Author: Rudy

First full day back in Arizona. Welcome to 2012. After breakfast I cleaned up the driveway — swept up all the dead leaves.

Then we went uptown to the big Superstition Ranch Market on Apache Trail — full of shoppers looking for great deals. And we joined right in. We walked out with a grocery cart filled to the top with fresh fruits and vegetables — all for $31.00! Amazing. We bought a few more groceries at Bashas. Then home for lunch.

After lunch we got on our bikes and went for a quick cycle to Walgreen’s and back. We were back just before 3pm — that’s when we expected the Driedgers to arrive. Sue gave me a little haircut and we had a shower. Then, at around 4pm, the company arrived. They’d had two little hiccups in their day: first, Dave had locked the keys into the trunk of the car so they only got going at around 9:00. Then, about half an hour south of our place, they were stalled on the road because there had been an accident ahead of them. But all was okay now.

We had a cool beer and watched the sun set. Sue and Marylou went for a walk. Then Sue got supper going and at around 7:30 we had our barbecued chicken and potatoes. After supper we visited a bit. Dave worked on a crossword.

By 10:30 the Driedgers went to bed. We watched a bit of late night TV and then went to bed too.

Looks stormy out there. Snow and wind. Sue’s doing laundry and packing. I’m checking to make sure all my computer stuff is packed. Looks like we are leaving Manitoba just at the right time.
This afternoon our kids are taking us to the Winnipeg airport. Our 4:45 WestJet flight will get us to Phoenix at 6:43 — hopefully we’ll catch the second half of the Giants-Cowboys game.

Anyway, it’s been good to see family and friends here at home this Christmas — but I’m quite looking forward to the desert — cycling, hiking, golfing, reading. See you there.

Okay, I haven’t really been updating this blog for quite a while. In fact I’m writing this “after the fact”. We had just over 2 weeks at home — with no internet, no TV, and not much to do. Sue helped to move her mom to a new apartment. We had Christmas at Mart’s with the Penners, and again at our house with the Nikkels. Then Tim moved his business to the new location (although I didn’t really help much because I got sick with a bad cold, my first in many years. Then Tim and Alex hosted us for New Year’s Eve and took us to the airport on New Year’s Day for our flight back to Phoenix. Here are some Christmas photos that Walter took at our house.

After a couple days of cold and rain, today we seemed to get back on track. Sure, the morning still looked cold and wet — although the rain had stopped — but at least the sun was out in the morning. It’s amazing how that makes everything seem more positive.
I worked ALL MORNING adding almost 200 photos to the SD camera card for the digital photo frame we’ve bought for my parents for Christmas — lots of photos from our Southeast Asia trip from a couple of years ago, including Japan, and our Buenos Aires photos. It seems these ‘little’ projects always end up consuming the better part of the day.
I also did a small job for Tim at Oak Leaf. I did NOT read my next book. Sue was busy trying to clean the shower door which looks quite stained by hard water — I’ll need to run the softener when we come back in January.
We had lunch. Great (as usual). Last of the chips. Cleaning out the fridge because tomorrow is our last day here until next year.
At 3:00 we were back at Mountain Brook. NOBODY else on the course! But the sun was out for most of the time, and although the course was wet, we didn’t get our feet soaked and had a great time. That doesn’t mean I played great — no, I had some good holes and too many poor ones — lost by 2 strokes on nine holes to Sue and her new clubs. Well, at least I want to blame it on the clubs — it can’t be that I’m just so useless.
When we got back home I reported our intentions to leave for a couple of weeks to our neighbors, Mike and Charlotte, whom we never see otherwise. All good. Sue warmed up the leftover Chinese food from yesterday. We had a gin and tonic, then supper. Watched our comedy channel shows. Then Sue put in one of Jill’s movies, “The Sum of All Fears”. Okay. Sue didn’t really like it and was playing Bridge on her iPad. I dozed off a couple of times. Snacks of grapes and nuts.
Watched a 60 Minutes rerun and some late night TV before heading off to bed — our last night of 2011 here in Gold Canyon.

Another full day of rain. Cold and rain. Lots of rain.
Sue did laundry in the morning. Read a bit. Messed up a sudoku. Ed H from Lorette called and lined up their dates to visit us at the end of January.
After lunch we headed out to Queen Creek. Had a coffee at Starbucks. Bought more socks at Target. Checked out the booze prices at BevMo.
Then we went to Santan Village. Went to Walmart. Went to the Apple Store where Sue played Bridge on her iPad while she waited for her ‘genius’ appointment. The ‘genius’ diagnosed her iPad — and concluded that the ‘problem’ is with the Bridge game app, not the iPad. Now it was dark, after 6pm.
We went to the big Total Wine store and bought a ton of beer and a few bottles of wine. Drove back to Gold Canyon; stopped at the Chinese restaurant on King’s Ranch Road and ordered takeout. Went home and ate half of it. Stashed our booze.
Tried out the Vintura Aerator we’d ordered on Amazon (it was sitting where FedEx had dropped it off — in a plastic bag outside our door) with our wine — yep, makes the wine taste better.
After supper we watched one of Jill’s movies, Desperado. Lame. Well, except that that Salma Hayek is one hot babe. But it would have been nice if the movie had a plot.
Watched a bit of late night TV and retired to bed.

Rain, rain, go away…
Well, this is something we’re not used to. A solid day of rain and clouds. Really! So we listened to James Taylor all day. In fact, I downloaded the 2007 album “One Man Band”, a live concert recording, and we listened to that.
After breakfast we sat around and read our books. In fact, today we both finished the books we were reading; I finished the David Bergen book and Sue finished the Steve Jobs biography.
We had leftover pizza for lunch. After lunch we tried to watch Charlie Rose on PBS, but it was boring. Rudy did a logo job for Tim at Oak Leaf. We even got out our rain jackets and tried to go for a walk around the block but had to turn around early and hurry home before the rain again came down hard.
Sue made supper: basa fillets with rice. After that we watched Monday Night Football. The game was boring so we switched to The Daily Show for a while. Then, after the game, we watched the 2-hour special “One Man Band” featuring James Taylor, which I had downloaded (took almost all day). The show was great and even though it was only over at 11pm, we managed to stay awake. In fact we watched about half of the CBC National news after the concert.

Today is Sue’s 60th. She got a few emails and Facebook messages this morning. And phone calls.
We watched our morning CNN news shows and then I went to Basha’s to pick up some breakfast pastries.


Then at 11 the first NFL game of the ‘afternoon’ began. I watched the TV game (Patriots) as well as one on the internet (Minnesota/Detroit).


After lunch we watched a bit more football before going out for our 3pm golf date. Again, Sue’s new clubs seem to be working very well. Although we both scored poorly after decent tee-offs on hole number one, things gradually improved. The afternoon was (once again) perfect for golf — not at all cold.
We finished our game and then went to the Firehouse Bar to finish watching the Green Bay game. We had a couple of beers and ordered a pizza to take home.
We ate our pizza and watched 60 Minutes and the Sunday Night Football game (Giants at Dallas).

Read in the morning. I’m reading the Dave Bergen book “The Matter with Morris” and Sue’s reading the Steve Jobs biography. After lunch Sue baked some not-so-monster monster cookies. Then we hiked up (to the very top) of Silly Mountain before coming back down and having our cookie snack with a G&T. The day was sunny and probably warmer than any day this week.
After supper (leftover manicotti) we watched our TV shows. Then we watched another of Jill’s movies, “Meet Joe Black”. It was pretty good. It was pretty long! Still, even though Sue was tired and it was already 11pm, we watched the CBC podcasts (At Issue and Rex Murphy), before she went to bed.
I had been downloading a collection of 60 Van Morrison bootleg albums all day, and before going to bed (at 2am!) I looked through them and added some of them to my iTunes playlists.

Skyped with Dave Driedger for a while this morning — discussion about dates for their visit here in January/February. Then we went for a bike ride. It was cool enough to wear cycling jackets, but otherwise nice and sunny. We talked to a homeowner about the big 35,000 single-family home that is being constructed up on a hill not far from our place.
On our way home we passed a home with a bunch of boxes piled up as garbage — and noticed a ‘broken’ bike sitting there. It looked like it was also being thrown out. I went back and asked the owner about it — she told me I was welcome to have it. So Sue and I went to pick it up with the van. The back wheel had no tube. Back in our garage, I used one of the tubes we bought for our hybrid bikes and pumped up both tires. With a little adjustment, the bike soon looked almost good as new. In fact, the tires look completely new! It’s not really a cruising bike, but we think it will be great for some of our guests to use for cycling around the neighborhoods here.
After lunch we had to hurry to get to the golf course. We had hoped to buy some new clubs for Sue today, but Dale, the owner, wasn’t in. So we used our regular clubs and headed out for a 2:45 tee-off. Some discouraging holes for both Sue and me — but in the end we both had fun. It turned out that our 9-hole scores were actually about average for us! And with the early start, we ended up running across the road after hole number 9 and golfing a couple of extra holes. Well, hole number 12 had a big water hazard. I splashed 4 balls before finally smacking a shot near the green. Just then the guy came around to collect the flags — we were not really supposed to be there. Now we had to shoot for greens without a pin to mark the hole. Well, it was cooling off quickly and we need to skedaddle to get back to the parking lot before dark.
An almost full moon was rising above Superstition Mountain. Gorgeous.
Back at home I checked to see what was on tap for Thursday Night Football; and figuring that it would be a Steelers’ blowout over the Browns, we decided NOT to go to the Firehouse Bar. In fact, we didn’t even order pizza. Instead, Sue warmed up some leftover spaghetti and made a salad and we had our own supper at home. We watched NFL online.