Monday, March 18th

  Another gorgeous day in the Valley of the Sun.  Temps reaching the 80's in the afternoon, a slight breeze to make it a little more pleasant.  

  Marg did some laundry this morning.  There is always laundry here with the smaller machine she has to work with here.  That and she wanted to wash the flannel sheets and put them away.  The night time temps are only going into the 60's now and even that is in the early hours after midnight.  This is the weather when all the desert critters start to become active, especially: snakes, lizards, etc.  I went for a bike ride with 3 other guys from the park.  We picked up a new rider, the guy generally rides around the park, but went for the longer ride.  He struggled a bit with it, but made it.  We cut off short, so our ride was about 5 miles today.  He is not new to the park, just to our ride.  He has been in the park for quite a while and is here for access to better quality medical treatment, so he is sort of known to us.  

  After the ride I did a garbage run, then back for a shower and lunch.  In my travels I came across a guy who is looking for golfers to play the Raven at a special rate.  The special deal is $89 [regular rate $180], so I explained to him I would be using 35 cent dollars, so that would be a Canadian equivalent of about $125.  That and the course slope rating [read difficulty], I really don't need a more challenging course, I don't think it's for me.  His reply - well think it over.  We still had some cake left from last night, so had a piece with lunch.  It was still great.  After lunch Marg went to water aerobics.  It had been quite a time since they had it and most of the gals were not aware the pool heater was replaced and the pool was back in the 80's today.  They had a bit of trouble with the player and the electrical connection, so it was a bit of a struggle.  I am certain things will work out, even if there isn't a lot of time remaining.  

  I went out for a haircut and was surprised when I was able to walk right in to a chair.   The parking lot was full, hard to find a stall.  It turned out the majority were at Vans Golf over the lunch hour.  On the way out I stopped to check it out thinking there must be some great sale, but that did not appear to be the case.  I looked at a few things, but nothing was attractive enough to loosen the purse strings.  On the way back I stopped at Costco for fuel.  There is something unusual going on as I saw on the news that a large number of Circle K service stations are out of fuel.  The fuel prices have increased about 10 cents a gallon in the last week or two.  This also happens every year near the end of the winter visitor season, when they pump a lot of gallons to folks leaving for home.

  The rest of the afternoon went by very quickly.  We picked up the gamblin' gals along with the Blanke's at 3:30 and the 6 of us headed to Casino Arizona.  Traffic was pretty good on the 202, so we were there in good time.  We had a good experience with the food at the concession in the bingo room, so ate there again today.  One of the gals won $200 in bingo, another had a better day at the slots. Marg & I not so much, although we were one number close quite a few times, success eluded us.  By the time we got home it was about 11 PM, so we were pretty much ready to crash.

  Happy birthday to brother Jim today.  Big day for Marg tomorrow.