Well, now. Hasn’t that been a long dry spell for Blog
updates? Yes, indeed! But, we’re still here. In fact, we’re still in Arizona.
More on that later…
Writing this Blog entry (well, at least thinking about
writing it) has pretty much convinced me that I need to separate out “George
& Geri” from “Travels”, for a couple of reasons. First, when we’re not on
the road, it always feels awkward posting non-travel stuff here. Second, there
are times when we’d like to share some of our travel-related posts with a wider
or different audience, like people we meet or some of the groups to which we
belong.
I’m not sure exactly how this will all turn out yet, whether
I’ll create another Google (Blogger) project or switch to Tumblr, WordPress or
something else. I might even try using FlipBoard’s “magazine” publishing
capability. When we first started this Blog oh so long ago, Blogger seemed the
best because we were using Picasa for pictures.
A lot has changed since then, including Blogger’s ability to
support multiple simultaneous Blogs and changing approach to images. I’m not
sure how Flickr, with its drastically expanded cloud storage, fits in yet.
Plus, our use of Facebook as a primary day-to-day venue for updates and
pictures has expanded, and Twitter, Instagram, and more have crept into the
mix. Of course, not everyone is comfortable with a lot of the social media
sites these days. I look forward to figuring it out.
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So, what’s been going on since, OMG, Christmas? Well, some
things have gone according to plan and others haven’t. That’s par for the
course, I suppose.
To begin with, let me say that this has been one of the
nicest winters we’ve spent in Arizona since we’ve been doing this. We had two
“cool spells” in December when daytime highs got down to the mid-50s but other
than that, it’s been wonderful. We had 60s-70s to mid-February, 70s-80s all the
way into April, and 80s-low-90s mostly to mid-May.
As a result, we’ve had several series of blooms on the
neighborhood cacti. I was even able to get one photo (top-right in the
composite) shown as the “Instagram Photo of the Day” on one of our local TV
newscasts. [Puffs chest] And, the patio has gotten a nice workout this season,
for breakfast, cocktails, and dinner!
Now, I will say that it’s turned hot since mid-May, or
“normal” as the locals call it. We’ve surprisingly become accustomed to the 90s
and low-100s, as long as we’re not in the direct burning sun. Then, all bets
are off.
The downside of all this nice weather is that things have
been dry. I mean very dry. On any given day, relative humidity in the single
digits hasn’t been uncommon. Hydration has become critical even without
exertion, and we’ve been trying to drink at least 3 x 750ml of water each day. As
of this writing, it hasn’t rained since March 2nd. We’ve only had
about one inch of rain year-to-date, which is less than 50% of the already
minuscule norm, and fire season has come early in much of the state. The long
term forecast calls for an El Niño event to form, so next winter may be very
different.
_______________________________________
Some things don’t change, though. We’ve continued to eat
well and to work our way through the wines that we collected pre-retirement.
I’m happy to report that we’ve almost consumed all of the bottles designated as
“drink through 2013” and haven’t had a way-over-the-hill bottle this season.
One or two have been flawed (corked or tainted in some way) but that’s actually
beating the averages as well.
I won’t bore you with all the “food porn” pictures that
we’ve taken and posted on social media. Suffice it to say that it’s amazing
that we haven’t really gained any weight (of course, we haven’t lost any,
either!). Two of the highlights were a “care package” from Pat & Al in
Connecticut with several bags of Utz chips that we can’t get out here, and a
new recipe that Geri made for Veal-Ricotta Meatballs. Oops; now I’m getting
hungry…
_______________________________________
Another thing happening around the house is a move to “cut
the cord” on TV services. When we’re in Arizona, we get most of our network
programming Over-The-Air from the local affiliates. We still have to pay through
the nose handsomely for DirecTV for specialty channels and for the DVR
capability.
Our friends Ana and Larry spent some time helping us
understand how they get most programming, plus some we don’t get via satellite,
through their Internet connection. By using Roku and Apple TV boxes, plus an
Ethernet-based TV Tuner device and an old laptop computer repurposed as a Media
PC, we can get a lot of programming for free. There’s some work involved, sure,
but I work cheap.
Add in low-cost Netflix and Hulu Plus accounts, and we might
be able to suspend DirecTV over the winter season and rely on the reasonably
good Internet service we have here. The primary adjustment has been learning to
not expect to watch shows “live” since they often “appear” 1-2 days later on
the ‘net.
With lots of network-attached storage space, we might be
able to download enough programming to keep our interest over time. I’ll have
to look into options for scheduling downloads off-hours, not because our ISP
requires that or penalizes us, but simply to keep from slowing us down when
we’re using it for other things.
Of course, all that changes when we hit the road since
satellite TV and limited Internet are the norm then. It’ll be interesting to
see how this plays out, and how much we can actually download before we leave.
_______________________________________
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| This formation was eventually going to be a giant heart. I think. |
Some of the happenings around the house are in the sky. We’ve
had numerous fantastic sunsets and I’ve seen a couple of great sunrises as well
(Thanks, Merlin), and I tried (unsuccessfully) to get some good pictures from
the lunar eclipse. In March, nearby Luke Air Force Base holds their annual
“open house”. This year, the Thunderbirds were featured, and we were able to
get a distant look at some of the aerobatics from the back yard.
We also had an early-season Haboob (dust storm) in The
Valley. It was miles away from us and headed in a different direction, but the
visual impact from 20 miles away was stunning.
_______________________________________
Also in March, we started another one of those “we’ll get to
this someday” projects. We had about 35 photo albums stored in a closet for
years, plus boxes of “loose” pictures that never made it to albums. This was
after we lost a lot of photos due to damp and moldy conditions in our storage
space when we lived in NYC back in the ‘90s.
We were asked to look through old photos for a specific
project being done in Connecticut (more on that later), so it was time to go
through all the pictures. Geri and I spent the better part of a day pulling
everything from the albums (some needed a putty knife to pry them carefully off
the pages!) and another day to apply a little organization.
We ended up using manila envelopes to capture like pictures,
plus a separate box for all the “travel” photos. We started with digital
photography years ago and I actually sold the last of my film equipment on eBay
in 2012, so these pictures go back a ways. Now we have things in a more
manageable state and can start doing more digitizing as “rainy day” projects. (Actually,
we have “air conditioning days” here; these projects are good for when it’s too
hot to do anything outside.) Ultimately, we’ll have everything worthwhile
scanned and disperse or recycle the actual hardcopy photos. Someday…
_______________________________________
By April, as the weather got warmer, we realized that we
have a lizard living in out block wall fence. He (?) has only appeared a couple
of times, so it’s hard to get a snapshot but I finally had the Nikon handy one
day to get a couple of pictures. Hopefully, he’ll keep the scorpions away!
_______________________________________
The big project for the season was painting the Master
Bedroom. It’s something that we’ve been talking about for several years,
actually as long as we’ve owned the place since 2005. Geri was firmly convinced
that I didn’t want to do it, and her evidence (that I hadn’t really done
anything to start) was pretty compelling. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to do it;
it was that I actually didn’t want to DO it. She knows how to light a fire
under me, though, so when she started talking about hiring someone I knew I had
to get going.
As with any project like this, one of the first steps is
deciding on colors. We tried many color cards from the paint departments at
Lowe’s and Home Depot before deciding on “Mystical Sea”, a light green shade as
the primary color. Don’t ask me how I suggested that she remember the name of
the color. I’m not sure it was exactly what either of us wanted, but it was the
middle ground that worked. Maybe we should give people in DC lessons.
It was relatively easy to decide not to do the “designer
thing” and paint different walls with alternative shades and/or complementary
colors. We decided to keep it simple and not get carried away.
It was also easy to decide to replace the carpet with
laminate flooring at the same time. The 14 year old “builder’s grade” economy
carpet was just unacceptable, unable to keep clean, and probably even more
annoying than the “battleship gray” walls in the master suite. We decided on a
Cherry color to match the trim on our bedroom set and found what we were
looking for at Home Depot at a pretty good price. Of course, you have to buy
underlayment (padding) as well, but it was still a good deal.
One of the smarter aspects (I think) was that we were able
to get enough of the laminate to replace the carpet in all three bedrooms.
Eventually, we’ll end up with a carpet-free home, just right for desert living.
The project planner in me noodled through how we could live
comfortably during the reconstruction. We realized that our bedroom set would
(just) fit in the second bedroom temporarily, so the spare room furniture could
go into the garage while we relocated to the other end of the house.
We concluded that it made sense to extend the paint scheme
into the master bathroom at the same time. OK, I was the one who said, “If I
have to do this darn painting, I want to do it all at once”. Of course, that
meant that the linoleum flooring in the bathroom had to be replaced with tile
as well. Since we had the color scheme picked out, it was actually easier than
I expected to find a complementary tile.
All of this “figuring things out” was essentially free into
January. That’s when things got real. The primary trigger was the city’s annual
“bulky waste pickup” schedule. “You mean I can dump all this old carpet and linoleum
on the curb and it’ll magically disappear”? Count me in for that! So, “demo”
began on January 25th and the debris disappeared on the 27th.
Now, people who know me understand that I was brought up
with a “if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right” mindset. I used to tell
people, “I’m the laziest person I know. I only want to do this project once”.
Nowadays, that’s code for “this project is going to take longer than anyone,
including me, thinks”. It took me a month to paint the outside of the house, so
why should this interior project be any different?
Well, it wasn’t. First of all, you don’t just paint. You
prep, you patch, and you prime that battleship gray once or maybe twice to stop
the color from bleeding through no matter what marketing hoo-ha the paint
people spread. You paint two coats without asking, “Isn’t one good enough”,
even on the ceiling. You take the doors and hardware off so you don’t get paint
clogging up the works. You mask off the walls when you paint the trim to make
neat edges. You grind and seal and fill uneven spots and cracks in the concrete
slab before you put down the new flooring. And, you stop and have a do-over if
you mess something up. You plan on NOT having to do this again.
So, it took six weeks to do a complete floor-wall-ceiling
renovation for two bedrooms and a bath. Not too bad, as these things go – at
least for me working alone. We had some help with moving things and painting
trim from our friend and neighbor, Maryann, and with moving stuff back from our
friend Larry. I set up our “EZ-Up” tent in the back yard to use as a cutting
station, first for the tile on the bathroom and then for the laminate in the
two bedrooms.
This was the first time I installed the laminate, but I
watched the guy do the living room and hall that we had done before our
furniture arrived back in 2005. I hadn’t fully caught on to the “you’re retired
so you can do this stuff yourself” mentality at that point. In fact, one of the
bigger mistakes we’ve made in the past 10 years was to not rip out al of the
flooring in the house and tile the whole thing before our furniture arrived on the
slow truck from New Jersey. But, we started with the laminate and it would have
looked goofy to tile the bedrooms now.
In the final review, I think these renovations came out
pretty well. I have a couple of follow-up items for next fall (touching up the
closet door guides and installing a ceiling molding in the master closet to
cover up an antenna coax), and I’ll do that when we finish up the floor and
paint in the third bedroom, which is really our study/data center/wine storage
room. I’ll probably rip out the linoleum in the laundry room at the same time,
since I have enough tiles left over from the master bathroom to complete that
room. Then, all that will be left is the kitchen/pantry. Who knows; we might be
“done” with renovations by this time next year!
_______________________________________
I did have another little home improvement project, and I
almost waited too long to complete it. Back in January, part of getting ready
for the bedroom renovation was installing a new electrical outlet and antenna
coax connection for the bedroom TV.
It’s a nice, although older, LCD TV that we have mounted
relatively high on the wall facing the bed. Neither of us was happy with the
wires dangling down the wall to the floor, so I added a new outlet behind the
TV mount and ran coax down from the attic. It came out very well, but that’s
not the project I’m really talking about.
While I was in the attic, I noticed that a) it was pretty
warm up there and b) the gable fan wasn’t running. Being on a mission to deal
with the bedroom, I deferred work on the fan until it was really hot up there.
Initially, I diagnosed the problem as the
temperature-controlled switch, because I wasn’t seeing power at the fan. Well,
I must have not been able to properly see the terminals or the meter or both
while teetering between two ceiling joists and trying not to fall through the
ceiling.
I replaced the switch, adding a piece of plywood upon which
to stand in the process, and it didn’t resolve the issue. This time, I could
see power to and through the switch, so it was the fan motor that was bad.
Off to Home Depot I went, and they had an almost-exact
replacement in stock. I had to do a little modification to the mounting
brackets to match the old installation, but we soon had air circulation back in
place.
You could ask why we really care about pumping 100°+ air into the attic,
and I’d look at you with a blank expression on my face.
Now, here’s the part of the story that I really wanted to tell
[groans]. No good deed goes unpunished. About a week after fixing the ceiling
fan in the attic at the back of the house, I noticed that the GFCI outlet in
the garage at the front of the house was tripped. The water softener control
panel was blank, and I noticed it out of the corner of my eye as I was walking
past.
This happens from time to time and GFCIs can get weak after
several trips, so I had a replacement on hand in stock. Feeling confident, I
swapped the outlet, flipped the breaker, and reset the GFCI. SPARK! POP! Well,
now, maybe this is more complicated.
I pulled off the other outlets on the circuit in the garage and
started to dig in. A ground fault (the “GF” in GFCI) can be tough to diagnose
without the right tools, so I ran an extension cord to the water softener in
the short term and ordered a good tone generator, used for tracing circuits and
finding broken wires, from Lowes.
A couple of days later, I was doing something on the patio out
back and noticed that the outlet there wasn’t working either. Hmmmm. I checked
for tripped breakers (nothing) and reconciled myself that I had two electrical
issues to work on.
The next day, I was spraying weeds in the side yard when I noticed
a little-used outlet on the side of the house. On a hunch, I got the test
meter; dead. That’s when it hit me: the outside and patio outlets must be on
the same circuit as the garage. And that’s when it really hit me: the wiring
from the side outlet to the patio must go right under the attic fan.
Sure enough, when I added a piece of plywood to the attic floor, I
didn’t see the Romex partially covered in insulation, and I put a screw right
through the wire. A quick snip and splice and the bad piece was out and the wire
reconnected. I turned the breaker on and the GFCI held. Problem solved! I
swapped the old GFCI outlet back in, put the newer one back in stock, and
simultaneously patted myself on the back and kicked myself in the butt.
Of course, the only people I know that would care about this
anecdote are my friends Dave and Wendell, and neither one of them would be
reading this far into a Blog post…
_______________________________________
So, you might be wondering, “Why are they still in Arizona
at this time of year”? Well, there are a couple of reasons.
First, we’d planned an abbreviated travel season this year
to reduce expenses after several years of breaking the bank with extraordinary
outlays. Coach upgrades were sort of planned but the new furnace, and last
fall’s diesel injector rebuild came out of left field. Even worse were the
medical expenses, mostly dental bills for us, and even larger vet bills for
Merlin and Maya Lynn.
Second, travel is expensive and not letting up. We’d like to
go back to Alaska at some point and we’ve talked about another trip to the
Maritimes (we should have included Newfoundland the last time!), so saving a
little now to afford the diesel later makes sense.
Additionally, we have some medical processes under way that
won’t wrap up “on schedule”. Geri has a new Primary doctor (prior one dropped
her medical plan) who referred her to a pulmonary specialist to see if we can
improve her breathing and reduce these bronchitis (or worse, pneumonia)
attacks.
As a result, she’s been through medication changes, X-Rays,
a CT Scan, two breathing tests and three overnight sleep studies, has adjusted
to a couple of medication changes, and now uses an oxygen concentrator (we call
it “R2D2”) to help her nighttime breathing, and they want to add a C-PAP next.
We should wrap up these activities by mid-June.
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| R2D2, the oxygen concentrator. Sounds like an Iron Lung... |
For my part, I had a nagging sinus infection for the first
time since retirement (it was common to get at least one a year with all the
travel I was doing), and came down with a mysterious infection in my eyelids,
of all places. I’m on my 6th different medication to treat this
issue with my meibomium glands (!) that help keep the eyes clean and healthy.
What causes this, you ask? Nobody knows, apparently. Geri is
convinced that I got something toxic in my eyes when I was pulling up the old,
dirty carpet from the bedrooms. I can’t argue, but I also got some dust in my
eyes when cutting the laminate flooring to fit. What I DO know is that I
wouldn’t wish this on anyone. And, if you ever have a stye that someone wants
to lance and express, say “No!” before they get their tools. I had it done and
ended up in the ER with a bleeder that took over an hour to stop. But, I did
get to look like a pirate for a while…
I finally got to a specialist who prescribed doxycycline,
which is helping but takes time, approximately (if I’m lucky!) two months. The
good news is that the doxy will help make sure I don’t suffer from Lyme
disease, prostatitis, sinusitis, acne, rosacea, rickets, malaria, anthrax,
Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, and even syphilis! They should put this stuff in
the water supply.
Thank goodness the pups have been doing fine this winter,
other than some adjustments to Maya’s insulin to keep her in balance.
_______________________________________
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| Jack Daniels barrels at Toby Keith's |
On the lighter side, we did have a couple of out-of-town
visitors (Pat & Sharon from the Aetna days, and Rick & Lynn from all
the way back to college), and we managed to take advantage of a couple of wine
tasting Groupons with Ana & Larry and John & Judy (neighbors who are
also “winter visitors”).
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| Wine tasting in Scottsdale with John & Judy |
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| Some people take pictures of the plane when they travel. Not us. |
In May, we actually took a trip on an airplane! No big deal,
you say? Well, it was the first time we’ve done that (other than the little
8-seat sightseeing plane we took to see the peak of Denali in Alaska in 2009)
since before retirement in mid-2005.
Early in the year, our granddaughter Alicia let us know that
she was planning a surprise 30th wedding anniversary party for her
parents, Pat & Al. We put a plan in place to be part of the surprise. I
cashed in a significant portion of my accumulated US Airways miles (Geri
doesn’t fly coach, OK?) and we found a Pet Resort to handle the pups needs (it
was difficult to find a place that would handle Maya’s insulin injections). Off
we went for Mother’s Day weekend in Connecticut.
Alicia and her sister Britt did an awesome job in planning
and execution, and the whole thing was a complete surprise for Pat & Al.
Even a lot of family and friends were surprised to see us there, so that was a
bonus!
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| Britt, Pat, Al, and Alicia |
_______________________________________
At the end of May, things swung the other way. We got the
call that Geri’s older sister, Kathy, had passed away in Southern California.
She had been suffering from Alzheimer’s for many years and we knew that her
health was failing. Geri and I had started talking about changing our travel
plans to head there first when we leave Arizona this year; we had initially
been planning to go see her at the end of the travel season.
Sadly, with Alzheimer’s, it’s difficult to gauge these
things. We’ll choose to remember her as she was in her prime, of course. Since
we already had been going through old photographs, I dug in and posted a group
of her over the years to Facebook.
The service will be June 27th in Lompoc, so that
helped define our travel plan for the summer. We’ll leave Arizona on the 25th
in order to get there on schedule.
_______________________________________
Which brings us to “summer travel”. In spite of our
later-than-usual start, we’ll still be able to get away. Over the past few
weeks, we’ve been doing all of our normal preparation work. Geri’s done a lot
of organizing of clothes and supplies, and I’ve been working mornings (before
it gets too hot!) on all of the annual maintenance tasks (engine and generator
oil and filters, chassis lube, etc.).
We have most of the things that can be loaded early already
moved, recognizing that we run a risk that as soon as something goes in, we’ll
need it here at the house. Overall, we’re in pretty good shape, since our
checklists spread the work out over a month. We could be ready to go inside of
a week if we needed to do so.
So, our route will take us west to the California Coast
initially. We’ll break that segment into two travel days so that we can get all
the house preparation stuff out of the way the morning of departure. We have a
“boondocking” spot that we’ve used many times for a quick overnight, just west
of Palm Springs.
From Lompoc, our plan is to slowly head north to Oregon,
generally via US-101. Our northbound stops of a few days each will be in
Salinas (Monterey tour), Petaluma (San Francisco and Napa), Eureka, and
Brookings before we get to Coos Bay/Charleston for almost a month. We’ll attend
a couple of RV Rallies, one in Coos Bay and one in Redmond, during August, then
head back to the coast and retrace our path southbound along the coast. At
least that’s the plan at this point; all we have laid out in detail is the trip
north. Now, that’s the way to travel!
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