One life in two places means we are truly blessed

A foggy morning in Tucson

Someone here said it often feels like they living two lives, the one here and then the one at home where they live most of the time. I disagree, I’m living only one life, I’m just living it in two places. Both uniquely beautiful, both with nice people and friends and both blessed.

The trailer is pretty much set up now, the outdoor chairs and large mat are down and just a few days in we are settled into the Arizona portion of our life. The weather is OK, not quite as idyllic as last year, temperatures for the next couple days won’t get out of the 60s, the lows overnight are in the 40s and this morning for the first time ever while we’ve been in Tucson we had a heavy layer of fog – or “marine layer” as they call it in California now. It used to be fog, but somewhere along the way it became the “marine layer.” But since Arizona really doesn’t have “marine” we’ll go with fog.

I was up early for my visit to the fitness center where two men on adjoining treadmills were having a loud, ugly and unnecessary political discussion. One was a liberal the other a conservative and they just couldn’t stop needling each other to the annoyance of just about everyone else in the center. Eventually one of them departed and left the rest of us to our exercise in peace.

Back at the trailer I caught up on mail, headed to the showers to wash the stink off of me and then headed over to the “Easy Bleeders” workshop to start working on a wood carving project that I have been trying to finish. A number of the same guys were there from last year and we had a good time catching up. Two of them guys in the carving shop are also members of the Bible study I attend on Thursday.

Another foggy view

About every other Wednesday around here is “Market Days” which brings dozens of craft and other vendors to the resort. It is a pretty eclectic vendor event and we bought some homemade greeting cards and four beautiful grapefruit today.

A guy who builds birdhouses thought he had a sale when he heard someone mention I was from Michigan. The vendor jumped up and said “I’ve got something you’ll really like and held up one of his finely crafted birdhouses.”

The problem was that the birdhouse was painted a bright yellow and blue and had big Block M’s all over it.

“Wrong school,” I told him. And then he sheepishly had to admit he had no green and white Spartan birdhouses to sell. Too bad, I thought.

This afternoon the RV repairman came and gave us an estimate (for the insurance company) for the hail damage to the top of the trailer. A little more than $1,000 to fix everything.  The insurance company gave us permission to have the skylights fixed right away to keep any water out of the trailer and that was completed today. So at least we are sealed up tight now.

Market Days at Voyager

“Hot August Night,” a Neil Diamond tribute band was at the Voyager tonight and played to a sold out crowd in the ballroom. It was a high energy show that was very, very good. The guy who sang Neil Diamond classics was great and looked pretty much like Neil Diamond.

We have always enjoyed the entertainment here, but it looks like we’ll have to book well in advance from now on as the shows are selling out.

Joan cooked me one of my favorite comfort food dinners – weenies and beans. She had leftover mac and cheese from the potluck and some cheese and crackers to a comfort food dinner.

Joan and I both receive allergy shots at home and in the past have not brought our serum with us. Last year we found out that the 3-day a week clinic here at Voyager will give shots so this year we had our Flint doctor package up our serum and we plan to continue our treatments here.

More Market Days

Of course it’s a quasi-doctor’s office and like any other doctor’s office there is paperwork to be done. So yesterday we filled out the paperwork and today I returned mine to the clinic. Earlier in this post I talked about a guy who was in a heated political argument on Wednesday morning with another man at the fitness center.

After returning to the trailer the insurance adjustor arrived and he inspected our home and agreed it need awning repairs. He approved our claim for the total amount and because we haven’t made a claim for the six years we have owned and been insured by Progressive they approved the entire amount without a deductible. I had heard concerning things about Progressive, but so far everything has gone like clockwork and all the phone service and local in person service people have been just super.

“Super” and “insurance company” are not words I usually use in the same sentence either.

One of the broken skylights

Friday brought another day at the wood carving shop and Joan went to her aquacise class in the morning. In the afternoon we went to the grocery store and put some more food into trailer and then we went to the “Two’s Company” dance in the ballroom.

The couple who make up “Two’s Company” are one of the more popular entertainers here and there was a good crowd on hand. Joan and I sat with friends from last year – Bob and Judy – and some new folks we met last night – Kathy and Ron from Kitchener, Ontario. Lots of laughs, lots of dancing and just a great night all the way around.

When we arrived home about 10 p.m. we watched the news and learned that a man wanted for murder from Flint was arrested in Phoenix on Friday. Just can’t get away from the violence in Flint.

We have a little mystery going on in the trailer. A couple years ago we bought one of those digital weather stations that tells you both the temperature on the inside and the outside. The outside temperature is determined by a satellite device that you put outside the trailer and it registers on the main display inside the trailer.

Finally replaced

The mystery is that the outside temperature is showing on the weather station, but we have no idea where the satellite device is. On Saturday morning, after returning from the gym, I completely emptied the trailer storage basement and was unable to locate the device.

We usually keep the device on top of the trailer tire, but obviously we took it off before driving it away last year. Joan has searched all the inside cabinets and I have searched all the outside spaces and the device is nowhere to be found, and yet it seems to be working.

There is enough difference in the two temperatures to believe it is outside somewhere (I even checked the area around and under the trailer on the off chance it was still on the ground from last year) but we simply can’t find it. If you have any ideas, we’d like to solve this one because it is driving us nuts.