Cool Morning

I do have to say one thing about Arizona — it can be a mixed bag of weather!! This morning we woke up and it was 33 degrees!! Not really a surprise for northern AZ, but still a surprise when it was in the 90’s still last week! I do love the cooler weather and enjoy the morning walks with Max — we take much longer walks when the weather is like this!!

Voting

So yesterday was our day to run errands. We had some Amazon returns to take to the UPS store and that worked perfectly because we needed to complete our absentee ballots and we needed a notary to sign that. The last time we were registered we were in Louisiana, so since we are not registered in MN, that calls for a notary to check our license and sign. Kind of funny….first you have to go in and show them your blank ballots to make sure someone else did not fill them out I guess? And then you vote, but you cannot leave the store, you have to find a quiet corner in the UPS store to complete your little black circles. We brought our own black pen to make sure our ballot did not get thrown out for using blue ink. Then you put your ballot in a brown “ballot envelope”, which you have to take your mask down to lick the envelope. 🙂 Then you have to put the ballot envelope into the white “voting envelope” and lick that too…again down with the mask! Then the notary looked at that and our MN driver’s license and did her notary work. After we signed the voting envelope and she notarized, it all went into the “mailing envelope”, which again we had to pull our masks down to lick! And all of that fun only cost us $10 each for the notary services. I was a notary back in MN when I worked in the law offices and I thought it was law that we could NOT charge for doing the notary service. Guess AZ is different or the laws have changed. Maybe I need to start a part time notary service! We then took our mailing envelopes directly to the drop off at the post office!!! Civic duty completed!!

Flu Shots

Our next stop was to get our 65+ flu shots. We first went to Walgreens thinking they would not be too busy. There was a big sign on the front door “Out of 65+ flu shots!” So I called CVS — same thing out of 65+ flu shots. Wonder what makes “our” flu shots different?? Safeway, where I like to grocery shop, has a pharmacy, and in fact we got our flu and 2nd shingles shot there last year — a perk you get a coupon for 10% off your groceries!! I called them first and he said they had plenty. After filling out the paperwork, waiting about 45 minutes because there were 2 people in front of us (I think giving shots are not the pharmacies priority….which I understand), we did our 2nd civic duty of the day and got our flu shots!! 🙂

Drive

Last Saturday we decided to take a drive up to Flagstaff and check out the Flagstaff Arboretum. We have usually skipped any drives on the weekends since we like to take the scenic route through Sedona on 89A.

This map does not do the drive complete justice, but the road from Sedona to Flagstaff is twisty turny, up and around the mountain. A good change of altitude and really is a beautiful drive. And even some leaf color changes this time of year. But we quickly remember why we do not take this drive on the weekends as we entered Sedona!! Virus, what virus!! The road was bumper to bumper, and people were crowding the sidewalks. It was ok because we were going so slow that we could people watch as if we were sitting on one of the benches in uptown Sedona. Dumb of me not to take any pictures. Once we got past Uptown Sedona, there were not as many cars holding up traffic, although you cannot go very fast because of the curves, there were tons of cars parked where ever they could find space along the side of the road so they could walk into the already full state parks along the way. Again more people watching! 🙂 It took so long to get through Sedona we never made it to the Arboretum, so that adventure will be for another WEEK day!

Clouds

Since we have been back here, almost every day has been clear blue skies. Once this little cooler weather started to head towards us, more clouds seemed to appear.

And when we did go on our drive, we saw what I would call UFO Clouds that were so cool!!

I sent these pictures to Jenny…since I knew she would know what they are called and they are Lenticular Clouds — basically from stable moist air that flows over a mountainous region! That bigger one was actually a little spooky!! So I guess the crazy drive was worth it.

Although we have had mainly blue skies, the sunsets and sunrises do not disappoint!

Snow

Looks like snow has made it appearance in Minnesota!! Seems kind of early, but it is 2020 so expect the unexpected!!

And I really enjoy this picture — not everyone would appreciate it, but Christmas was always waiting for the Sears or JC Penney’s Christmas catalog to come in the mail so we could sit down with it and dream about what we wanted for Christmas. How many remember those catalogs?? Jaxen seems to be enjoying doing the same.

Those were always the greatest catalogs to get in the mail….and it was an exciting time, knowing that Christmas would soon be here!!

Caley is back at work after her Roni Rona adventure. Sounds like the symptoms were not too bad — just the burning smell, and pretty tired. Hopefully that is her only Roni Rona experience this year!!

Pretty quiet otherwise….asked Emily and Erin for some Christmas hints — we usually give them some money so they can buy what they want, but I also like to get a couple of little gifts to unwrap. Last year we hid the money in puzzle boxes so guess we will need to find something creative again this year — will see if Amazon has something fun!

Well hope everyone is staying healthy and warm!

TIFN