2020 Thoughts

Copied from a friend:

Here are 12 things to consider as we are close to closing the door on this year:

1. The dumbest thing I ever bought was a 2020 planner.

2. I was so bored I called Jake from State Farm just to talk to someone. He asked me what I was wearing.

3. 2019: Stay away from negative people. 2020: Stay away from positive people.

4. The world has turned upside down. Old folks are sneaking out of the house & their kids are yelling at them to stay indoors!

5. This morning I saw a neighbor talking to her dog. It was obvious she thought her dog understood her. I came into my house & told my cat. We laughed a lot.

6. Every few days try your jeans on just to make sure they fit. Pajamas will have you believe all is well in the kingdom.

7. Does anyone know if we can take showers yet or should we just keep washing our hands?

8. This virus has done what no woman has been able to do. Cancel sports, shut down all bars & keep men at home!

9. I never thought the comment, “I wouldn’t touch him/her with a 6-foot pole” would become a national policy, but here we are!

10. I need to practice social-distancing from the refrigerator.

11. I hope the weather is good tomorrow for my trip to the Backyard. I’m getting tired of the Living Room.

12. Never in a million years could I have imagined I would go up to a bank teller wearing a mask & ask for money.

Line Dancing

We joined the "Absolute Beginner" line dance class at noontime today... it merged in with the "Beginner" class after 15 minutes, and then that merged in with "High Beginner" about 30 minutes later. We did okay in the Absolute Beginner class, hung on with the Beginner group, and decided to leave by the time she was teaching the 4th dance in less than an hour...

We had the lessons on the patio area -- where the church service is held and where we went to the concert a few days ago.

There was a pretty good crowd of folks giving it a shot!

If everyone is facing the same way at any given point in the dance, that is a good thing!

In a normal year, the lessons would be in the ballroom (upstairs in the main center building), but we enjoyed being outside!

I think we'll enjoy going back, but we need a *lot* more repetition! 

We also did pool exercises this morning, and rode our bikes to the Farmer's Market (about a mile round trip) and around the outer circle (took the trash to the compactor) -- so we've gotten a bit of exercise today!

Sorting rocks

A little background:

When Carl and Sue purchased the lot at Venture Out, it had a cactus on it.

We got a message from a neighbor over the summer letting us know that the cactus had fallen over...

The birds had used it quite a bit (housing, food?) and we guess that they weakened its structure sufficiently to cause it to give way.

Over the summer, Carl was able to arrange to have the remainder pulled up and the whole of it taken away...

...but a lot of rocks remain where it was located that don't match the other rocks in the "yard".

We need some more yard rocks anyway, but decided that first we should remove the dark colored rocks (and put them in a place in the back where we need rocks too).

 Anyone want to help us sorting rocks?

Patti started sorting rocks.

I think that Patti has a grand-nephew or two who could be quite helpful in this endeavor!

Pool Exercises?

Pool Exercises? In December?

Well, yes, in Arizona!

We had been intending to join the pool exercises since we've been here at Venture Out, but they are at 9am (and 10am) and it has still been in the 40s at that time of day... not conducive to being outside in swim wear!

Overnight (Sunday-Monday), since the forecast was for a low of 50 degrees, we decided this would be our best shot this year! So we went to pool exercises this morning (Monday).

It was in the high 50s by the time we got to the pool -- not too bad!

We had a good 45 minutes of exercise with about a dozen other residents, keeping social distance in the pool.

New license plates

The license plates that we applied for when we were in Livingston were shipped to our mail forwarding service box and they came in our last request to forward our mail. Carl put them on our two vehicles:

So we are now legal front-and-back times two! And with an easy to remember license plate if you are an amateur radio buff! 

p.s. we were debating whether it was okay to post this with our license plate numbers, but... since they are publicly available whenever we are out and about, we decided that it was okay!

Pets read "The Night Before Christmas"

We saw this last year, but enjoyed it again this year!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDHTyzBRvAQ 

Hope you enjoy it too!

Blessed Christmas!

We went out for dinner on Christmas Eve and then drove out to look at Christmas lights.

One of the Williams' family traditions was to go out for steak on Christmas Eve...

... so we went to Longhorn Steakhouse...

The wall-mounted Longhorn had a mask on!

One of our friends here at Venture Out had recommended some Christmas lights in the north part of Mesa -- we weren't exactly sure where they were, so I looked at the internet for popular lighting sites in Mesa and found one that was highly recommended:

It was a townhouse that had nearly every inch lit with Christmas lights!

Since I had not found anything about a neighborhood in the Recker/202 area that our Venture Out neighbor had told us about, we decided to just drive up Recker. When we got there, we immediately saw the lights at the northeast corner of Recker and 202:

The Red Mountain Community Church had a wonderful light display with a broadcast on an FM radio station that you could listen to as you drove through.

The trunks of the trees were lit and then there were large clusters of lights in the trees as well.

There were various lit up displays and the radio broadcast gave the meanings behind the displays.

Then there was another area that we could walk through...

Lots of lights created a snowflake-like display.

Lots and lots and LOTS of lights created a light waterfall!

The video is a short part of the lights and music that played while we were in the walk-through part of the lights display.

When we got back to Venture Out, we stopped to take pictures at the entrance.

It is really pretty!

The resort had posted "official" pictures of the entrance on Facebook a few days ago:

I don't know if this is a picture from 2020 or a previous year's decorations.

Our "Christmas tree" and presents - you may notice that "Santie Claws" left a can of cat food for Miss Kitty.

We've had a great day -- our Christmas dinner came out well -- a little bit easier than Thanksgiving. Carl said that if we make this dinner 40 more times this year, we might know exactly how to make it without any problems!

Happy Christmas Eve!

We are looking forward to a quiet Christmas day tomorrow -- a few pictures from our past few days:

Behind one of the lots, we saw this decoration -- the homeowners must have a tall ladder to get those Santa hats on that cactus!

Several years ago, I took a picture with my camera through our spotting scope of a Bighorn Sheep in Yellowstone and it came out pretty good. This week, I tried taking a picture of Saturn and Jupiter aligning through the spotting scope - do you see them? No? Neither do I!!!

When we were out driving this week, the signs that usually tell of traffic issues had a different message...

If you like fruitcake, is this a confusing message?

We wanted to make cookies for Christmas, and we had a couple of boxes of Krustees Snickerdoodles, so we decided to make them.

Carl did the mixing and the making of the balls. Patti rolled them in the cinnamon and sugar...

... and put them on the pans and took them off. Lest you think those look awfully dark, we tried a variant from the back of the box for *Chocolate* Snickerdoodles. It was easy - just adding 2T cocoa to the mix. They are very tasty!

We made half "regular" Snickerdoodles...

... and half Chocolate. They are all good!

After our pretty successful Thanksgiving feast, we are trying it again for Christmas. We both like turkey, and especially like turkey noodle soup, so we like having leftovers and broth. Turkeys aren't available year-round (not the whole ones that are good if you want to make bone broth) -- so we decided that we would go ahead and cook again -- and this time, we have 50A power and we are hooked up to be able to dump our tanks as much as we need to -- both of which we were missing back in November! So we are looking forward to a little less stressful dinner-making tomorrow than we had for Thanksgiving.

We hope everyone is having a blessed Christmas!

Lunch and glasses

We enjoyed lunch with friends Wayne and Nancy at Olive Garden on Tuesday -- no pictures though, but we had a good visit with them!

When we left lunch, Carl checked with LensCrafters and they said that both of our glasses were completed and available for us to pick up. So, we stopped by there on our way back home...

Are we stylin' in our new glasses/shades?

Carl has not worn glasses other than readers, and he has a bad habit of taking them off without even thinking about it, so we put a sports strap on them so he at least has to think about it if he wants to take them off. He is also trying to get used to the progressive lenses... he isn't sure that they are going to work for him, and he may switch to bifocals. We're going to give them a couple of weeks of use before making that decision, though.

We're both enjoying the transitions lenses (I've had them for a while) in the bright Arizona sunshine!

Biking

We enjoy biking around Venture Out...

The Administration building, also the Sales Office

You will note that there are only pictures of Patti riding -- that is because Carl is adept at taking pictures and riding his bike, and Patti is intent on staying upright on her bike with both hands on the handlebars!

Christmas decorations around the park

On our bicycle ride the other day, we specifically looked for how people have decorated for Christmas here:

A stone turtle with reindeer antler headband!

Santa hats on the cactus

More Santa hats on cactus, and other yard decorations

Golf cart decorations - the wrapped package was part of the decoration, as well as the wreath, and you may be able to see the 'snow' on the fenders.

Extra large lights around the roof -- I don't know if they light up or not!

Well, this one isn't decorated specifically for Christmas, but the red is very festive!

This isn't decorated for Christmas either, but it is a pretty red and green. This is a metal cactus, not a real one.

 

Some of the blocks in Venture Out have multiple homes with the same decoration -- this street has reindeer heads made from palm tree pieces...

 

... here's a closeup - I don't know what the part of the palm tree that the decoration is made from is called -- I don't think it is the "frond".

 

Reindeer heads on a citrus tree

Closeup of the reindeer head on the citrus tree

One more house on that particular block that had the reindeer head. On our block, several houses have a wooden drummer boy. I think that when the occupants of a block are trying to win the decoration award, the whole block will try to have the same decoration, and then folks will use them in following years too. It makes the block look cohesive.

We had seen this yard when we were looking at Christmas lights, but pictures just don't do it justice. They have 10-12 tables of Christmas nativity sets, village scenes, just lots and lots of stuff! The couple happened to be outside when we stopped to take a picture so we got to chat with them for a few minutes (at a careful social distance, of course!).

I think that this yard won first place (for a corner lot) this year.

Carl took a picture of our lot with the "night vision" setting on his camera (and supporting the camera on a railing across the street to minimize blur). It is neat how it got the lights in the palm tree to the right of our lot (those are from the "Sparkle Magic" light from our lot), the moving lights on the side of Gracie, and the down light on the flag pole (lighting the flag at night). The string of colored lights in the front windshield look like a line of white.

We also got the spotting scope out last night and were able to get a nice view of Saturn and Jupiter. We had to zoom it in all the way to get a good clear view of them, and then they moved out of the field of view of the telescope very quickly with the earth's rotation. But it was neat to see them!