Sunday, January 16, 2011

A Fun Visit, A Fun Dinner & A Fun Email

Yesterday was your basic lazy day.  Slow to rise, slow to move and slow to go...to Cottonwood.  Not much to report there.  However, upon rounding the last curve to come home, who's vehicle should I spy at the end of our road?  Why Maggie, Steve & Izzy's!  They had arrived only 5 minutes earlier for a wonderful impromptu "HOWDY" from the snow-spotted Northland.

We had a great time visiting out by the campfire pit.  It was WAAAY too warm to build a fire or sit inside the house.  It was a splendid afternoon and the temp peaked at a whopping 67 degrees while they were here.  Delicious mid-January weather.

This was my first meeting with Maggie & Steve's New Star, Izzy.  The yellow lab puppy exhibited all of those traits that endear puppies to humans and was a Good Dog.   By and by, we decided to play a round of mildly extreme croquet.  What would normally be a straight forward session of smacking baseballs around mesquite trees and limestone rocks turned into a real adventure.  How so?  Well, there's this thing about puppies and balls.  What would a puppy be without a ball to grab?  Hum...  Sure enough, Izzy didn't disappoint us.  She would grab one of the croquet balls and take off with it.  Even with stern admonitions from her Parents, Izzy was always on the prowl for a "grab & run."  Steve & Maggie did an admirable job limiting Izzy's impact on our game.  However, it was quite fun to have the "Dog Factor" injected into our croquet game.  The whole concept of "play it where it lies" took on a whole new meaning after the dog would drop one of our balls.

After the game, I took a photo.  However, I was in "Dummy" mode and forgot that the camera card was NOT in the camera.  Opps. Now, I have no way of getting this fine foto out of the camera since I don't have the custom USB cord for this old 5 megapixel artifact.  Opps.  I tried every trick I know to get this foto out of the camera and all ideas failed.  Finally, I woke up this morning and figgered a foto of a foto was about my last chance.  (I used the Fuju FinePix S1000 on ultra macro to get this shot of the LCD display on the back of the other camera.) As you can see, it didn't turn out real well.  But, hey, it's the thought and concept that counts, isn't it?  My apologies to Maggie, Izzy & Steve for me being such an airhead with the camera thingie.  THANKS for coming to visit.

During the remainder of the afternoon, I fiddled with newly-acquired stuff from Wally World.  The kitchen stuff container section of the pop-top camper is now in good first draft shape.  We pulled out the water tank and converted that space into our "chuck box" area.  There's a 4-gallon milk crate and four plastic storage tubs in there now.  They will hold our culinary water, pots, pans, food and kitchen utensils.  All is well & tidy there now.

Then we swapped out the air filter in SuziQ.  There's a story and slide show about it over on the Zuki blog.  We won't bore you with the details here.  Afterwards, we headed over to Robin & Gary's place for a fine evening of great hospitality and a wonderful lasagna dinner with fresh baked bread and really fine dipping oil.  An evening with Robin & Gary is always such a delight.  THANK YOU!!!!

Well, here's some other news.  Susun's getting to be a Road Warrior with Lilly The Laptop.  She took it to the Sedona motel and has actually sent two messages to my email inbox.  She's definitely learned how to send SHORT messages and, as we all know, that's a gift.  Here's her entire note from last evening:

"Great Day with Great, Beautiful Women!  In all the right places at the right time with Smiley Faces and Love and Joy and gratitude!  See you tomorrow.  We love you,  The Idaho Sisters."

Way to go, Sweetie, ya dun good!

Cheers, jp

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