Yesterday and today we have been under overcast skies and they have been the coldest two days we have seen yet. The high yesterday maybe reached 16C and even that is questionable and today the mercury may have reached 18C. We went swimming this morning and the pool was many degrees warmer than the air so it was easy to stay in it for a while. The forecast for the next seven days is a lot better, sunny with highs as warm as 27C, so providing the forecasters are correct, we will be enjoying much better weather soon. The visibility has been so poor at times that it has even been difficult to see the surrounding mountains.

Today we decided to go over the highway to eat at an inviting restaurant I had read about, the Veggie & Tea House in Palm Desert. As the name suggests, it is a vegetarian restaurant with extremely reasonable prices for an abundance of great food. However, the next time we go there we will know that we only need one entrée for the two of us!

From there we headed into Palm Springs to go to a thrift store to look for a denim jacket. I usually am not a huge fan of thrift stores mainly because I don’t particularly like the smell but denim is always better used anyway. However, this thrift shop did not have any “stale clothes” smell and the stock was unlike any we have seen in a used clothing store before. Today anything with a pink tag was selling for 50% off the already ridiculously low prices. I bought a cute skirt with the tags still on it for $3.00 and a beautiful 2-piece wool suit for $9.00 as well as two other skirts for a grand total of $31 for everything. We had heard that this store carried a lot of high quality, often new or nearly-new clothing, usually donated by some of the ultra rich residents in the area. I didn't find a denim jacket but the store is quite a find and we are motivated to check it out on a regular basis.