Almost not Retired? But still finding adventures.

Loving my life and all the changes but I find myself wondering why it was so important to return to stationary living. It's because I love it. It's hard to be uncomfortable all the time and that I was. The same said for Tim. Ergo, we have the new addition of Lazy Boy recliners. Ahhhhhh! I have two long term house projects. Photos and the garage. I have more pictures than I can stand and need to sort them. Ours, and 4 piles for the girls. Do they ever care? The garage has been an on going project ever since the movers arrived. I'm looking forward to sharing before, during and after pictures but it will be a while.

Tim is working full time driving for the students at UNLV. His route is pretty easy and he seems to enjoy the kids. During the summer he will be driving double decker red English tour buses on the strip. He is looking forward to doing that and so am I. I am going to stow away on one of the tours.

We had alot of our "do it next year" projects done already. The pool man is getting permits and lining up the workers. We bought a pool table which we were wanting since we bought the house and had some concrete poured. We got alot of Concrete!

We also found time to have a day trip to Laughlin, visited Harrahs and won some dough and took the Christmas Tree Pass through the desert for kicks and giggles on the way back. It is 16 miles of dirt road and best traveled with 4 wheel drive but the Edge did just fine.

To our suprise, we came across trees along the way that people decoorated with their ornaments and trim. Next trip coming up soon but more important, waiting on Tom and Deb, they're arriving on 2/20. Fabulous. Until next time, love and kisses. Mummy

Shout out to AJ friends

Tim and I took our first real road trip in the new Winnie. We went to Apache Junction with two goals in mind. Reconnect with snow bird friends for a few days and visit with Donna and Jamison, who drove from the Dallas area to see us. Well damn if weather didn't just kill that time and although I was able to spend time with Paige, I was lost to Joan and John and Dave and Tim's friends jumped ship and headed home to beat the storm to Texas. We left early too, heading west to California on Hwy 10 and then north and managed to skirt the storm and arrive home safe 2 days early. The worst part was driving over the hunks and chunks of snow and ice that fell off trucks and other vehicles along the otherwise clear road. We'll have to go through Lake Havasu City in the daylight next time, it was awesome in the dark, I can't imagine what it will look like in the daytime. We did stop in Lake Havasu City for a steak dinner at I believe Montana Steakhouse. Raw oysters on the 1/2 shell, steak, butterfly shrimp, fabulous salads and a thick creamy carrot soup which I wish I would have ordered but I hate hate hate cooked carrots and Tim got the last bowl. He let me taste it. I admit, I have to find this soup on the computer. We had our desserts to go. Yum! And I must say, Rocky was a very good little guy with people and traveling and Zoe was very happy to see us when we came home. My trip to the Tempe Yarn and Fiber with Paige was heaven. I bought some dye for my fiber and an off white cotton 220 in a lighter weight than I'm used to buying and am looking forward to using it on . . something. I have to finish booties for my folks and then I can play with the new stuff. Spring will bring a few changes here - we are going to put a swimming pool in out back and a pool table in the house. Some more concrete and a patio cover with a lattice roof for the west side of the house and extending the parking/driveway out front and we should be set here for the rest of our lives - except we'll be poor and living on fixed incomes but what the hell. We'll only live once.

Life with Dell - my need to compute

I've managed (with the help of family members) to kill 3 laptops in as many years. Laptop #1 was a Dell I bought in about 2003. She served us well and died about the time we sold our house in Edgerton. She was replaced with Laptop #2, an HP bought at Walmart in Hayward WI in June of 2007. She was a matter of life and death, total life support. I'm shamed in that I cannot survive without a trusty computer. There were several features I didn't like about her but I accepted her anyway and we worked our way through our issues; that is, Tim and me and the computer worked our way through issues. I was the mediator when problem solving was needed. We headed to Apache Junction, Arizona and that HP helped us stay in touch with friends and family and entertain us through the a winter in the sun. We headed back to Wisconsin for the summer and then on to Port Aransas, TX and poof, she up and dies. Actually just her hard drive died but you might as well have removed my own brain. That computer lasted all of 18 months, just outlived its warranty and left me high and dry without any communication outside my immediate surroundings. That should not suck but it did. Winter 2010, drive to Best Buy, purchase another Dell, laptop #3. This computer died two weeks ago. I put on my copy cat hat, the "I've seen Tracy do this" hat. She fixed Dell #1 which is okay except it powers down if my hand passes over the keys, which keys exactly is yet to be discovered. She replaced the hard drive in #2 while she was here and since the computer did not come with backup disks I had to order them and restart it. Monkey see, monkey do. Dell #3's hard drive was removed and replaced by me and since it did come with start up disks I was able to get it running too. Ironically, an old Compaq PC circa 1998, a relic for sure, sits on the desk, still running. She's a bit slow, dull in color and the printer only prints in black in white, in spite of new color cartridge. All this information shared only to confess my addiction to computers and the need to "compute". This leaves us with two restored laptops and one faithful PC. Next time, should I dish out the cash for a Mac? I hear they are "perfect".