Olympic Opening Night

The town of Mesa had a pre-Olympic Opening Night party last Friday evening. Mesa's sister city is Burnaby, a city in British Columbia, Canada, located immediately to the east of Vancouver.

We were invited by our friends, Bob and Judy, from Canada. You remember that Bob is an ex-RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police). The town of Mesa asked him to be present at the ceremonies, and advertised him as a "Real Mountie". Too funny!

The ceremony was held on the upper deck at Hohokam Field, where the Chicago Cubs have their spring training.



It's a beautiful ball park with mountain ranges as a backdrop.

This is Red Mountain.



This is looking out at left field. I believe the mountain range is called the McDowell's. If I am wrong,someone please correct me.



Here's a shot of home base.



Go Cubbies!



The party began with a welcome from the City of Mesa.



Then we watched a video from Mayor Derek Corrigan of Burnaby, B.C.





The flags were presented. Here are the Mounties - (yes, there were TWO REAL mounties there!)




Our friend, Bob, a.k.a. "Real Mountie"




Then an official Torchbearer named Jack.



I had a chance to speak to Jack later on in the evening.




"How did you get the chance to be a torchbearer?"

"I applied on line. They were looking for 'filler-ins' between towns. Usually through the towns they used dignitaries to carry the torch, but they needed people between the towns," Jack replied.

"How far did you actually walk?"

Jack laughed. "Only 1300 feet! They didn't think us old people could walk very far!"

"Do you get to keep the torch?" I asked.

"Yep, for $350! Otherwise I'd have to turn it back in. But this was a chance in a lifetime for me to carry the torch and I was happy to pay the money. But after the flame is extinguished, they remove the fuel tank inside and cut the wick so the torch won't be lit again to maintain the integrity of the torch and that it was only used at the Olympics. I got to keep this uniform for free, though."

His outfit, as you can see, consisted of running pants, jacket, hat, and those hard-to-find-but-everyone-wants red mittens. They originally sold for $10 in Vancouver for the Olympics. Now they are priced at a thousand bucks on EBAY!

Here is what they look like.



And of course I really, really wanted a pair.

There were three pairs available in a raffle, along with other prizes.

Of course, we didn't win a stinking one.

One old bat nice old lady bought 7 tickets for $5. You want to know how many were WINNING TICKETS? FOUR. What the hell are the odds of THAT happening. Either they didn't stir the pot with the tickets or that lady's got "lady luck" written all over her. Course if it was tattooed on her when she was 21 and now she's 75, it probably looks like "ady uck" or something. And yeah, she won a pair of those damn mittens. Did I want to wait for her in the parking lot and jump her for them? Yes, yes I did. I just smiled, because you all know, I am a LOSER. (WE bought 14 tickets, but who's counting?)

Then we watched some of the opening ceremonies on the big screen.




After awhile we decided to go home and watch the rest of the ceremonies indoors as it was starting to get real cool outside. It was a fun night, even if I didn't win a damn thing!

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If it weren't for bad luck I'd have no luck at all

"I'm so unlucky that if I was to fall into a barrel of nipples I'd come out sucking my thumb."

~ Freddie Starr

I am a loser.

Not the "nobody-loves-me-everybody-hates-me-I-eat-worms-all-day" kind of loser. I mean the kind of loser who never wins ANYTHING.

To make matters worse - I married a loser.

One loser X one loser = extremely bad luck.

My husband, Jim, still faithfully buys a lottery ticket every week. We are lucky if we get one, MAYBE two numbers. He plays the Power Ball lottery.



Not only do we have to pick the six winning numbers, but also decide which one of those numbers is going to be the POWER BALL. Yeah. Close to impossible.

I suggested that we play the Little Lotto where you only have to pick 3 numbers.

His response?

"Nah, the pot's too low!"

The jackpot for the Power Ball can get way up there in the gazillions, well, maybe 150 - 180 MILLION dollars. The Little Lotto is maybe $100,000. You know, peanuts.

Sometimes Jim will pick up some scratch off tickets for me.

Win $7000! Win up to $50,000! Four Chances to Win!

They all scream out to me. My heart races and my pupils dilate. I grab my lucky (or truth be told UNLUCKY) penny and begin scratching off the tickets.

I dream of what $50,000 could do for me.....Pay off some bills, buy a small economical car.....

Okay, maybe I'm setting my sights too high. I'd be happy with $10,000!

Scratch, scratch, scratch.....

$5,000?

scratch, damn!

$1,000?

scra.....

Do I hear $500?

How about $100? 75?

Oh, yeah. Every blue moon I'll get a free ticket. So I get to do this all over again.

This is what a losing lottery ticket looks like:



I've played BINGO at different campgrounds. Have I ONCE called out, "BINGO!" Nope! Well, only when I'm singing, "There was a farmer had a dog and BINGO was his name-o!"



We have raffles all the time at the resort where we stay all winter. Have I ever won anything? Zip. Zilch. Nada. Wait, I DO remember winning once. That's right. I won a bread basket. Of course, the other prizes were things like wine, four tickets to the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra, etc. Me? Two loaves of bread. So in a way, I was STILL a loser.

Giveaways on blogs? Nary a one have I won.

I guess the biggest indication that Jim and I are a couple of losers was when we went to the racetrack.



We had no idea what we were doing, just picking and choosing horses at random. We bet on a particular horse, can't remember it's name, but it should have been called "Can't Make It" because it DROPPED DEAD before crossing the finish line. True Story.

Who knew on the racing form next to "Win", "Place", and "Show", that they needed to add another category "Finish".

A woman's husband had been slipping in and out of a coma for several months, yet she had stayed by his bedside every single day. One day, when he came to, he motioned for her to come nearer. As she sat by him, he whispered, eyes full of tears, "You know what? You have been with me all through the bad times. When I got fired, you were there to support me. When my business failed, you were there. When I got shot, you were by my side. When we lost the house, you stayed right here. When my health started failing, you were still by my side. You know what?"

"What dear?" she asked gently, smiling as her heart began to fill with warmth.

"I think you're bad luck."

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Friday Night Caper

If you think people who winter in Arizona in retirement communities just play bingo or shuffleboard, you are sadly mistaken.

Let me tell you about my Friday evening.

The Background

This is Bob and Judy.



They are from Canada. Bob is ex-RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police).



Bob earned the nickname "Crash" for crashing seven, count 'em, seven, police vehicles in one year.

Apparently he's not a good bicyclist, either.

Meet Harold.



Harold is blind. Has been since the age of 27. I saw Harold at the pool a few days ago. He told me that he was taking his daily walk with another friend named Bob. RCMP Bob rode by on his bicycle, said hello to Walking Bob and didn't see Harold until the last minute and almost ran him over!

"That doesn't surprise me," I told Harold. "RCMP Bob just told me that he had lost control of his bike the other day when riding into his patio and that he ran into his porch railings!"

"Well," Harold said, "running into a PORCH and running into ME are two different things!"

We couldn't just let this information go. We had to do something about it. RCMP Bob is a great guy with a wonderful sense of humor and an infectious laugh. We knew he could take a joke.


Meet the Team of Instigators

Larry and Norma, Colorado



Mike and Kathy, Michigan



Pat, Illinois



The Plan

We wanted to attach training wheels to Bob's bike, but couldn't find a used pair anywhere, even though we went to a couple of Good Will stores. Larry ended up making the wheels from cardboard. They turned out pretty good.

I was able to get my hands on the yellow tape used at construction sites. Although it didn't say "DO NOT CROSS" like police tape, it did say "CAUTION".

I typed up a letter using the local police department letterhead on it (which I copied from the internet). The gist of the letter stated that Bob's bike was being impounded as of February 5, 2010 at 6:00 pm. It would not be released until he met the following requirements:

1) Pass a bicycle safety course,

2) Apologize to Harold for almost running him over. What was he thinking for God's sake?

3) Apologize to his wife for denting the porch railings.

I added some other little digs in there and signed the letter "Officer Goodbody".



Bob and Judy were going to be gone on Friday night to the annual Canada Day dance held here in the park, along with all our other Canadian friends. The instigators and I opted to go out to celebrate being American by eating at a Mexican restaurant where their Margaritas are huge and appetizers are half price during happy hour. We firmed up our plans for the big caper over our drinks.

After dinner a somewhat giddy group went to three stores looking for white chalk so we could outline a body that was lying on the sidewalk like Bob had run somebody (namely Harold) over.

Here's Larry attaching the training wheels to Bob's bike.



The finished product



Next we attached the caution tape from the porch to the grapefruit tree,



from the tree, across the patio driveway (behind their car) and attached it to the pole on the other side of the patio,



and all the way down the side of the driveway and around his bike.





Larry volunteered to be the run down victim.





Larry doesn't move an inch and Kathy does her magic with chalk.



The final product.




We taped the letter from Officer Goodbody to their front door. Then everybody went their separate ways. I didn't get a chance to talk to Bob and Judy till the following afternoon. They said that they laughed so hard when they saw all the stuff we had done. They figured it was us "Americans" since all the "Canadians" were out at the dance. We all had a good laugh, but I have to watch my back because I know paybacks are hell.

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Who would want to sleep with me?

I am NOT an easy person to sleep with. And I don't mean playing "hiding the salami", "doing the nasty dance", or "bow-chicka-bow-wow." I'm actually talking Sleep.

Let me explain.

I always had vivid dreams growing up and had some episodes of sleep walking. We had four bedrooms in our house, and six kids. One night I went to bed downstairs and woke up in an upstairs bedroom. Another time I was walking out the front door when my brother, Mickey, asked me where I was going. "I'm going to Kim's house." It was midnight. I was about twelve.

Fast forward a few years.

I woke up screaming and standing up against the wall with my hands and legs spread out wide like I was trying to hold the wall up. I had dreamed that the walls were falling down. My father heard me scream and yelled up the stairs, "Are you okay?" That woke me up and I was startled to find myself in this odd position. I laughed and replied that I was fine.

Then the movie The Exorcist came out.




IT.SCARED.THE.CRAP.OUT.OF.ME. Like it should any good Catholic girl. It probably didn't help that the only seats available in the theater were in the front row. And there we sat, my twin sister and I, along with some friends, with our necks cranked all the way back, wincing when Linda Blair spewed her green pea soup all over.



I watched the movie in terror, through my hands on my face. The movie had such an effect on me that my sister wanted me to talk to the local priest. Seriously. Anyway, my sister and I shared a large "L-shaped" bedroom upstairs. The bottom of the "L" was the dormer that my Dad had added on the house. The longer part of the "L" had slanted roof like an "A" frame. Each of our beds lined each side of the A. This is important to get the whole picture here.

That particular night, I had a horrible nightmare about the devil coming after me. For some ungodknown reason, I stood up on my bed, screaming my head off. But I couldn't stand up straight because the ceiling had an angle to it. So there I was, hunched over, and screeching like a banshee.

In the meantime, good ole Pami, my twin sister over there, minding her own business, is having her OWN nightmare. And for some ungodknown reason, SHE stands up on HER bed, well, hunched over, actually, and begins screaming, too.

Hearing each other scream wakes us up from our dreams.

I'm amazed to find myself standing up on my bed. I asked Pam, "Why are YOU screaming?"

She said, "I dreamed that there were snakes coming under our door! Why are YOU screaming?"

"I dreamed of the devil!" (See the connection here? snakes = devil!)

All of a sudden, we burst out laughing hysterically. We fell on our beds and laughed and laughed and laughed. Twenty minutes later our Dad yelled up the stairs, "Hey, are you kids alright?"

Well, this started a new fit of laughter.

"Dad," I said, "We could have been KILLED by now! What took you so long to see what was the matter?"

"Well, I heard the screaming so I ran and looked out the front window and didn't see anything. Then I ran and looked out into the back yard and didn't see anything. I figured you guys were okay 'cause nobody came in the house! But then I thought I should check on you!"

My brother's bedroom was across the hall from us. He wasn't home at the time. But when he heard the story the next morning he kiddingly said, "I should have shot you both and put you out of your misery!"

Things seemed to settle down a little after that. I was busy planning my wedding and thinking about moving into my first apartment. I dreamed about moving and did wake up with a lamp in my arms one morning though.

I got married and thought I would grow out of all this walking/talking in my sleep nonsense.

I was wrong.

One night I said to my (first) husband, IN MY SLEEP, REALLY, "I'm so mad at you that I could wipe SHIT all over your face!" Nice, isn't it?

Still with this same husband, we got a dog, named Rusty. He weighed about 45 pounds. One night I dreamed that someone was breaking into our apartment. Oh my God! He's on our bed! I started screaming at the top of my lungs. My husband jumped up from a dead sleep and said, "What's wrong?"

I yelled, "There's someone in here! He's on the bed!"

He kicked as hard as he could and you know what happened?

Wait for it.

Wait for it.

Poor little Rusty let out a yelp like a coon dog as he went flying across the room and slammed into the wall. Yep. My so called "intruder" was just my dog sneaking up on the bed. My husband was furious!

"That was the dog, you idiot!"

I felt so bad for Rusty, I was mad at my husband for calling me an idiot, and my heart was beating out of my chest. Just another night in paradise.

We got divorced a few years later.

Now I'm with my current husband, Jim, but things didn't get any better in the sleeping drama department. Usually I would dream about things I saw throughout that day. So if by chance I saw bugs or any other kind of creepy crawler thingy on TV? I'd dream about it at night. And chances were high that I'd see them because Jim watched the Discovery Channel a lot. He still does.

So here's what would happen.

I'd wake up screaming about bugs crawling all over me.



Or I'd crawl under the covers to the foot of the bed hiding from them. Or I'd wake Jim up and tell him that a mouse crawled across my pillow. Or that a big spider was hanging down right over my head. Like I said, I'm a real riot to sleep with.

I've even woke up swinging and Jim has had to wrestle my arms down so he wouldn't get smacked. Imagine going to work and explaining how you got that black eye?

Now that I'm older, things have calmed down somewhat. I still have wild dreams, but I'm just too damn tired to act them out. Once in awhile I'll say something to Jim in my sleep, but most of the time, I keep those thoughts to myself. The only thing coming out of my mouth now are snores. Jim should be thankful of that. I'm just going to have to remind him of that fact next time he complains about my snoring.

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Desert Oasis

Last week we received many, many inches of rain here in Arizona. It is very rare to see puddles and drainage areas filled with water - at least not in monsoon season. I was at a shopping center and saw these two perfect reflections from a standing pool of water and couldn't resist snapping some photos. Click to enlarge the photos.






For more reflections, see James.

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I LOVE OLIVES!

I've written many times about the gang we hang around with while we stay in Mesa, Arizona. Our group continues to grow each year, and when we're all together, there's over 22 of us! A few weeks ago several of us got together and talked about things we wanted on our "bucket list" to see and do during our time left this winter. I suggested the Queen Creek Olive Mill.

The Annual Olio Nuovo Festival (New Oil) is going on right now. During the festival they offer wine tasting, vendor product tasting, and music. Sixteen of us piled into four cars and headed out to the olive mill.

The mill is located about 22 miles southeast of us and it was a beautiful drive out there. Here's a shot of Superstition Mountain through a window of a moving van. I thought it came out pretty good. These mountains have a purplish tint to them. They are so beautiful.



The first person I ran into was this handsome gentleman wearing this great T-shirt. I couldn't resist getting my picture taken with him.



You may notice that I'm pointing to the "Extra Virgin" printed on his shirt. He did make a snarky remark about not being able to say the same about me!

First stop - tasting some nuts.




These cayenne pepper almonds sure had a bite to them!
















Now these cocoa almonds were more my speed!






Next up - wine tasting. We lined up down a brick path for what we thought would be a nice full glass of wine. Notice the olive trees in the background.




I was at the end of the line and I heard my friends giggling and laughing.

"What's up?" I asked.

My friend Kathy showed me exactly how much wine she got for her "taste". Just a sip.



Bottoms up!




Hail, hail, the gang's all here!



This lovely young woman is Jessica. She turned out to be our tour guide. Here she is demonstrating three different types of olive oil - from buttery to one that has a "bite" to it. I have to admit, I drank more olive oil than I did wine that day!



Our tour didn't start for about an hour, so we browsed through the store. It was filled will lots of goodies. Their specialty being olives, of course, meant jars of olives. But not JUST olives, but STUFFED olives. Olives stuffed with oregano and feta, or mesquite smoked almonds,Vermouth garlic, or sun baked tomato basil. Making your mouth water yet?

Of course, the olive oil came in so many flavors - lemon, balsamic, strawberry, garlic Parmesan, to name a few. I bet they had 50 different varieties.



Here's just a few of the wonderful things in the store:

Different colored and flavored pasta



Care for some wine?



Kitchen utensils - I think they might have been made from olive wood.



Large, brightly colored urns.



T-shirts.



I thought this was cute posted on the wall in the store.



This is the little cafe inside the store. The food looked delicious, although we had already planned to eat at another place afterward.



Here is some of the gang waiting under the gazebo for the tour to start.



This is Jessica, our tour guide. She was wonderful. Not only was she cute, but she was enthusiastic AND she knew her stuff.



Jessica gave us a brief history of the mill, talked about how they gathered the olives, then brought us into the room where they actually press the olives.

This is the olive press. It came from Italy and was delivered by a man named Guido. True Story.



What I found amazing is that they use the whole olive - pit and all.

I love this sign. No matter what the language - you understand "no touchie"!



This is the bottler machine. Not a great picture, but I wanted you to get the idea of how small this operation is, yet it bottles 3,000 gallons of olive oil a season.




Some bottles waiting to be filled.



Here is a quick shot of their olive grove as we drove by. They no longer allow tours of the grove.



All in all, we had a great time visiting the Queen Creek Olive Mill. I learned a lot about how to make olive oil on the tour, it's a fun place to visit, and I would recommend it to anyone if they come to this area for a visit. Visit their website to learn more information and see some beautiful pictures of their groves and store. Also, they have a couple of clips from Dirty Jobs on pressing the olives and raking the olives from the trees.

Hope you enjoyed my little tour!

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