Friday, November 29th

We had a wet day yesterday and last night with some very high winds.  What is really special about those winds is they sent out one of those telephone messages warnings [of high winds, risk of a tornado, seek shelter, beware of flooding] where everyone and anyone with a cell phone gets an emergency alert.  These came out at 3:00 AM.  Today we learned today that there were 3 confirmed tornados in the Phoenix area and one more event being examined as a possible tornado.  They must not have been big ones as most of the damages were uprooted trees and other wind damage. Fortunately none happened in our park, although we have had lots of flooding in Apache Junction.  Also our location in the park is good in a flood event being at the highest point, so our risk is minimal even though the road out front was flowing.  You can get a better picture by searching thru google, it was pretty bad in areas of AJ.  Not knowing the intensity of the storm we had pulled the golf cart under the carport to keep the seat from getting saturated,   Up in the mountains north and east of here they got lots of snow, a couple of feet up in Flagstaff for example.  Our rain total is something like 3 inches from the last few days.
  We stayed in for the early part of the morning as it was still raining a bit and it was chilly.  At 10 Marg and two of the gamblin' gals went up to the Fort.  Cindy was going to go up the bush highway, but Marg talked her out of it over concerns with the rainfall.  It turns out that highway was closed due to flood waters.  There were a few rescues of people stranded in flood water, but not sure where.
  I stayed in as we were waiting for a new credit card from Visa for Marg.  I tried using the tracking number she had but it never worked, so I called Purolator.  They couldn't find it either, so transferred me to the Canadian tracking office.  A lady there located it and advised me it was on the truck for delivery today, but my difficulty tracking it was because of their system.  Apparently a Canadian Purolator package goes to UPS in America and they had the package.  It seems odd they would be dealing with a competitor, doesn't it?  I did some stuff on the computer, some maintenance stuff around here [mostly pushing water off the driveway] and the package showed up at noon.
  The gals went up to the Fort to get smokes, apparently Marg gets 3 packs here for the price of one at home.  They just smell funny when she uses them.  They also played slots for a bit but none of them were winners.
  We had a bowl of soup and then went out for some Black Friday retail therapy.  I can't recall how many billions they are project Americans to spend but it's huge.  There are a lot of good deals, if you can afford to spend the money.  On the news they were saying something like 50 million Americans are still paying off their credit card debt from last Christmas - go figure.  We stopped at Big 5 sporting goods where I got new slippers and a pair of go-fasters at very good prices.  They we went to TJ Max but Marg could not find anything there.  Finally on the way home we stopped at a super Walmart where we picked up a few groceries and toiletries as well as a top that Marg liked.
  By the time we got home, Marg had enough so just stayed in and did some banking on line.  She had a bit of problem accessing the bank service because it was her first time with it using a U.S. location.  I guess the bank security system is able to determine that as well as giving warnings on foreign transactions on some of the cards that are not in U.S. dollars.
  I went to happy hour and it was a small group because of the cool weather.  I think it was the third time we had it at Jim & Beth's so I said well you can have it at our place anytime.  The response was how about tomorrow, so it looks like we host tomorrow.  Once back I went over to a neighbours and fixed her flag holder, I guess the wind played with it too much.  She has not been all that well and is an older gal, so when I saw her trying to fix it, I volunteered.
  Supper was a nice chicken dish with baked potatoes.  There were lots of options for dessert, lucky me.