cold but fun week

Good morning.
Just returned from my walk. A chilly 37 this morning. It won't get back to normal temps until early next week.
So, good weather to do some things around the house. We finally went out a got a door for the second bedroom. Way back when we bought the house. The door to the master bedroom had a cutout in the bottom corner. The previous owners must of had a small animal they wanted to be able to go in and out of the bedroom when the door was closed. It was obviously a do-it-yourself job and looked really bad. So we took the door off and threw it out and put the door from the second bedroom there. So now, after a year and a half of living here, we finally decided to get another door.  So we picked that up a couple of days ago, and today I'm going out to get some chisels and wood tools to cut out the hinge spots. Then we'll hang the door.
In other news....
I made spiral zucchini salad again. It is tasty!

And Tuesday, we went with a group of neighbors over to Aliante again for their Taco Tuesday. Tasty street tacos! And this Tuesday was one of the casino's free sock hop events in their showroom. They have this twice a month on Tuesdays. A different live band playing from 6-9pm. And, did I say, it's free? 

 So after dinner, we all went over and enjoyed the music and dancing.
With this cold weather, I think it's time to cook our last turkey. Help keep the house warm and smelling good.   :-)

to damn cold!

Good morning from a cold Vegas!
Got down to 31 last night and today's high will be just 57. First night in 454 days we got to freezing at the airport.  It was a cold week last week and looking to be the same next week. Lot's of snow up on Mt Charleston and we even had flurries in the southern valley yesterday. But it didn't stick.
Craig did our taxes yesterday, and we're getting a whopping $4 back. Only because of slight differences with the health care subsidies and our actual income.
We also went to our neighborhood casino, Aliante, on Tuesday afternoon with neighbors for their Taco Tuesday. $4 Margarita's and $1.50 street taco's. They were really good! I'm always amazed at how busy this casino is in the later part of the day. Since we live practically next door and almost never go. Fortunately, we're not gamblers.    :-)
So that's it for now....

keeping busy.

Good morning.
Our beautiful weather is leaving us for a spell. High temps this week in the low 50's.   brrr!
But here's a few pics I took this weekend.....

Pansies like the cold and have been blooming very nice.

This is a new plant I've added to my yard. It's called Fantastic Paddle Plant.

Spotted this when we went to Lowe's to get a screen for the gate.

It's a variety of Kalanchoe. Should do pretty good here. We'll see.
And here's the screen installed on the gate.

It's technically a privacy screen, but you really can see through it. But it's metal and will keep the rabbit's out and looks better than the burlap and chicken wire.    :-)

We also cut each other's hair and trimmed a neighbors tree. It's an African Sumac like the one we have in our front yard. They grow very vigorously, and the branches tend to hang as they get longer. So we cut it way back and bundled up 3 large piles and put them next to her garage. Bulk pickup isn't until next week.
Been to a couple of patio parties, but that will stop until the nice weather returns.
Did our first grilling of the year as it's now light enough in the evening to see what I'm doing. Did pork steaks and Craig made potato salad. Both delicious!
That's all for now!

A project and ....really Craig?

Good morning.
Well, we did another project, but first, I want to tell you about a little incident.
Take a good look at this pic........

I've discovered that toilet bowl cleaner is great on grout! So, one day, I squirted some along the cracks near the counter and fridge, and let it soak. While I'm outside, Craig walks into the room and gets his socks all wet from the liquid. I say..."didn't you see the bottle sitting in the middle of the floor"?  He says..."I thought you just forgot to put it away".  Really? I'd leave a bottle of toilet bowl cleaner sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor. Wouldn't walking into a room and seeing that cause you to look down and figure out why it's there?   Sometimes I wonder about him!
Anyway, on to our little project......

We have a metal garage door. It faces west and gets full sun in the afternoon. Last summer, you could walk into the garage, and as you got near the door, you could feel the heat radiating from the metal as the hot summer sun bakes the door.
So we decided to insulate the door. The door already has the tracks like it was made to have insulation. So we bought 2 'kits' since we have a large double door.

They are pre-cut for the width and just needed to be trimmed for length.

It was happily an easy project. The worst part was all the Styrofoam bits that were everywhere. But I backed the cars out and vacuumed them all up. This should certainly help keep the garage a little cooler this summer.
Well, that's all I got for now....

I've been hacked!

I got an e-mail this morning from IHG Rewards Club. I have an IHG credit card and the rewards club is where the points go when I use it. That gave me free nights and discounted nights on my last trip back to Michigan. Anyway, I got an e-mail stating I had changed my profile. But....I had not! So...I first tried logging in and was told my e-mail or pin was wrong. Well, I knew something was wrong so I called them to figure out what was going on. I find out, someone had gotten into my account, changed my e-mail address and used my points to book a room in China! China of all places! So after stating I was not going to China and had not changed my e-mail address and went through numerous security questions, they closed my account, cancelled that reservation, opened a new account and transferred my points there. Whew!
 Thankfully, I check my e-mail a couple times a day, and had just received that one an hour earlier.
It pays to be vigilant!
I was surprised that someone would hack me since i didn't have many points left after last year, but apparently enough to book a room in China!   :-)
So, that's my excitement for today. I'm still taking it easy. I'm feeling much better, but want to ease back into activities. We have friends coming out to Vegas on Tuesday and I need to do some cleaning. Maybe a little today and dive into it tomorrow.
So that's it for now...

I'm a wee bit sick

Good morning.
Well, it's been nearly a week since our cruise. We got back home Saturday afternoon. And though we managed to survive an entire week on a ship in close quarters with 3000 passengers and 1000 crew, we didn't get sick with either a norovirus, cold or flu. But.......
Thursday, I came down with a cold.   :-(
So, staying close to home and trying to rest and drink fluids. Had to turn down a couple of patio parties, and haven't walked in a couple of days.
But, a cold is better than the flu.
So, since we've been back, we've had beautiful weather with highs in the 70's. We're going back into normal with temps in the high 60's this weekend. Before my cold hit, I did manage to cut back and re-pot both of my Bells of Fire, and my Bougainvillea vine into larger pots. The pots they were in were okay, but the extreme summer heat dries them out to much. And since everything is on a scheduled drip watering system, They would either be too wet or too dry. So larger pots hopefully will do the trick.   :-)
I also made another blueberry pie. Very good! And Craig did our taxes. We owe $4.   :-/
Apparently I slightly miscalculated the health care subsidies and they overpaid by $4 so I have to pay it back. This will be the last year we have to deal with that since I'll switch to Medicare in October.
And we were thinking of another cruise. A short 4 day cruise. Carnival e-mailed me a good discount. But then we realized our passports would be too close to expiring, so we'll take care of that, and maybe I'll get another special from Carnival.
Well, that's all for now.
Take care and stay well.

Recap of the cruise.....

Good morning.
So, Our cruise left Long Beach CA on Sat around 4:30 pm. Sailed all day Sunday and arrived in Cabo on Monday.
After we got on board, we checked out our room and unpacked our luggage. They had 3 large closets. Plenty of room for all our stuff.  Then we went to a bar to activate our prepaid drink package. They charge for pretty much anything you want to drink and the prices are higher than on shore, so it made sense to us to buy what they called the  Cheers beverage program. It gives you up 15 alcoholic drinks a day and unlimited water and soft drinks. And that even includes any of their specialty cocktails. We never hit the 15 limit, but after the cruise I figured  what we had and we came out way ahead of what we would have if we payed as we went. Regular cocktails were $7.50 and specialty drinks went up to $15. Anyway, we got a drink and began to explore the ship. The Carnival Splendor is a large ship. Holds 3000 passengers and 1000 crew. The typical ship in their fleet holds 2000 passengers. The main decks with things to do were on decks 3, 5, 9, 10, and 11. The other decks were all guest rooms.
Here's a floor plan of deck 9.....

Our room is marked with a black arrow. So we were close to everything on this deck.
This deck had 2 pools, the lido restaurant which is a buffet and 4 satellite fast food outlets that included 24 hour pizza, a deli, a hamburger, hot dog place, and a tandoori place.It also had 3 bars.
And on deck 5....

In front was the balcony entrance to the showroom, then shops. then a casino and bar, a coffee shop, piano bar, wine bar, nightclub, and the Moroccan  lounge where they also had smaller shows.
Down on deck 3...

In front was the main entrance to the showroom, then the main lobby and lobby bar, then in the middle and back the 2 sit down restaurants.
Up on deck 10 was the second level of the Lido restaurant and lot's of deck with lounge chairs and deck 11 was more deck with lounge chairs and a spa.
So on Sunday, our first full day at sea, we got a good feel of where everything was.
Our 7 day cruise included one day at sea down one day in each of the 3 ports, and 2 days back. The day we boarded was considered the first day.
Monday, we arrived late in Cabo for some reason ans because there was another cruise ship there, there weren't enough tender boats, so it took a long time to get people to shore that wanted to go. We decided to stay on the ship and enjoy all the amenities.  Oh, and did I say, all the food is included in the fare. You could literally eat 24-7. I believe we each gained 20 lbs that week.   :-)
We sailed that evening and arrived the next morning in Mazatlan.  Spent the day wandering the town and that evening we sailed again, arriving in Pueto Vallarta the next morning.  This was our favorite stop as it's a big city with a lot more culture and sightseeing.  We sailed again that evening and spent the next 2 days at sea heading back to Long Beach.  They had dozens of activities scheduled throughout the day. A schedule was in our room every day so we could pick and choose what we wanted to partake in.
All in all, a very nice time. Would like to maybe do an Alaskan cruise next.
And here's some cute animals that were in our room each day.....

They even had a towel folding demonstration one day so you could see how they are made.
So that was pretty much our cruise. I could go on and on about the entertainment and food, but I think I've bored you enough.    :-)

Puerto Vallarta

Good afternoon.

Since I have some time, I'll do a post on Puerto Vallarta.

 If you look real close, you'll see Craig standing on the aft deck in port, and look what's across the street from the dock...

 That's right, a Walmart! And  a Sam's Club. I guess they are everywhere!   :-)

 We really enjoyed our stop here. It's a large city with so much to see and do. We're thinking of coming back for a week next winter.

 Sand sculptures on the beach..... They have a miles long promenade along the beach with numerous sculptures....

 Of course I didn't take many pics as usual.
And here's their famous church with a very unique dome....

It was a nice stop, and we enjoyed the culture and ambiance.
Tomorrow, hopefully, a recap on the trip.......with towel animals....

Cruise ports of Cabo San Lucas and Maztalan.

Good morning.
We left Long Beach CA on Sat. afternoon. Sailed all night and all day Sunday and arrived in Cabo on Monday morning. Cabo doesn't have a dock for large ships so we had to 'park' in the bay.

You can see there was also another ship in the bay that had arrived the day before.

They had to tender people from the ship to shore in small boats.

Here's the other ship leaving early in the evening. We left a little later.

We didn't go ashore here for 2 reasons. One, we arrived later than expected, and two, because of the other ship also needing boats to tender, it took a ridiculously long time to get everyone off that wanted to. They started tendering around 11:30, and didn't get the last people off until 2:30. Then they had to be back on ship by 4:30. Wasn't worth the time waiting. We figured they would have the same tourist stuff at the other ports.
We left Cabo that evening and sailed overnight to Mazatlan.  Their port is a commercial one

 So we docked among cargo ships and they brought out shuttled to carry us to the passenger terminal.

 It was a picturesque bay.
We got to the terminal and took the 1 mile walk to the center of town. They had this quaint square with cafes on 2 sides. While we sat and had a couple of beers, we were entertained by a guy singing pretty good opera, and after him, a group of young people did an acrobatic skit. Somehow, I didn't get any pics of the town.
But here's a pic of us leaving port that afternoon.

We sailed overnight to Pueto Vallarta. I'll do that post hopefully tomorrow.
I spent a good part of yesterday, cutting back a couple of bushes and transplanting them into larger pots. They did pretty good last year and hopefully in larger pots, they'll do better this year.

Cruies pics

Good evening.
Here's some more pics of our ship.....

These 2 pics where when we were boarding in Long Beach walking out the gangway.

The main pool is on deck 9 which is open to the sky. But on deck 11 there is a sliding roof that can cover the entire pool and deck area. They closed it a couple of times when we had some early morning rain and one day at sea when it rained all morning.

And you can see the giant screen at the one end. They had movies every night.

A bank of elevators on our floor.

The glass elevators in the lobby area. The lobby atrium went from deck 3 up to deck 10.

Another view of the glass elevators. There were 4 across the one side.

And a sitting area in the lobby near the bar.
I'll post more pics and more details hopefully tomorrow.
Went to a Superbowl party at a neighbors this afternoon. Good game and some fun commercials.

7 day cruise.

Good morning. We've just returned from a 7 day Mexican Rivera Cruise on the Carnival Splendor.
Had stops in Cabo, Mazatlan, and Pueto Vallarta. 

 Craig's finger is pointing to the balcony stateroom we had on deck 9.

It was a very spacious room as far as cruise ships go.

Here's the main pool near the middle of the ship. There were 3 pools total and 3 whirlpools.

The aft pool.

The atrium lobby near the front of our ship with the lobby bar.

This is the walkway along the casino toward the back of the ship where more bars were located.

We had a great time!
I'll post more of the trip when I get some time.