The Ides of March

Us and the Canadians in Yuma

Consuelo and I search all through our motor home for our togas to celebrate the Ides, but alas, they were not to be found. Instead, we'll wear our jeans and shorts to celebrate this famous Roman feast day. Not that we need another feast day. We've feasted enough of late. It always seems that when we get together with our rowdy friends, we add a few pounds onto the frame. It seems that we've been doing so since the first of January.

Arts and Crafts in Tubac

February was a short month. It usually is, but our faster than ever activities cut it to what seemed 12 days. We spent the first week in Yuma, playing some golf and wrapping up our activities there. Our campsite benefactors, Rusty and Mary Ann returned from Mexico, and we partied with them a bit. Then we cruised over to Tucson for a very brief week playing with Curt and Beth Kraft, who escape Rochester every year to SE Arizona. Curt and I played golf for 3 days, we tripped to Tubac for the Art Festival, and we had a wonderful Valentines day dinner with other friends of theirs.

The sewing sisters

We then journeyed up to Fountain Hills where Consuelo and the sewing sisters had their annual sewing camp in Arizona. Lots of cutting, stitching, patterning, and fitting was done, along with comfy food. The ladies did an outing to the Art Museum to celebrate Deb Wilkinson's birthday (how many years is that, Deb?) and Denny Robertson and I hiked out to the Dixie Mine, a round trip of some 6 miles. One night everybody came to our little house for dinner, where I served up salmon stuffed with bleu cheese, bacon and pears, and Ming's pork fried rice.

Consuelo selling garlic graters

After the sewing camp ended, we walked through "The Great Fair", another art event in Fountain Hills with Denny and Andrea. At one point, Denny decided to buy some garlic graters from a man who was alone in his booth. While the man wrote up Denny's order, Consuelo took over pitching the product to the folks walking by. She was pretty good at it, too.

Four Peaks from McDowell Mountain Park

We parked our house in McDowell Mountain Regional Park while we visited Fountain Hills. This large Maricopa County park (actually in Scottsdale) hosts about 95 large wonderful campsites, miles of trails for hikers, trail bikes, or horses. Coyote bands roam the area, yelling to each other at night. We might have extended our stay there, but they have a 2 week limit unless they are full, and they had folks waiting in overflow every night soon after we arrived.

Bill and Pat's new house

Soon after we arrived in Fountain Hills, my brother Bill began moving from their modular home in Apache Junction to a real house in Mesa. He and Pat have decided to abandon Massachusetts as a summer retreat and spend full time in Arizona. Prior to the move, after they got the keys to the new house, I helped them get some things ready to move and packed a load of things over to the new house. Logistics required scheduling, as they needed to have the ceilings painted and tile laid in the kitchen before they could completely move in. I helped some by rehanging the ceiling fans, installing a new stove and oven, repairing one miswired outlet, and odds and ends that I could help with. The final move was completed on March 10th, the evening of which we celebrated with pizza in the new house. I think they'll be very happy there, except perhaps for the days when they need to vacuum and realize how much more square footage they have.
We had departed McDowell Park on March 1st, arriving at the Elks Lodge in Tempe. It is a handy location to get to places in the city. For example, one of our sling chairs broke and it was a short haul over to Phoenix to get it repaired. Shopping is all around us.

In the midst of this, we've been refinancing our house in Maine, a long distance event that is proceeding quite nicely. Consuelo has been doing marketing for Oregon Woodworkers online, also proceeding quite nicely. And lately I've been fighting with a nasty bug my computer has of just hanging in the middle of a project, with no clear success yet. Very annoying.

We've started to fill in the blank spaces in the calendar between now and when we arrive back in Maine in mid May. Stops along the way include Tucson for another week, Grand Canyon, Salt Lake City, Arches National Park, Rochester, Croton Point NY, and Ipswich. And of course, a bunch of gas stations and Walmarts.