Wax on produce

We are blessed to often get fruit from friends and neighbors who have citrus trees in their yards. Sometimes fruit is left in a box outside a home with a "free" sign, or a pile is left on a table in the Baja Bistro (gathering room for meals, socializing, meetings). Sometimes a friend who knows that we love fruit brings a bag by our house.

We have noticed that when the fruit has just been picked, they are often really large fruits, but over a few days, they reduce in size...

Bag of oranges brought by a friend from his yard

Day 14

 

Day 1 - blue plastic top for comparison

Day 1 versus day 14 --->

 

 

 

 

 

Note that I can't be certain that the pictures are of the exact same orange, but originally they were all about the same size.

Carl spent some years working at grocery stores in the Chicago suburbs, part of the time in the produce department (he is embarrassed to admit how roughly they treated the fruit, dumping it unceremoniously from the boxes where the fruit had been neatly packed and cushioned, and then wrapping the fruit onto foam trays in cellophane). He worked as a stock boy, but also was on a management training program so worked different departments so he would learn more about the stores and how they ran. Of course, produce in the grocery store is waxed. We thought that the waxing was to make it look better (shinier), but since we've noticed this tendency of our fresh fruit, we did some research... one article said, "To protect fresh produce from dehydration and postharvest decay and also to enhance their appearances, fruit producers may apply wax on some of these products." https://www.cfs.gov.hk/english/multimedia/multimedia_pub/multimedia_pub_fsf_120_02.html 

We enjoy shopping at a local market for our vegetables, but we have noticed that the lifespan is very short for most of the vegetables we get there ("don't buy more than you're going to use in the next day or so"). We understand that much of their produce comes from Mexico and may not get the same treatment as US grown produce. I think they also get things that are near end-of-life which is why their prices are so reasonable. I also see them dumping the produce pretty roughly into the purchase bin areas, so some of the bruising that we see after we get the items home is from handling at the store. Again, it is okay if you use it soon, but don't plan on keeping it for more than a couple of days!

Amateur Radio Club Winter Field Day

The amateur radio clubs that Carl belongs to (Sunlife ARC and Venture Out ARC) had their winter field day in February at a local park...

The sign was posted from the VO ARC -- it is part of the Electronics Club in our community.

Sunlife also had their sign up.

One of the activities that one of the members had arranged was a game to search for markers via "what 3 words". This is an app that has been created to pinpoint a location within 10 square feet, with the tag for the location being 3 common words. It is considered to be easier to communicate than GPS coordinates.

She had set up locations through the park and placed clothes pins at the locations and challenged the radio club members to use the app on their phones to find the locations (or, rather, the clothes pins at the locations). Carl and I took two different pieces of paper representing two different locations... 

This was the clothes pin at one of the locations. The organizer had marked it with "W3W" for "what 3 words". For more information, check out: https://what3words.com/clip.apples.leap

Lots of food available at the pot luck lunch!

Members patiently waiting for the time for lunch to start

Antennas outside the pavilion

One of the radio setups within the pavilion

President of Sunlife ARC informing us of the plan for serving our plates

His direction must have worked!

We had pulled pork and then pot luck side dishes supplied by the members. Yum!

Off for repair

Carl and our renter, Al, had done all they knew to do with the golf cart -- if you recall, it died on New Years Day. They had come to the conclusion that it was probably the controller, but... that's an expensive part, and Carl would prefer that a company with diagnostic capabilities would come to the same conclusion. He had called a company that other neighbors have had good service from -- it took them about two weeks to get us onto their list, but they eventually picked it up...

The repair company sent a flat bed trailer to pick up our golf cart (in addition to others).

Getting it onto the trailer

"Arizona Golf Carl Repair"

On the trailer and ready for transport

We have heard since they took it that, indeed, the controller needs to be replaced. Unfortunately, they have found other issues (not associated with the non-running issue, but likely to be issues in the further)... so it is going to be a rather expensive repair. But, hopefully, by the time the golf cart returns, it should be in better shape and hopefully able to continue to work for us for several years!

"Let Us Entertain You"

Our "Venture Out On Stage" group recently presented their show for this season, "Let Us Entertain You". This was a variety show -- in the past they have done a musical with a theme throughout, but this one was composed of separate vignettes not connected to one another.

We joined one of our neighbors to enjoy the Saturday matinee performance.

We are always impressed by the talent that we have within our community.

This was a group doing "Black and White"...

... it is an optical illusion dance...

I think it works better if the participants are closer to the same height, but they did a good job -- if you want to see a video of a more professional group - you can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1b_asWIcrk

A "Dating Game" -- posed as being run in Kentucky, and it turned out that two of the contestants were cousins of the bachelor, but that evidently wasn't a problem to him!

A large group doing a country-themed piece...

... another large group doing a pirate-themed piece...

... a Phyllis Diller impersonator answering "write-in" questions...

...a princess collaboration or competition...

Finale

We enjoy seeing folks that we know from other venues around the park sharing their skills and abilities!

Country-western night at Friday Night Dance

There are dances every Friday night in our community -- we enjoy going to most of them, though we check out the band online ahead of time to make sure that we like their music. This season, the "dance committee" has started having "theme night" dances -- they had a toga party a few weeks ago (we went, but we didn't "participate" in the toga theme). Just a week or so ago, they had a country-western theme night when the band Strait Country was playing. We had heard this band play last year during the Concert Series, and really enjoyed hearing them, so we were looking forward to getting to hear and dance to their music.

Since we got cowboy hats in Calgary in the summer of 2024, we just needed to add in some boots for me and jeans for Carl and we were set! The dance committee provided a backdrop for photos... 

... so we went over to get our pictures taken...

One of our friends was over there so she took our pictures for us.

Group picture of all who participated in wearing Country-western attire! We are just right of center in the back -- you can see our white hats -- that means that we're part of the "good guys"!

The dance committee has a theme night for an upcoming Friday of "Biker Babe and Dude" -- we might go to the dance (the band is one that we like) but we probably won't be in appropriate costume for that one!

Sprucing up the neighborhood

One of our neighbors on the 800 block of Douglas (where our RV lot and the casa are located) organizes a group of guys to clean up and paint the garbage can lids every couple of years. This year, he recruited Carl to help!

It is "interesting" ("odd", "different") that the trash cans in our community are buried in the ground. The trash men open the lid and use a hook to pull the trash bag(s) out on pick up days. 

Usually there is one trash can shared between two houses, but at this location, there happened to be two trash cans near each other so all the volunteers could be captured in one picture. Carl has cleverly identified the trash can lid to be painted and is pointing it out to Al (Al and Shar are renting the casa this season). The other two volunteers are working on the lid behind Al, and Doc (the organizer) is supervising.

I think Carl is making sure Al knows exactly what to paint. 

Doc provided the cardboard pieces so no bricks would get over-sprayed.

A couple of days before the painting, the guys had gone through and sanded lids that had rust on them and primed them, so on the painting day, they only had to paint.

Interesting feature on a UPS truck

When a UPS truck was delivering in our neighborhood...

Carl took a picture because he was wondering what that round white thing was on the roof (the rectangular white thing at the top is the roof of the house beyond). It appeared to be rotating, and we wondered if it was a sensor like we had seen on the Waymo self driving cars (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2026/02/some-views-from-closer-to-phoenix.html).

Carl had thought he would ask Jimmy, but we did an internet search, and we think they are probably a ventilation fan for the cargo area of the truck. From what I read online, these vents are intended to pull the hot air out as the trucks don't use air conditioning but rather drive with the front doors open when it is warm. Other comments indicated that, regardless, the fan doesn't help much to decrease the heat in the closed-in cargo area...