So Cool, So Soquel

Monday turned out to be relatively clear and warm after a rainy Sunday, so we promised ourselves a little outing after lunch once Phil got his teleconference meetings taken care of. I did some wash and got a list together for shopping at Trader Joe's. I've been trying to maintain a low cholesterol diet with some consistency, but it's challenging to find all the items in just one store.

We decided to avoid Highway 1 and take Soquel Drive instead, which must have been the main drag between all these little beach towns sometime in the past. Phil said it's kind of like driving around in a state park with all the tall trees and deep ravines and I know what he means. You get more of a sense of where one town starts and the other one ends, although we did get kind of turned around looking for Capitola Mall and had to backtrack from Santa Cruz. Getting sidetracked can have its advantages though. We passed a lovely art deco movie theater called the Rio that has been refurbished into a performance space and an interesting looking organic market called Staff of Life. Both Aptos and Soquel refer to areas as Aptos Village and Soquel Village and there are still some vestiges of commercial centers, but they're slowly getting eroded by the franchises and minimalls along the highway.

Once we got to Capitola, we stopped at a Goodwill to pick up some warmer clothes. I got a thermal shirt and Phil got a fleece jacket for wearing around the house. I thought I might learn something about the area from the kinds of things in the thrift store. It was very clean and well organized and had more sports brands like Nike and Adidas in good condition than I had expected, and less furniture and big ticket items than the stores around Long Beach.

The shopping trip at Trader's was a little hectic because Phil had to get back for another teleconference, but we got most of the items on the list. Later, we stopped at Aptos Coffee (Steve very generously bought us a card for 14 cups of coffee). While Phil did a little more work on his laptop, I got more stuff for the diet from the Safeway. While shopping, I noticed many students (from nearbyCabrillo College) and retired people. At the Safeway, I was struck by how many young families (four or five) were shopping together, and throughout the mall, I noticed several homeless people. With as much rain as we've been having, I don't know how they cope. Phil had yet another conference call so we hurried home as soon as I finished shopping.

I got a little blogging time in before supper. We have chicken and tomato sauce with rice and after supper some yummy chocolate cherry soy ice cream as we watched one of Steve's Netflix DVDs, an episode of the PBS series on the National Parks.