Palm Springs was sort of a bust. Usually it’s my favorite place on earth but I was too wrung out to enjoy it. Dammit! All that airport time for nothing.

Wait, not nothing: Check this out

Can you tell what that is? We went walking around the complex Sunday night in a hellacious windstorm. We heard a weird noise up in the blowing trees and a crow was high-tailing it out of a pine. Apparently he was trying to land on a moving target, and an owl was there first. It was BIG. Bigger than my biggest cat, maybe 18 inches tall. Is that possible? It was huge. I could see it a lot better than this crappity picture shows, but it was dusk and the tree was shaking like mad, so it didn’t photograph too well (my camera will not shoot fast enough for that sort of picture). I guess the locals already knew about him – mom said she’d heard stories about some big owl living in the complex. It gave me a thrill to see him. Or her. I’ve never heard it in all my time there.

In other news: Mom’s old cat does not like to go back and forth between LB and PS, even though they do it at least twice a month. Mom has scars to prove it and the cat always hides when it’s time to leave. She’s smart. When we were leaving PS this time, on a whim Mom put the cage out on the floor near where the cat was hiding under an end-table. She called the cat, and talked nicely to her, and after about a minute THAT DAMNED CAT SLUNK INTO THE CAGE UNAIDED. It was mind-boggling. I wish I could have recorded it for posterity. I’ve never seen the like.

In yet more cat news, Cheetah didn’t pee on anything of mine (that I’ve found so far) while I was gone. She might even look like she’s marginally improved. It’s hard to tell, she mostly looks awful all the time. Poor thing.

And, not about cats at all:

In-N-Out burger opened up here last week. Overdue, apparently. The drive-thru has been full, winding out the parking lot, along the side street, and spilling out onto the highway every day since the opening. They resorted to traffic cones to try and keep the queue straight and slightly less out in the middle of the road. It’s been like this every time I’ve driven by, at all times of the day. It was like this at 8:30 last night. The parking lot and the Chili’s lot next to it were also full of parked cars – and they sure weren’t in Chili’s. I know this because we couldn’t handle the crowd or the wait at In-N-Out and went into Chili’s instead. Bleah. The margarita was good. Some day I hope to eat at In-N-Out, but not until the herd thins out a little.