We Are Guinea Pigs and Adventures in Arizona City

On Sunday morning, Sheila called and invited us to be guinea pigs for a new recipe she was trying out.  Since her meals are always good, we accepted the invitation and once again, we had a terrific meal.  I can’t remember for sure what all was in the recipe, but a corn meal mixture with peppers and corn were baked in poblano peppers, then topped with a very good sauce with onions and/or peppers and cheese.  The meal was accompanied by a southwest cole slaw with jicamas and red peppers, rice and shrimp and margaritas.

On Monday, after first going to Glenn and Sheila’s a solar screen company representative came by our us to look at the sliding door to see what could be done.  His bid was higher than we wanted to deal with at this time, so we drove to Casa Grande to see what Home Depot had to offer.  They had a similar type door for a better price that we ordered and it should be here in about 3 weeks.  I guess that tells us we will be here until mid April for sure now.

Today while Ken worked in the garage to finish a few items for the setup of our security system, I kept busy dusting and vacuuming the RV.  It’s not my favorite thing to do, but sometimes it just has to be done. 

This afternoon I heard the sound of airplanes overhead and went outside to take a look.  There were eleven of the skydiver’s planes in formation, so it looks like they’re building up for the big jump.

After lunch, I noticed a strange odor in the RV that at first smelled like food going bad, so I sprayed some freshener throughout but still noticed the smell getting increasingly worse.  I opened up the refrigerator to look for something going bad only to get a worse smell of ammonia.  As we follow several RV forums, I knew that could only mean that our refrigerator bit the dust.  We’re very fortunate that this didn’t have 4 weeks later as we could have been traveling.  At least here, we have the refrigerator in the house where I moved everything this afternoon.  Then Ken started removing the refrigerator so that we can look into getting it replaced with a regular household refrigerator. 

More adventures to follow…what can possibly happen next?  I’m hoping for winning the lottery!

3/14–3/17/12–Arizona City and Other Travels

It’s not uncommon to see a rabbit or two in the yard in the mornings around here.

You can just barely make out the ears of the second one a little to the right in the brush.

On Thursday, Ken wanted to pick up some items at Harbor Freight, so we headed to Tempe and surrounding areas.  As we left our house, there was a crop duster out spraying the cotton fields.

On our way back to Arizona City, we drove close to the new Intel building going up in the Queen Creek area.  The numerous cranes can be seen for quite a distance from I-10.

Friday was another road trip for us starting with a trip to the social security office in Casa Grande as we had not received our SSA-1099 forms to complete our taxes.  We had to wait about a half hour to talk to someone, but once that happened, we quickly had the copies we needed and were on the road again.  We had never been to Florence, AZ which is the county seat for Pinal County.  We had purchased a home security system and decided to drive there to turn in our permit and payment for the alarm system.

We start heading toward Coolidge and Florence.

Heading into Coolidge, the Casa Grande Ruins was on our right.

In Florence, there were a couple of prison facilities to the south of the Sheriff’s office.

At the sheriff’s office we turned in out alarm permit application and fee, then headed to the assessor’s office where we visited with a very knowledgeable and helpful employee.  We made one other stop at another county office, then headed north of the sheriff’s office just over the Gila River where we stopped for lunch at the Riverbottom Saloon.  After a good meal, we decided to drive to the Eloy Municipal Airport to check on the status of 240 person skydive that was to be taking place in this timeframe.  After our arrival there, we saw this interesting bird nest a couple of cars over from where we parked.  That driver will be in for a big surprise!

It wasn’t too long before we saw three planes flying overhead in a triangle formation.

And then the skydive began.

Repacking the parachutes for another go at it.

And back in Arizona City, we saw this cactus in bloom.

We had a St. Patrick’s Day visit from a female red cardinal in the bush by our RV.

SKP Lunch–Casa Grande, AZ

Today we met Diane and Andy and John and Jana for the SKP lunch at the Golden Corral in Casa Grande.  It seems like we spent over 2 hours there visiting and of course, eating.

On the left front to back:  Diane and Jana.  On the right front to back:  Ken’s hand, Andy, and John.  Diane and Andy are #1 on the waiting list for a lot at the SKP park in Casa Grande and they will find out tomorrow if they are getting a lot.  Good luck to the two of you!

Following the lunch, we checked out a few local stores in Casa Grande.  Before returning to our place, we stopped by to see Glenn and Sheila and see the home security system they had ordered.  We’ll probably be ordering from the same company tomorrow which will give both Glenn and Sheila and us a free month of service.

Arizona City–3/7–3/12/12

We didn’t have a lot of good photo opportunities over the past week, but I’m posting a few things we’ve seen and done during the week. 

We had a few quail in the yard by the RV.

It took me about 3 days to complete this Impossibles Return to Sender jigsaw puzzle.  The Impossibles series is more challenging for me.  They come with 750 puzzle pieces along with 5 extra pieces thrown into the box to add to the confusion.  There are no straight puzzle edges and picture as to how the finished puzzle will turn out.

We had been experiencing some problems with our RV toilet.  After flushing, water would continue to run into the bowl unless we lifted up under the peddle to stop the flow.  We decided it would probably be best just to replace it, so when the new toilet arrived from PPL in Houston, Ken went to work to get it done.  Fortunately, it went much faster than what he expected.  Later that evening, we met Diane and Andy for the fish or shrimp dinner at the Arizona City Moose lodge.

Ken’s next project was to insulate the garage door.  He used 1-1/2” styrofoam and each section was cut into 3 pieces and it was another project that went pretty fast once he got the routine figured out.

Over the weekend, our neighbors had a garage sale and I got this upright Bissell vacuum cleaner for the house for only $5.00.

This evening, one of the neighborhood quails was perched atop this shrub by the RV.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) we’ll be attending the SKP lunch in Casa Grande.

Storage Shed Finished!

For the last week and a half or so, we’ve been working on putting together a metal storage shed in the backyard for tools and other items we don’t want stored in the garage.  We did drive to Tucson on Thursday for a visit and lunch with our Idaho hunting partners, Jim and Mary Lou.  It was great seeing them again as it had been about 2-1/2 years since we had last seen them.

I didn’t take any progress photos of the storage shed being put together, but here are a couple of photos of the finished project.

With that project completed, we’re ready for a day off tomorrow to get caught up on grocery shopping and whatever else catches our interest.  And with this post, our blog is again up to date.

Dinner at Glenn and Sheila’s

We would never pass up on a dinner invitation to Glenn and Sheila’s.  Sheila is a fantastic cook and we always enjoy whatever she prepares.  Here are the photos of our dinner and dessert on the 25th.

Met Life Blimp Flyover

On Tuesday February 21st, the Met Life Blimp flew over.