October 2015

A Landscape Waterfall

Waterfall

We took a little detour today along the street just to the north of our little road. We have lived here for almost five years and had not driven through this segment of our very local neighborhood. We were stunned to see several beautiful homes and landscapes, but none of them compared to this one where the homeowner installed a water feature on the front of the lot.

This working waterfall must have been ten to twelve feet in height from source to the pond below. This property is similar to our situation where the house is on a berm above the road, but the similarity ends there. This place had giant boulders stacked in front with embedded cacti, trees and this waterfall. I looked at some of the photos that I took and there appeared to be accent lighting on the property. It will be interesting to take the short walk some evening this fall and see if they’re all lit up. Click on the image to enlarge.

Weather Changing in Arizona

Rainbow

Over the past few days, the weather has played a role in the changing of seasons here. I’m not ready to call it Fall just yet, but we have had a pretty wet week thus far. The forecast has it warming up again toward the rest of the week, so I’ll assume we’re going to get into “Second Spring” for a few weeks before the really cooler weather settles into the desert.

Bob and I were out and about several times today; we had an early MD appointment, a post office PO box check, shopping at two different stores for last-minute specials that expire tonight and, finally, to pick up my pair of glasses that the O.D. office repaired. That was late this afternoon when the rainfall had moved east of town and the sun came out to form this beautiful arcing rainbow. Click on the image to enlarge.

Six Years Down the Road

six.png

It’s hard to believe that I have been retired for six years. October 01, 2009 was the first full day of official retirement from big aerospace, although excess leave and personal time off hours allowed us to take most of the last three months off. But on this day, six years ago, the first pension check from the second stint at the same company I had retired from a decade before. Sorta weird, but I get a separate check (directly deposited, of course) for each term of service.

I say that retirement has been damn good because we have had ample opportunity to relocate, build a new home, travel and just enjoy the leisure time. There have been a few pitfalls, but the outcome of those (so far) have not had a very negative effect on our retirement.

As we go forward with our life of leisure, we will be able to travel a little more often than we have in the first six years which is important now that our families have presented us with a new grandson and a great grandson. We will be visiting them and going to visit our other extended family from time to time. We envision an upgrade in our RV status in the future and will be organizing a vacation get-together with some of the family who also have that capability.

We eagerly anticipate the next six years of retirement and even more, God willing.