Day 2: Palm Springs and a Dead Dog in the Freezer

The second day of our trip started very unusually. Even for California. It was 7am when I entered the kitchen and bumped into my little brother Gavin. If you know Gavin, you know that it's a rare occurrence to see him up before noon. Well, the night before at 11pm he asked me if I could drive him to Morongo to pick up his driving licence and his girlfriend, because she needed to write a scholarship essay. When we got there, it turned out that we were taking not only his GF Dana to our house, but also her friend Patricia. Yes, the same Patricia that we'd heard so much about last summer :)). Anyway, Gav's had the two girls over since...[potential blackmail material? Maybe ;)] The two girls were of course the reason why he was in the kitchen at 7am -he was making them breakfast... [yes, a shocker, Gavin was MAKING breakfast. Wish I had taken pictures.] awwwww...

I am serious, people. It's really here.

So...I have had a hankering for waffles since the previous day when we went to the stores and I laid my eyes upon the yellow box of Eggo waffles. It used to be a rule that there had always been a box of Eggo waffles in Heather's kitchen when I came over in the past. Therefore I dove into the magical box called an American freezer with great enthusiasm and high expectations of finding a treasure. I sure as hell found it. Unfortunately, no Eggos. On the other hand, there was a box that said 'Our Gogo, We <3 You'. It was a normal brown cartoon box, sealed with a clear duct tape... It took a moment before it hit me: Gogo was a dog of Ryan, Heather's boyfriend. Also, Gogo passed away a couple of weeks ago. When I looked at Gavin, I am pretty sure I must have had big fat question marks in my eyes, because he smiled and nodded: "Yup, that's the dog. Ryan wants to bury it in the new house." Needles to say I forgot all about waffles, I slammed the door shut and ran to my room to share this little fun fact with Michal...welcome to America, babe! :D

Well, since there were no waffles and neither of us felt like having a dog pop-sickle, I took last night's leftovers and turned them into a breakfast. Creativity is necessary when resources are scarce.
 

After breakfast we took a car which was provided to us by Ryan [For which we are eternally grateful to him, because that saves us a lot of money we would otherwise spend on renting one.] and went down the hill to Palm Springs. The drive took us almost two hours, because we were testing our new navigation - really bad one :). So, first stop...Ruby's Diner.

Going to Palm Springs and not visiting Ruby's is like going to Prague and not seeing the castle or the Parliament building in London. It's a tradition. I don't remember the first time I went there, but I do remember other times. Every time I went to see Art, we would go to Ruby's. It'd been four years since I was there for the last time and sitting there again after such a long time made me nostalgic and brought tears to my eyes. As much as I enjoyed the food and being there...it was a bittersweet experience. It didn't feel right without Art.
The food at Ruby's....oh my. You know how sometimes you remember a particular food as being absolutely amazing and then when you actually get to eat it again it doesn't live up to your expectations? Well, that's exactly what I was expecting to happen yesterday at Ruby's, but man, was I wrong! The food was so good even Michal was like 'I would give up sex for this stuff'.  

My T. B. A. L. sandwich with coleslaw

Michal and his Chipotle Turkey and Avocado Burger with fries and salad

Then we walked down the streets of Palm Spring and drove around the whole area stopping by Best Buy to buy a Kindle and check out if Victoria has got any new secrets worth my attention [she hasn't], and other  touristy things. We got home around eight, finding everyone lying around, eating pizza a snoozing. Ryan's dad flew down from Canada to help with the moving and fixing the new house where we should move next week... so we had a nice evening with couple slices of pizza and some beer and then went to bed fairly early because we're still jet lagging.

...or maybe we're just lazy ;)