Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds James 1:2

Super Bowl Sunday. The heat is on here. Instead of watching my Sunday morning shows, we’re going golfing! We’d decided to hit the links early in order to try to finish before the heat of the day would be at its peak. Ken got up early and took the 30-minute Uber ride out here, arriving at 7:30. On his way in he saw that the fairways were empty. As he and Dave and I walked to the clubhouse we were looking forward to a quick 18 holes on a beautiful Sunday morning.

When we got to the clubhouse we were surprised to see LOTS of golfers out on the putting green and lining up at the first tee in carts. Families. Parents with young children. Huh? So before we went any further and got our clubs from the storage shed, I went into the pro shop to make sure we’d be able to golf today. No, sorry. It is a tournament. It is closed today. And tomorrow. And the day after tomorrow.

I complained that we hadn’t been informed — that one of our group had gotten up really early and taken a long taxi ride out here. (Ken, who should have been most upset, seemed to be okay with this turn of events!) The big boss apologized to me, showing me the poster on the door that announced the tournament, but only in Spanish. But we could golf after one o’clock on tournament days. In the heat of the day.

We turned back to the house. Ken changed out of his golf shoes and went to the club gym for a workout before heading back home. I decided to take some photos of all the flowering trees on the walk back to the apartment.

In the afternoon we tried to watch the final day of the PGA golf tournament on TV, but our TV was having a bad day and the internet connection was causing the picture to freeze. We would reset the modem, restart the TV, navigate to the right channel, watch about 3 minutes of golf ‘action’ (if there is such a thing), and then it would freeze again. Frustrating.

It was hot enough in the house that we finally closed the windows and started up the air conditioners. The one in my bedroom needs a remote to turn it on and adjust it, and the remote wasn’t working. I ‘borrowed’ the AAA batteries from the downstairs TV remote and that fixed it. When I opened the front panel on it I saw a thick matted layer of dust plugging up the filters. The same thing on the air conditioner in the other bedroom! So we spent a bit of time removing the filters and cleaning them.

MaryLou was doing a load of laundry, and noticed that the dryer wasn’t really drying the clothes. No hot air in the dryer. Dave noticed that we didn’t have hot water either. And when he tried lighting our stove, that didn’t work either! He checked the hot water tank in the car port and noticed that the pilot light was off. Out of propane. I sent Mario (the owner) a text. Thankfully he replied almost right away. Yes, he would have to order more propane for tomorrow, but in the meantime he could switch the connection to the not-quite-empty second propane tank. I also complained about our TV signal, hoping he could do something about that.

When Mario arrived he hooked up a TV antenna to our big TV and showed us that we would be able to watch the Super Bowl in Spanish that way. Yeah, well, not REALLY what we were after. But okay, you’re trying. Then he handed me a crescent wrench and told me to switch the propane tanks — he couldn’t do it because he had a big hangover! And he left. And Dave and I switched the connection, found a lighter upstairs in the bathroom, and lit the pilot light.

Back inside on the couch in front of the TV, I kept trying to get the golf on TV working. Our internet TV system has access to ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox channels from all the major centres in the states. The golf tournament was on NBC, but most of our NBC stations were not working today. I kept trying different cities — and eventually I got one that worked! And THAT is why Dave and I sat there in our nice and cool air-conditioned living room with hot and cold running water and watched what turned out to be a VERY exciting final round of the Phoenix Open! So exciting that we missed the beginning of the Super Bowl!

We were invited to the Neufelds’ for a Super Bowl party so as soon as the tournament on TV was over we high-tailed it out to the front gate to catch an Uber taxi to downtown. Not a lot of traffic today — everyone is inside watching the big game. When we arrived at the Neufelds’ we headed upstairs and joined Ken and Dave Wiebe in front of the TV. In Spanish. The game is the same, but the announcers are Spanish and all the stuff in between is Spanish, too. The Super Bowl ads which usually are more interesting than the game? Nope, not on ESPN Deportes. The six ex-NFLers who “C’mon man!” for a couple of hours before every game and again in between the two halves? Nope, don’t get that either. Thankfully, we were able to see the very exciting halftime show, when what’s-his-name from Maroon 5 orchestrated his own “wardrobe malfunction”! Yeah, it was quite the ‘super’ bowl. In the end, the best quarterback in the history of the NFL finally managed to throw a touchdown pass in the final quarter, to lead the best team in football to a win over the LA Rams. 13-3. Hard to believe, but there was more scoring in that demonstration Mayan ball game we witnessed here last night! Ah, but the pizza was great! (Even though the oven in the Neufelds’ house wasn’t working either! Hope there’s a big sale on propane tomorrow.)

And the company was great, too. We said goodnight and took an Uber back to our place. A quiet walk from the front gate to our house in the still-warm evening. Dave watched an episode of a Vikings series on Netflix. I went upstairs to bed.