In the Nick of Time...

East Mesa Arizona!    from my easy chair....  The heat is running to bring the house back to 68 degrees....  It is raining outside rather steadily and the temperature is 40....

We were up fairly early this morning because it was an hour earlier than our internal clocks were reporting....  We hadn't brought much in from the car, so the packout was fairly quick.....

The mob at the motel had eaten all of the continental breakfast by the time I was looking for a bagel.....   Gone, the man told me....  Sorry...........  Ya, right I thought..

So we were slowed by a trip to McDonalds and a fill up of gas...  We were rolling quite fast and the next thing we knew it, we were thru Albuquerque...

We stopped at the Route 66 Casino on the West side and topped off the gas..  That was another 200 miles, so Loyce took the wheel..  We drove to Grants and left the big road..

This time we took Nm 53 and went thru a Nat Monument  El Malpias  and then thru Indian reservations.  We were quite high in altitude, almost 8,000 feet.   Then thru a small and rather poor Indian town of Zuni Pueblo...  The hot commodity in that town seemed to be wood for your fireplace...  There were many pickups up town with wood for sale...  It will be quite cold there tonight...

You could see the storm off in the distance as we crossed into Arizona and the sunny day was replaced with dense clouds...  We drove for Show Low....  where we topped the tank again, and I  took back over the driving...

It was just dusk as we drove thru the Salt River Canyon area with temperatures in the mid 30s..  That's where we saw the first rainy snow flakes...  I was glad we were climbing back out of the canyon on fairly dry roads.  That only lasted a few more miles as when we were in Globe, it was raining right down...

By now it was dark and the roads were completely wet...  As we descended to the valley, we saw snow flakes and big rain drops which alternated depending to the temperature...

It was about 42 when we passed Gold Canyon, and thankfully we were out of the snow... We arrived about 7:15, which would be fairly early, if it was summer and still  light.....  But it seemed like the middle of the night, as we unloaded the massively over stuffed vehicle... 

So we are here at the Arizona house right before the storm is to be in full force...  I don't think we will be getting anything other than rain and cold, but they reported it will be freezing in the morning...  Now up in the mountains were we just came thru, that will be a different story...  Glad we made it tonight....

Retired Rod

Tucumcarri, NM

We decided to leave and take our chances with the storm in Western New Mexico. Once the grands were home we left about noon.

At 10:30 tonight we pulled in to get one of the last rooms at this Rodeway Inn that we like.  With the time change it's only 9:30 here

About 570 miles, and halfway. We'll see what the storm looks like tomorrow.

Retired Rod

Arizona Dreaming

 I keep looking at that header picture of the Arizona place and wondering if the sun is out down there....  But a quick check of the National Weather Service history shows that it was only 55 for a high at Mesa Gateway Airport about 2 miles from our house....

But I'm not sure we got above freezing again today...  And tonight is to be in the teens, here in Kansas....  So our high was Arizona's low....  Here in the midwest we get this cold damp air that is so laden with moisture that it seems it could rain or snow at any minute and that was what today seemed like...

And finally when I was taking the tax deposits over to the post office this afternoon, it was flurrying... Not enough to stick on anything, but just snow in the air... And dusting on the corners of the car....  Too cold to melt, and light and airborne all at once.....  Danged cold up the pants legs...

Tonight we have the three bandits in crime of our grandkids over here...   They are the children of our younger son Ben and DIL Danielle.. We made home made pizzas which were mostly devoured in about 5 minutes....

I mixed the dough about 4:30 PM before I went out on the mail run...   Left it in the oven which was heated only warm and then turned off...  It was more than doubled by 6 PM....

When we rolled it out, I pre baked it for about 8 minutes at 400...   It browns nicely and keeps the crust from being so soggy...  If we had a steel 500 degree oven the floor would cook the crust, but we lack that....  Doing several pies also negates the stone idea... although I do have one stone...

We had Italian sausage and pepperoni with some mushroom pieces..  And two kinds of cheese... Mostly white but with some yellow mixed in for color....  We were all stuffed....

They are all down in the basement watching the kiddy movies that Loyce keeps on hand here..  Its beyond bed time, but tomorrow is Saturday, so perhaps staying up late is fun at grandma's....

There's a darned storm that is predicted for Sunday night and Monday in the Northeast corner of Arizona and into New Mexico...  Not sure how much snow they will get, but it will continue to be cold and damp....  Not sure how we will handle that if we take off to go back South....

But for now the heaters seem to be running almost continually.....

Retired Rod

A lot colder and Insurance for the cars...

Its been cold here since Christmas.... It never was above freezing yesterday and today we managed about 36 in the middle of the afternoon.....  And for that warm blooded Arizona winter weeny that I am it seems like its below zero....

I think when the seasons change slowly from day to day, you become adjusted to that gradual change...  And it doesn't seem that bad to you...  But coming back from 70s to suddenly below freezing is rather nasty....

It isn't really all that nice back in Arizona either, but I'll take the mid to upper 50s over freezing anytime..

Every year after we leave from Christmas in Kansas, we never receive our car insurance billing... It comes sometime in January and I have to watch that I don't space it off...  So today I went over to the insurance agent's office and got copies of the proof cards and the billings so I could enter the stuff into the computer bill paying program....  Now the program won't space it off, like I would...

Other than that, we had a rather slow day reading the internet and reading books.....

Oh, and tonight we were invited over to Son Chris and DIL Melissa's house for some very tasty Lasagna.  We watched a lot of pictures they had taken on a month long vacation to the West coast this past summer...  Probably the highlight of which was Yosemite National Park....

We are watching the weather fronts now, wondering when a good time would be to return West....  But no decisions made...

Retired Rod

Boxing Day?

Today is known as boxing day in most of the British empire.....  Oh excuse me Commonwealth....

And being from the US, I have heard many explanations of this holiday, mostly from my Canadian friends...  And from those of us that think we understand down here in the Lower 48....

Ya, its the day that we clear all the boxes out of the house from opening all of those Christmas presents yesterday....  There's paper and trash all over the place...  We used to burn a lot of it in the fireplace when I was a kid....  The neighbors never knew, and we got some heat out of it..... but I digress.....

Nope not so!!  Go read Snopes..........

Or what I was always told by some of my Canadian friends, its the day that you box all your stuff up you got that you didn't want and take it back....  Or its the after Christmas Sales.....   Like Black Friday.......  You know, inventory clearance........

Well not exactly, but that is probably what it has become in modern times....

But in England many of the stores are closed in observance of this holiday so that can't be it.... At least over there...

So after some research on this matter, I came upon the most plausible answer from centuries ago...  It seems that the servant class of folks were busy taking care of their families on Christmas Day and didn't get any time to spend with their own families....  And these upper class people would put together a Box (present) for their workers, and give it to them on the day after Christmas..  And they got the day off to be with their own families...  So it became a holiday....  The box contained money, as a bonus or tip for the workers as well as left over food from the feast on Christmas day....

Many of the lords would use the day for sporting events since their workers were gone for the day.....

Now I have read other places where they debunk this theory completely in lieu of more modern explanations....

But here in the US, and here in KC, I think we all used the day as a day to take stuff back...  And see what the stores would have in the order of sales and deals.....  But anyway when I went over to Wal Mart, it was jammed....  You would have thought it was black friday...

I gave up and didn't even park....  but as the evening progressed, Loyce needed a prescription picked up...  And she didn't want to go.. So guess who was elected to this duty....

At least by now, I could park the car..  And I was only 4th in line for the pickup window......  But there were folks all over inside.   Especially in the grocery aisles....  Didn't we just eat everything in sight yesterday??

And as I was checking out across from the customer service center, there were dozens of shopping carts lined up out in the aisle containing stacks and stacks of returned items...  Some of it saleable and a lot of it copiously reboxed and returned as is.....  I couldn't help but wonder what happens to such merchandise....   Not that Wal Mart isn't the most profitable business on the planet...  But what do they do with all of that stuff.....?

I have seen clearance aisles in Wal Mart at times with bright red price tags on held over merchandise....  Perhaps that is where this stuff ends up....

So if your Canadian, what does boxing day mean to you...?  And if your from the US, did you take a lot of stuff back and stand in nasty long lines today???

Retired Rod

We ate too much....!

I didn't read a blog today, because things started rather early.......   We had both a turkey and a ham to get started...   The ham was one of those spiral cut jobs that comes pre cut....

They are all wrapped in heavy plastic and I had a while getting it unwrapped but not dumped in a heap, since it is like pages in a book...  They are pre cooked, so all you have to do is put them in a slow oven and let them reheat...   I use a church roaster oven over on one end of the counter...  It took about 2 1/2 hours for the nine pound ham...

We also had a turkey breast from a fairly sizable turkey, and  it weighed in at nine pounds too....   This we put on one of those Ronco Show Time Rotisseries..  We have the standard sized one, and this is about all the bigger item it can handle....  

The back end of the rib cage was touching the cooking element every time it went around...  And that made a waft of smoke on every pass....  I tried to re center the spit, but ended up giving up and letting it smoke...  Eventually the meat shrank as it was being cooked and quit with the smoke..

All of the family with grandkids in tow showed up for a 12:30 dinner...  I think we were all chowing down by 1 PM...  Of course Loyce made the hand kneaded dinner rolls and we had big buckets of mashed potatoes...  All of the sides came from the kitchens of the kids.....  We're all a bunch fatter tonight.....

The kids go crazy when we open gifts in the middle of the afternoon, and tonight was the fresh pumpkin pies.......

Another Christmas in the books, and 5 very tired grandkids headed back to their respective beds....  Hope your Christmas went well  too....

Retired Rod

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to everyone that I have had the good fortune to have had as readers over the years.......

We will be busy with our family today as I am sure you are with yours, so we will let the blog go for a while until the Holiday is over......

Retired Rod

Cookie Party

Today was the annual grandkids make cookies in our kitchen party.....  With the help of our daughter in law Melissa, Loyce put on the party....  A video is worth a thousand words..........   Click the little triangle in the lower left corner... Its only 40 seconds...

The Icing table.... Who wouldn't like to spread frosting and then put all those M&Ms on for faces and stuff....?

Are you taking my picture????

Caden is almost too old to enjoy this, but he is used to putting up with two sisters and two cousins....  I think he comes along because he really likes the eating part of the cookies...

The three year old was more interested in spreading the flour out on the counter and then hitting it with her hand....

We had to get that ice scraper in from the garage to clean up the floor  under where she was sitting....

I sat over in the corner and worked with my computers while all of this was going on....   Tried to stay out of the way, but every now and then I had to go sneak an unfrosted sample....

This has become a Christmas tradition at our house.....  The pictures were taken with the Samsung phone and automatically uploaded to the google cloud...   Even the video was up there....

I just selected them without any edits at all and included them here...  The clarity isn't all that good but they work for a blog....

Retired Rod

Now where did that get saved?

Technical Google stuff to follow:  Beware!

What I was trying to figure out when taking Biscuit's picture was where and why the pictures I was taking were being stored....  I couldn't erase them....  They were going to some web album that I could see on the Gallery App on the droid phone...   Instant upload...




When I used the browser to look up Picasa Web Albums, it was there all right...
But when I clicked on the insert photo button in the blog editor and selected Picasa Web Albums it wasn't there....

I went back to the Instant Upload Album on the browser web albums and determined that you could delete the unwanted pictures by choosing the button marked actions...   But you have to select the photo that you want to delete and have it be the only picture on your screen...  Just highlighting it on the album page won't give you the action to delete an individual photo...

Once its the only picture on your screen, you can delete it... under the actions button...

But if its in this instant upload album, why can't I select it for the blog......  Well silly you can...... On Blogger's editor,  if you look at the places where you can select photos under the upload pictures button, you'll notice "from your phone".....

Well its not really from your phone, but rather from this Instant Upload Album that your phone is populating automatically....  Good ones and bad ones they're all there...

But my old phone didn't do that...... so there must be a place to turn it on and off.....?  Couldn't find anything in Blogger... Or Picasa Web Albums...

So I started searching  on the Android phone.....  The only logical place would be in the camera settings...  So I pushed the gear icon for settings and systematically went thru all the settings that could be changed....  And its there too, under Accounts, Google, Google+, Photos and Videos, Instant Upload.  And the little switch says on.  Should I leave it like that?

I surmise that this is all available because I signed up for Google Plus when it first came out...  Which co mingles your albums into one area of management by the google plus gods...  So with the newest google phone and software, you can manage these things all together..... and evidently right from your phone...

This further demonstrates that Picasa is now or will be a part of Google + ...  And Blogger isn't far behind.  We will be blogging for Google Plus one of these days....  They want you to link your profiles right now.... Something I have resisted...

So how would you know all of this without playing around all day with it...  And better yet, since it doesn't seem to make sense logically, how do you remember that google plus is really the manager of your picasa stuff....?  On your phone?

Well anyway if you have a google phone and google plus account and a google blog, then you might also have instant upload, so beware that you have copies of pictures that might need erasing...

But on the other hand, I posted Biscuit's picture by just selecting it under "from your phone", without any transferring, or copying... or sending it by email..  Just quick and dirty take the picture and include it in the blog...

Of course that doesn't give you any chance to crop or recolor or resize stuff....  Which almost all of my photos need........

But hey its quick and dirty.......

Retired Rod

Dad's Playin with that darned new phone again...!

Why do I always have to be his subject...?

Ice chopping and App loading...

Today it was chopping Ice!!  Remember yesterday I didn't get all the drive cleaned but the sun melted a great deal of it.....?  And then it froze into a sloppy slushy frozen ice cube all over everything..

So when the sun came out today, for a couple of hours in the morning to begin to melt the mess, I was out there with my chopper scraper on the long handle..  One of the better things I have purchased from Harbor Freight....

It digs up most anything stuck down... Last summer it was the drywall mud on the floor in the basement....  Today it was sliding under the frozen ice and popping it away from the concrete drive...  A lot of it I then shoveled to the yard, but some I just spread out for the sun to do its work...  The sun stayed all day....

As I was doing this, I couldn't help but remember how last year on this day I was having the second surgery in three months... where they were fixing the first surgery....  I came to the conclusion that they knew the first surgery wasn't right... but I had been under so long, they needed to get me buttoned up and hope for the best...

That is because it seemed to be no surprise that I was right back and sick from the first operation....  Do they only work half the time....?  Well anyway I seem to be much better a year later after the second go at it...

I'm out here shoveling the drive!  Slowly, but still working along fairly steadily..  Once the drive was fairly clean, it was off to the Lowes again where all those snow machines were still lined up outside the front door...  We only had about 2 inches, that's not enough to sell blowers....

But I was purchasing toilet parts....  I had replaced the flapper valve before we left back in October, and the thing quit running on and on then... But the water float valve screamed and squealed when it was finishing up the last bit of water...  Annoying at 4 AM......

So it was back home to remove all the rest of the innards of the tank...  Water goes everywhere when you pull out the fill valve.....  But I had a bucket and a rag......  Didn't seem to leak when I was finished, but the night isn't over....

I purchased everything new from the shutoff valve up... That way it seems to seal up better.......

Then we had the grand kids back over while their mother runs the santa trips... I think we came home in the nick of time.....

I continue to set up and download apps for the new Google Andriod Phone... Looking at the old one to help me remember which ones I used...  It of course says no service on it, but you can still look at the icons on the screens...

So far I have been pleased with the Samsung Galaxy S III... It seems kind of too big when you carry it in your pocket, but using it the typing screens are a lot better because of their size....  And I have done a lot with the voice dictate feature...

Bringing up the Play Store, all I had to do was say FaceBook, and it loaded the app into the install screen without doing anything else...  Just touch install and accept and that's that...

I used Biscuit and her Ducky for a desktop background, because it is dark and she looks so pleading...  Its really neat, because it is a Google phone, all the photos that I have ever used on the blogs show up in my galleries....  That would be several thousand pics.....You can sit and scroll and scroll....  I didn't have to load a thing, they are just there....

And all of my contact list was down loaded the instant I synced my gmail account into the phone...  Never loaded a person... in fact I have been busy deleting the old stuff....  And when I delete it off of my phone, it is gone from my computer screen and the tablet as well....  Cloud computing...

Loyce came from a non smart phone, to the Iphone, so we had to enter her contacts by hand...  She also was putting some games on it so the grandkids were messing with it too...   They have apple products at home, and probably know more about it than we do.....

And the short day is now over, and we didn't explode.....  but I have to print out the comment that Jessica left about the Mayan Calendar thing...

I work in a credit union (well, for three more days!) and yesterday we had a member come in to take out some cash. So she says to the teller, "well you know the world is supposed to end tomorrow..." I'm thinking she is kidding. Then she continues..."so I'm going to go buy some batteries and extra water. Won't do me any good if the world ends, but maybe the power will just go out." LOL 


Thanks Jessica...... I'm still rolling in the aisle.....

Retired Rod

Working on the car and shoveling snow.....

As I was sitting here last night writing the blog, it was raining outside...  And reports from my friends up in Iowa were reporting snow...  With thunder and lightning...  Thunder snow, is the official term..  weird...

We had the thunder and lightning here too, but it waited until the wee hours of the morning to begin to snow.....  Wet heavy sloppy sticky snow...  We got about 2 inches that was wind driven into the screens on the windows...  And then frozen down...

It was 11 AM before things got back to somewhat normal, and I went out to do some shoveling...  Sweep off the truck and car, but serious shoveling still isn't in the cards for me.... I feel the surgery from last year if I lift too much heavy..

They don't seem to do much in the way of plowing our streets here in Kansas... Never did do any of the side streets... They melt and get slushy and sloppy and then freeze again at dark...  And the drive melted enough to make a skating rink out of the slushy ice and now is frozen again....

But my project today was to find some new covers for the phones, and get a new battery in the 4 year old Camry...  So while it was in the melting part of the day, I was stopping by auto parts places checking out the prices...

Ended up at Auto Zone, where I got a 640 cold cranking amp group 24 battery with three years of warranty for $119...  There were some $99 batteries at several of the places, but most wanted money to install them...

Auto Zone did it for free...  So I added on some new wiper blades to boot...  One of their guys went out and did the whole deal right in their parking lot...  Always wonder if they are zoned for such work outside of a garage, but perhaps the powers that be don't understand what is taking place....

Anyway by late afternoon we took our grand kids back to their own house, so its all quiet again here...

Tomorrow is the day where the sun is at its lowest point of the year, so our nights are the longest tonight and tomorrow night....  So from that point on, we should have the days increasing in daylight...   Well that is unless the earth ceases to exist tomorrow because of the Mayan calendar...

But its already tomorrow on the other side of the earth, and no one is reporting anything.... But if they don't exist any more perhaps we won't have any reports.........

If you are reading this tomorrow...........  Well lets hope we make it thru tomorrow's really long night!!!      By the way isn't it the Mayans that don't exist any more..?

Retired Rod

Grandkids and Phone devices...

I think I will need to go back over to Lowes tonight and buy one of those bigger snow machines..  Our weather decreased from just cold to damp and cold to completely overcast and darned cold.  To rain and thunder...

We had one of the grand kids come over about noon, so she has kept us busy during the morning while I was waiting for the Fed Ex man to bring the new phones and hot spot...

I only put the gas fired heater on the floor with the LP pig back behind the couch...  And let it run...  It has run all day and mostly all the time all day...  We might have had about a fourth of the bottle left when I started but it is very empty now...

I'm not too sure that we will continue with it once we empty the little bottle, but it felt good while it lasted...  And we now know for sure the heater works...

At 3 PM the overnight driver arrived with our new devices and that began the marathon of authenticating and configuring...  I am about blind now...And since one phone is an apple and the other an android, I have to continually rethink what I am about to do....  Really they are quite similar.  Some of the wording is different but the tasks are the same....

Apple gives you less control and has less devices to manage...  I used the linux internet connection with chrome to check in on the Verizon web site to initialize each device...  Just told the computer to turn each one on in turn and in a few moments they were running....

The android phone came shipped with 4.0.4 which is the latest ver of ICS  ice cream sandwich...  But before long it went into a routine of updating the system... Once I signed it onto the hardwired wifi..  Now it reports 4.1.1  which they call Jelly Bean..

That is the latest version that I have on the Asus pad...  Which I am writing this blog on currently...  I need a keyboard to type a blog....

And I had a big dust up with the Jetpack mifi...  It comes with security turned on and a preset ID name...  And in the tiny teny print the security pass code is printed....  I tried and tried to get signed on...  It was working and reported everything was fine.... But I couldn't sign on.....

Typed in the code over and over...  Tried the desktop, laptop, and the tablet... no go.  Finally I looked a little harder, and one of the characters that I was reading as a 1 turned out to be an f.  I showed it to Loyce, and she read it to me right away as an f, and didn't even know about my mistake.....  I guess I'm just going blind...

These devices are going to take a bit more work in the future, but then that's what you get them for, so you can mess with them for weeks....

The rain is to turn to snow before morning so maybe it will be a white Christmas before we get back out of here..... I can't wait!!!

Retired Rod

Looming ominously !!!

It was after dark when I came out of Lowes tonight, but something struck me when I turned around and looked at the front entrance....  So with a cell phone that doesn't do pictures in the night I took the following picture......

My phone wasn't able to get all of the machines in the photo at once..  There were a lot more on beyond the pictured row to the top left....  It hasn't snowed here yet, and I wonder if some of these aren't left over from last year because they had a remarkably warm season....

But still it occurred to me that they might think they know something that I don't...............!

I was in Lowes trying to find an Acme nut and regulator to go on a propane bottle....  I needed to hook up the blue flame heater to a 20 lb cylinder and see if it still works....  We purchased the heater out in Quartzsite in 2009, and used it some that year when we were in Mesa Spirit...

We had plumbed it into the gas lines under the fridge, but when summer came it was disconnected and filed on the storage shelves here in the garage..  I am thinking of spending a night or two out in Q again this year, but Loyce is not as sure... Boondocking is not her long suit...

So I found just the ticket with the big nut and regulator connected to a piece of 18 inch hose...  So with some fittings and a propane bottle from the grill, I managed to get the heater lit and it is running on its thermostat here in the kitchen...  The propane pig isn't the cleanest, so that lash up will be chased out of here directly in the morning....  But at least I know the heater still works and doesn't do anything nasty like smoke or breath fire......  Actually the radiant heat feels quite nice as compared to the drafty heat pump that seems to run on and on.....

Today I intended to go to the Romeo Christmas Lunch, and I did make it but rather late....  So late in fact that I didn't even bother ordering food.....  But I did get to sit for a while and talk to the guys before they were ready to leave...  There must have been 40 folks, and most of them were on their bikes....  They left the house while it was still in the early 40s for temps.....  But as they were leaving around 12:30 it had made it into the middle 50s....   Really sunny though....

But the reason I was late, was that I was changing our phones around and their associated plans for data and the like.....  It gets complicated, so I won't drag it all out, but Loyce likes her Apple Ipad and wants an Iphone...  I like Android and use the droid phone and the Asus tablet...  We are a house divided!

We also have an air card that is plugged into a router.....  So we redid the whole thing on Verizon with a new Jetpack mobile hot spot to drive the laptops and my tablet...  And then share the data plan with two new phones and Loyce's verizon ipad....  Her phone is ancient at over 4 years old and mine will be three here in a couple of months...  The aircard was purchased in 2008, so it is beyond old...

So for our Christmas present, we will be setup with new phones and I have that new tablet...  And now the Mifi as well....  We have no other connectivity in the Arizona house or the Lake cabin, so this stuff will be mobile with us and we travel...  Not too sure about Quartzsite though....  Haven't seen many towers out in the desert...

So while I was getting this all lined up, it got later and later, causing me to be late for the luncheon....  Oh well.....  I had to go in the car anyway because all of my riding gear was left in the desert...  No room in the car to bring it along....

This new phone equipment is to be here overnight, so tomorrow I will be setting things up with the carriers...  Wish me luck.....!  Usually I have a local office sell me the stuff and they set it up...  But for some reason I did it over the phone this time......

That blue flame heater is over there on the island clicking on and off on its thermostat as quiet as a mouse.... Hope the new phone takes better pictures....  Never have thought the photos were all that good on this HTC....

Retired Rod

Looking at new Harleys but settling for gloves.....

I was out and about today as it turned out sunny by afternoon..  Not warm, as I think the high was something like 44 degrees but if you sat in the front of the pickup truck in the sun, the cab warmed up quite a bit..

When we come back for Christmas, it is always the first order of business to go pay the property taxes on our house...  Kansas makes the darned things due on December 20th...  I never understood that, why 5 days before Christmas...  Just to make sure you won't have any money left over for the Holidays?

Well anyway, I didn't have the bill until we went thru the mail this morning looking for it, and once found I had to drive right over to the County office building and pay up....  But I did pretty good this year because I was three days early...

After that bit of unpleasantness, I stopped by my DIL Melissa's place to see where she had purchased my scooter riding gloves as I needed to exchange them....  They were HD branded so I knew they came from HD, but which one as we have several here in town...  The KC area anyway, but no they came right here from Olathe and she said they were purchased under my name..

Well that made the whole thing a lot easier, as I drove over there and did the exchange in about 15 minutes.... But then got hooked up listening to a salesman on the way out.....  Of course its hard not to go look at the new motorcycles...  And I could fill the lot with new ones to ride on each different day..... snap out a it Rod, that's not even close to realistic...

Well it was sunny and nice and I was out and about, got a Wendy's and some gas for the pickup and drove it around for the first time in six weeks...  As it started right up because I use the little Wal Mart battery tenders on everything...

Otherwise it was just the normal day here in Kansas....  Winter life here is sorta boring.....

Retired Rod

Back in the cold

I'm never used to coming back here in cool, no cold Kansas....  It was 36 degrees this morning and we were socked in with ground fog....  As I was headed up to Wal Mart looking for groceries for breakfast...

Of course everything that we would need to make anything to eat was not on hand....  When we loaded out to go to Arizona, we were loading the motorhome with its large four door fridge...  So naturally we cleaned out most of the food that wasn't frozen...    So no eggs, milk, bread, butter, meat, well you get the idea, it was old mother Hubbard's cupboard...  But we had dog bones!!

So as I was reading all the Arizona and California blogs today about rain and 55 degrees, it was still 20 degrees better than here...  We never saw the sun for a minute... and that is precisely why we go to Arizona in the winter......  Its almost always sunny sometime during the day...

I wanted some comfort food.....  so I purchased a three pound piece of beef round to make a beef stew....  Onions, carrots, celery, and potatoes.....  And a big carton of beef bullion stock...  Its kind of a slow process to brown the meat and cut up all the stuff.....  Simmer for a couple of hours and then add the potatoes....  But when your cold all over........

Loyce declared mid afternoon when she was getting a second bowl, that this stuff is really good.....  She wasn't much on board as I was making the kitchen into a big mess....  It simmered in the cast iron pot for half of the afternoon but with adding the potatoes last, they stayed together...

I like chicken and home made noodles too, but winter is never a good time for keeping your weight down....   Fresh egg noodles rolled out on the stone counter top....  Cut and hung out to dry on racks...  I remember my grandma had them on metal racks made just for that purpose...

See why I don't do well when shut inside with the kitchen....    And Tuesday is the Romeo Riders lunch at a fancy place that specializes in fried chicken...  Best fried chicken in KC....  In a suburb called Martin City..

Other than watch TV and study the internet, that was our day...  Well Loyce is busy getting the Christmas stuff done, but I am not allowed to participate in that.....

Retired Rod

Home in Kansas..... Reflecting on Ct.

As we often do, we never even turned on the radio in the car Friday..  I was busy negotiating the snow and the storm..  And once beyond the weather, we just traveled along talking between ourselves....

So when I wrote last night's blog, I was unaware of the tragedy in CT or the fact that young people had perished...   Once the blog was posted, I managed to turn on the TV for some quiet time before bed.......  Loyce had already gone to sleep....  And that's when I found out...

This morning when we left the motel, we had seen some of the coverage while we were eating breakfast in the lobby...  The mostly cold rolls and coffee stuff that comes with rooms these days....

When we were on the road, I tried to get our portable satellite receiver to work in the Toyota, but since it is an aftermarket gizmo it didn't want to pick up the signal...

So we have been mostly without coverage on this tragic thing in an elementary school....  We can't get our mind around how this could have occurred, and perhaps we will have missed all of the nonstop coverage....  But I think that is just as well....   I am just totally sorry for all of those involved and have no way to make anything right or better for them....  We are mostly helpless... Prayers...

Anyway we left Tucumcari at 9AM Central time this morning, as I had changed our watches last night as we fell asleep...  So it seemed kind of late when I glanced at the time this morning and it said 7 AM, but when you're half asleep, I just got up and didn't question my watch...

It really wasn't until I got back in the car to leave and the clock there said 8AM that I thought oh ya,  but I just reached up and changed the thing to read 9...

And that was correct quite quickly because in about an hour of driving, we crossed into Texas where it was Central time...  We stopped in Dalhart where Loyce likes the C store and bought some lunch items...

We buzzed right thru the no man's land of the Oklahoma panhandle... not stopping for anything but the traffic lights...  And we made Liberal, Kansas by 1 PM...

By now the weather was warming up as we began to see temperatures in the 50s and the Western Kansas sun was brilliant...  It's always sunny in West Kansas!!  But its long out across those plains...  3 o'clock in Greensburg, 4 o'clock in Pratt, and 5 o'clock Hutchinson....  We stopped there for a McD's as there is no Wendy's out on the highway anyway....

I was pushing the speed as much as I dared, because we wanted to make it home....   It was dark at Emporia where we picked up Interstate 35 and the legal 75 mph speedlimit...  But by now I was fairly tired, so I just set it on 75 and quit pushing...

We came in about 7:30 to a cold house...  I was feeling frugal when we left, so the heat was set at 45 degrees....  The sun in the afternoon had it about 50 in here.....

Most of our stuff is now inside the house, and we are deciding what we should have brought home with us but didn't...  But hey we will only be here for a couple of weeks tops...  Like going for a vacation back to your most of the time home....

That's the fun of it, finding different things in your closet to wear that you had forgotten about....

Messing with Google maps, I measured 1,150 miles over the way we came this time...  Which I think is as short as we have ever made it...  But not too sure about the trip thru the desolate part of New Mexico...  Wouldn't want something to go wrong out there.....  Almost worse than West Texas as far as miles from help...

I seem to be tired tonight,  .......

Retired Rod

Off for Christmas

Tucumcari, New Mexico

You couldn't see the top of superstition mountain this morning for the fog.
And the spitting rain at 50 degrees...  I asked if we were really going to head out on such a day and received the affirmative..  Uh, . . . . .  OK..

Things were locked and packed by 9AM...  So we stopped for gas in the East end of the valley...   as we passed Gold Canyon it began to rain..  Beyond Superior it began to sleet..  Loyce was beginning her nap....  I had white knuckles .... but Christmas beckons...

Right away we came upon a wreck outside of Miami...  A pickup had lost it and spun backwards into the guard rail..  Someone was hurt and the ambulance people were on their knees...

About three miles farther a second truck accident was in the middle of the road..  This one was a head on....  We sat still for a while and I couldn't help but notice the very minimal amount of sleet on the road....  How did these folks crash in that?  Its barely wet...    But it was foggy,  still us Northern folks would have to quit driving for all winter...

We had decided to take the Show Low route rather than go to Payson, because Payson was forecast for 9 to 12 inches of new snow... Show Low was to have just 4.. Still we were in it heavily above 6000..   It stuck like glue because it was so wet..  We just went slow and steady..

Down thru Salt Canyon it kind of let up, as the temperature in the deep ravine was several degrees warmer than out in the open...  Show Low looked like Christmas.. The trees covered in the white blanket....  We topped the gas tank and headed East on US60..

Its still 7400 feet of altitude all the way to New Mexico but it seemed to be letting up  a bit..  After a long while we turned North at Quemado to sneak back up to the interstate..  We had bypassed Gallup and Grants coming out 45 minutes West of Albuquerque..

After more gas at the Route 66 Casino for $2.91  we were in the big city...  Loyce wanted Cracker Barrel, so we took about an hour off...

After supper another three hours landed us here in Tucumcari at a Rodeway Inn..  They are pet friendly  for an extra $8, but the place is way nicer than the Motel 6 next door.....

Tomorrow the central time zone.......

Retired Rod

Storms when were wanting to leave...

This was kind of a busy beaver day as I had a lot of things to get accomplished before we try to head out for parts East of here in the morning...

Loyce has it in her thinking that we just have to leave here on Friday, even though the weather man seems to think we are having some nasty storms tonight and during the day again tomorrow...  The snow is to be down to 5000 feet by mid morning, and the mountain pass to the North is 7600 feet...  To say I'm not sure how that will work out is an understatement...

By mid afternoon we had large cloud decks roll in from the Northwest and I thought we would get rain...  I jumped on the scooter to get it filled up with gas as I don't want to leave it empty while we are gone...  The sky had big vertical shafts of fog, but I never did see any rain...  I puttered around making things ready like we might be able to leave....

Loyce has been packing her stuff and cleaning everything again, like we will never be back until next fall...  Never can tell who might come and look at your house while your gone....  Of course if someone is looking, they are most likely a criminal...

It never did rain all afternoon, even though some of the folks around us reported rain showers especially to our Northwest...  After dark here we have had some sprinkles for a few minutes but hardly enough to wet the driveway...

I guess we will just have to wait and see what tomorrow will bring for snow showers in the Northwest part of Arizona...  Perhaps we can go somewhere East, even if it is Southeast....

Retired Rod

All the Fixins!!!

The motorscooter sat still today!  There wasn't time.....  And besides it was too cool in the morning as we were down in the 30s again last night....  Really that isn't much of a problem now that we have this house, because the heat comes on with the thermostat and it is very quiet..

In fact I really didn't notice it much the first time it ran last week..  With the fridge and the washer running the rest is just a whirr...

But today we were quite lucky because we were invited to attend an old fashioned picnic....  It was fresh burgers hand formed and seasoned on the outdoor grill...  Carefully barbecued with the heat turned down low so they wouldn't be burned...

Then all the fixins,  skillet baked beans, potato salad, deviled eggs, chips and fresh cut onions.....  Are you hungry yet?  Oh, and those chips had my nemesis, the jarred spicy cheese dip....  I can't stop..... had to have them take the bag away from me...

We had the luck and pleasure to be invited over to Sandie and Jim Dixon's place up in the North part of Apache Junction...  Their park is the exact opposite of the RV mega resorts we have been staying at the last several years...

Oh, its as clean as a whistle and nicely paved with concrete patios just like all of the other parks in this area, but it is much smaller...  at just over 100 spaces...  There is no traffic to speak of..  An occasional car or pickup, but they pull into a neighboring lot and stop to say hi...

The day was becoming warm in the low 70s without a cloud in the sky.   We talked for so long that that we almost stayed too long...  But even as we tried to leave and walked out to the car we seemed to find yet another subject that we hadn't been over yet...

Jim is just getting over some surgery on a pesky blood vessel in his leg a couple of weeks ago, but he is making remarkable progress and was getting around almost as though nothing had happened...  We were much relieved at his progress.

So we yet again, had another fine day at another party in the campgrounds of the Arizona desert.....   Thanks Jim and Sandie....!!

Retired Rod

cooler again..

Remember when I was pushing to get the roof sealed up on the motorhome...?  The nice weather just couldn't hold up because we were now in December I rationalized...

Well, it held off pretty well until late Sunday night, when the heat came on here in the house...  It had been set at 68 several days before, just as a precaution for the middle of the night...

But I was up and writing the blog when I hear the furnace come on.... and wondered just how cold it was outside....  About 44....

And then last night it was 42 when I was headed for bed...  But that wasn't the end of it as by morning the heat was running about every 15 minutes and it was 34 outside....  

Once the sun was out about 7:30 things turned better and the heat quit...
And by noon we reached the magic temperature of 60, where I usually declare that its safe to ride the scooter...  So ride I did...

No where in particular, but around to see the folks around here that I know...  The realtor lady and our job foreman, but as usual he was way too busy to stop and talk much...

I rode off over to the more distant Wendy's South of the Valle Del Oro RV resort, but after cruising the shopping malls decided on a 6 inch sub way....  Not much of a lunch, but I wasn't in the mood for a heavy burger..

By the time I rode thru the RV park and back to the house it was mid afternoon and almost 70...  Well not quite but it was OK as long as you stopped and didn't get out of the sun...

You know, overall it was bright and sunny and still a really nice day..  Loyce went off on her shopping jaunt before I left, and I would only be left sitting in the car waiting for her, so running around aimlessly on the scoot seems like a good trade off....

Just a slow retired day on the desert...  With no work accomplished to speak of.... Seems about right though....

Retired Rod

A printer for Arizona

Ok, so Rick did it to me again....  Many of us have had our computing experience changed and molded by Rick Doyle up North of Victoria.....

I didn't even consider using Chrome....  Until he said ya gotta try this!!  Its a lot faster....  Its a lot cleaner on its screen and you only have one search line.......  And reluctantly I loaded it up....  Whamo!  he was way beyond right.....

I've lost count of his suggestions that I have tried....  So with that in mind, I wondered about his printer suggestion...  Well, what "he did" anyway seemed cheap and quite effective...  But going on line for the printer that he bought didn't reveal  any sales on such a model here in the US...

I found it on the Canadian web site for Best Buy.....  I asked the guy over at one of our stores, but he couldn't find the NX530 in the US.. Seems they sold out several sales ago...  But not to fear, they had a similar model on sale for this Christmas......

The similar model is the XP 400 also by Epson...  It might be similar but didn't have near the print speed that Rick's had...  Other wise it looks about the same....  Uses newer print cartridges too...  And it costs $10 more at $69...  So what's not to like, slower, more expensive ink, and costs more.... ??



I bought the thing Saturday night just the same, rationalizing that the Looney is worth more than the dollar now anyway so it would cost me more in USD and then there is the CN sales taxes......  Shipping....

Quit trying to compare yourself to Rick,,,,,,  so his is faster and cost less, can you duplicate his good deal?  No....!  Get over it..

But the good thing about this printer is that it is WIFI capable and logs itself right into your router...  Enter your pass code and it signs right on...

Then run the software on your windows machine and answer the questions as to where the printer is and you can set it up.....  They recommended that your first set up be with a USB cable plugged into the printer directly....  But I didn't have the cable...

So I just pushed on using the network connection...   And I got it set up just fine...  Then I went out on Google cloud print and set the machine up on the cloud...

Because the Asus Transformer Pad is an Android device using all things google, it found the printer on the cloud without doing anything...

But the real test was today when Loyce and I had to see if it would work with Airprint for the Apple iPad...  We signed the iPad onto the local Wifi  turning off the ipad's verizon internal modem while we were doing the printing..

Then we selected a short email and pressed the forward/reply button on Apple mail...  The bottom most selection on the dropdown menu was Print...  But it didn't do anything when we pressed it...

So we just sat there a moment to see what it might do...  And it came up asking for us to select a printer......  Offering our XP400 as a choice...  So we selected it and bingo the printer began to run...

So we have no wires other than the AC cord, and it works on the laptop, android, and the ipad...   Oh, its a flat bed scanner and a copier too...

I haven't tried the scanner thing over the wifi yet and that might take the cable...  But still I think we have kept up with the Jones.....  Or perhaps the Doyles..

And by the way, we have almost 10% sales tax here in Mesa, Az too....    So we aren't even slighted in the tax department either..  But no blended taxes yet...............  uh, don't give them any ideas.....

Retired Rod

A little Jaunt around Arizona

We headed out for a drive today as we had enough of sitting in the house....

It was noon when we left and our destination would have done better with an earlier start...

Up on the hill overlooking the town by the airport here is Sedona.

These are mostly the same picture just looking around from side to side.  Below is a panorama where the camera takes shots as you scan the horizon...  Then adds the shots together....

I took this for perspective...  Its really not that far out there, the town is right down the hill from the rocks...

Wandering the city streets you get right up to the base of coffee Pot Rock.

This is cathedral rock and the sun is trailing down over the hill behind me..  Its really yellow making the red rocks seem almost orange...

Same thing with the sun...  Chapel of the Holy Cross.  This is on the back side of the Cathedral Rock.

More of the spires along the wall with the Chapel....

We wandered back down to the interstate, but the sun was mostly gone as we got to Bell Rock...  So I had to borrow a picture from a friend   to put on here.....



You might know that friend too, because his name is Rick Doyle...  His pictures were better than mine anyway...  Much nicer day with good skies...  Thanks Rick....!

It was really dark when we got back to the house.....

Retired Rod

I promised pictures...

I was digging around on my picture memory card and found this picture of Mr Froggy...  I think he kind of looks like he had a few too many.... LOL..

He is a valuable member of our family.....  Well, colorful anyway...

Here is the new Mr Pot...  He's on the corner of our back deck but hasn't found a flower to live inside of him...

The importer fellow called this one Sedona because it has the red mountains....  He had the exact same one with brown mountains which he said were the Chocolate mountains....  They call this group of pottery Pueblo...  Like a small city.... Not sure why that is.....

I took this picture the other day before Mr Pot  found his way to the corner in the far right of the concrete...

The broken pot was on that shelf in the corner above Retired Rod ...  At least I didn't take a picture of the broken piece..... Duh..

Biscuit left her tennis ball out there for me to trip on....  Not much winter going on here.......

Retired Rod

Memories of the Arizona Memorial and the story of Mr Pot..

I have spent the evening watching the military channel and their tribute shows of the raid at Pearl Harbor...  This was six years before I was born, but since my father was in the Navy and stationed aboard a Cruiser based in Pearl, it has always had a special meaning for me...

Its been more than 20 years ago now when Loyce and I rode out across the harbor on one of the Navy's tender boats to go to the memorial...  The pictures now show newer vessels that are owned by the National Parks Service I think...  But back then a third class Boatswain's took you out to the memorial...

I remember standing silently looking down into the water at the rusting hull, with bubbles of oil seeping to the surface around the perimeter of the hull..  Ever so slowly...  There were people thru out the white memorial, but not much was spoken....  Maybe a whisper....  An older lady had a large bouquet of red flowers that she was offering into the water one after another while she and her kids were in prayer.........

We stayed for about thirty minutes, reflecting on the experience, but there really isn't much you can say or do out there...  But you are changed by your presence there...

The other night when I was doing those pork chops outside on the grill after dark, the light bulb outside by the grill began to flicker...  A compact fluorescent purchased in one of those value packs....  I ended up going after another bulb, which turned out to not light at all....

So as it was completely dark outside, I went back for the third bulb..  That was when I managed to hook my shoe toe in my wife's decorative planter shelf next to the door..  And knock the pottery planter from the second shelf to the concrete.....  There were three of them and I did catch two.........   Crash!!

That bring us to today and my scooter ride over to the big Mesa Market outdoor swap meet...  Long time readers will remember that a couple of years ago I purchased a ceramic frog from a fellow who has a big permanent shop there..

I blogged about the frog back then and we had some fun posing froggy in different settings as we traveled..  Trying to keep from breaking him...  Today he is in our hearth room next to the fireplace in KC...  Froggy's Story..

And since I needed to redeem myself for the crash, I went to see my friend and his Mexican imports...  He is from Nogales originally and travels way down into Mexico bringing Southwest items of art back to the Mesa Market...

And the second I said I had purchased a Big Frog, he remembered me from two years ago.......   Amazing...  He remembered me carrying the big fellow out into the parking lot after he went and got him from storage..

Anyway I now own a large planter pot with scenes from Sedona, I was told...  Well at least the mountains depicted were red...  And Loyce seemed pleased that her planter had been replaced...... Wheeww!

It was too dark to take a picture tonight, so I will have to get a shot later, once we determine what kind of a plant to put in it...

And yes I had to put the scooter up and go after mr pot with the car.... He cost too much to take a chance like that on the bike.....

Retired Rod

A change in mindset?

Today was Thursday and that meant that the Country Stores were going on over at the RV parks....  Valle Del Oro has one on Thursdays and so does View Point...   And I had the best intentions on going over, at least to Valle Del Oro, but somehow I didn't get enthused enough to leave the house....

I'm not sure what happened, because last year I was always up rummaging  around thru the different crafts and stuff that folks bring...  Is that an RV kind of thing....?  Am I loosing it?

I had left the new little tablet computer on and hadn't put it on standby, so its batteries were both flat...  I mean 0%, and usually I don't like to run stuff all the way down like that....  So I went about slowly bringing it back to life...  I like to run the computer while it is charging at first so some of the electricity is going into the screen and the charging of the batteries becomes really slow at first...

Once I had the unit up to about 10% then I went ahead and let the screen time out, but left the computer running...  Eventually I turned the whole thing off and let it charge full tilt...  You can't really tell that anything happened to the batteries, but it has taken some of the life out of them just the same..

I read the computers, worked on the weeds that continue to sprout in the back yard... And sat out in the yard by the wrought iron table... Biscuit was out there sniffing under every bush...  She hasn't figured out that other dogs can't get inside the concrete block fence...  She is sure there will be a calling card under one of these if she keeps checking for it...

Eventually I left and went to Wally World and Wendy's..  I was told to buy a new water pik by the dental hygienist the other day, but you know how that one goes....  So today I was checking out the ones at WM... Ended up with their hand held model...

It wasn't nearly as warm today, but still over 70 in the middle of the afternoon...  But I took the car...  Not too sure why....

I think we are both getting ready in our minds to head back to Kansas one of these days...  Which has changed our mindset.... But its cold back there, so I'm not too certain how enthused I really am..  But I don't seem to be starting any long range projects..  More just hanging around like I'm getting ready to leave...

Loyce is sewing away on her craft projects for Christmas, so what she doesn't get done here will just be packed and returned to be worked on there...

Retired Rod

Warm and delightful

This morning I was on the skype phone with my pilot friend up in Des Moines..  We get on the  phone and loose all track of time..  He was telling me that they were to have a beautiful day up there today because it was to be in the 50s.....

I didn't say anything.... he knows its nice out here, so I didn't want to rub it in....  So once I let him go, I decided to take advantage of the nice day....

To me that means out with the scooter..  And again I went out to our South down to the Hunt Highway in San Tan Heights...  That is about the end of the valley as you are up against the mountain...  I wandered around down there for a while and returned back to Combs road where the Olive Farm and Store is located...  That isn't the exact name of the place, but I can't remember it tonight....  They press and sell custom and unique oils and we took the tour several years ago...

After that I just wandered around down there in the South area..  Lots of homes with horses in their lots and even more motorcycles wandering around with the same ideas I had...

Eventually I ended up over in Gold Canyon.. driving out the US 60 highway after the freeway ends...  And I got the idea to stop into Gold Canyon RV Park and see if Ed and Marilyn were around their rig...  It was 4PM and I reasoned that it was Happy Hour and they might be gathered under someone's awning...

Again I kind of don't like just showing up at someones rig, but usually will just shake hands and introduce myself, as we had never met...  But we have read each other's blogs for several years...  Need to break the ice somehow...

Well I'm happy to relate that we are not strangers any more...  We spent about an hour getting to know each other personally, and of course E & M are some of the most gracious folks you will want to meet..  I'm really glad I stopped by...

But old mister sun was going down in the West and it gets kind of cool fairly quickly to be riding at highway speeds, so perhaps we can get together at another time this winter...  It was almost dark as I pulled back into the driveway here...  And Loyce was still working on Christmas presents with her sewing machine...

Tonight we grilled out some Iowa thick style pork chops...  I braised them on each side on high heat, but then turned the grill as low as it would go with the top closed to kind of bake them thru....  They were super!

As I was riding around in the sunshine this afternoon I saw temperatures in the early 80s with I think 84 as a top temp...  That is really unusual even for Arizona....  But the forecast is for cooler temps as the week goes into the weekend....  It can't last forever.........

Retired Rod

Android dock

Remember how I said that I would mess around with this new android tablet and decide if I was keeping it before buying some accessories for it...?

That almost bit me today, as I had to decide if I could live without it or keep it...  Remember it was a black Friday special with $100 off, and it is now back to its regular price.....  So no, I will not be taking it back.....  It works nicely  thank you.. other than my fat fingers don't type well on it....

Ya can't blame my lack of dexterity on the tablet though.  So maybe I should have gotten the little docking station and keyboard to go with it......uh.... Wasn't it $99, but that was $50 off too...  Normally $149....  I just hate my own indecision.....

I looked on line and they were cheaper than Best Buy but were all out of stock...  And a call to Best Buy  revealed that our Signal Butte store was out of both the tablets and the docks...... Boy I Messed this one up, even if I do pay the bigger price..

Well there's a Best Buy over by the Fuddruckers on Power..  And it was to be over 80 this afternoon....  Motorscooter ride!  I stopped by Target to see if they still had some but the kid there said only Apple was normal stock.....  Nope, too big of a price.....!

Once over at BB they didn't have any of the tablets left but they had some keyboard docks...  But the price was now $149...  Ya, I knew that, but started into my "aww gee, that's just my luck" routine....  "Dog gone it!!  I knew I should a bought it Saturday... I'm gonna just hate myself  for days.............."

The young man looked at me and said that he had been indecisive like that before and paid the price for it as well....  I'll ring it up here if you want...  So I said go ahead, but I can't watch.....

So he rings it up and it comes up $149,,,  then he looks at me and back at the register and pushes a couple of keys and it switches to $99....  Then he looks back at me and winks..... see its still on sale....!!   I quietly say Thank You, and give him my card....

He had several docks and no matching computers, so he must have made a decision to send one down the road....  I was the tool to make that happen.

This dock is the bottom half of the laptop with the keyboard and mouse touch pad in it... The tablet plugs in the back like a screen..  It has a second battery and a USB adapter, along with a full sized SD card socket...  Plug your camera chip in and transfer away..



Now you attach the power cord to the dock, as the tablet plug is now the connection to the dock.. It charges both batteries at once...  Fold the tablet down over the keys just like a laptop when your done and the screen goes into standby, like a tablet...

Move over net book!!! And this whole deal was under $380 before tax....?  I'm a little old to jump up and kick my heals together but in my mind I just did...

But no its not an Apple.......  I can run a file manager on the memory to move things around.

Retired Rod

Back for another burger on a nice Monday

After working up and down the extension ladder all afternoon yesterday, I was more than beat by last night....  Seems I scamper right up the ladder at the beginning of these projects, but by the time its about night fall, I crawl ever so sloooowly back up after going on yet another tool run...

Then I seem to pay for all of that exuberance the next day...  Just not as spry as I once was....  And so today was a stay inside day...  I worked on the computer for much of the day and enjoyed the partially overcast day as the sun was out and bright for a while and then seemed to duck under the clouds the next minute...

We never did get any rain, which is usually true to our normal desert weather...  If we do get some, it seems to spot the car's windows but never wet the ground much....

So late in the day Loyce and I went out with the car looking for a sandwich...  Since going over to Fuddruckers with JB and Brenda the other day, I couldn't keep that fresh ground burger on its fresh baked bun out of my mind...

So even though Loyce didn't know where I was headed, I went directly over there and we had another of the smallest burgers they serve...  Of course that isn't too small as they start at 1/3 pound...

After early evening sandwich we drove around over in the near North side of Mesa around Falcon Airfield...  Seems we don't get back to some of these parts of town unless we are just wandering around...

Never started the motorscooter or left the house otherwise, but a good Monday just the same...

Retired Rod

Glad thats over with....

While I was reading all of those prior year blogs last night for December 1st, one thing struck me about those prior years....  Especially last year when we arrived here on December 1st......  It was cold and rainy..!!

For days on end it was in the early 60s for the daily high...  It dipped into the 40s each night... Even though I went back home to get the first surgery repaired the weather here in Arizona didn't improve much...

So this year we have been overwhelmingly blessed with absolutely beautiful daily weather...  Its like summer never ended here...  And the forecast while cooler here tomorrow will be back into the 80s for more time this week.

Since we are now several weeks into this unusual weather, I feel that we are tempting fate here as it is only a matter of time...  Time before the fall cool and rainy period begins...

Now keep in mind that we never get much rain all at once here in the desert but it does rain kind of off and on and the days are sometimes in the 50s for a high... And that is a lot better than back home...

But remember I had that problem with my satellite dome and had to dig out all of the rubber sealant to remount the dish... And while I went over and purchased the new rubber, I never have completed the job....  Which was wearing on me last night, when I realized the weather could turn any time now...

So that became job number one today...  Go back over and get the motorhome...  Take the dome back off of the roof and remove the brackets with their stainless steel screws..  Then reassemble the whole thing using the CA glue as a locktite type product..

After that the area of the roof needed to be cleaned with alcohol in preparation for the rubber sealant...   I didn't remove all of the old sealant, but rather used a craft knife to taper the old into the area where the brackets were reassembled...  When it comes to replacing the sealant, I don't know where to quit..  At $10 a tube, this stuff is a bit higher priced that ordinary caulking...

Doesn't take too long to describe the work, but I spent most of the afternoon at it...  But as it was getting dark, the sealant had over an hour to harden...  Of course it wasn't cured completely but it was skinned over and no longer runny, so I took the coach back over to storage...

Now it can surprise me with those muddy rains that come early in the morning anytime it wants to......  The roof is sealed back up!!!  Yay, or is it yea!!

I found this a few moments ago...


      Yay:  pronounced just like it looks, use this to express your glee over       meeting someone famous or getting your teeth cleaned.

Yea: pronounced like “yay”, but use this when you are voting in affirmation.

Yeah: pronounced like…well…I don’t know how to explain that well, but this is your casual yes. 

Well OK enough of the English lesson, but I need that every once in a while....

Retired Rod

Snow!

In the category of only in Arizona....   This afternoon I was up at Fry's grocery in Old Apache Junction and they had the streets all blocked off for what was explained to me as a Walk A Thon....

But since its never cold enough here for snow, as part of the entertainment for the kids, they have dumped a big pile of snow in the middle of the street...  I didn't find out where they got the stuff, but it was melting rather quickly as it was mid 70s outside...

The big kid in black shorts has a snow ball and his buddy in the gray shirt is about to get it....!

Eww, that's cold...  Well ya. when your in a T shirt and shorts anyway....  If you look some of the other kids are down on their knees scooping up some of the very wet stuff for projectiles of their own....  Wonder if that was what the event planners had in mind.....  But really, these kids rarely see this stuff....

I had to ask what a walk a thon was, and was told that the kids walk several miles for a pledge for each mile from their sponsors....  The schools get the money for their activities funds.....  Works for me....

Saturday is kind of my day to hang low, as all the neighbors were out working on all their weekend projects...  We seem to have a new neighbor to the South as that house has been for rent since it was built...

They were over there moving furniture all day, so I just left the garage door down..  No sense distracting them from their work, we can meet later....  The truck was a rental so I am sure it had to be returned as quickly as possible...

In reading Al's blog a few minutes ago he recapped where they had been on December 1st for the last several years, which caused me to look in our blog for what we were doing on this same day in years back...

But it was interesting that last year we had just arrived for our stay at Valle Del Oro on this day...  We had spent the night before in some very cold temperatures well below freezing in the motorhome...  That would have been at Holbrook, Az...

Its hard to believe we have already been here a month this year, missing all of that cold nasty late fall weather.....  But we do plan to go back for Christmas this year so I had better not get all exuberant about missing the cold weather.....   Even though I am sitting here in Short Pants and a T shirt.....  LOL...

Retired Rod

Looking for a carwash and tethering, not....

I hate to keep talking about the weather here but we continue to experience really nice temperatures....  Today was to be cooler but it still made it up to 73 in the middle of the afternoon..

And it is to be warmer each day until the middle of next week when we are to reach 80 again...  Sigh....  Tough duty.......  Not a rain cloud in sight....

Well with the nice weather, I decided that I needed to wash the motorcycle...  This requires a pressure washer to get the wheels and underside clean..  And I don't have one here..  Sometimes I brought one from home, but there wasn't much room this fall..  For the added weight.. I'm sure I could have shoehorned it in though...

But that's easy just go to a car wash.....  But looking on line, they were all auto drive thru types... How do you find a wand wash when you want one...?  I'll just ride up into the old part of Apache Junction, there'll be one up there some where............   Wrong...

I rode and rode up and down all the suspect streets and never did find such an animal...  I wonder if wand washes are so out of favor that they have all been closed...???  I came home and searched the internet again but didn't find anything...  Perhaps some of my fellow Arizona bloggers know where they are hidden...

That left me outside with a bucket and a soapy sponge...  And even though the temps were very nice, that sun bears down on you, making me leak sweat.....  I couldn't keep my glasses on my face....Yuk...

And it was a rather slow process, as the water leaves all those water spots...  So it all needs wiped off before it dries......  And the underside is still just as dirty as before....

So when I finished that project,  I was hot and disappeared inside to work on the the new little android transformer tablet.....  I was trying to see what it would take to tether the phone to it as an internet source....  At first I thought it would need to be wired with a cord, so I drove way over to Fry's Electronics in West Tempe...

Finally I whomped up a cable to connect the two....  But once home it obviously wouldn't work.....  Studied some more and decided to use the bluetooth option.... And several hours later I did get them connected after using a couple of different downloaded apps...

And I thought I had it too.... but..... I learned that the tablet was secretly connected to a distant neighbor's wifi...  Its wide open and just named linksys, like it came from the factory....

I read that there is some file that I might be missing....  But then they said the nasty words that I might have to root the operating system to install it.....  Nah, more study before we do that....   Tomorrow.....  or maybe not...

Retired Rod