Meandering

It's time once again for one of those blog posts that meander here and there and really don't go anywhere at all.

We will be leaving sometime today to head down to Mesa.  Miss Susun flies out to San Diego on Saturday.  Then she boomerangs right back on Sunday.  Huh?  Say What?  OK, well, you know how much Miss Susun loves to travel.  She is all excited to take her Grand Sons on their very first Road Trip.  She, Gage, Van and Mom Sarah will pack up late Saturday and then head out Sunday morning to drive the kids back to Mesa.  It's going to be a multi-day Road Trip.  After visiting Family in Mesa, the kids will come up to Second Chance Ranch and might even get their very first camping experience.  They will visit Sedona, too, before heading back across the desert to Southern California.  Miss Susun is so happy she is going to get to lead the kids on their very first Official Road Trip.  She will return to Mesa on February 18th.  Hopefully, we will be able to get her back to San Diego for a week in March.  She will also be spending a week there for Gage's 4th birthday on April 10.

For some reason, it's has seemed to be very busy around here the past few days.  The day after the mid-winter party was pretty lazy but the pace picked up Monday and hasn't slacked off ever since.  We set up a shooting match for Gary, Goatherder and Tony on Monday morning.  As soon as we returned from the 4 hour informal match, we received an email containing the closing papers for the sale of the Indiana house.  The typical whirlwind commenced upon receipt of those papers and we barely were able to get them out by the deadline for overnight UPS.  The papers arrived safely back in Lafayette at 9 am the next morning.

Tuesday we were off like a shot to the Tuesday Target Shoot and didn't get back from that until lunch.  Miss Susun spent the bulk of her Tuesday centered around a hike along Oak Creek on the Baldwin Trail.  Little Yonni went back and forth into the desert three times testing some reloads for his "new" pistol.

We planned to have a leisure day yesterday but it sure didn't turn out that way.  Emails started coming in from the Indiana attorney's office about how several accounts we thought we had closed were still open.  Thus commenced a pitched half-day battle with ATT, Comcast cable, Sam's Club and the natural gas company.  In the most ridiculous of the cases, ATT people told me that had received her death certificate on December 30 but made a mistake and didn't close the account and, even though it was their mistake, they now couldn't close the account unless it was effective yesterday and that I had to pay $217 for their error.  No kidding.  Incredible.  The rest of the details are not suitable for a family blog.

Miss Susun went off to do laundry in Cottonwood while Yonni unstressed by reloading a few hundred rounds of ammo in preparation for an ICORE pistol match Saturday morning at the Phoenix Rod & Gun Club. I also listed six pistols for sale online and spent the remainder of the day booking various firearms transactions to do while down in The Valley. 

Last night's campfire was great.  Gary & Robin visited and it's always so much fun when they do.  We've had great campfires each night this week.  There's been nary a breath of wind and the full moon has been spectacular.  There haven't been any righteous sunsets to speak of but with a full moon, who cares?

The clock is ticking down on the real estate closing.  It is scheduled to take place today.  We are waiting to exhale when it is finally done.

We have a couple of top priority projects pending right now and both involve river guides.  One is for the Verde here in Arizona and one is for the Salmon up in Idaho.  We emailed ans spoke with our volunteer Supervisor in Challis, Idaho yesterday and will jump back into that long-delayed project on Monday.  As some may recall, we did the field work for that river guide in July and August of 2010.  That sure seems like a long time ago.  Well, gee, it IS a long time ago!  I have no clue how we are going to recall all the details of that field work and find all our photos.  So, it seems we will have to go back up on the Salmon almost as soon as we return to Idaho.  Luckily, the river follows the highway most of the way so we ought to be able to "remember" simply by driving alongside the river.  Undoubtedly, it will make for an unusual and interesting road trip.

Meanwhile, the Verde guide seems to move along very slowly.  Hopefully, we are going to collectively jump start that project next week, too.  Busy times lie ahead.

Drum roll please....Guess What?  We're going to get hearing aids tomorrow.  Yep, we've finally decided to cross the Rubicon and stuff hundreds of dollars in our ears.  When we first started pricing hearing aids many years ago, we routinely received estimates ranging between $5000-$6000 for a pair of hearing aids.  We actually know people who actually spent that kind of money on hearing aids.  Well, we simply can't see stuffing two Suzuki Samurais in our ears so we refused to pay that kind of extortionary rates.  Tomorrow, we're going to get a pair of hot rod digital hearing aids with remote controls for a mere $1400 for the pair.  That's a decent price and one we are willing to pay.  We are finally actually excited about the prospect of getting those much needed devices.

Well, there's not much else to report and so it's time for this meandering to come to an end.  Have a great day & Many Cheers, jp