a catch-up post

Good morning.
It's been beautiful here in the desert, though a bit warm in the afternoon.   :-)
But we have our misting system and it's working great!
Here's a couple pics of the sunrise on the Spring Mountains off to the west of us I took yesterday on my morning walk....

The mountains just glowed in the early light.   :-)
And here's a pic of our Sheep Mountains just to our north, taken from the community center in front of the golf course......

And last, a pot I found to plant some fingerling cactus in.

One of our neighbors has a huge strawberry planter full of these. They get very pretty orange flowers in the spring. They look like they are taking hold pretty good.
So not much going on right now. I've been house cleaning and playing on the puter.
That's all for now!

some house updates

Good afternoon.
As promised, I'll tell you about a few projects I've been working on..
First, we decided we wanted more light in the garage. 

We had the garage door light and a light near the front of the garage. But we added another light near the door of the garage.  Since it's a plug in light and the pull cord would have hit the garage door when it opened, we got a remote. You plug the light into the base unit and I hung the remote next to the door. Now I can turn the light on or off with that. Then I've been changing the back yard a little...

I had 6 Autumn Sage on both sides of our 'creek', but they weren't doing as well as I'd like, so I removed all but one and replaced 4 of them.

I put 3 spreading Lantana on the far side of the 'creek'.  And I've yet to decide on what I'll replace the last one with.
Then, we added misters to the patio......

The hose runs along the roof line and down the other side of the house. It works really well! We sat out there this afternoon as temps hit 105, and were very comfortable.    :-)

So, that's what I've done with the house and yard so far.   :-)

Craig's got a pot roast in the crock pot for dinner, and we finished my Blueberry pie for lunch. 

And that's it for now....

another update

Good afternoon.
Here's a current pic of part of our back yard....

Everything is looking pretty good right now.   :-)
And I took a new walk yesterday morning.

The golf course that snakes through our community has a paved path for the golf carts. If you walk early enough, and I do since I go out around 6am, you can walk along those paths before the golfers show up.

It gives you quite a different view since your basically walking behind the houses instead of in front. And of course, it's very park like.  :-)
And yesterday, we had lunch once again at the 3100 grill at our golf course. And as I've said many times, I never get tired of the view!

Then yesterday afternoon, we got together with neighbors, Barbie and Harry.

They have a place here and back in Illinois, so we don't see them a lot, but yesterday, they took us down to Tenaya brewery  and then to Gordon Biersch down near the strip for dinner. Had a great time and good food! They just moved into our community about a year ago. A really fun couple. And younger than us!   :-)
Also we've been busy with  few projects around the house. I'll post more when I get some pics.   :-)

another busy week.....so far

Good morning.
Here's a pic from my morning walk yesterday....

If you look closely, you can see the Aliante Hotel in the middle left at the other end of this section of the golf course. After that one day of clouds and rain, it's been sunny and warm again.   :-)
And I've been busy this week. So far, I've washed the windows, (when they power washed the house before painting, they got them a bit messy) cleaned the shelves in the fridge, and blew out the leaves in the stones in the bag yard and bagged them up. The neighbor behind us has several large African Sumac's with one in her side yard. I like it because it gives us some morning shade, and is big and green. Makes for a park like  view from our patio. But, they shed a lot of leaves in the summer, and quite a few come into my yard. So I finally cleaned them up yesterday morning.
Then, I baked a pie....

A Blueberry Crumble pie. My crumble got a little too much butter this time so it's a little flat looking, but tasty nonetheless.
And, it's now been a year since we moved here. I have to say, we are still happy with our decision. Vegas isn't the perfect place, but then I don't think there is one. At least, not one we could afford.   :-)
But there are still way more pluses than minuses, and it still beats Michigan overall. I'll take a couple months of heat over 4 months of bone chilling cold!
And with that, time to go to our weekly free senior slot tournament. Hope we win this week!   :-)

A total eclipse and a rainbow.

Good morning.
Who would have thought that you could see a total eclipse and a rainbow the same day!
Well, I saw a rainbow this morning on my walk. Some rain is moving through the valley, and although we didn't get the rain at our house, we did get this rainbow....

And it went all the way across the sky. Now here in Vegas we're expected to be mostly cloudy today. Our valley is sunny most of the time and the one day we could really use the sun, it's going to be mostly cloudy. But that's okay. I didn't plan on watching the eclipse anyway. We'll see just 70% here in Vegas. But in honor of this special day, Craig is making his delicious potato salad and I'll be grilling chicken.    :-)

down on the strip

Good morning.
We didn't get down to the strip on Thursday, we instead went Friday.  The reason is I found a Groupon for the Beer Park which is right next to the Eiffel Tower. And after I printed it out and read the fine print, found out it couldn't be used with-in 24 hours of purchase. I had never seen that type of restriction before, but not a big deal as we're retired and we could go any day!    :-)
So, we drove down on Friday morning. It takes a good 30-40 minutes to get down there with the traffic. We were able to park at the Paris Hotel/casino. They have free parking for NV residents. At least right now. Parking anywhere on the strip used to be free, but one after another started charging for parking and now they all pretty much do. At least, right now, they give residents free parking.
And here's a pic inside the Casino I took while waiting for the elevator to take us to the top.

Here's a stock pic of the tower. It's pretty tall! but only about half as tall as the original. This one is 50 stories tall. They couldn't build it any taller because of being so close to the airport.

They have the entire platform covered with screening so the only way you can get decent pics is out those small openings. But I got a few good ones...

Above, the tall gold tower in the back middle is the Trump Tower. The mountains behind are the Sheep Mountains. Our house is w-a-y back at the base of those mountains.

Then after viewing the scenery for a while we went back down the elevator and over to the Beer Park

The Beer Park is about one story above the street. It looks like a big outdoor deck. We got seats along the edge and good views up and down the strip. I got a special Groupon. It gave me 40% off a purchase. So this Groupon, which was $26 for $40 worth of food and drink, only cost my $13.   :-)
After there, we wandered down the street to Bally's which has a large outdoor bazaar and a lot of little bars and restaurants.

We had a couple of drinks and did a lot of people watching.
Then we wandered back to the Paris Casino, and made our way back to the parking garage, without stopping at one slot machine, and drove back home. Because it was late afternoon and rush hour, it took us nearly an hour to get back home. Another reason we don't go down to the strip very often. But we had a very enjoyable time. It's fun to see all the tourists, but nice to be back in our quiet neighborhood.

busy week!

Good afternoon.
Well, it's been a busy week so far. Sunday we went to a karaoke competition at a bar down near downtown. It was really lame. But they did have good food and drinks.   :-)
On Monday, the house painter's came and power washed the house.  Tuesday we went down near the strip to see a taping of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire! Got free tickets and really enjoyed the experience. It was fun seeing a show produced and being in the audience. While we were at the taping, which lasted just over 4 hours, our home was painted.
Here's a before and after look....

I know, doesn't look any different. But if we wanted the colors changed, we would have had to submit it to the ARC committee. And we did like the color of our home to begin with. Now it looks nice and 'fresh'. But better yet, they patched cracked ceiling plaster on the patio and caulked and even removed an old satellite TV bracket on the side of the house I couldn't get off. We were very pleased with the work.
And here's a couple of pics I took at the taping....

They did 3 1/2 shows during the 4 hours we were there. The taping was for Veterans week and they had a lot of vets there in the audience and of course trying for the Million Dollars. So if you want to see us on the show, look for Millionaire during veterans week in Nov.  But good luck, we were seated in the top row behind Chris Harrison, the host. No one we watched got a Million, but one got to 50,000.
They even at one point called on an audience member to answer a question for $1000.00 I didn't get called, but damn! I knew the answer! Wouldn't that have been fun!
Then today, we went to the weekly senior slot tournament and neither of us got even close to the cut-off. Maybe next week.   :-)
Tomorrow, we head back down to the strip to use free passes we got for being in the audience on Millionaire. We get to go up the Eiffel tower! Should be a great view from up there. I'll try to remember to take a pic.   :-)
Well, Craig's calling dinner, so got to go!

1 year already

Good morning.
It's been a busy week so far. Wed we did our free weekly senior slot tournament  and once again, I made it into the top 50 and won $25! That's 3 times now and it doesn't cost us a thing! We don't even stay and play so it's just free money! Thursday was haircut day. Friday was Craig's last appointment with the Orthopedic surgeon for his finger. He has good flexibility with it but still a lot of scar tissue. The doctor says it will soften over time. Keep massaging it and use vitamin e oil.
Today, is exactly 1 year since we 'retired'.  It's been great! We still like our home, still like our neighborhood and still like southern Nevada. It's a bit hot in the summer, but we'll take the summer heat for 2 months over the bitter cold for 4 months. And I can still go out in the morning before it gets too warm. It's 79 out this morning. Perfect weather for a walk, which I'll do as soon as I finish this post.
And here's a few pics of my walk yesterday morning which took me around the community center...

This last pic is our street. Our house is way down on the left. And that's the Sheep Mountains in the distance. We had lunch at the 3100 Grille on Thursday and the dining area overlooks the golf course and mountains. I still haven't tired of that view. it's similar to the top pic.
But in honor of our 1 year, we're going to splurge and have frozen pizza for dinner. We like the Freschetta brand. Craig just adds a little more cheese. Don't we live the wild life?   :-)
Well, time for my walk....

luggage, paint, and a full moon.

Good morning.I've just returned from another nice walk. Another beautiful morning.   :-)
Here's a few pics I took over the last 3 days of a full moon. You'll probably want to click the pic to see it better.

These first two pics have the moon just above the Spring Mountains, which are a ways west of our community.

The above pic was taken near the golf course.

And this last pic was taken just around the corner from our house.
We finally found a new piece of luggage that will work for us....

It's a duffel bag on wheels.

It has a handle that pulls out of a zippered compartment for ease of hauling. It's not exactly what we wanted, but it's smaller than our big suitcase and larger than our carry-ons, so should work good for us. And best of all?  We looked at Target, Walmart, Kohl's, Stein Mart, T.J. Maxx, and Ross. But we finally found it at K-Mart! I even looked online at Amazon and E-Bay, but K-Mart had the best price and the size we wanted.
And a couple of days ago, a man came to our house soliciting house painting. His company was painting a house down the street, and of course, trying to drum up more business. We kinda have been thinking of repainting, because the house is 11 years old and the paint has faded quite a bit. We have been noticing over the last couple of years quite a few homes in our community have been repainted, and you can certainly notice the difference. I think we should wait a few more years, but Craig thinks we should do it while we still have some money.  So, I've done some research and this company has done dozens of homes in our community and has gotten excellent reviews. And the price is in line with what others paid.  So I think we'll probably go in that direction soon.
Okay, I think that's all for now.

a little update.

Good morning. Just got back from my morning walk. A very nice 78 out this morning although a bit humid at 41%.  :-)
We had a bit of rain a few days ago. Not much at our end of the valley, but over an inch in the southern part of the valley. It seems typical of the rain here in Vegas. We've been here nearly a year now, and most storms seem to come up from the south and just clip the southern edge of the valley.
Here's a couple pics from the back yard.....

The new Crape Myrtle we planted a month before our trip is doing very well, and the Purple Spreading Lantana are filling out nicely. The Bougainvillea vine to the far left is blooming okay but not like I was expecting. I think next spring, I'll put it in a bigger pot and see if that helps.

The 2 Bells of Fire bushes are going gangbusters. I think I need to cut them back to help them fill in more. And here's a pic of a beautiful sunrise yesterday morning.

It certainly didn't show up in the pic, but the sun was glowing from behind the clouds. Looked real nice in person.   :-)
My laptop that died on our trip is back!  I finally ended up having to do a complete re-install of the operating system. That means everything that was on the puter is now gone. It's like a brand new out of the box puter. But that's okay as I only use it for burning DVDs and playing games and web surfing on trips. So I'm happy I was able to save it.
And we're enjoying the comfort and laziness of home after our long trip. I'm making a couple of changes to the back yard and I'll post some pics when I'm done. Nothing major just some continued tweaking.   :-)
And we're on the search for another suitcase. Our med size one Kinda fell apart during our trip and is repairable. It was nice because it wasn't huge and had two separate compartments. So far, we haven't seen anything like it, but we are going out again today to another group of stores.
So that's it for now!