January 9th - Saturday

A busy day in the life of these two snowbirds.
  Our day started off early in the morning with an alarm that rang at 6:30 AM. For us that is early, Marg always says that time only comes once a day for her, but she is a trooper and got up for the breakfast crew.  She had a restless night and I would not have been surprised if she had not come at all.  Probably a testimonial to being a descendent of those tough pioneers in northern Alberta.
  This was our first working breakfast since arriving in the valley of the sun.  We had a new couple working with our crew and they were great and things went very smoothly this morning.  As usual I did pancakes and Marg did scrambled eggs.  We had some people who were looking forward to her normal fried eggs as an option, however because of our crew size and the number of diners, we had to limit the options and stayed with scrambled.  The breakfast attendance has been slow, probably because of the Christmas break and people being away.  Anyway we were advised to expect a light attendance, however we experienced the opposite.  We found ourselves making extra trays of bacon and pulling more eggs out of the fridge.  On the pancakes, I made an entire bag of Costco sized batter and it all went.  Well almost, I had enough at the end to make a very large pancake and as usual Harry ate it.
  When we got home, it was not much of surprise that we had visitors, first Kenny & Doris and then Jerry & Pat.  It started out as dealing with getting tickets to a concert next month that became a nice visit for a couple of hours.  After they left we went out to the flea market on Apache Trail.  We were delayed getting there as a woman driving a motorcycle was hit by a motorist and apparently died at the site of the collision.  There were police everywhere as well as the bike and car were still at the scene.  It was a big Harley and the car undercarriage appeared to be destroyed.  Hate to see that kind of thing.
  We looked around the flea market and I came away with a small vise.  I had been missing having one down here as they are so handy, but didn't want to spend a bunch on one, so with the deal I was able to make I have one that will do most of what I need.  While these guys will deal, they pretty much know the value of what they have and don't move to far off the asking price many times.  It was a slow day at the market, so that is usually a good day to negotiate.  On the way back we stopped at Harbour Freight and they had their big tent in the parking lot sale.  There were a lot of shoppers there and most of them like me, just buying the bargains.  I got some really good deals on some stuff I can almost use, so who knows, they may turn out to be useful at some time.  Oh yes, I got my free item, a small pocket flashlight. Over time I probably have had 6 or 10 of them, but they always seem to go someplace and I believe this is the only one I have right now.
  Got back to the park just in time for showers before going to dinner.  We were so busy we never even got to happy hour.  Patti had put together a sit-down roast chicken dinner at the hall for tonight.  It was something new and she wanted to try it and it was great to see it so well attended.  They had it set up as a bit of a nicer affair.  They had 2 maitre de's [wearing white shirts with bow ties] and we were greeted at the door with the ladies being escorted to the table.  All the help had yellow shirts and the tables were nicely laid out with all food being served at the table.  The starter was a garden salad with a main course of chicken breasts that were some of the largest I have ever eaten accompanied by mashed/gravy and green beans.  Desert was a slice of cake.  It was nicely done at a very reasonable rate.
  After dinner we went home, we are tired and it is starting to feel like Maui midnight.