Donna has been busy writing while I’ve been getting out to play pickleball. She has a mid-December book deadline and also has couple of articles to complete. I played pickleball four days in a row – about two and half hours per day. With the shorter waiting times between games at the Pacific Beach and Ocean Beach Recreation Centers, I’ve been getting a good daily workout.

My days are already falling into a familiar San Diego routine. Get out of bed around 7:30am. Mess around on the Internet for a while. Breakfast. Pickleball. Read. Happy hour with the guys at Offshore Tavern and Grill or Dan Diego’s. Watch a show or movie. Bed time.

The Internet continues to feed my latest obsession. Last weekend I ordered another pair of Lucchese cowboy boots. This time I went a little overboard and bought full quill ostrich boots with calfskin shafts. They arrived from Amazon on Wednesday. I was really disappointed when I opened the box. The stitching on the shafts – the part that comes up around your calf – was supposed to have a gold hue contrasting with the brown calfskin shaft. These boots looked like someone had smeared brown shoe polish over the stitching and the shafts were uniformly brown with no contrast – you could hardly see the stitching.

I called Lucchese customer service and told them the boots don’t match the images I saw online. They were very helpful and told me something was amiss. They stitch the shafts after the leather is dyed and polished. I don’t think it was a factory defect – something happened to these boots. They offered to repair or replace the boots if I sent them to the factory in El Paso. I opted to return them to Amazon since I had free returns with my Prime membership. I boxed them up and rode the Spyder to the UPS store in Pacific Beach. It was super easy – the UPS guy scanned the return label and gave me a tracking number.

When I came home, I ordered another pair of the same boots. I received an email from Amazon telling me they had already processed reimbursement to my credit card – they must get a notification when the return label is processed by UPS.

While I was at the Pacific Beach Recreation Center playing pickleball on Thursday, I got a notification on my phone telling me the replacement boots had been delivered! Wow! I ordered the replacements around 4pm on Wednesday and they came before noon the next day!

Lucchese full quill ostrich boots with calfskin shafts

We had another minor issue this week. Last weekend the Mission Bay RV Resort office lent me a converter box for our TV since trees were blocking my Dish satellite reception. It worked fine on Sunday – I watched NFL football all day. On Monday night I wanted to watch football but the reception kept cutting out. Monday was a cloudy, overcast day. I assumed the clouds caused the RV park’s Direct TV antenna to lose the signal.

On Wednesday we tried to watch the presidential race debate, but the TV signal was cutting out again. There weren’t any clouds on Wednesday. The RV park sent a guy out on Thursday and he gave me another converter box. When I hooked up the new box, it couldn’t acquire any signal at all. I found it hard to believe that I had two defective boxes. I suspected a problem with our coaxial cable. The 50-foot cable I used to hook up to the park’s TV system was given to me three years ago by my brother-in-law, Tommy. It’s been knocking around in a container in our trailer since then. I went to Home Depot and bought a new cable. Problem solved – the TV reception is great and I was able to watch the game last night.

Donna made a pot of pork chile Thursday with the chicos she bought in Santa Fe. She had it in the slow cooker all afternoon. Our friend Mona visited with her while I watched the game and enjoyed the chile with a Racer 5 IPA. The chicos were coarser than I expected. Maybe that’s the way it is with ancient foods. I’m sure I got plenty of fiber.

Pork chile with chicos

Racer 5 IPA from Cloverdale, California

As the sun was setting, I walked over to the cove and shot a different sunset view. De Anza Cove is east of the RV park. Looking across the cove you see the Bay Park neighborhood terraced on the Clairemont Mesa. The sun lit up the neighborhood as it dipped below the horizon. I missed the dramatic lighting by a minute or two, but this photo gives a sense of what it looked like.

Last rays of sun on Bay Park

We had an unseasonably warm day yesterday – the high was 89 degrees. The weather guessers are calling for low to mid-80s for the weekend before the temperature falls to a more normal high of around 70 degrees. Tomorrow we’ll go to Donna’s sister’s annual Halloween party. I’m taking a break from pickleball until Monday.