Some Pictures of the House That Aren’t Very Good

So here is a previously posted picture of the house from across the street.  It’s pretty good.  I like this picture.

Jim was up one calm morning with a gallon of glyphosate attempting to eradicate the bunch grass growing on the side of the wash.  This is going to be an ongoing project.  After two weeks, it’s pretty much dead, but it’s still standing.

There have been deliveries from Amazon right and left.  This is the office chair we bought for cheap at an estate sale.  They had a Sunbeam mixer I was interested in, but they wanted full boat retail for it, and would not come down very much on that price.  They’re sill available new, so if I decide I really need a mixer, I can get it on line.  The red rug is new – from Amazon.  On sale!  It makes it easier to move the chair about on the tile floor.

I think house photography is a skill, and it’s a skill I do not have.  I’ve taken multiple photos and they’re all pretty terrible.  That window in the front is definitely not helping with the lighting.  Anyway, here is the living room.

Looking right from the living room to the server.  I got that in North Carolina.  The reason the pictures are like that is because there is a giant nail in the wall holding up the top water color.  That server weighs about 400 pounds and we can’t move it, unfortunately when the movers placed the server, I didn’t notice that it needed to be centered under the giant nail.  This is our workaround to hide the nail and be symmetrical.

Moving further right, looking in to the kitchen.  The piece on the left is one that we had made locally.  It provides an amazing amount of storage for light bulbs, napkins, kleenex boxes and stuff like that.  It’s also pretty.  Bookcase on the right is courtesy of Ikea.

There is something about cabinets that don’t go to the ceiling that demands that you put stuff on them.  The flowered flour sifter was my Grandmother’s.  You can still see the 35 cents written on it in grease pencil.

My fetishes are seeing the light of day after being packed away for 10 years.  They’re happy to be out. 

THIS is the current bane of our decorating existence.  The TV needs to be on that angle to be visible to the two love seats.  Wouldn’t you think you could just scroll through a couple of websites and buy something to corral the cords and look better than this?  No, no you may not.  The router is 8.5 inches tall, and to get a low console, you don’t get a tall enough shelf.  We found one console that was OK, but it’s sold out.  I pretty much have the inventory of Overstocks and Wayfair memorized. 

So, progress is being made.  We’re happy with the kitchen, nothing else is needed in there.  It’s amazing how many plates two people go through in a day when you give up the paper plate habit.

Armistice Day

In his address in Paris, French President Emmanuel Macron said the following:

"Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism.  Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism. By saying our interests first, who cares about the others, we erase what a nation holds dearest, what gives it life, what makes it great and what is essential: its moral values."

"I know there are old demons which are coming back to the surface. They are ready to wreak chaos and death.  History sometimes threatens to take its sinister course once again."

Meanwhile, in Poland, the nationalists were marching, chanting their wishes for a whites only Europe.

It just never ends.

Bike Hike

We’ve been outside a time or two recently that did not involve yard work.  I incorrectly equated “desert landscaping” with “low maintenance.”  That would not be the case.  Currently we are trying to kill off an invasion of Buffel grass on the other side of the wall.  If it would stay over there, we’d let it be.  However, it’s invading the hopseed hedge, which is very hard to weed, so chemicals are being used.  The grass is sick, but so far it’s not dead.

This is along the Santa Cruz trail.  Everywhere we go recently, there is a significant trail closure.  This does not really impact us, as we have to drive to the trail from the house, but it’s such a bummer for the people at Rincon Country West RV Resort.  Their spur to the trail was paved late last season, which was just wonderful.  Now, the underpass at Ajo is closed until 12/2019, which means they all have to ride down Mission Road (very busy road) to Silverlake to get to the trail.



I love the look of this rusting pole against the very blue sky.



There has been hiking among the cacti.



Look at the low point of the saddle, about mid picture.  That trail is accessible from the house.  We’ve been up there twice.



The orange flowers are normally spring bloomers.  They’re still in flower after the rains a while ago.



Look dead center.  There are three mule deer there.  They have a unique gift of standing so that I am forced to shoot into the sun.



We now have sun shades for the western facing patio.  The light fixture over the table has been replaced with a smaller, simpler fixture.  I’m really happy we outsourced the activity.  We could have done it, but it would have taken all day per each.

Cheating

I did not think that things could get worse than Brian Kemp’s disenfranchising of thousands of Georgia voters, his inability to provide functioning voting machines with power cords, and his failure to recuse himself from the job which allowed him to oversee the election in which he was running.  However, I was mistaken.

The Arizona Republican Party has filed a lawsuit.

County officials were still counting more than 600,000 ballots when four local Republican parties filed the lawsuit Wednesday night. The suit challenges the way counties have allowed voters to fix problems involving signatures on some mailed-in early ballots.
The lawsuit singles out the state's two biggest urban counties, which are the base of Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema's support. She and Republican Rep. Martha McSally are separated by only a few thousand votes.

So, if we don’t think we’re winning, we file law suits and alter the results of an election.

Yesterday the president fired Attorney General Sessions, and elevated his chief of staff to acting AG.  This would be the same person who is on record calling Mueller’s investigation a witch hunt and suggesting the best way to stop it would be to cut all funding.  No conflict here!

On the bright side Dino Rossi lost to Kim Schrier in Washington.  Dr. Schrier will be going to the House of Representatives.

Tomorrow a handy man is coming to do tasks that require standing on a ladder, which is something we no longer enjoy.  Progress on the house continues.

Update to post 11/13/2018.

On November 9, the AZ Governor tweeted this:

The RNC lawsuit was denied, the votes were counted and Kyrsten Sinema won.  Yea Kyrsten Sinema!

Arizona Sunsets

Tonight was another gaudy sunset.

.

The western skies have been pretty spectacular as of late.

A Very Good Day

Today was an excellent day. We were up and out early to go to the Social Security Office.  I was there to file a restricted application for spousal benefits.  Were you born before January 2, 1954?  Is your spouse receiving SSN?  If so, I think you are eligible to file for spousal benefits (50% of spouse’s payment at full retirement age), and let your SSN grow until you’re 70.  This is a limited time offer that ends in 2020.  Here is a link to a fairly understandable Forbes article on the subject. 

We got there when the doors opened at nine.  Last week I waited 90 minutes on the phone to make an appointment, and thus was able to go in first.  I was directed to window number 15, and low and behold, the gentleman working that station had pulled my paperwork, knew why I was there and proceeded to process me and my documents in about 20 minutes.  The person I spoke to when I made the appointment asked many questions and generated a file on me that allowed much of the work to be done before I got there.  The visit truly exceeded expectations.

If you’re going to do this, form SSA-10 lists the documents you need to bring.  In my case, since Jim is still living, I did not need a death certificate.

On the way home, we followed signs in the neighborhood for a moving sale.  There is a business here that runs sales for people who must empty the house.  We bought an office chair – cheap!  I’m so excited after pricing them at Office Depot. 

After lunch there was hiking.  There is a trail that starts across the street from the house.  We walked up to the top of a saddle.  While we were standing there, two Blackhawk helicopters flew by.  They’re from a special operations unit at Davis-Monthan. 

A mountain whose name I do not know.

This is our community.  Look at the houses closest to me.  We’re around the corner in that neighborhood.

This is amazing.  These flowers generally only bloom in the spring, and they’re pretty scarce.  At present, they’re all over the place.  It’s amazing what a little rain will do.

Have you ever seen such a juicy ocotillo?

When you exit the trail back into the neighborhood, this is what you see.  This is our house.

Progress continues.  It’s starting to look and feel more like home than a collection of rooms with furniture in them.