Dreary Days

The end of December has been very cool and a little bit wet. While looking at the summary for the month, it shows that the high was 80 on December 5. Actually, the last day we were even as high as 70 was on the 9th. There was .61" of rain, over 6 days, for the month. The winds have been mostly calm with a high gust of 20 mph on the 19th and only a total of 6 days with high gusts exceeding 10 mph. It will be nice to see the temperatures at least reach back into the 70's soon. We miss sitting outside which is not very comfortable when the temperatures are low.

Has everybody lined up his/her News Years Resolutions? I think we all know that they are rarely followed beyond the first week of the year. There are some that appear every year - like dieting - that must be followed, especially as we get older. Josie and I both have aggressive targets for our weight loss in 2013. It is a constant struggle for those of us that have a slower metabolism and built-in fat genes - or don't exercise very much. We kind of stopped our daily workouts after Josie started her holiday work at the flower shop and it shows in both our energy level and weight gains over the last week. That will become part of our daily routine again, starting on Wednesday.

Our plans to bring in the new year are conservative. We will have an early dinner (6 PM) at a local restaurant in Surprise with George, Cheryl, Cot and Lois, which will be a nice ending to a very good year for us. We feel blessed that we are both healthy and still able to enjoy our traveling lifestyle and look forward to some new experiences in 2013.

HAPPY NEW YEAR !!

Differences in One Year

One year ago today, we left San Antonio, TX to stay in Ft Hancock, TX on our way to Happy Trails in AZ. We had some great times while traveling on that trip from Campbellsville, KY last year to begin our adventure with the retirement community. We were excited and anxious to get started in what turned turned out to be a sometimes rewarding and other times bad experience. The nearly 5 months we spent with that company could have been longer with better local management in that area. Our efforts to transfer to a facility in AZ were blocked by our area manager who didn't want us leaving his area, offered a transfer to another community within his area, and that led to our resignation.

As we have always believed, things happen for a reason. That led to our wonderful experience in Jackson Hole, WY which will be one of two locations that we have returned to in the 4 years we have been on the road. The only other location was Amazon. It also served to convince us that northwestern WY is a location where we could easily spend summers in the future. The experience we had in Cody the year before last also reinforces that feeling. Cody would be another area that we could return to as the same attractions are there that draw us to that part of the country - easy access to the National Parks and the beauty of the surrounding mountains in a perfect summer climate.

Our arrival in Surprise AZ following a terrific trip which included a stop in Southern Utah to see Zion National Park was the perfect ending to a perfect summer. It's nice to be able to take some extended time to just do nothing but relax before going back to work. In many ways, we are looking forward to settling in one or two locations, and in other ways, we want the variety and freedom to go where we want, when we want, to continue. The one conclusion we've made during these years on the road is that we will settle in the west - somewhere. Another conclusion is that we ruled out CA as one of those places to consider for settling. We've lived there enough - in both northern and southern CA - to know that the state has serious fiscal problems and the cost of living is out of line.

The coming year will bring new and happy experiences for us and we just hope that they are as rewarding as the ones we've had in the past four years, and that we remain healthy enough to continue this once in a lifetime experience.

Eyeglasses

The first of several different appointments was completed yesterday. After a conversation with the office, the Westbrook Vision Center in Peoria had a cancellation and was able to take me at 10 AM yesterday. I could have gotten an appointment at an Optometrist office in Surprise, but I wanted to go to an office that wasn't part of a big chain and had a Doctor on staff to perform the exams. Since Medicare was paying for the exam, I figured it didn't matter what was charged for the exam. Anyway, I got a prescription for glasses, but didn't buy them at this office for two reasons: I would get a better price for the glasses at a large chain store like Costco, Walmart or Sam's Club, and I wasn't sure what kind to get - either bifocals or Progressive lenses.

Since we had a few items that we wanted at Costco, we went there to check out frames and glasses. They had a nice selection of frames and I was able to get a pair of glasses ordered with Progressive lenses. The program that Costco has will exchange the lenses back to bificols within the first 60 days, at no charge, if I cannot adjust or get used to the Progressive lenses within that time frame. They also would reimburse me for the difference in cost if that should happen. With all the coatings, the frames and lenses cost about half of what it would have been at Westbrook where I had the exam. I will get my glasses in two weeks or so.

I need to take our propane tank to be filled today. It hasn't been that long since I filled it, but we have been using the gas furnace exclusively instead of the fireplace to save on electricity. Our first month's electric bill was $100 which is a result of our having the fireplace on just about every day. With propane being so cheap now - $1.99 per gallon - it will be cheaper to use the propane and rest the fireplace. We can still use the fireplace without its built-in heater just to have a visual flame which works as well. That is one reason we are looking at Lake Pleasant for next year - the electric is included in our space rental.

We also took down Christmas in our fifth wheel yesterday - except for the tree. We packed everything in boxes and put them in the shed here until we make another trip to our storage unit. Only 361 shopping days until Christmas...

Storage Visit

While loading up and organizing our new storage unit a few weeks ago, we came across several containers of yarn and incomplete afghans that Josie had started over the years. She hasn't done any work on any of them for at least 10 or 12 years, but she wanted to work on them now since we have lots of time before working again. So, we went to the storage unit yesterday and located the containers. They were easy to locate since we tried to keep things toward the front of storage that we thought we might need to access. The next step was to organize her yarn and projects and consolidate them.

Another reason for visiting the storage unit was to try to locate a couple of the diet books we have. We weren't as lucky locating them, so we stopped at Barnes and Noble and bought a couple paperback replacements of the books we were looking for that are probably in the middle or rear of storage. It wasn't worth tearing out everything from the storage unit to look for those, so buying the cheap replacements was the way to go. We are both ready to hit the diet trail on January 2.

Our "sappy" Christmas movies are all done from our DVR now, so last night we watched an old favorite of ours - Donovan's Reef. That is one of those movies that you can watch over and over and still enjoy. Actually, almost all of the John Wayne movies are good to watch over and over.

I made some appointments before Christmas and one of those is with a Vision Center that is suppose to be for today. I say "suppose to", since I never received a confirmation for my online reservation and will need to contact them this morning to confirm. I desperately need new glasses and want to try a set of bifocals to eliminate the need to carry two pairs of glasses everywhere I go.

We're also watching for the temperatures to rise into the 70's again so we can sit outside and enjoy the sunshine. It looks like we need to wait another few days for that to happen but it will also be nice to see the warmer mornings as we have been in the mid 30's almost every morning this week. It still beats most other places as we heard on the Weather Channel that 65% of the country has snow on the ground...

More Movies

This year we really enjoyed watching all of the Christmas movies that were shown on the Hallmark Channel and on the Lifetime Channel. In all, we probably copied over 20 films and we watched at least a couple each day during the lead up to Christmas. There were still about 5 or 6 left on our DVR so we watched another couple yesterday. There are only a few left at this point, so our backlog will be cleared out today, for sure. This is the first year where we paid any attention at all to the "sappy" Christmas shows, but there are some very good films and they serve to inject some Christmas spirit into even the most ardent Scrooges.

One of the gifts that Josie and I gave to each other was the Dark Knight Trilogy. We watched the last two of those last night, including the most recent one - "The Dark Knight Rises". If you haven't seen the films, they are must-see viewing. The end of the final movie leaves you thinking that maybe Batman (Bruce Wayne) is killed, but there is a shadow of a doubt which leaves the series open to even another episode. Also, Robin was introduced at the end of the final episode which also suggests that another episode is to follow - eventually.

Between watching our films, we went to dinner at Macayo's again. We took our Macayo mugs and had our $3.99 Margaritas with another fine Mexican meal. All in all, it was a different, but fun kind of day.

Today begins a "get serious about weight loss" search for the right diet. I will look for my Adkins Diet book that was so successful for me in the past and Josie is still trying to find a diet that will both keep her interested and work at the same time. We really enjoyed splurging over the holidays, but there is a price to pay now to lose the extra pounds. This is a common problem for most people and is, probably, the most frequent New Year's Resolution for folks. It's not an option for us this year, so it's time to buckle down and do the right thing for our health...

Quiet Christmas

Our Christmas Day was very quiet and simple. It was a good day for Josie to rest up from her nearly two weeks of working at the design center and for both of us to just relax. Most of the day we spent watching movies and tidying up a bit from all the pre-Christmas preparation. We had a small spiral sliced ham that we purchased at Sam's Club and Josie also made a sweet potato casserole and some vegetables that were excellent, which we ate at around 4 PM.

While watching the rest of our Christmas movies that we copied on our DVR, there was a lot of activity at our hummingbird feeder that we have attached to one of our rear windows:

 

 

 

We haven't noticed as much activity before, probably because we haven't spent as much time watching the feeder. Occasionally, we see a large bird fly up to the feeder, and sometimes they will perch there trying to figure out how to get to the contents. It's fun to watch.

Even though the day was cool and overcast, we saw areas in the country where very severe weather was a concern and we are thankful that we are here for this holiday season. We hope that everybody had a great Christmas...

Christmas Eve

It was not as busy as we anticipated on Christmas Eve Day. Josie went into work early at 8 AM and I waited for a phone call to come and help with the deliveries. She said that when she arrived, there were no orders to be filled and they slowly trickled in during the morning. I never received a call to come and help with deliveries, and Josie was done by 1 PM. She stopped at the Salon and had a manicure and also stopped at a store for a last minute gift for me which was sold out. It was 3 PM when she arrived home, a lot shorter day than was normal in the past. The people in the shop indicated that this was the slowest Christmas season they could remember. We decided to go to the 7 PM service at our old church in Sun City Grand. There was also a 5 PM service, but we wanted to take Communion which was only available at the later, Candle Light Service.

We were disappointed with the service. We arrived shortly after 6:30 and, at first, thought the service was cancelled. There were only a few cars in the parking lot that should have been filling up at this point. In years past, the church would be filled with standing room only crowds at this service on Christmas Eve. It was disappointing because: the Pastor we used to see retired about a year and a half ago and there was an Interim Pastor who was just so-so, the program was very different, the Choir was smaller and had all new faces, some of the music was strange to us, the crowd was less than half of what we were used to seeing and the Christmas Spirit seemed to be lacking. There were only two children that participated in the Children's Message at the alter. In years past, there would be ten to fifteen children participating. There is a new Lutheran church in town that opened a couple years ago and we think that may have had an impact on this congregation. We plan to try that new church very soon. We still feel better that we attended.

We watched a Christmas movie on TV and turned in by 10 PM. It looks like Santa stopped here during the night but was probably in a hurry and only left a couple gifts. We feel blessed anyway.

MERRY CHRISTMAS !!