Surviving the "Winter Wallop"

January 25, 2010
Peoria, AZ

Yes, we're still alive - sorry for the gap in posting! There's not much to report from the past week, other than the weather. A series of storms passed through and dumped some rain. Since we grew up with variable weather, we put on our rain gear (even the pups) and tended to take it in stride. Of course, we had all the obligatory TV news stories about people driving through washes filled with running water and getting stuck or worse, washed away. Stupid - not my term, they actually have a "Stupid Motorist Law" in AZ now. If you get caught driving around "road closed" signs, you get to pay the costs of your own rescue. Doesn't look like it'll help.

I wanted to get over to Quartzsite this winter, where RVs gather in the desert, to catch up with some traveling friends, but the weather made that a non-starter. Geri wasn't particularly in the mood for a trip there (or anywhere for that matter), having just gotten back from the 4-week dash to the East and back. Maybe next year...

Anyway, we caught up on some "rainy day projects" - often, we have these queued up and don't get to them in the nice weather. We both worked on to-do lists, organizing things that need to be done "now" versus before we leave for the summer. Geri got an early birthday/anniversary gift: i ordered her an Amazon Kindle book reader, which won't save us any money but will definitely make storage and transport easier. I'm holding out for the Apple tablet that's supposed to be announced later this week. I say that, but actually rarely read books anymore, tending to focus more on online reading (news, travel, motorhome, photography) and periodicals (same focus areas), so I'm not sure if it makes sense for me.

I also did some budgeting (downer - continuing to live within our income sucks) and a first cut at last year's taxes (upper - excess withholding and the tax credit for the solar equipment we put on the coach last spring yields a refund for a change). All in all, it's been a rather productive week.

On the food and wine front, we've continued to do well. We're almost through all of the red wine that ended up in the "drink it or lose it" pile when we reorganized the "wine box", although there's still quite a bit of white left. Given our tendency to focus on reds, I need to figure out how that happened or, better said, make sure that doesn't happen again. I think we'll be paring back on some of the "wine club" memberships we've accumulated where they ship us what they want as opposed to us buying what we like. On the meal front, one highlight was among the simpler dishes, as we made (well, Costco made and we cooked) a chicken-parmesan ravioli with a sun-dried tomato cream sauce. A simple sauce, this one will work with a variety of additions, so we'll be trying it out several times in the future, I imagine.