Gentlemen, Start your Engines!

It was Nascar time on Sunday and what a day it was! I love to drive fast and have a bit of a lead foot so naturally I'm going to love watching live racing. I like to watch it on T.V. and love the few moments they give you the "rev up time" where you can turn up your speakers and listen to the cars whiz by w/out any announcing. Seeing it live, I can hear it the whole time :) The parking lot was nothing but trucks, semis and RVs w/ flags hanging above them. Apparently there is a special flag pole you buy to put in the back of your ride so that you can hang the American flag along w/ your favorite race car driver and the occasional state flag alongside. You follow the large amounts of people streaming into all of the action. There wasn't any traffic going to the race; we arrived about 10:00. The front entrance is full of stuff to buy, then you enter through w/ your tickets and surround yourself w/ food vendors and more merchandise sales and lots of things for you to check out or get your hands on. The race was exciting w/ never a dull moment around. The weather was interesting though. It was already a windy day. It started off really warm, then during the race dark clouds covered and it started to rain along w/ the cold wind. After the rain passed the sun came back out, but it was chilly the rest of the time. Once the sun went down it was down right cold. We had on shorts and t-shirts, but I did bring a sweatshirt w/ me since the morning was chilly. Now I know why everyone I saw was wearing jeans and long sleeves. I thought they were crazy at first, now that seemed like a good idea. Once the race was over everyone was herded to their cars like cattle. We walked amongst the drunks who could barely walk, the guys mooing like cows and the terrible wind blowing dirt into our eyes for 30 minutes until we arrived to the car. I'd say the only terrible-unexpected thing that happened w/ the Nascar was that I didn't really see any mullets or the hicks that I anticipated which meant the people watching wasn't nearly fun. Maybe because we're on the west coast and that could be more of a Midwest thing. Oh well, it was a great time and hope I can do it again sometime.

Skip and Jan's

Saturday was a busy day for us, actually the whole weekend was. It was great! We started off going to the Sun Lakes car show, free hot dog w/ pop. Headed to Tempe to a NE bar called Skip and Jan's to watch the game. What a game it was! The best played game so far. The bar was filled w/ red w/ the exception of maybe four older folks betting on the horse races. After the win we headed home to get ready for karaoke at the Sun Lakes country club. It was some intense karaoke as they put everything into it. There is complimentary popcorn and you can purchase hot dogs or pizza and of course the drinks were flowing. (I was the sober DD since J spent the day drinking at Skip and Jan's and continued through the night). The karaoke was entertaining as I thought it would be.

We haven't had our A.C. unit on for over a week due to the lower temps. In fact it's chilly in the house. I've had to break out the warm gear for the night time. We haven't turned our furnace on yet either. Good stuff!

When the Shit Hits the Fan

Two fans that is. Yesterday Uncle B put up our living room fan- light combo. Took a while, but it was finished. I love this fan; it's quiet, has great lighting and blows a good wind. Today, ceiling fan number two was installed in the dining room. A few complications later, it was also finished. This fan is classy looking w/ a light combo as well. It too is quiet, has a lot of wind and provides great light.

Meanwhile the weather here has cooled off. This is the cool down that you hear everyone talk about. It's upper 70's; but it's chilly in the shade. Anything below 70 and I'm cold. I'm actually wearing a sweatshirt and pants!

I'm looking forward to going to the Nascar race on Sunday. It's something I've always wanted to do and now that I'm in a state that can host it, perhaps this won't be my last race I'll see.

Sunday Driving

Sunday November 2nd started out w/ some donuts and cleaning. Around 1:00 we headed out. We wanted to take a drive around to check out some other surrounding towns. We headed down and passed through Queen Creek, lots of cool sites along the way. We continued down to Anthem. We were thinking of buying a house down there a while back. It's a new up and coming town. The only problem is, it's a little far to commute to a job since you'd have to come up to Chandler or Phoenix for work. In about 10 years that town will be hopping. We decided to stop at an Open House to check a big one out. It had 6 bedrooms and 4 1/2 baths w/ tons of storage and extra rooms. The kitchen was fantastic! A spiral staircase to the 2nd level which held the bedrooms w/ enormous closets and bathrooms. The place was fantastic and w/ it being only about a year old, never lived in, 3000 sq ft, it had a great low price of $329,000. You can't get that much house, that new, never lived in price around here. Anyway, we continued on to the town of Florence which houses a large prison/correction facility. We got a good look at what a prison looks like from the outside since it is right off the highway into town. Then we headed to Coolidge. Coolidge holds the famous Casa Grande Ruins. We stopped to take a look, but didn't go through the tour. We headed down to check out the town and ate at a diner called Tads. Fried chicken special it was for me. Great food! After that we headed on home. It was 5:00 and the sun was shining on the tops of the San Tan mountains as we crossed through the Indian reservation. AZ has some of the most beautiful sunsets and views. It looks cool to see the cactus in the background w/ the mountains and the sun setting.

Saturday Scattered Fun

Halloween went pretty smoothly. We had 30 trick or treater's in an hour and a half. We had already decided that when 8:00 came along we'd call it night as long as there wasn't a consistant amount of kids coming and go eat. We used our Garcia's gift card and headed for some Mexican food. Imagine that, more Mexican food. We eat a lot of Mexican food around here, but we love it and there is some great places to eat it.

Saturday was a pretty busy day. We got up early and headed over to Sun Lakes by 9:00, which is where Uncle B lives. They were having a bizarre/flea market thing. We walked around there and checked out the old items that I could remember my parents having. We had some laughs and saw some interesting things. After a couple hours there, we headed over to Cheeseburger Cheeseburger for lunch. Next door to that is Aunt Leena's Creamery, we haven't checked that out yet, but it's always busy and we hear they have great ice cream. In fact, the place was featured on Guy's: Diners, Drive In's and Dives; one of my favorite shows on the Food Network. I'll report on that place soon, I'm sure I'll be hitting it up shortly. After lunch J and I headed to The Home Depot.
"Well, um, actually a pretty nice little Saturday, we're going to go to Home Depot. Yeah, buy some wallpaper, maybe get some flooring, stuff like that. Maybe Bed, Bath, & Beyond, I don't know, I don't know if we'll have enough time." (Frank the Tank from Old School)
We needed to buy two fans, one for the living room and one for the dining room. We've been looking at fans for a while now and pretty much knew which ones we wanted. On the way in we were stopped by a guy selling A.C. unit repairs, he talked our ears off about anything and everything. Meanwhile Bob the manager noticed J's NE shirt and introduced himself. Bob is from Skyler NE, so we chatted w/ him for a bit. We finally broke free from all the chatter and headed to the fans/lighting. We grabbed our fans and down rods and headed over to get some doorknobs. Our house was missing two doorknobs, one to the master bedroom and one for the master closet. We replaced the master bedroom, closet and toilet knobs w/ a nice brushed nickel knob which replaced the outdated gold ones. Someday we'll switch out the rest of the knobs in the house. We finally reached home where we settled for the night, watching the NE game.

It was an interesting memorable Saturday. Everywhere we go, we meet the most interesting people or see the funniest things.

*Frank the Tank quote is dedicated to Frank from work-if he still reads this. Go Frank the Tank!