More Listings

We received five more rental listings to review from our property manager. The listings are beginning to take on a pattern which is to be expected. Most of the listings are for older homes in neighborhoods where there are no HOA (Home Owner Association) rules which can be good - or bad. Some of those neighborhoods are in less desirable areas where, generally, the people don't take as much pride in their homes. Some are in nice neighborhoods that have RV gates but not enough room for large RV's. There are a few that satisfy our RV storage requirements but, so far, don't have the other amenities we are looking for in the house and grounds. Hopefully, when the time comes, we will find the perfect fit.

There are some signs that our tenant might be taking advantage of his (now) short term occupancy. Our rental reimbursement is late this month which is not normal. I have sent a note to our property manager asking about any potential problem. I just hope that the tenant does not think he can get a free ride the rest of the way.

It is beginning to get  busier at Josie's shop now that we are getting closer to the first Holiday this season. I'm sure that she will be very busy when she begins work at her new job next week. She will only have three days of working at her new job before Thanksgiving. Fortunately, she is somewhat familiar with the procedures at Cactus Flower...

On With a New Week

Today will be the start of Josie's final week working at Phoenix Flower Shops. I know that she has mixed emotions about it as she has made many friends there that will be left behind. Actually, she will always have those friends and will keep in touch as good friends remain that way. Friday will be her final day and she begins work at Cactus Flower on Monday.

We will also get more rental listings this week and hope to identify a couple more that would be worth driving by and investigating. None of these listings will be "real" candidates for us as we have several months to go before being able to move on anything. Our home in Glendale needs to sell before we can do anything, but it will be nice to know that there are homes out there that qualify for us. If we somehow win the lottery between now and then, our plans could change (ha).

This new week will also have more doctor appointments for us. Josie will get a shot for her back and legs, I will have my annual ultra-sound for the aneurysm, and I will also try to schedule my physical which is now due.

I'm sure that there will be other surprises during the week. We hope for good things to happen so we'll just take events as they occur...

Doing Drive By

The main thing we wanted to accomplish yesterday was to do a drive by on a couple of the rental listings that our property manager has provided. He has sent about 25 listings so far, and we chose two that looked very promising for fulfilling our requirements. The first one was a very nice home in a very nice neighborhood (Arrowhead Ranch) that was within walking distance of one of Josie's new store locations. I took these shots of the outside of the house:

We were only able to look at the inside by peeking through the windows and there would be some problems with the interior - very small rooms. Otherwise, it satisfies every aspect of what we are looking for in a rental. The other main concern we have is that there were no visible RV's in the neighborhood which indicates to us that it is probably similar to the home we are going to sell - RV gates, but no RV's allowed. That will be a problem in many areas.

The second home was a little bit south of the first, and not worthy of photos. It did have the ability to store your RV on site, but the back yard was forgettable. It was also on a corner lot with the RV storage on the side of a busy street. It was older and not in as nice a neighborhood as the first.

We will continue looking and feel confident that there is a "right" house for us out there somewhere. The good news is that we have a huge area identified for the search.

We also made a stop at our storage unit to pick up our regular, outside grill to use here a the Resort. Our small grill that is used for travel is not performing well which resulted in that move. There are things we need to get done around the RV today, so it looks like a "stay close to home" day...

Mixup

The final working day for Josie at the 7th St store location never happened. She drove all the way to the store - 1 hour away - and when she arrived was informed that she was not scheduled there. Whoa! The manager at the 19th Ave location didn't have her on that schedule either, so the communication breakdown was another example of why she is changing jobs. She went to the 19th Ave location to pick up her paycheck before heading home and was told she was needed there for the day, so she stayed and put in her day at that store. She will be so happy to leave that kind of nonsense behind.

There are a couple of the rental listings that caught our eye this week and today we will do a drive-by at each of those to see if they are on the mark. Each of them appears to have the ingredients of a nice home and are in areas that are desirable. We'll get a couple shots of them to show what we are looking at as examples. We are getting new listings all the time, but most of them have one or more feature that is not what we are looking for. The right house will be out there at the right time I'm sure...

Costly Win

The main event (for me) yesterday was the matchup on Thursday Night Football between the Cardinals and Seahawks. I root for both teams except when they play each other, and then it is all Seahawks. They won last night, 22-16, in a game that wasn't as close as the score. The Seahawks again provided a couple gift scores to their opponent via penalties. The bad news is that they lost their best defensive player, Richard Sherman, to an Achilles Tendon injury. He will be lost for the rest of the season and the Seahawks have a tough schedule the rest of the way. I don't see them going too far this season with all the serious injuries they have. They also lead the league in penalties, and they didn't hurt that distinction last night. Of course, I will still be cheering for them.

Josie will spend her final work day at the 7th St store location today. That is the toughest of the locations for her and she will be happy to see this day end. She has only next week to go at the 19th Ave store before starting her new job at Cactus Flower.

I made an appointment for next Thursday to have my annual Ultra Scan for the aneurism check. It should be fine as the device that was surgically installed seems to be doing its job.

We are getting new listings, daily, for rental properties. There have been a couple that we want to do a "drive-by" to check out. We have a way to go yet before getting serious about any rental.

It was announced yesterday that the GTA (Grand Teton Association) will eliminate the year-end completion bonus next season. They already have modified other compensation benefits (gift cards) which has us worried about the future impact of all these changes. We are not closing the door yet on a return to Jackson next year, but it is looking more and more like we may be taking at least one year off, based on our current activities...

Lots of Activity Yesterday

The most significant event from yesterday was receipt of 22 listings from our property manager of available rental homes that fall within our designated criteria. There were two of those that stood out as terrific candidates, one of which is almost within walking distance of Josie's new shop on 67th Ave. It has everything, including a nice, fenced in pool, along with a huge covered porch in the rear with plenty of RV storage space and complete privacy. We signed up to receive real-time updates on listings, so we expect to receive them frequently. It is comforting to know that there will be qualified choices when the time comes for us to commit to one.

I worked on trying to fix our small outside grill that we use while traveling. It has ceased holding a flame, even with the gas turned to the highest setting for some reason. I took it apart, cleaned it thoroughly and reassembled it. There was a slight improvement, but not enough to grill a meal. We will pick up our regular, large grill from storage to bring here to the RV.

We received our Letters of Understanding from the Grand Teton Association outlining our offers for the 2018 season. It contains everything we talked about, including our raises, and looks good except for one omission that I wrote them about. We don't know at this point what our plan will be for the summer, so we are going along with the plan to return for now.

I also received a couple of important calls. One from the eye doctor who wants to schedule my cataract surgery - probably in January. The other call was from my doctor who inserted the sleeve in my body around the Aneurism that was discovered a couple years ago. I get an annual check on that to make sure all is well. That will occur within the next couple of weeks.

It is becoming a very busy time for us, and exciting for the most part...

New Job is Set

All of the details were finalized yesterday for Josie's change in jobs from Phoenix Flower Shops to Cactus Flower Florists. She set her final day at Phoenix Flower Shops for Friday, November 17, and will begin work at her new job on Monday, November 19. Her first few days will be at the Glendale store located at 67th Ave and Rte 101. It is expected that, at least starting out, she will also spend some time working at the Cave Creek store. The distance to each location is much better than her driving to the downtown location a couple days a week which she is now doing. She will also make more money on her new job and will be appreciated much more than before as Cactus Flower already knows her capabilities and will treat her more professionally. She is, naturally, hoping that she made the right decision. I am almost certain she did.

That also means that we will most likely change the area where we will seek housing. Our goal is still the same for the requirements and we will be searching for something that makes it easy for Josie to commute. It will be interesting to see what is available using the criteria we have established. We should begin seeing candidates any day now. Of course, anything close to Cave Creek and Carefree will be too expensive for our budget, but somewhere, not too far away, there may be a hidden gem that we can afford.

We received our first electric bill since we arrived back in AZ. With one week out for our trip to Chicago, the bill was $118.25, which may not be so bad. It was a very warm month and we ran the A/C a lot while we were home. It shouldn't get any worse than that from here on out as we aren't using the A/C at all right now.

Today should be a business as usual day with no significant events scheduled...