hazy days

Good morning.
I've just returned from my morning walk. I have a Raspberry fritter thawing on the counter, to go with our coffee and Sunday paper, now waiting for Craig to get up.
Here's some pics I took early this morning on my walk....

A full moon and you'll see the Sheep mountains look very hazy. The Spring mountains to the west of us are barely visible the last couple of days. We are under an air quality alert. We are getting smoke from the California fires drifting into our valley. I probably shouldn't be walking outside right now. The weatherman said it should clear up tomorrow when the wind shifts.
We went to the casino yesterday afternoon, to see if we could win a car. We haven't been to the casino much this month, but we've been there enough to have some entries into the car drawing.
Well, we didn't win the car, but Craig won $50 in slot play. So we stayed a bit and he managed to turn it into $100. So not a bad afternoon. We actually have done pretty good at this casino this month.  The few times we've gone, we've come out even or a little ahead.
I also bought a cherry pitter yesterday. I picked up cherries at the store. They were on sale for $.99 a lb. I saved some for eating, pitted the rest and froze them. When we cool off a bit, I'll make a cherry pie. I probably could have bought a couple of pies for the cost of the pitter, but my pies are a little healthier as I use a crumb topping instead of a crust, and use a sugar substitute. 
Well, I guess that's all for now....

Colorful sunrise and Black Widow

Good morning.
I've just returned from my walk.  A very nice 88 this morning. It's been a little warmer than normal with highs reaching 115. We should be back down to normal temps(105) this weekend.
Here's a pic from my walk yesterday...

We get some real pretty sunrises here.
And When I go out to the mailbox on the other side of the road about a door down the street, I've noticed a mess of webs going from the bottom of the box into the plant next to it.

It doesn't show up in this pic, but you almost walk into it getting the mail. Soo, I decided to take my spray out and saturate the area so as not to possibly get a spider in my mail when I pick it up.
So I did that early yesterday morning after my walk. And when I went out around noon to get my mail, this is what I saw.....

You can't see it in this pic, but it's got that red marking on it's belly. It was a Black Widow Spider!
These are apparently very common in the valley. But I don't want one near me!
But I hate all spiders anyway. I don't care if they're good or bad, I don't want any anywhere near me!
But I did find a little cutie in the back yard yesterday morning when I was watering my pots. It was a small lizard! About 4 inches long. He scurried way to fast to get a pic. Now they can hang out all they want. They don't bite me and eat other bugs. Hope I didn't scare him off.
Craig went to the Dermatologist a couple of days ago. He had a small scaly spot on his check he wanted checked out. It was determined to be a precancerous type of something and they froze it with Nitrous Oxide. They also froze a few other spots on his face. But they did take a couple of biopsies. One on his nose and one on his back. He'll know in 12-14 days if they are anything that needs further attention. He now has a small crater on the top of his nose that will take a couple of weeks to heal. He wouldn't let me take a pic for my blog.   :-)
And I just heard Craig get up so time to go...

winning was easy.....this time

Good morning.
We had some storms move the the valley the last couple of days, but barely a sprinkle here in the northern edge of the valley. We always seem to get the worst wind, rain and storms in the south and east side of the valley. And that's fine with me!  It's not like my trees and plants need the water. I have everything on drip irrigation as does everyone in the valley.
Anyway, last Thursday, we went to the casino to spend some of my neighbors money. If you remember, She gave me $100 before she left and my mission is to go to the casino by our community, (Aliante) and use her card and gamble some each month. The idea is to keep her account active so when she comes back in the fall, she'll still get the monthly mailings which offer all kinds of discounts and specials. So, Thursday was the day. I gave Craig $10 out of my money so he'd have something to do while I gambled. Well, I kinda blew through her $10, and Craig managed to multiply his into $20. So he gave me half of that to use with my card. We were hoping to get 50 points playing so as to take advantage of a special Thursday giveaway. Not only did we both manage to reach 50 points, we ended up with about $17. So just down about $3. But, for that effort, we got a $7 food voucher, and our 'free' gifts were a comfy throw and a t-shirt.

So we came out pretty good! And I have another $10 I have to spend of hers next week, so we'll try this again! And, we can use the voucher at Nathan's for lunch! $7 should get us each a hot dog and a beer!   :-)
Went to a little patio party at a neighbor's yesterday evening. The weather was just beautiful!
For dinner on Friday, Craig made a tortilla casserole.

It turned out tasty as usual, and plenty for leftovers.
I'm going to do some dusting today, and later, relax on the patio with drinks.
:-)

a thoughtful memento

Good morning.
Just got back from my walk.
It's been warm and a bit muggy for Las Vegas. Humidity has been running around 30% in the morning's before dropping into the teens in the afternoon. Morning temps in the mid to upper 80's.
But great weather for walking.
I did see a coyote a couple of days ago out on the golf course. That's the second one in about a week!. I've only seen about 5 since we moved out here. They are supposedly no danger to humans. There has not been a recorded attack on humans unless the Coyote was cornered. Whenever I've seen one, they have already spotted me and are scurrying off in the opposite direction. Some walkers, especially the smaller ladies, carry a golf club or walking stick. Several months ago, I had one lady ask to walk the rest of the way home with me as she had seen a coyote and was a little nervous.
And Craig and I received 2 of these in the mail yesterday.....

It's the photo of one of Craig's customers in glass. She passed just last year. Craig did her hair for many, many years, and I cut her husbands hair. We still keep in touch.  Now......This pic was taken well before Craig started doing her hair. She was in her 80's when she died. It was a thoughtful gesture.
We received our new property tax bill for the coming year. It went up $14 to  $1265.00. That is still less than what we paid for out home back in Michigan. And this house is worth more than double that house. So low property taxes are another plus for Nevada.
Went to the fitness center yesterday. We're going to try and go 3 times a week. Trying to get some more fat off before our big road trip, because I know we won't be eating good then.   :-)
It's nice we have the use of those facilities. Their included in our HOA fees.
And I think that's all for now....

I love any kind of pizza!

Good morning.
It's been partly sunny to partly cloudy the last few days. We've begun our monsoon season and that brings widely scattered showers and increased humidity. We've been running around 30-60% humidity and you sure can tell the difference from our normal 1-5%.
Here's a pretty pic I took a couple of days ago on my early morning walk.

We get some real pretty sunrises our here!
And here's a stock pic of a Mexican Pizza.

In an e-mail to my Mom, I told here what we were having for dinner, and she wanted to know what it was. So I described it and thought I'd also show her a pic of what it looks like. It's really tasty!
Currently just picking up 2 neighbors mail, but keeping an eye on 4 homes. Picked up a flyer from one door and a paper from another. Earlier this week, I picked up quite a bit of trash along the backyards of 2 homes that abut the golf course. Must have blown across the fairway during a windy day earlier this week.
Our Smith's, (or Kroger's depending on where you live) is changing some of their stores. When you go in, you can pick up a scanner and start by scanning your card. You scan everything as you put them in your cart. When your ready to check out, you scan the bar at the self serve register, the total of your purchase comes up, and you pay. Easy peasy! They are supposedly going to randomly re scan peoples carts to make sure you scanned everything to start with. I see this system ripe for abuse, but they must think it's worth it. I do like the time it saves me checking out. And the scanner gives you a running total so you know how much your spending.
And other than that, not much else going on.

older than dirt.

Good morning.
The last 2 days of our trip took us through Sedona and Prescott. Sedona sits in a red rock valley surrounded by beautiful scenery. 

Here's a couple of pics from a balcony where we had a couple of drinks.

Sedona is definitely a tourist town. They have pink jeep tours and we saw their jeeps all over.
Most of the stores were typical t-shirts, jewelry and the usual southwest memorabilia. I did buy a 'dirt shirt'. It's a t-shirt that's 'dyed' using the red clay found here.

After spending the day in Sedona, we headed south to Cottonwood, where we spent our last 2 nights. We choose this little town, because it was between Sedona and Prescott, and had easy access back to the highway for our drive back to Vegas.
Here, we ate at a Mexican sports bar for dinner called Calavera.

And as you see in these pics, Calavera is Spanish for skull. And they were on the tables and chairs and backs of the booths.

A little bit on the creepy side, but the food was good and it was right across the street from our hotel.
Now, the last day here, we drove to Prescott, and toured the interesting town square and area around the courthouse. And apparently, I didn't take one pic that day.
Then back to Cottonwood, and Tuesday morning, the drive back to Vegas. Got there and back safe, no issues....a good trip!

Wupatki National Monument

Good afternoon.
To continue on our trip......
After the volcanic crater, we headed a little north to Wupatki National Monument.
This is a park that has numerous ancient Pueblo ruins.
It's amazing they were able to live out here in all this desolate nothingness. They built all the Pueblo's on massive rocks instead of on the ground. I imagine it was for safety, from attack or animals.

But they did say the area could have been more hospitable for them back then.

It was very interesting to see what they were able to build with what little they had to work with.

Now this path out to the ruins was made by the park. They didn't want you to walk off the path so not to disturb any area that might be of importance to researchers.

This was the largest of all of them. A massive complex of rooms.  We saw several others, but none as impressive as the two I've posted here.

After this, we headed back to Flagstaff and had dinner at the Lumberyard. An old actual lumber yard building that has been converted into a brewery/restaurant. Very busy and good food.
Tomorrow, our trip to Sedona and Prescott.

road trip

Good morning.
We've just returned from a little road trip.
This trip took us a little southeast of Vegas to Northern Arizona,  Specifically Flagstaff, Sedona, Cottonwood, and Prescott. The weather in Flagstaff was nearly 30 degrees cooler than Vegas due to the 7000 ft elevation that Flagstaff sits at. And it reminded us of northern Michigan with a lot of hills and pine trees.
We arrived Thursday afternoon and spent 3 nights there. The first day was a short drive to Walnut Canyon National Monument.

You can't see well enough in these pics, but there are numerous cliff dwellings in this canyon. One is just next to my shoulder in the above pic.

There is a trail that goes by some of them but we declined to do it as it would have been  273 steps back up out of the canyon and we didn't feel that energetic.   :-)
We then went back to town and explored the downtown having a late lunch/early dinner at a sidewalk cafe at an old hotel.
Next day took us a little farther north to see Sunset Crater, and Wupatki National Monument.
Discovered that the trail to the craters edge has been closed for some years to protect the fragile environment, but we did walk the lava trail....

This is actually a very young volcano erupting only about 100 years ago. So the lava flows haven't had enough time to get covered by vegetation and such. It was a very surreal sight. And for miles around the area, there was visible thick areas of black ash covering the ground. The entire one side of the volcano still didn't have hardly any vegetation growing because of the thick layer of ash. And they get very little rain here to help it break down.
After seeing this we headed on to Wupatki. It has some fairly well preserved ancient Pueblos.
I'll post more about them tomorrow.