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| Larry the Lizard |
This
morning while Kim was waiting on a return phone call, I sat outside playing
Scrabble in the warm shade of our tree, watching Larry the Lizard climbing
around on it. The best word of the day
was ‘vlei’. Since there’s no way that I’m aware of to
challenge a word in the electronic version of Scrabble, I just have to accept
what is played; but I must say I’ve never before seen a word start with that
particular combination of consonants. Even
though I can’t challenge, I do look up the words so I can see what they mean
and store them in my head so I can play them if the opportunity arises. Might as well learn a new word or two while
I’m at it. According to Wikipedia, vlei is a word used predominantly in South Africa and is derived from the
Middle Dutch word for ‘valley’. In
Afrikaans, however, its meaning changed into that of ‘the shallow lake’. And
I’ve said it before…while the computer may have every word imaginable, or sometimes
unimaginable, in its word bank, it doesn’t seem to play with any kind of
strategy. It also exchanges letters a
lot, in lieu of playing a word to earn points.
But then strategy requires thinking, doesn’t it? 😏
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Clouds
moved in last night so Kim came in early…I finished what I was doing shortly
thereafter. We were in bed before 11 and
slept until almost 8 this morning.
That’s about 9 hours of sleep…just what Kim was needing. And me? I was just being lazy.😉 Sleep is important in general, but more so when
a person is fighting a cold or whatever it is that Kim has. He was thinking he’d be getting to bed early
again tonight because it was cloudy in the early evening. There are some stars visible now (8:30 p.m.)
so the clouds are clearing some, but high thin clouds undetectable by the naked
eye can become problematic in the lens of a telescope. He’s over at the scope tinkering and if the
conditions are right, he just might have a late night again. He doesn’t want to pass on any chance of
imaging because when we get home, he might be waiting a couple of months again
to see a clear night sky.
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We rode our bicycles in the
early evening. I took off before Kim who had a few things to do and
really didn’t want to ride far anyway. So I rode out about 3 miles
then turned around and headed back. Met up with Kim about halfway
back to camp. We rode back to camp together with a short stop for
what turned out to be a harder photo op than I thought. There is a
huge tractor tire set up right alongside the road, the bottom buried. I’ve
ridden past it every day envisioning how fun it would be to climb up and stand
on it…like Peter Pan standing with his hands on his hips in defiance. In
my pre-planning, I had even worked out the best way to gracefully climb it. Well,
I managed to get to the top but climbing didn’t go at all like I had planned…I
clawed my way up and I don’t remember but Kim may have helped with a
well-placed push. And I have to admit that I didn’t feel defiant at all as I
tentatively got off my hands and knees to stand upright Peter Pan style on a big
tire. Despite the smile on my face, fear is what I was feeling. Kim had to help me climb back down, too. I’m
sure the Fed Ex guy that drove by as I was draped over the tire about halfway
down it had a good chuckle. It didn’t
feel like it would have been a pretty sight. 😊
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We
realized on the way over from Quartzsite that the a/c in the truck was not
working. It blows air and while it’s not
hot air, it’s not cool by any stretch of the imagination. Sort of neutral. However, with the back
window open, we can keep air circulating enough for the short trips that we’ve
taken into town. Kim did some
troubleshooting the other day and the most he could do was eliminate a
possibility or two. Today he called the
Ford dealership in Casa Grande and got an appointment for 1:30 to get it
checked out. We had a couple of errands
to do so we left early to find the dealership and then do our errands.
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Mailing a package was on our list of things to do, so after Rapunzel
found the dealership I directed her to find a post office near my location. Directions popped right up…however she
thought we were somewhere we weren’t. So
we went the wrong way to begin with but got ourselves going in the right
direction; she caught up with our actual location and then gave us turn by turn
directions, eventually proudly proclaiming that our destination was on the
left. We had just pulled into a parking
lot behind several buildings. A wire
fence was in front of us, the back of a building with no outlet was on our
right and a brick fence, not a post office, was on our left. We did see a mail truck in the parking lot so
figured we had to be in the vicinity…just couldn’t get there from here and what
was really funny is that Rapunzel gave us a thumbs up for making it ‘2 min
earlier than predicted’. That’s really rich, Rapunzel…our destination
is NOT on our left so really, we’ve only managed to get to the wrong spot 2
minutes early. Yippee Skippee!! As
we maneuvered around to head out of the parking lot, Rapunzel was insistent
that we turn around as our destination was on the left. Time for her to be quiet and for the humans to
take control…we used logic and found our way to the front of the building. And it was indeed the Casa Grande Post Office
so Rapunzel was fractionally correct in her directions.
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| How Kim spent his time |
Sat around the dealership for a couple of
hours while diagnostics were performed. Bottom line is that the air compressor
is leaking and needs to be replaced. Not
only was the estimate more than we wanted to spend right now but they wouldn’t
be able to do anything until tomorrow which meant a return trip…so we’ll deal
with no air for now. Opening the back
window will be our go to option if it gets too warm in the cab of the truck. We’ll check out other repair options when we
get home.
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It
was a beautiful day for a bike ride but getting the a/c checked out was more
important to both of us. Tomorrow’s
temperature is predicted to be in the mid-80s again; we’ve talked about getting
up early and taking a longer ride, but I’d like to see how Kim feels before
committing to that.
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Whenever we’re heading out into the sun, I use sunscreen. This morning I found a couple of half dollar
sized spot on my arms that I apparently missed when slathering it on yesterday.
Oops! The Neutrogena sunscreen I use
does a top notch job in spite of operator error.
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We
knew that there was one cactus spine tip that Kim couldn’t get out of my arm
from my unfortunate cactus encounter of about 8 days ago. It was just too small for the pliers/tweezers
to grab; I could feel it in there but it wasn’t painful, irritating or catching
on my shirts. It was just a tiny tiny
bump I could feel if I ran my hand over it.
This morning I scratched an itch in that area and something like a scab
came off on my finger. Ha! It was the
tip of the cactus spine! My body had
pushed it out to where it could be removed.
My arm is now officially spine free…now I just have to wait for the one in
my finger to do the same. 😏
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Bicycle miles today: 6.1
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