Weekend updates

Every weekend I thought would be the one that I caught up with my posts, but for the third weekend in a row I've failed!  So here is a summed up version.

2 weekends ago...Three hawks, one havalina and 47 miles later Jonathan and I finished our Saturday morning ride and peeled our human salt lick selves off our bikes seats for a quick visit with Joanthan's aunt and uncle.  Our ride started, and logically ended, at their front door, giving us a chance for a nice chat and check up on Mr. Max, their 14 year old puppy who has recently recovered from some health issues, before heading back home for the day.

A good eight hours later, after safely nestling two over-sized IPAs in my purse, we picked up our amigos down the street and made our way back to Scottsdale to dine at FnB. BYOB is the reason for the smuggled booze.  The experience was fun as the company is always a pleasure, and the food was good, but something is lost in an evening out when you have the bring your own beverages.

 

Sunday we returned to our long ignored to-do list.  Ever since we took down the aluminum car port, and Jonathan got a new car*, his little car has had to endure the desert sun while parked at home.  In hopes of resolving the direct sun contact and maintaining the look of our house without adding a bulky shade structure, we ordered a custom sized, custom fabric shade sail.  We lucked out in that the custom canvas fabric was a near exact match to our exterior beam/ceiling color.  Two trips to Home Depot, one trip to the always toxic, off-gassing Harbor Freight, and a lot of sweat later Jonathan and I managed to pull and tug our shade sail into place. When standing underneath and looking up the matching color to the house fits in quite well, and while looking from the street you barely notice the canvas.(*Note Jonathan's car did not make the photo opportunity as seen here)

One weekend ago...Jonathan stepped up his hiking by making the drive to Prescott to hike 9+ miles while I stayed home attempting to get my running mileage progressing.  Seems I've hit a bit of a rut at a way too short a distance to even be considered a rut!

Post exercise we checked out a new neighborhood nursery and finally replaced some of the front planter plants that didn't fair too well in this summer's heat.  I was sincerely sad to see the loss of the jades, especially the one that came all the way from VA, but lesson learned.  We replaced the voids with more elephant's food (which does freakishly well here) as well as some little cactus.  The plan is to have a nice ground cover of elephant's food plus a few little vertical plants for visual variety.

Sunday Jonathan worked hard at removing the old fan support in our bedroom and replacing it with a far superior support. His work left an odd shaped void of drywall in the ceiling which I was confident I could replace.  Didn't turn out as easy as I'd hoped.  Frustrated and defeated I walked away and decided to try again the following day.  After watching a few videos I still thought I could avoid cutting the hole in the ceiling to match the new dry wall piece as many a do it yourself video suggested.  I should known better than to try and out smart the experts in the videos.  As of that Sunday evening, the void remained, resulting in a "fail" on my end of the project.  Life goes on.

Past weekend: Due to a bike tube blowout and being low on spare tubes we canceled our planned long ride on Saturday morning and instead took Mr. Jackson for a nice little hike in Papago park. The park was on our route to the Botanical Garden where we were scheduled to pick up our free trees, thanks to APS' shade tree give away program. On our hike we witnessed a little military training as we watched 7 massive helicopters, looked like Th-1 Iroquois or the better known Blackhawk, fly over head in formation, land, and take back off from the nearby base.  I can't say I agree with everything military, but the machinery and history/concept of warfare continues to fascinate me.

After we dropped off our trees and a tired little Jackson at home we ran a few more errands, picked up a new-to-us bookshelf, and stopped for lunch at the newly opened Rice Paper on 7th St. The restaurant focuses on spring rolls, and Vietnamese sandwiches/soups (Pho), and boy oh boy was it good.  Service was lacking, aka don't go if your already very hungry, but the atmosphere is nice, the good is great and its certainly worth a return trip.

Jonathan finished repairing the hole in the ceiling and I set to work on taping and puttying.  I have about one more layer of to go and it should be finished. Hopefully this week/weekend we can re-attach the fan and, fingers crossed, it will no longer wobble and creak!

Preview for this weekend...This Saturday morning we have a dude with a tractor scheduled to grade our front yard.  Now that the summer weather is at an end we can finally get back to finishing the front landscaping!