a post

Good morning.

I've just returned from my morning walk. A neighbor joined me this morning. They have just returned to Vegas for the winter after spending Christmas back in Normal Ill. They got out just before the freeze!    :-)

It was nice to have someone to chat with during the walk. Made it go a lot more quickly.    :-)

And here's a pic I took the other day walking.....

Yes, I'm bundled up with a coat, hoodie and earmuffs. The mornings have been cold at around 40. 
The Spring Mountains and a section of the golf course are behind me. You can see where most of the grass is brown. That's the 'summer' grass that goes dormant in the winter. In the fall, they over seed the greens and main fairways with annual rye for the golfers like in the pic below....

And if you click on the pic and look really close, you'll see snow up on Mount Charleston.
And a neighbor dropped off these cookies yesterday....

Cranberry Oatmeal cookies. They were yummy! It was a big plate of cookies but we ate half of them before I thought of taking a pic.    :-)
Have I said how many nice neighbors we have?
And we finished the afternoon with cocktails on another neighbors patio.

Christmas Day

Good morning.
I'm a little late, But Merry Christmas!

We had a very nice day. Craig cooked a ham.

Even enjoyed a nice snow fall.    :-)
Found some nice you tube videos of snowing in the forest, a roaring fireplace, a snowy stream and even a trek through snowy woods to some pretty waterfalls. Found software that I could use to download the vids. Then I burned them to a blank DVD and can now 'watch' them on our TV. Gives us enough 'winter'.   :-)

And on Christmas day, we had cocktails and Christmas cookies on the patio. Had to light the fire pit as it was only 64 out.   :-)
And yes, that's a pot of pansies between us. They apparently do good out here in the winter.
So a nice Christmas in the desert. I'll take this over the single digits they're having back in Michigan!

almost Christmas!

Good afternoon.
We've just returned from our afternoon walk. A bit cool at only 54, but it will get warmer over the next few days.
 I've been working on a little project......

We have 3 poinsettias under our TV and I'm not having very good luck this year keeping them alive, so I decided maybe fake ones would look okay.
I bought the stuff to do it and put one together.

I actually think it looks better than the real ones.    It's the one in the center.....    :-)
So I've done the second one today and maybe the third one tomorrow. I'll post a pic.    :-)
I also made another pie!

This one blueberry. It is delicious!
We also had leftover spaghetti sauce with meatballs and this time used just zucchini for noodles.....

Used the handy dandy spiral cutter for the 'noodles', and sauteed them for about 10 minutes with oil and garlic.

Topped them with the sauce and some Parmesan and it was very good! We may never eat regular pasta again!
My arm seems to be slowly getting better. I'm getting a little more movement every day. I'm happy about that!
And we're having ham for Christmas this year. A change from our usual turkey with White Castle Stuffing, which we'll have in early Feb. instead.
And tonight, home made low fat pizza. Life is good!

Here comes the sun and zucchini noodles

Good morning.
I've just returned from my morning walk, and as usual, I'm going to bore you with some pics again.    :-)
Here comes the sunrise.....

I know you've seen many, many pics like these but I feel like I need to post pics of something and I don't have much else.    :-)
My arm has gotten a little better, but certain movements still send me through the roof. Of course, it hasn't even been a week yet. And I am very impatient.   :-)
I've read a severe sprain/strain could takes weeks to months to heal.   :-(
We tried something new for dinner yesterday. We had spaghetti and meatballs. While that's not new, what we added was...
Zucchini noodles!
We had bought this spiral slicer some time ago and I suggested we give it a try.

It takes zucchini, or probably most any firm veggie and cuts them into long noodle shaped strings. I used it and it worked exactly like it said it would. Now, to make sure we didn't ruin dinner with some odd ingredient, I made some regular pasta also and we put them on a plate, side by side and ladled sauce on top. It was actually very good! I sauteed the zucchini 'noodles' in a small amount of oil with some garlic until they were just limp. No salt as that would draw out water and make them mushy. We liked it so much, next time we'll just use Zucchini.    :-)
I also found a salad recipe that calls for zucchini noodles. That looked good too.
So as I try continue to expand our dietary variety, Some thing we don't care for and somethings, like this, we surprisingly really like!
Well that's all for now....

a trashcan snitch and a painful day

Good morning.
When we went down to the strip on Tuesday and spent the night, I asked our neighbor across the street to put away our trash cans. Tuesday is trash pickup day in out community. Well, we get home Wed. and one of our trash cans isn't in the garage. I assumed the neighbor couldn't get the door opened and put the can in her garage. But when I saw her she said she completely forgot all about it. So, what happened to the trash can?
I decided to look at our camera system recordings to solve the mystery. And here's what I saw....

At 6:45, neighborhood watch drives by. Look how our Christmas lights make the tree look ghostly.
Then, at the 7:04 mark, here comes our neighbor....

Grabs our can and takes it to his house.

Yep! It was our next door neighbor!
So, I went over to retrieve it. Apparently, they arrived home that evening and saw the can sitting there and all our shades were closed. They figured we must be gone and the trash can sitting out there would advertise that, so they put it in their garage for safe keeping.
Have I said how many nice neighbors we have?
So case solved! We do like our surveillance system.
Then, on Thursday, I decided to add another shelf in our pantry. It was getting pretty full and another shelf higher up would help. We went out and got a shelf, I cut it to fit, got the supports in and put the shelf in to check the fit before securing it. Well, it got a bit wedged, and as I tried to lift and twist it out, I did something to my arm that caused extreme pain. I couldn't move it in hardly any direction without pain. I iced it and and even later it was still extremely painful. Craig insisted I go to an urgent care facility. Long story short, After 3 1/2 hours, it was determined I have soft tissue damage between my elbow and wrist. That means a lot of rest and no activity for a while. If it's not starting to feel better in a week or so, I may need an MRI to determine if I have a complete tear, which hopefully I don't. I guess time will tell. I have it in a sling to help minimize movement.
So, I'm laid up for a while unable to do much with just one good arm. I guess it's good I'm retired an not working.   :-)