Tuesday, January 31, 2017

January 2017 is now in the history books and the month ended with the warmest day of the year so far.  Now this is the Az we signed up for.  With the rain this year the desert is about as green as it gets and some of the cactus are blooming already.
  Got out on the bike this morning with 4 other guys and went up to feed the donkey a couple of carrots.  He was pretty happy to see us and came right over to the fence.  After we were on the road for a bit we could hear him braying away probably trying to get someone else to stop by.  I would estimate we can hear him at least a mile away.  One of the guys cut off early to go play pickle ball and two of us turned off after about 3 1/2 - 4 miles.  I have my bike speedo all messed up and the only thing I get now that is useful is the road speed and it's metric now.  It still shows me lots of other useless info.  One of the guys said the only way to reset them is to take the battery out, for now this is good enough.
  After I got back we went out to pay the insurance on the park model, then to the post office.  It was amazing I was in and out in no time at all.  It's usually a half hour, so that was a nice surprise.  When we got back to the park, Marg went to water aerobics.  The pool here is solar heated, so it was a bit cool this morning, still being impacted by the weather last week.  When the days are hot like today, it makes the water seem that much cooler.  There were 7 ladies at splash & thrash, so it was a good deal.
  I went to the car wash down on Ironwood. I use the self serve spray wand bays.  They still use the brush type car wash system here and I really don't like them after becoming to brushless at home.  The car has the headlight covers all scuffed up from them down here.  It was $6 to soak it with high pressure soap spray, use the soapy brush, rinse it and then spray it with spot free rinse agent, so a pretty good deal.  You don't dare not use the spot free rinse with the water in Arizona.  When I got back I used some vinegar in water to do the windows and mirrors and it looks pretty good. 
  While I was cleaning the truck, the neighbour came over with a 16gb flash drive.  They want me to copy a bunch of pictures from prior years to it as I have quite a few [back to 2010] on my hard drive.  Then he will rearrange them to take to the hall and run in a DVD player on the big screen TV there.  They have the one I made for Nov Dec this year as well as my player and want to expand on that presentation.  People like to see pictures of themselves.  A project for another day.
  Marg went out to pick up a few groceries, for one thing we are out of bananas.  Oh  I got some nice pink grapefruit.  One of the guys in the park agreed to pick all the one's on Richard's tree and was running around in his golf cart giving them away.  He's the same guy who gave me the sheleighleigh.  The truck came back, still clean.  Hah, the rains have ended, so there is nothing on the road here now just dust and bugs to splat on the grill, that's why I washed it. 
  Lunch was BLT's and she managed to get the smoke detector going.  Not sure why it wasn't that smoky, I could still see in here.  But it was good to hear that it is working fine.  I put in a new battery every year when we get here and that is the first time I have ever heard it.  After lunch we cleared out the Az room so I could change the headboard on the bed.  It was fortunate as when we pulled the bed out to do it, we found the carpet still wet from last week's rain.  Put the fan on and opened the window and it dried pretty quick  That means another job, to seal around the base of the wall.  Got it dried out, the headboard changed and then put everything back.  Took a bit of time, pretty much the afternoon was gone when it was finished.
  By then it was happy hour and it was pretty well attended.  A couple of the guys were asking about tee times, so we agreed to book a time after 1:00 PM to get a better rate.  As soon as I got back home I got online and booked a foursome for 1:06 on Monday at Encanto, then sent each of the other 3 an email with the details.  I will probably end up driving as they are all talking about the PBR [a good deal on beer] at the turn and they know I don't usually drink on the course. It will be our first time to this course this winter.  They are a fun bunch, so it will be good.
  Supper was brats and hash browns, something I always enjoy.  Then it was off to bingo at the hall.  Marg had a very good night, she won twice and two of the gamblin' gals won tonight as well, so they were all in fine form.