Author: Rudy

Thursday: Another hot day coming up today. Got up before 8. Read a bit. Went for a bike ride at 10, and picked up a movie at Walgreens for tonight. Read some more. Really am liking my book, “Unbroken”. Sue finished her book club book, “The Rain Before It Falls”.

Then at 4:15 we teed off at Mountain Brook — hadn’t golfed now for quite a few days (Sunday). It was great! Last ones on the course, hardly had to wait for anyone, had some good holes and some bad ones, shot 51, Sue 52.

When we got home I lit the barbecue. Sue talked on the phone with Alex a bit. Had BBQ chicken and mashed potatoes and asparagus. Yummy. Then we sat down to watch our movie, “Young Adult”.

Tonight after 10pm Ed and Val and Bev and Lyle are arriving here in Gold Canyon. Weather is pretty hot here — and unseasonable warm in Manitoba too. Sue says it’s supposed to cool down (and rain) on Sunday and Monday. We’ll see.

Wednesday: Did nothing again today. Too hot to spend any length of time outside. In the morning I downloaded a whole library of ebooks again — I now have over 4000 books! I finished reading my eBook on my kindle (10 Degrees of Reckoning, a book about a sailing accident near New Zealand). I started my next book, Unbroken, another sea disaster book. By late afternoon we were ready for happy hour. Then Sue made manicotti for supper. After supper we watched our usual shows, followed by my download of the HBO movie “Game Change” (the Sarah Palin for vice president story). It was pretty good. We watched some late night TV before going to bed. And that’s how we spent 3.14 of 2012.

Tuesday: No, not those Giants! The San Francisco Giants. Lost to the Chicago Cubs. This very hot afternoon, at the Giants home park in Scottsdale. Lawn seats $15 each. Full house. Sat on beach towels. By the time we left the temperature read-out in the van said 36 degrees.

Went for a walk to Walgreens in the morning, returned our DVD rental. Had an early lunch so that we could get to the stadium in Scottsdale before 1:00. Hoped to buy scalpers tickets for cheap. Walked all around the stadium — scalpers were asking face value or better. Finally Sue bought $15 lawn seats from the ticket booth just as I found a pair of seats over the dugout for $20 apiece. It was lucky that we found a spot on the lawn not far from a tree — so after the first few innings I actually was sitting in the shade.

The Cubs were in control of the game early on. I read my book for the last few innings.

Got home and had happy hour. Then we barbecued bacon cheeseburgers and had some more of that delicious leftover potato salad. Watched Daily Show reruns and 60 Minute reruns. I tried to read some more of my ‘shipwreck’ disaster story on my Kindle. Wiped. Went to bed at 10pm!

Monday: We were going to go to a baseball game today, but never got around to it. The weather was perfect. Sat outside and read. Sue did laundry. At 11 we hopped on our bikes for a ride to Walgreens and back, with little side trips to ‘Deerfield’ and around Ed and Val’s loop. After lunch we read some more. Looked up tickets to ball games on Stubhub.com — maybe we’ll check that out a bit more later in the week. I ordered a keypad deadbolt for our front door at home from Amazon. I finished reading the story of Mellissa Fung, a CBC journalist kidnapped in Afghanistan, on my new Kindle. Love the Kindle. Book was okay. Barbecued bacon-wrapped steak for supper. Sue made potato salad. Then we watched our movie, “The Skin I Live In”, a Spanish movie with subtitles. Weird but interesting. A bit of CBC news from home and Sue went to bed early. I started reading my next book, “Ten Degrees of Reckoning”.

Sunday: Morning TV shows were off a bit — because of Daylight Savings Time, which Arizona does not observe, we missed Fareed the first time around. Good thing CNN repeats it a couple of hours later. No French toast today because we don’t have French bread to go with our French pork sausages and French icing sugar and French syrup, so we had regular toast. Read a bit, I on my new Kindle, Sue one of Jill’s “Paula Dean” books. After lunch Sue made a few phone calls: brother Al, Karen Pries (tips for her upcoming visit to Greece). I watched golf on TV. Inspiring. Then at 3:30 we went golfing — first to the driving range, then our regular nine holes. Conditions: excellent. Performance: Sue almost quit before finishing the first hole, Rudy had poor luck using Tim’s driver, but scored low 50s and was happy with his game. Sue has decreed that we will not be golfing Mountain Brook again for a while — that course is cursed. She will find us a better course where we will be able to once and for all conquer that game.

Supper was leftover stir-fry for Rudy, porridge for Sue. Then “60 Minutes”. Then a movie on TV (we returned “The Rum Diaries” to Walgreens today without having watched it). We cried our way through “My Sister’s Keeper”. Then a bit of “Fox Sunday” rerun, with guest Newt Gingrich. Ended the day watching Holmes rip apart an old house and rebuild it according to code — what a great show!

Saturday: Bacon and eggs. Hiked on Silly Mountain — not too strenuous because Sue’s back is still “iffy” and my feet are still sore. After lunch Sue went outside to read and I played on my computer, downloading and organizing a bunch of Yo-Yo Ma music in iTunes. We left early for our 4:00 tee time and hit a bucket of balls — I was trying out Tim’s driver and had a bit of success. It didn’t really improve our golf scores — Sue had 55, I had 57 — but we had fun. The weather was perfect, no pressure from other golfers. When we got home Sue started making supper (stir fry) and Charlotte from next door came over to deliver the junk mail — and my new Kindle! After supper we watched a bunch of “48 Hours” reruns on TV, then the movie “The Hangover” (on TV), then SNL. Went to bed before midnight.

Friday: Spent the morning working on my kindle and ibook files — the kindle I ordered is supposed to arrive here on Monday. Sue read and talked on the phone. We had an early lunch. Then we headed out in the van — filled up gas (it’s getting close to $4.00 per gallon again!), and went to Talking Stick up in Scottsdale to the Salt River Field baseball park. Watched the ‘home team’ Colorado Rockies lose to the Oakland A’s. The weather was great — about 74 degrees. We sat on the lawn and watched kids running around, guys sitting around drinking beer and talking sports, and girls in skimpy sun dresses looking great. Good times. After the game we had ice cream cones at McDonalds. Then we went to a nearby Walmart to buy tea towels for Sue and soap refills. Then to Macy’s on Power Road where Sue did NOT get the lipstick she went in for — after almost an hour of sampling and ‘negotiations’. Next time. We only got home at around 7, after sunset. Barbecued 2 sausages, Sue made beans and ‘cheesy’ rice to go with it. Watched our Comedy Central shows followed by our DVD rental “J Edgar”. A bit slow-moving. Letterman. Then off to bed.

Thursday: I spent all morning and a good part of the afternoon going through a bunch of books that I downloaded using Vuze — and I worked on converting them to ePub and to Kindle versions — which works! So I uploaded them to iBooks on Sue’s iPad and a couple as Kindle versions too. We went for a bike ride to Walgreens after watching Charlie Rose until 2pm. We returned the DVD from yesterday. Tried to buy a new watch battery for Sue but they didn’t have one. We got home just in time to get ourselves ready for our 4:15 tee time. It is a perfect day for golf today. And we hit a small bucket of balls on the driving range before our game. And we had a great time — no one behind us.

For supper Sue made another great fish dish with potatoes and a salad. Then, after we watched our Comedy Central reruns, we watched the movie “We Need to Talk About Kevin”, which I had downloaded and burned to a DVD. It was pretty bleak. Then Sue watched a bit of Piers Morgan and played Scrabble before going to bed.

Wednesday: Don’t think we did anything today except we walked to Walgreens and returned our movie and picked up a new one. Then, after a supper of leftover Chinese and a Skype with Tim and Alex, we watched the DVD, “London Boulevard”. It was so-so — a bit hard to understand the dialogue and accents, and the plot was forgettable. It was cold today. We barely made it back from Walgreens before the 11am iPod 3 announcement which I watched a live blog of on the computer. Sue read a bit in the afternoon. That’s about it. Oh yeah, Sue called Irmy who is home from Chile. And we got word back from Jill that it’s okay for us to stay here an extra 2 weeks, until mid-April. So that’s a relief.

Tuesday: Sue had a bad night. Severe headache. A full-blown cold. But this morning she was feeling a bit better. Jim was up since 5 in the morning, listening to music and reading on his iPad in the living room. After breakfast the Peters left on a bit of a drive: up to Tortilla Flats, maybe even to the Roosevelt Dam. Then they planned to slowly make their way back to La Quinta in California. It seemed that between Bonny’s and Sue’s less than 100% health we really hadn’t done very much. But it was nice to see them and to have them see where we’ve been hanging out.

After Jim and Bonny left Sue sent Jill an email asking about the possibility of us staying here an extra week or two. Then we sat around all afternoon. Sue did some laundry. I played on the computer. We ordered our favourite chinese food from the restaurant at the Walgreen’s corner and I also booked a Redbox DVD online. I went to pick up both at around 6 o’clock while Sue watched the Lang and O’leary Report, live streamed on CBC.

We had honey-walnut shrimp and lo mein with chicken and then sat down to watch our regular Comedy Central shows at 7pm. After that we watched our movie, a sweet little romance called “Like Crazy”. It was okay. We also watched a little bit of news, since today was ‘Super Tuesday’, where 10 states had Republican primary votes. Mitt Romney won, but it was probably closer than it should have been, so the other candidates will stay in the race. That means we’ll have this gong show for probably another month.

Went to bed before midnight. Tomorrow it’s supposed to be cool — a high of 60. Another lazy day at home, I guess.