Weekend Plans

Following a very busy schedule for Josie, she has the weekend off to enjoy. There isn't much that we can do outside as long as the cold air stays around and with the threat of rain that exists for today. It did warm up enough yesterday (54) to open the gazebo and take out the plants to be watered and get a little sun. It was an otherwise uneventful day.

We have plans to do our Christmas shopping today and to get all the mailing done before the end of the weekend. The big game - ASU vs Stanford - is today which will determine the PAC-12 representative to the Rose Bowl this year. ASU has a greatly improved team, but Stanford is no easy touch either. The game starts at 5:45 tonight, so we hope to be able to watch that game.

Tomorrow we go to the Ballet in Phoenix to see the presentation of The Nutcracker. I did some research yesterday on the story itself and also printed out the casting announcement which was released the day before. Our tickets are for the Matinee presentation (1 PM) and we are excited to go. A little culture doesn't hurt anybody, right? It is a show that we have talked about attending for many years, but never have been able to put it together until now.

I grilled some salmon last night and was able to get a nice shot of the Christmas lights and a little bit of the sunset:

Salmon, Christmas spirit and a beautiful sunset - it doesn't get much better...

BRRR!

I realize we are the lucky ones with just 34 degree temperatures outside when I see the Midwest is suffering through some serious ice storms. We know all about those from places we've lived where the winter months are always a roll of the dice for good driving weather. Nonetheless, it is very cold - too cold - for these aging bodies of ours. The cold front started to come through at about 12:30 yesterday afternoon when the winds picked up again and were a steady 15-20 mph for most of the afternoon. We moved all our plants into the gazebo and closed it up for the night.

Josie worked until after 3 PM yesterday and we made a trip to Albertsons to stock up on some groceries. We like traveling the Carefree Highway in the afternoons because we have a pretty good chance of seeing the wild burros on the side of the road. We were lucky yesterday and caught this small group just after the Lake Pleasant Blvd traffic light:

We remarked about how healthy they look. For being wild animals that live off the desert, they seem to be getting all the nourishment they need.

I received an email yesterday that described the top 10 destinations for travelers - both worldwide and in the U.S. The list immediately lost credibility with me when I saw that the top destination outside the U.S. was Havana, Cuba. It lost even more credibility when Brooklyn, NY was on the list for the U.S. Check it out. It makes for interesting reading.

It's still dark outside at 6:20 AM, so there will be no sunrise photo included in this post. I really love the sunrise and sunset here and I hope you don't get tired of seeing those pretty shots. Have a great Friday, everybody...

Into the Freezer

We should feel lucky, I guess. It's -13 in Jackson as this entry is being written and we are sitting at 39. The forecast for us is for freezing temperatures before the start of the weekend. Winter is here. We had winds most of the day yesterday - between 15 and 20 mph most of the time - and even though we only had a trace of rain, it was threatening all day long. Some real rain is expected by tomorrow, while Jackson is getting more snow.

The winds we had yesterday only served to make us more aware of the mess that the tree on our site creates. The Acacia tree is like a weeping willow except that it has little blooms, or puff balls, that have been falling off the tree for at least the last month. It is the fruit of the tree and I researched ways yesterday to prevent trees from bearing fruit - especially ornamental trees where the fruit isn't edible anyway. There is a spray that can be used  - Ethephon - that should be used in the early part of the season before pollination occurs. There isn't much we can do about it this year, but when we come back next year, we will consider getting the whole tree sprayed with that chemical. The tree is too large for us to spray ourselves, so we would need a professional service for that job. It's a real nuisance to use our blower after each windy day to clear away the droppings from the tree.

Even though we are saving money by only having the one vehicle - our F450 truck - we miss having the second vehicle for a couple reasons. The main one is that we are staying closer to home as a result of the poor gas mileage we get with the truck. That means we don't go to a lot of the places we would like to go as long Josie is working and we have to do shopping and make other necessary local trips on her days off. I also cannot save time by doing some of the shopping while she is working. Some of the savings we have enjoyed is eaten up by the higher diesel fuel costs and certainly by the mileage which is about half as good as the Jeep. We'll try to stick it out as long as we can, and as long as we can justify the inconveniences.

We will continue to be prepared for the expected rain that is coming by keeping the gazebo closed and the plants out of the freezing temperatures at night. It will be nice to see the warmer weather return again early next week...

No Cookies

This time last year, Josie was busy making cookies for the Christmas season. We also had some fruit cake a year ago at this time and it just shows how one year - and better eating habits - have made a difference. I can't believe we were talking about losing weight at the same time all that baking was taking place a year ago. We will have no home made cookies this year, and certainly no fruit cake. We don't miss any of those.

We also were planning our trip to Vista, CA at this time last year to pick up our goods from the storage unit there, and close down our final ties to that part of the country. That was a bump in the road for us but a good experience. In fact, we are waiting now on a settlement payment from a class action lawsuit brought against Holiday Retirement for pay for hours worked and not compensated. As you recall, we were working about 90 hours per week including the time we had to be available for emergency calls, any time of the night. It finally caught up with them, and they have to fork over about $7.5 Million to all the managers of record on the dates we worked. Of course, the attorneys will get the lions share of those funds.

Josie was given her schedule for the rest of the Christmas season, and it appears that she will be working 40 hours each week until Christmas. They are really happy to have her for the busy holiday seasons, and the stores she is working (2) are fighting to get her time. She goes in a little later on Wednesdays - 11 AM - which gives her a chance to relax longer in the morning before work. Wednesdays and Thursdays she is scheduled for one of the stores, whereas on Monday and Tuesdays, she works at the production center location in Sun City on Union Hills Ave. Now, she will add Friday and possibly Saturday at one of those locations. The extra hours appear to be scheduled for the production center right now, but that could change.

Only 21 days before Christmas, and we have lots to do to get ready for the holiday. Today is another great start with this - another beautiful sunrise:

Into the Spirit

Just about everything is done for the season now - except for shopping. All of the decorations were completed yesterday and the inside is also done. The outside decorations were enhanced a little bit by the addition of some (fake) poinsettias:

They are being held down by the use of Velcro under the plants. They are so light that any type of wind at all would send them across the site. It did get a little windy for awhile yesterday and the plants remained in place.

The inside is also all but done:

There are window lights all around the rig that we turn on at night. The outside lights are all on a remote timer that we turn on for 6 hours each night. So, it looks like we are all set for the holidays.

Word has it that the huge chill that is beginning to cover the northwest is going to spread to AZ later this week. We're looking for temps to be close to freezing by Friday morning, but that will be nothing compared to the sub zero temps in Jackson and other areas to the north. The chill will be spreading eastward this week and almost the entire country will be in the chill zone by the weekend. Welcome, winter...

November Summary

We were all over the place with the November weather. Our high temperature was 91 on November 11, and our low was 44 on November 25. The real story was the big and wet storm we had for 3 days, November 21-23, where we had almost all of the rainfall for the month - over 2.3 inches. There were several days when the wind blew more than normal, but the highest wind gust measured was on November 6 when it reached 32 mph. All we can say about the December forecasts is that we will be starting out with a cold spell due to arrive over the next several days. We see that winter has arrived in Jackson, full force, with highs in the single digits and lows in the minus territory for the next few days. Maybe we don't want to spend a winter in that area.

There was very little in the way of exercise in the month of November and we need to address that situation before too long. Both of us gained some weight - enough to be on alert for December so that we don't let it become a trend. Right now, both of us should be able to lose the extra pounds - about 5 - that we put on with the holiday eating. As long as we attack the weight gain early, we should be OK.

It looks like December will be a month for getting organized for next year. We will review our health care options again before signing up again with the AARP United Healthcare program. As our plan is a Florida plan, we are pretty much limited to the options available in that state. We don't think that the Obamacare changes will have any impact on our senior options, but we'll see. Fortunately, we don't have a lot of special needs for medical coverage except it would be nice to have more coverage for prescriptions. Right now, we aren't spending any money for health care insurance except for our monthly deduction from our Social Security which we never see anyway. Overall, we have been satisfied with the program we presently have in place.

Have a safe December everybody - 'tis the season to be jolly...

Outside Decorations Done

Following a couple trips to Home Depot to pick up some last minute lights and some garland from Michael's, we finished up the outside decorations.

Josie did a great job on her crafted tree from a tomato vine tower, lights and garland. I have a shot of her tree during the final stages.

and completed:

We decided to place the tree on the front part of the site:

It really looks terrific, and this what the site looks like at just after dusk last night:

I guess you could say we are ready for the Christmas season. We also have white (clear) lights inside the gazebo, but they block out the nice colored lights on the tree in the back and the fence lights. Those lights are good for when we sit in the gazebo after dark. Our decorating effort now goes back to the inside of the rig and we only have a few more refinements on those before taking inside pictures.

We did a small turkey in our oven last night to have for "leftovers" following Thanksgiving. We are grateful for having Thanksgiving dinner out, but it is always nice to have some turkey and "fixins" to eat for a few days after the holiday. Our diets are on hold for this period in the year. Actually, our dieting does not exist at all at this time of the year and we are hoping to just maintain our weight from now to the end of the year. In order to do that, we will have to have some exercising between the binges...