in Oxnard,CA
near the coast and are sold all over the Murrieta and Temecula area. We
buy a box or two a week! Its a real pleasure to have fresh strawberries
every day on our cereal or just eat them. (Clicking on the pictures makes them bigger)
Strawberry Stand
The strawberries are from Thacker
Berry Farms. Their flyer days that "Thacker Berry Farms is always searching the world-over to find the very best strawberry
on earth. We currently grow a variety called "Seascape". This variety
is grown by the sea, and that makes it very special. Not only is the variety
itself unique but when anything is grown by salt water the salt permeates the
soil with nutrients enhancing both appearance and flavor. Vine ripened to
perfection and picked daily, we are sure you will find these strawberries
heaven by the sea.
In contrast supermarket strawberries are picked half ripe and then gassed with
carbon dioxide for long shelf life and their variety is grown for production,
not flavor. So tell you friends that there's a new berry in town at
"Thacker Berry Farms."
Boxes of Fresh Strawberries
These are the ones we bought minus a few that we ate on the way home.
Last night we went to Old Town Temecula to see "Of Mice & Men" by John Steinbeck presented by the Temecula Valley Players at the The Old Town Temecula Community Theater. I think its amusing that I have handled this book many times in its many editions, but never actually read it or knew the whole plot. Consequently, the play was very intriguing but sad. It was well presented and the actors were great. We look forward to attending more plays by this group.
First Edition Dust jacket
Points to identify true 1st Edition of this modern classic: "Covici Friede, Publishers, 1937. Hard Cover. 1st Edition. First Printing of the
First Edition, First Issue, First State with the words 'and only moved
because the heavy hands were pendula' on page 9, and the bullet between
the two 8's on the page 88. Beige cloth stamped in terracotta, black and
blue top edge; in original dust jacket with the $2.00 price, listed in
upper corner of front flap"
Today we went for a 4 mile hike at the Santa Rosa Plateau with San, Mike and San's nieces. It is a state protected area with many hiking trails.
We took one trail that brought us 2 miles out to n adobe farm house and back for a total of 4 miles. It was a gorgeous day for hiking, in the high 70's with a clear blue sky. The scenery was fantastic.
You can click on any of these picture to get a better view .
Did you know that mistletoe is a parasitic fungus? Read about it here on wikipedia. Around here on the golf course there are many trees devoid of leaves (it is the middle of winter after all!) But high up in the bare branches are clumps of green leaves.
Mistletoe high up in the Trees
Mistletoe close-up
This is the mistletoe
The traditional way of harvesting mistletoe is shooting it down. Read about it here.
Decided to go to the San Bernadino Swap Meet(Flea Market) to meet up with Elly's cousins Duane, Renee & Phil. This market was filled with mostly vendors of older stuff & older junk. Not many vendors were selling new things like underwear & socks, so it was more interesting than the ones in Riverside.
Entrance to the Swap Meet
We managed to find a table to be used as Elly's photo table and a packing table, so the trip was worth it. Elly also picked up a small brass duck for the mantle.
We went to the Temecula Farmer's Market today to pick up our weekly groceries. Here are just a few scenes from the Market. We are so lucky to have fresh locally grown and raised food in the middle of February. We picked up some of the asparagus, a local organic chicken and local sweet potatoes
For those who are spatially or distance impaired, I decided to give you
an idea of just how small Massachusetts is and how really big
California. I have superimposed an outline of Massachusetts over
Southern California, it is drawn to scale using a web site I found. You
can see that the entire state of Massachusetts fits totally inside
Southern California not even including San Diego!.
We live in Murrieta, about where Southbridge, MA would be. Riverside is up around he Fitchburg area and LA is way over near North Adams, MA. The beach in Oceanside would be where Harford, CT is. I hope this give you some idea of just how big this area is.
One of the pleasures of living here in Murrieta are the sights and scenic views we get to experience everyday during our normal daily errands. The panoramic view below is what we see everyday on our trips to the post office. Since it rained here yesterday, the higher elevation got some snow. You can see the snow capped mountains in the distance.
Click on picture to make it bigger
Here is another view as we descend into the town
Click to make bigger
Found a dining room set on craigslist today. The people are going to deliver it too! Waiting for it to come tonight. Should make the living room/dining room look more normal.
Well, you see, Elly bought this Norwegian Blue Parrott at John's auction back about a month ago. When we moved, she decided to ship it out to California via UPS with the rest of our "stuff". (you can read the earlier blog postings about our stuff!). Anyway, on Sunday, Elly picked up a cage for her parrot. But something appears wrong! The parrot hasn't said a word since we put him in the cage. I thinks he's dead, but Elly says he's just resting.
Elly's Parrot
Our excuse is that it is raining here today so we are bored
Monday & Tuesday were spent running errands. On Monday, we drove back to Riverside (the county sat) to go to the Californian State Board of Equalization Office. That is where we applied to get our resellers certificate so we don't have to pay sales tax at auctions and estate sales. After waiting in the waiting room for about 15 minutes, we were brought into the office where a very nice woman assisted us in filling out the paperwork and giving us our resale certificate. We are now officially in business in California! Hurray!
I also sold three more books today on Amazon. Our inventory is dwindling to 11 books total. We need to get more books!
Today I went to CVS pharmacy to get some of our prescriptions refilled. It's nice to have a national pharmacy that just refills prescriptions regardless of what state you're in. We also set them up for automatic refill and they will call us when they are ready. Just like back in Mass.
One thing different from back in Mass though are the liquor laws. It seems that not only liquor stores sell liquor, but just about every one else does too. All the grocery stores, the pharmacy's like CVS and Walgreens, and Sams Club carry a full range of beer, wines and hard liquor. The strange thing though that you cannot walk out of the stores carrying liquor that is not in a bag. That means that if you buy a 24-pack of Budweiser, they have to put it in a bag! Go figure!
Today we headed out for Oceanside by way of Escondido. There was a small antique show in Escondido, but it was not something we would go back to. On the way to the beach, Elly saw an antique shop from the highway. We got off and went antique shopping. Elly found a few accent pieces for the house and more info about where the good estate sales are.
Our Oysters on the Half-Shell
When we got to Oceanside we stopped at the visitor center there. The two ladies working there were from Marshfield, MA and Nyack, NY. Both were a long way from home, just like us. We picked up a bunch of reading material and went looking for a place to eat. We ate at theLighthouse Oyster Bar & Grill on the Harbor. We both had a half-dozen blue point oyster on the half shell. Elly thought they were as good as the Wellfleet oysters back home.
Here is a panoramic view from the restaurants balcony.
View from the balcony. Click to make bigger
Pelican Waiting for Food
Elly with Pelican
After dinner we drove to the Oceanside Pier. It is the longest wooden pier in the United States. Click here to read about it. As we were walking along the pier, we saw many people fishing and many pelicans waiting for dinner from the successful fishermen.
Elly even posed with one of them making sure to keep her distance as they do bite! Here is a video of a pelican chowing down on a fish from a fisherman.
There were many people playing on the beach & in the water. The water was cold!
Just been reading up about Murrieta. A little over 100,000 people live here. Temecula, just south of Murrieta, is about the same size but a little more commercial with larger shopping centers. You can learn more about Murrieta and Temecula using wikipedia. Clickhere for Murrieta andhere for Temecula.
We got up early today, but not for yard sales. We will miss all the yards sales today because we have to go get the desk that we bought last weekend and that Elly has been desperately waiting for. We arranged for some local movers to get the four pieces that we bought from a family that is moving in with their parents in Las Vegas. But we have to go meet the movers and pay for the desk.
Turtles in the Pond (click to make bigger)
Here is a nice picture of some turtles in the pond just outside our patio. (just for Gracie!).
We hit a few yard sales before we got to the desk place because the movers called and said that they would be a half hour late. They arrived at the new time, wrapped the pieces and loaded them on the truck. About a half hour later they arrived at the condo and unloaded the pieces into the condo. Elly is very happy with her desk and credenza.
In the afternoon we hit a few more yard sales down by the Pechanga Casino. We decided to go visit the casino to see what it as like. It was filled with electronic slot machines. Since we were hungry we opted for the buffet. What a buffet it was. There was any kind of food that you would want plus enough desert options to make anyone gain a few pounds. The buffet became our lunch and dinner. We were stuffed when we left.
Yesterday, we had our first real visitors in our new home. Elly's cousin Joyce came down with her son, daughter-in-law and grand daughter (visiting from Connecticut) for a visit and to see our new home. We decide to take them to Old Town Temecula. We ate lunch at Rosa's Cantina (see our post in October), and then we visited four of the antique shops there before heading back home. A good day was had by all.
Today, we drove up to Perris for a few yard sales. There aren't many yard sales on Thursday, they all start tomorrow but we decided to take the trip as we wanted to see Perris was like. We bought a nice brass floor lamp with a leaded glass shade for the living room, a desk lamp and a book. Not much, but it was worth the trip for the floor lamp alone.
On the way back, we stopped in theLake Elsinore Outletsin Lake Elsinore. You can tell that the economy is bad by the empty stores and the lack of any crowds. The place was deserted except for a few shoppers. Nothing like the crowded outlets back home in Wrentham. We bought a few things for the kitchen that we needed like a rolling pin and bottle brushes.
Today, it was 85 degrees here. It broke the temperature records. Dinner is lobster and perch from the farmers market in a garlic white wine sauce. Elly says its a perfect day!
Unlike in the song, it does sometimes rain in Southern California. Today was overcast, sprinkling and about 55-60 degrees. Elly says its "freezing". I think she already forgot what "freezing" is like. Elly got tired of waiting for her desk, so she set up her eBay photo studio on cardboard boxes, took her pictures and put a few things upon eBay. You can click here to see her items on eBay. We are using the gas fireplace often to keep the chill out of the air in the morning. Elly loves having her morning coffee by the fireplace. The flowers in this picture are the fresh cut flowers Elly bought at the Temecula Farmers Market on Sunday.
Today I painted one of the shelves that we bought at the yard sales to match the red in the kitchen. I also went to U-Haul to try to get my hitch into the hitch receiver in case I need to use a trailer. The hitch was all rusted from the New England salt. After about 20 minutes of chipping rust out from inside the receiver, the U-Haul tech managed to get the hitch in & pinned. I think now it is permanently installed because I don't think it will be possible to get it out due to the rust. The cars in California have no rust on their under-carriages. All the cars are nice and shinny. I think we have the crappiest car the condo complex. Oh well!
Today we feel more civilized after getting connected with Verizon FIOS. We now have HD TV, High Speed Internet and Digital Phone. We now have a local California home phone number but no phone yet. So keep calling us on our cell phones until we find a good phone at a yard sale.
We also took a walk to find to the big pool. There are two pools: one for the Master Association and a smaller one for our condo association. This is a picture of the big pool. I am sure it will get a lot of use as the weather warms up.
Went to Debbie's today to watch the big game. It was good to see everyone again. Really bummed that the Pats lost to the Giants in the Superbowl AGAIN! Oh, time to move on. Need to spend today figuring out how to get the desk and stuff we bought on Friday moved to the condo.
We have to stay home today because we should be getting Verizon FIOS TV & Internet. Yeah!
Today we hit the yard sales in Murrieta & Temecula. After looking at craigslist, we put the addresses in google maps on my xoom went shopping. It would be impossible to get around in a new town without my Xoom and google maps GPS. We picked up a few things for ebay, a few books for Amazon (our inventory is now up to 10 items), and we managed to score a desk, credenza, coffee/tv table and side table. We left a deposit, now we have to figure out a way to get it home!
Before we headed home we stopped at the Temecula Farmers Market. OMG, we can get freshly picked fruit and vegetables in the middle of winter. We picked up 3 small baskets of fresh strawberries and some beef jerky. We already had lettuce etc from grocery shopping. From now on we will shop at the Farmer's Market. You can click the link above and see what is in season.
After we got back home, I got to thinking "wouldn't it be great to have an app that you could punch in the yard sale address on my Xoom and have it map the itinerary?" Well, there is one, it also scans craigslist and puts all the yard sale address for that day on the map and you can select which ones you want to go to, and have it create an itinerary. This is great, check it out here: Yard Sale Treasure Map
Update: One of the books I picked up today already sold on Amazon. Wow!
As promised, I finally was able to post the video of us moving into the condo. You can watch it below. It gives you a much better view of what the condo actually looks like.
Here's another video I shot standing on the patio outside the kitchen sliding door.
The past few days have been very hectic. It's like trying to move in to your very first apartment. Remember, we brought nothing with us except a few boxes of kitchen stuff, a few boxes of books, and four suitcase of clothes. We got the bed but we still had to sit on the floor and use boxes as tables. Our refrigerator is one of those beach styrofoam coolers that you can get at the Dollar Store.
We found a real nice slate kitchen table and four chairs on craigslist. Elly enjoys her morning coffee at the new kitchen table, siting by the gas lit fireplace and watching the ducks and turtles in the pond outside the kitchen door.
We also found a real nice butcher block kitchen island cabinet that matches the kitchen perfectly on craigslist. There are a lot of furniture stores in the area because of all the housing developments that sprung before the real estate crash. A lot of them are having "going out of business" sales and the prices are competitive because of all the stores. We got a real deal on a four piece living room set (sofa, love seat, chair & ottoman). The set was delivered yesterday, so now we can sit down and relax. The fridge is coming today.
We have also been accumulating inventory for eBay and Amazon so we can get to work to pay for all this stuff! Hoping to go to Hemet for an Estate Sale today.
We are really bummed because we won't get TV or Internet until after the Superbowl, so we are going over Elly's cousin Debbie's house to watch the big game. Go Pats!
