Author: Rudy

I woke up next to an older woman this morning. (Old people like old jokes like that.) For much of the morning Sue was either on the phone or on her iPad getting birthday wishes. I went for a bike ride around the loop while Sue sat outside in the sun and read. Our neighbour looks to have moved into her house — she was planting a new cactus in the front yard and a carpenter was building a patio roof structure similar to what we have in her backyard.

After lunch we drove into the city. First stop, IKEA — to exchange those seat cushions for larger ones. Then we had the GPS guide us the long way around up to the Tempe Marketplace. We’d not been there before and wanted to go watch a matinee at the Harkins theatre there. We wandered around the outdoor mall for half an hour before going in to the movie. We saw “The Theory of Everything”, the story of Stephen Hawking. Sue cried through some of it, although it wasn’t a sad movie. In fact, we both thought it was a very good movie.

After the movie we drove back to the restaurant we’d gone to for Sue’s 60th birthday three years ago. We got the table outside, next to the big wood fireplace, and had a very nice dinner.

Back at our house we watched the last quarter of the football game (Arizona won) and the CBC ‘At Issue’ panel on the news.  And THAT’S how we celebrated Sue’s birthday!

Woke up just before 7:00 to the sound of my phone ringing in the kitchen. What’s up? It’s still dark here. I answered the FaceTime call — it’s Max, sitting at his breakfast table, eating pancakes, and giving Opa a call. They’re coming to visit in Phoenix real soon! A great ‘wake-up’ call.

Scrambled eggs for breakfast. No, it’s not Saturday, but the Christmas hamper from the Peters had another dozen eggs in it so we had to celebrate.

After breakfast I worked on some websites for a couple of hours. Sue did her exercises and laundry. It was another beautiful day here, 10 degrees above normal.

After lunch Sue took her putter and marched across the road to the Gold Canyon putting green to ‘practice’ her putting. She’s of the opinion that practicing on OUR little putting green in the backyard doesn’t help anything. We’ll see. I putted in the backyard — got 3 in a row in quite a few times, but that fourth ball just won’t listen.

At around 2:45 we went to Mountain Brook — we had a 3:15 tee time. It was a slow day at the course, and as we drove there we noticed that there was no one on hole 9. So we asked if we could walk the BACK nine today, and they said okay. So that’s what we did.

We both had only good drives! Really good drives! It must be Sue’s driver which we are ‘sharing’. Now if only all that putting practice would pay off on the greens. But no, after a fun time walking the back nine, we finished with a 50 for me, 55 for Sue. And it’s the putting that’s letting us down. We threw our clubs into the van and headed to the grocery store. As we drove there Sue announced that the best way to improve would be to NOT practice, to NOT go golfing every day — all that practice actually HINDERS your progress!

We bought a couple of steaks at Bashas and went home to barbecue. The evening was warm, the sun setting on the mountain. After supper we watched a movie I’d downloaded, “The Immigrant”. Too bad my download didn’t include subtitles for all the Polish parts of the movie! But I think we ‘got’ most of it. We followed that up with the pilot episode of “Suits”. That was good, too. We tried to keep our eyes open long enough to watch Jon Stewart and then to bed.

One more thing: Sue reminded me that I hadn’t said anything in yesterday’s entry about the news of her friend Phyllis, so I’ll add that here. My sister Irmy invited Sue to join her Winnipeg bookclub (Harafish) about 15 years ago. The other 5 or 6 members were mostly librarians. Phyllis was one of them. The group met once a month. At their October meeting, just before we left for the winter, they were surprised that Phyllis didn’t attend. They found out the next day that Phyllis had had a stroke, and was in the hospital. The stroke had affected her one side and she’d lost her ability to speak. And for the next month Irmy would send us updates to tell us how she was doing. It looked like things were getting a bit better at first, but in the last week Phyllis was not making progress. Then, yesterday at noon, Sue got an email from Irmy that Phyllis had died that morning! Quite a shock. Phyllis was 60 years old, younger than Sue. She was still working but so looking forward to retiring and seeing more of the world. (We’d stayed at her son Peter’s apartment in Paris a year ago.) And now she is gone. R.I.P., Phyllis. Just another reminder that we need to take the opportunities to do what we want to do while we still can. And if that’s golfing in Arizona for the winter then that’s what we should do.

Tuesday. That means it’s garbage day here at Vista Point. Yippee! Okay, it’s not THAT special — we have TWO garbage days a week here.

After breakfast we got our bike shorts on and went for a ride around our ‘loop’. Another beautiful day here. I had to stop on the way back (after climbing the ‘big’ hill!) to take a photo of ‘our’ mountain. Ever since we first came to Gold Canyon 4 years ago, Superstition Mountain has been a landmark for us. And for prairie folks like us, who really don’t know anything at all about a mountain on the horizon, we’ve come to love and appreciate our mountain. No matter how mixed up and crazy some of the little bays and cul de sacs here are, or which hole you’re on at the golf course, you can always orient yourself by just looking up to Superstition, from whence cometh our sense of direction.

When we got home Sue took out the shears from the garage and proceeded to give the big bougainvillaea bush on our front yard a haircut. Too many ‘dead’ branches. Sue had gotten permission from the owners to do this. Now our big garbage bin, which had just been emptied, is full again — with thorny branches. Good thing Friday is another Garbage Day.

After lunch Sue went to the pool to read. I did some work on the computer and made a couple of phone calls. I also got the leaf-blower out and cleaned off our putting green in the backyard. I putted for a bit — still can’t get 4 in a row in.

We had an early supper and then went to Ed and Val’s for 6:00pm. In the spirit of the season, they greeted us with a couple of Christmas hampers — all the leftovers from their fridge, etc. They are coming back at the end of January, so I guess they didn’t really need to pack more than the one little suitcase they put in the van. We headed to the Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix and dropped them off at the WestJet gate. Said goodbye and Merry Christmas.

We tjriesled our way down to the IKEA store in Tempe on the way home. We were looking for some chair cushions for our kitchen chairs at the house. Man, that is a bizarre system of so-called store layout those Swedes have invented:  winding and circling and following arrows on the floor like a giant game board for shoppers. But I guess it works. We found our cushions alright, but then followed that maze around most of two floors towards the exit, all the while picking up more things that we didn’t know we needed! We finally managed to find the checkouts at the end, where we quietly stood in a long hardly-moving line for the final half hour before making our escape. The 35-mile drive home was less complicated and way less stressful.

At home, we snacked on more of that homemade caramel popcorn and watched the news.

We had a 12:25 tee time at Sidewinder booked for today, joining Ed Peters who is going home tomorrow. Since our last outing at Mountain Brook was so discouraging, I really needed to go hit a few balls on the driving range before the game. So this morning Sue and I picked a few clubs out of the bag (6-iron for me) and walked across the road to the Gold Canyon Golf Course. Our ‘gold card’ membership gets us ‘free’ driving range there. We each smacked a big bucket of balls, and it looked like I might have ‘fixed’ something. (Not surprisingly, the solution is to NOT swing hard and let the club do the work! I knew that!)

When we got home I noticed some ‘garbage’ down the street where a neighbour was getting his air conditioning replaced. I managed to ‘salvage’ a wooden palette and took it home to make (another!) homemade TV aerial. Not enough time to finish it though; Sue had lunch ready at 11:30 so we’d be ready to leave at noon. I quickly called my parents to check up on them (they’re doing fine, enjoying various Christmas concerts at church) and then we headed back across the road.

Our threesome was joined by an older gentleman, “Bob”, at the course. Sue’s driver is still working pretty good for me — I really need to ‘get my own’. The temperature was 75 degrees, a light wind, just enough clouds to keep the schnoz from getting sunburnt. The game was going well, too. And we had fun. Both Sue and I played with the same ball for most of the game — that is, until Hole 15, where my second shot went into the pond. Three times in a row. And I was doing so good! So that balooned my 47 on the front nine — to 100 for the game. And Sue just keeps on swinging that easy swing of hers and playing great golf.

We got home ‘early’ (before sunset) and while Sue made the G&Ts I got back to work on my TV aerial. Following the instructions I’d found online, I cut and bent my pile of coat hangers and assembled them on the palette board, until Sue got mad and ordered me out to the barbecue. I gobbled down my supper and got back to my project, scanning for ‘new’ channels on the bedroom TV. Hey, I got the local ABC station! This is working!

And now Monday Night Football was starting — Falcons at the Packers. Should be a close game — for the first 5 minutes! And sure enough, Green Bay had a comfortable lead at halftime. So I’d sort of lost interest in the game, and was busy downloading episodes of the TV series “Suits” that Sue and I want to start watching. Sometime in the fourth quarter, I noticed that Atlanta was making a comeback. Not a bad finish! Atlanta scored 30 of their 37 points in the second half, but it was too little too late — Green Bay won 43-37.

Went to bed and watched a bit of late night TV on the bedroom TV — Jimmy Kimmel tonight, now that we get ABC. Exciting! Well, at least I thought so. Sue keeps reminding me that for the 3 or 4 minutes that I manage to stay awake watching late night TV any channel would be good enough!

Another Sunday. Another NFL day at GC.

We got things started with a ‘telephone’ call from Max — on his toy phone. He’d just had pancakes for breakfast and he told me he was looking forward to flying to Phoenix in a big airplane and Opa and Oma would pick them up at the airport. But first they would have to wait for their suitcases. Well, Opa and Oma sure are looking forward to that day too.

We watched our Sunday morning shows and followed that up with a pretty nice breakfast of our own — French toast with peanut butter and fruit and bacon!

Sue read outside in the afternoon. I diddled around, putting on our putting green and doing an hour’s worth of work for Koop. I didn’t really watch the 11:00 NFL games; we didn’t get the Vikings or the Giants on our channels, and I didn’t really care about Indianapolis game. I was more interested in the late afternoon games. In fact, I really wanted to watch TWO games — the Arizona/Chiefs game and the Seahawks/Eagles game. So I set up the bedroom TV next to the living room one and watched both! And when I saw that the Giants had blown away the Titans and the Vikings beat the Jets in overtime I thought this could be a big ‘turnaround’ day for me — for a change the teams I cheered for WON! Well, not quite. The Cardinals won, but so did the Seahawks. And then, after we’d watched 60 minutes and ate half of the pizza Sue picked up from the Hitching Post, we watched the Patriots beat the Chargers. I guess I expected that.

After the football games were over we watched the CBC News and ate some homemade crackerjack popcorn. And went to bed.

Saturday. The first Saturday of the month. We think it must be a day for garage sales. And as we sat and ate our bacon and eggs we watched numerous cars idle by, stopping to look at the open garage door across the street. I guess our neighbour didn’t realize it was garage sale day at Vista Point (our community)! It reminds me of some friends of ours whose garage looked like a garage sale about to happen, and who had to CLOSE their garage doors on Thursday mornings in the summertime.

So, after breakfast, we got on our bikes and scouted things out. Not many open garage doors on our street. Actually, not many sellers in all of Vista Point, although there were some good deals to be had. Too bad we’re not looking for bar stools or an almost-new all-wood dining room suite. No, we’re sort of looking for some table games, or some toys for when Max comes for Christmas. And maybe even some cheap Christmas lights and decorations so we can fit in with the Mountain Brook folks. But not today. So we cycled out to Mountain Brook — no garage sales there — but we saw signs for an ‘estate sale’ and we followed those up the mountain. Hmmm… we’re probably too late — thinks looked pretty ‘picked over’, although Sue DID buy some more serving dishes.

After lunch Sue read and I putskied around and worked on my TV aerial some more. I ended up going into town (Apache Junction) and getting some stuff from ACE Hardware. There was some kind of street market on the Old West Hwy — the road was closed so I had to detour — and so it took me a long time to get there and to get home. And on the way home all I could see ahead of me was the setting sun brilliantly lighting up Superstition Mountain. The sky had been cloudy and gloomy all day but now, at around 5 o’clock, the clouds opened up in the western sky just so the sun could get one last peak at the mountain.

I hurried home so that Sue and I could hike up the little hill behind our house to see that ‘purple mountain majesty’. And as we sat and watched, the mountain and the valley below it put on a little ‘slide show’ for us, changing colors every minute or so. Here’s a gallery of some of my photos — even looking west, out across the desert, the blanket of clouds were tinted with ‘pastel’ pinks and purples.

After supper (leftover spaghetti) we decided to start watching some of those ‘series’ that so many of our friends have told us about but we don’t know anything about. So we watched the first 3 episodes of “Orange is the New Black”. Not sure about it. We switched to CNN after that, and ended up watching 2 one-hour ‘Lisa Lin’ documentaries, which were very interesting (i.e. we didn’t fall asleep during the show!). And then to bed.

The sun came back. Another beautiful day in paradise. Started with a couple of great cups of coffee — made with fresh new beans from our Costco trip yesterday. Sue spent most of the morning ‘doing the books’ and at the kitchen table and cycled to the Wells Fargo bank. I’m still trying to putt four balls in a row on our little putting green in the backyard (I can hole 3, but invariably the fourth one misses). After lunch I poked around in the garage and ‘organized’ my golf clubs. We went to the Mountain Brook course a bit early for our 3 o’clock tee time and got on early. I had had a pretty good game on my last outing (to Longbow) so I wasn’t prepared for what was about to happen. I should have known better, but I took out my six iron on hole number 4. DUMB! It’s like I’ve never golfed before — kind of like it was here at Mountain Brook 4 years ago. But I didn’t give up, and my next shot followed the first one into someone’s backyard. And then when I took out my trusty lob wedge my shot veered off sharply to the right. And so did my nine iron. And my sand wedge. What? I know I’m a crappy golfer, but this is ridiculous. By the time we finished the ninth hole, with the first hole open and still plenty of light left in the afternoon, we didn’t even WANT to go for a few extra holes.

Back at the ranch I added and re-added my score card. Hmmm… Sue got the rice and asparagus fried up while I barbecued the pork chops. We’ve not barbecued a lot since we arrived here a month ago.

I still have a few movies in iTunes that we haven’t watched, so we decided to watch one of them tonight — “I Am Love”. I had downloaded it in two parts. When the final credits rolled by after one hour, I realized we had watched ‘Part 2’ first! No wonder the movie seemed weird. We watched Part 1 and filled in some of the details. Still, not a great movie. In hindsight it may have actually been BETTER watching it this way! With all that farting around and trying to figure out what was going on, we’d frittered away the better part of the evening. Time for the CBC news. Sue went to bed while I tried to stay awake in case anything good happened on TV. I finally surrendered and went to bed too. And what’s Sue not watching on the bedroom TV? a PBS all-star tribute to the music of Bruce Springsteen! We watched that, and managed to stay up until it was over at 1:00am.

It poured at night! and it was still raining in the morning when I got up. We hadn’t seen that here in Gold Canyon since we got here four weeks ago. Well, that really put a ‘damper’ on my plans for the day! Now I would have to read my book INSIDE.

After breakfast I spent most of the morning NOT reading — but instead I went through all the channels on our Shaw box and made a bit of a TV guide for us. Sue was sorely missing her buddy Charlie Rose. It turns out that Charlie may only be available on a PBS EAST channel, meaning he’ll be on WAY past our bedtime! A good thing I have hooked up my ‘aerial’, where we get a Tucson PBS channel which airs Charlie Rose at 5pm most weekdays — so he’ll be able to join us for happy hour.

After lunch we drove to Santan Village — we were out of coffee beans and needed to make another visit to Costco. Sue had another shopping list so we spent the afternoon at the big outdoor shopping center. We headed home at around 5. I’d been roped into trying a new brand of gin by the salesman at the Total Wine store, so we set up a little ‘taste test’ when we got home — and proved that I had indeed been ‘roped in’. Oh well.

After we finished our G&Ts we had to hurry to get to Ed and Val’s for our 6pm supper date. Along the way we got a little side-tracked by all the Christmas decorations and lights out on Sandtrap Road! Wow! People are nuts here. Frosty the Snowman and icicle lights hanging from the eaves — Gold Canyon hardly knows what RAIN is, never mind snow. Even the bright almost-full moon looked dull hanging out overhead on this street!

Lyle and Carly, who are visiting the Peters this week, made supper. Well, Carly had a terrible cold and apparently Lyle did most of the cooking. Indian food. Delicious. We ate a lot and had a nice visit. The Peters family was planning to go see the Grand Canyon tomorrow. They were going to leave quite early so we said goodnight at around 9:30.

I caught the last 5 minutes of the Cowboys-Bears game when we got home. Sue went to bed early — trying her best to catch up on all the hours of sleep she missed the night before. I watched the news and the late night talk shows and managed to stay up until 1:00. Making progress on that front!

That’s about as exciting as it got today! I did a bit of computer work in the morning. After that we both spent most of the day reading. Sue finished her book, “Girl Runner” by Carrie Snyder (8.5 out of 10), a book she borrowed from Val. I got about halfway through my book, “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.” I even had a short little nap in the afternoon. We went for a walk around Mountain Brook and I picked up a DVD at the Redbox at Walgreens. After happy hour we had spaghetti for supper. Then we watched a couple of movies: A Most Wanted Man (another John le Carré story, just as convoluted as “Tinker, Tailor” a couple of years ago), and “A Birder’s Guide To Everything” (so-so), a movie I had downloaded a month or two ago. We watched Jon Stewart and went to bed, where we fell asleep to a rerun of the James Taylor/Carole King concert on PBS. When I woke up at around 2am I could hear RAIN on the rooftop!

I went to Mountain Brook in the morning — they were having a free ‘Demo Day’ where 4 or 5 golf club companies were showing their new products. I wanted to find a driver that would feel similar to Sue’s Callaway driver, which I have started using all the time. So I hit a bucket’s worth of balls with a new ‘Big Bertha’ — and it felt good. But I didn’t buy the club. Ed and Lyle showed up too. Lyle was hitting balls off the end of the driving range with an Adams driver! The day was cool and cloudy — really the first REAL cloudy day we’ve had here. But a good day to golf.

I went home for lunch and left just after 12 noon to pick up the Peters boys. We drove out to the Longbow Golf Course. Ed bought a discount card which gave us each a $20 savings on green fees. We had a 1 o’clock tee time and probably got on a bit early. I managed to dribble my first shot just over the desert scrub onto the grass. Not a great start. I continued to make my way down the first fairway from side to side until I got to the green. I criss-crossed the green. Holed out the first hole with a nine. Well, at least my play made the Peters boys look like pros.

We wore sweaters all day and no sunglasses. And the course was very nice — so nice that airplanes were flying low overhead all the time. I don’t think my nephew Matt Penner would have been able to golf here at all — he’d be looking up too much. Actually, I was looking up a fair bit too — at least that’s the critique I got every time I shanked another shot! But things got better as the afternoon progressed. And anyway, we had fun.

By the time we were done we’d even had a few (a VERY few) droplets of rain. And the cloud cover made it seem darker than usual. All three of us ended up with respectable scores — I think I shot a 96, which is very good for me these days. I dropped the boys off at their house and headed home.

Supper was ready when I got home. After supper I watched the CBC news a few times. After Jon Stewart and Jimmy Fallon I went to bed.