December 8, 2007
Peoria, AZ
Sorry for the delayed update…
We arrived back at our house in Peoria last Tuesday, one day ahead of schedule. Since we stopped for the night just east of Phoenix and got an early start, even with morning traffic, we were home before 9:00 AM. We spent the rest of the day cleaning (me: washing the coach, Geri: doing several loads of laundry – we’re still wondering how two people can generate so much work!).
In the afternoon, we moved the coach over to its new storage spot. Imagine my surprise when there was someone in our paid-for spot! I’d asked them to move us to a larger spot when one opened up, but that wasn’t the case. We’ll move spots within the next week or so, and in the meantime we’re parked in another open spot. This storage facility just opened earlier this year, and they’ve built out about 20% of their available space so far. They’re building it as they rent it; a reasonable strategy if they actually stay ahead of the curve. It seems to be a weakly-managed business, so time will tell how long we stay there. It’s a lot cheaper than some of the other options I researched, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
The last few days have been a bit of a blur as we’ve been getting back in the swing of being home. Wednesday was a bit of a “rest day”, which we needed after driving 2,175 miles in roughly 4 days, so we didn’t get much done other than restocking the fridge and pantry. Thursday, we were up early as Geri had a scheduled routine doctor’s appointment at 8:00 AM (ouch!), but we made the most of it by having a productive day catching up on shopping and getting started on holiday activities. On Friday, Geri had another scheduled appointment, so I used that time to catch up on bills and get the outside Christmas lights set up. We don’t do a whole lot of decorating since it’s just the two of us, but it’s nice to put out a few lights. (We have several neighbors who go all out, with lots of lights and decorations that they add to each year. Us, not so much.) While I was at it, I got the inside decorations staged. This is an area that’s really Geri’s domain, so I stick to moving the boxes around and handling anything involving electricity and/or ladders. She set up the tree and I put the lights on today, and we’ll finish up inside tomorrow.
On the food front, we’ve been a bit naughty and nice in keeping with the season. I found a few interesting fish recipes in a series of cookbooks we got from Williams-Sonoma, and made one that came out pretty well. It was a fillet of sole done in a roulade (rolled) style with baby spinach leaves and sea scallops inside. The fish came out great but the sauce, tomato-based vinaigrette, was a little too acidic for my taste. I scaled the recipe from 4 servings to 2, so I may have miscalculated. We’ll definitely try it again. It matched reasonably well with something from the “wine box”: a French White Burgundy, the 1999 Saint-Aubin 1er Cru “En Charmois” from Michel Colin-Deléger et Fils in Chassagne-Montrachet. Wonderful.
We also made a nice beef tenderloin with pan-roasted potatoes and sautéed carrots that paired well with one of our “value” wines, 2005 “Root:1” Cabernet Sauvignon from the Colchagua Valley in Chile. The name comes from the fact that the vines are ungrafted. The vines in most of the world have been grafted on disease-resistant rootstock since the mid-1800s. The disease (phylloxera) impacted most of the wine-growing world, but was never transmitted to South America. Wine trivia, right? Anyway, the wine is <$10/bottle and drinks very nicely for a fruit-forward new-world Cab.
In other news, it’s been freakin’ raining! We had a little over 2” of rain here all year, and then had another 2”+ last weekend before we got home. Then it started raining again yesterday and will probably continue until Tuesday or Wednesday. We’re just not used to that kind of weather here. Of course, neither is anyone else. The local news crews have been deployed like The Weather Channel teams in a hurricane and the news choppers are taking video of idiot drivers ignoring “high water” signs and getting their cars sent down the washes. Maybe we’ll just stay home for the next couple of days…
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