Becky had a facial in Flagstaff Friday afternoon. She wore out the dogs in the morning, so the four of us spent a very quiet few hours while Becky was gone. After she returned, she tried another reset of our spa, but it still is not heating up. The Friday movie, recorded from HBO, was Confirmation, about the fiasco surrounding the confirmation of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court in 1991.
I remember the event vividly, but it was interesting to see the stuff that happened in the background, which was not on TV. Of course, the movie was slanted against Justice Thomas, but it was still watchable.
Saturday morning, we decided to take a short trip with our RV in May. I tried the website of the Pechanga RV Resort in Temecula, and was frustrated by the mechanics, so I reverted to the old way---and called them on the phone. It took only two minutes to make the necessary reservation.
Saturday afternoon we watched a Netflix documentary about Joan Rivers called A Piece Of Work that covered only one year of her life. Very interesting. She was quite the complicated person, mostly insecure.
Sunday was a glorious Spring day in Williams. It seemed as if Becky and the dogs were gone the whole day. They spent part of it touring nearby Kaibab Lake.
After a delicious pasta dinner, the redbox movie we watched was The Lady In The Van, a delightfully odd British film starring Maggie Smith.
We woke up to another dusting of snow Monday, but it melted fairly quickly. Late in the day, the Summit Spas fellow arrived to fix our hot tub. It turned out the pump that simply circulates the water through the filters had gone bad.
By chance (?) he had another one with him, saving a second trip. That meant the cost was only prohibitive, not astronomical. There are four other pumps in the thing,. I wonder when they'll start failing.
Tuesday involved a visit to Flagstaff to see Dr. Mathern. All seems to be well. The Tuesday night movie from Netflix was the first three episodes of the second season of Boss. It's still fascinating.
I saw Dr. Boettcher on Wednesday. He applies another bunch of the magic stuff that is slowly closing the tiny hole in my scalp. The redbox movie that evening was The Walk, a regular movie version of the documentary we watched a few weeks ago of the wire walk that Philippe Petit took between the Twin Towers in the 1970s. It starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the fellow who played the kid in the Third Rock From The Sun TV show a few years back. He did a terrific job.
Thursday was another day of a little snow, and a walk through the slush with the dogs at Buckskinner Park. After that, Becky got a massage from Natanya Nagy, her new best friend. That night's Netflix movie was The Grifters, a favorite of mine from 1995.
On Friday (the 29th) we had some morning snow, then Becky took the dogs to the Grand Canyon Railway as part of their big walk.
She dropped them off at home while she then went to the Grand Hotel in Tusayan to visit Shannon Baas, a former co-worker at the Bright Angel Lodge at the canyon. They hadn't seen each other since 2009, and they had a nice reunion.
Our next-door neighbors, Jay and Connie, brought home a new dog, a border collie named Bear.
The Friday "movie" was three more episodes from the second season of Fargo. Still good.
Safeway, our local market, has been issuing tickets to pay Monopoly, a sweepstakes-type game being offered by Safeway and a number of its related companies over the past few months. Becky took it up a few weeks ago, spending about five minutes a day opening and matching the tickets. The game is coming to an end soon and Safeway has a large number of undistributed tickets. So on Saturday Safeway began giving away ten at a time (per dollar spent) instead of one at a time---just to get rid of them. Some of the tickets award more tickets by themselves.
The two of us spent several hours on Saturday opening more than five hundred tickets, matching them to the game board, and going back to Safeway to exchange "winners" for more tickets. It was exhausting. But it was a good way to while away the day since we had a little snow to deter us from doing anything outdoors. The final result of all the work was nothing (!!!) except a bunch of discount vouchers for 25 cents off a lot of food items we rarely buy.
On Sunday the dogs spent most of the day sleeping, and I finally finished Liberty And Tyranny, and began re-reading Dennis Prager's Think A Second Time. I read it ten years ago when it was first published.
That night we watched (from Netflix) Reservoir Dogs, Quentin Tarantino's first movie as a director. Very nasty. Not great, in my opinion.
On Monday we got back on track with the medical team. I went to Flagstaff by myself for a follow-up echocardiogram, to see if the cancer medicine was negatively affecting my heart (one of the possible side effects). It turned out it was not. Yea. We celebrated with dinner from Pato Thai, which I picked up on my way home.
My cardiologist, Dr. Cohen, had moved to a new location (and a new group) and I was unfamiliar with his parking lot. I backed into a tree---and ruined my bumper while also re-arranging a little of the nearby fender. I've hit other things in the more than 13 years we've had the truck, but this was the first time the damage was enough to have fixed.
On Tuesday, I took the truck to Custom Designs Auto, which is one of the few repair shops in Williams, and had a conversation with Talon, the owner. He will replace the bumper on Friday so the truck looks only barely damaged; we'll then decide whether to attack the sheet metal at a later time when we can leave the truck with him for a week. My insurance company (Progressive) is standing by for my decision.
Also on Tuesday, we had visitors. Carl and Salli Middleton, long-time friends (Salli was a sorority sister of Becky's at UC Santa Barbara) stopped by on their way from "the Valley" to Las Vegas. The Middletons live in Seattle, and are on a vacation loop through the Southwest. We haven't seen them in four years. It was a lot of fun catching up. Becky made a tasty chicken curry salad for lunch.
The Tuesday night redbox movie was Remember, starring Christopher Plummer and Martin Landau. Excellent movie with an interesting twist. Well worth seeing.
Wednesday was a day for visits to Dr. Mathern and Dr. Boettcher in Flagstaff. Both reports were positive. Thursday we were back to the regular routine of reading (me) walking dogs (Becky) and watching TV (both of us). We also tidied up more than usual, since our friend, Barbara Coad is due to visit us starting Saturday. Because it was Cinco de Mayo, though, we had to have Enchiladas (made by Becky) and Margaritas (made by Jose Cuervo) for dinner. Delicious!
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