Palm Springs was in the 70’s today. A nice day here - a bit chilly and cloudy, but lovely if you’re taking a hike or playing tennis. I was doing none of those because my son is a slug and wants nothing but to spend all day on his computer. I think about all the things we used to do - Children's Museum of the Desert, The Living Desert, Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs Air Museum, libraries, parks, just walking around. Now? Forget about it. He didn’t even want to go to the pool, but I went, took a jacuzzi and called my poor mom in NY while I was there. She proceeded to tell me her tale of woe about the ice and rain and cold and misery. I felt a little bad, but that’s why we don’t live there anymore.
It was one of those days where I could not get off the computer no matter how I tried. Mostly, it was taken up with trying to put a downloaded library book onto my Kindle. The book is Apple Tree Yard, and the 2 Knit Lit Chicks were raving about it. This is usually a straightforward affair if it’s in Kindle format, but his one was in ePUB. You can read it on the computer but not Kindle. Through series of Google searches, I then went down the rabbit hole trying to figure out a way to Kindle it. First, I downloaded a program called Calibre which converts various file formats and imports them onto your devices. It supported everything but the weird extension this book had. So I had to get Adobe Digital Editions, which turns this format into an ePUB, but could not open it because it had DRM protection. So I downloaded ePUBDRMRemoval. That did the trick. I was then able to open the new, DRM-free file back into Calibre and voila, load it onto the Kindle. I’m not sure if it’s still a library book or if I own it, but I'm really looking forward to starting this one, if I ever finish Life After Life. I swear it gets longer the more I read. While I was on the library site I saw I book called People I Want to Punch in the Throat by Jenn Mann. This is the best title ever. The subtitle is Competitive Crafters, Drop-Off Despots, and Other Suburban Scourges. Being in the Pacific Palisades school track, I've encountered a few of those. I am not familiar with this writer's blog, but I am sure to be checking it out.
After that I decided to take a walk on the bike path that meanders through the golf course nearby. I wanted to try and get close to 10,000 steps. At the very least, the Fit Bit is a reminder of of much a slug you’ve been on any given day. Once my husband got home we went to an early dinner in town. We tried to go to a new place called Birba but there was an hour wait. It looked pretty cool with lots of fire pits and outdoor tables. The desert is especially hopping right now. We fell back on an old favortite, Matchbox, also very busy. The food was great and the waiter hooked me up with an extra glass of wine which is always much appreciated. We had wanted to go to the movies but DH had a short turn around between shifts so we decided to punt. They really wanted to see American Sniper, but I am really torn about if this is really appropriate for a 12 year old. I went on a website called kids-in-mind.com which really breaks it down for you, scene by scene. After reading it, I wasn’t sure if I could handle it. Violence is something I’m really sensitive to and I don’t believe in exposing kids to things that could be traumatic.
When we came home we thought we’d watch The Killing on Netflix. We’ve always liked this series and we only have 2 to go until the end. Could not get Google Chrome to work once again It was taking its sweet-ass time on some kind of upgrade, so we gave up. Watched a Dateline and did a few rows of knitting, though not the several repeats that I had planned. The other thing I’m always meaning to do out here is scanning the many books here onto Goodreads, and pulling out the CDs here that still need to be ripped. Maybe a dozen or so at a time this year and then I’ll have it done.
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