Christmas Tree 2020

 Sue and I put up the tree and the lights. Sierra helped with ornaments and ribbon.

Thanksgiving in the time of Covid

Theresa and Mike hosted Thanksgiving this year at their place. Sue, Sierra and I were guests.

It was a good Thanksgiving, we kept to our social distancing and wearing masks when not eating.

Food was plentiful and good, as was the company.

Sue made the Cherry Pie

And the Pumpkin Pie

 

Solar Powered Bar be que Pulled Pork

Dragged out the old Sun Chef to make some Pulled Pork. It's very good.

Halloween 2020

 

Happy Halloween 2020

 

Oct, 26, 2020 - Sierra decorates her apartment for contest

 

We Lost A Good Friend

Pete Roman was a good friend we had the pleasure to know for many years. He will be terribly missed.

Artist credit Tary Vanstone, she works from photos; if anyone wants to commission a portrait,  she's on Facebook.

 

She's a lumberjack all right

 About September 17, 2020

Rise of the Trash Pandas

 https://youtu.be/VchTkMWfj2w

Two Pond Lilies

 August 19, 2020

First time in a very long time we have had two Lilies in the pond at the same time.

Time for an Escape

 July 20, 2020

Traded in the Chevy Spark for a 2019 Ford Escape.

Life after DirecTV

It has now been a little over a month since we bid DirecTV goodbye. So how are we managing?
Fairly well actually.
Our budget appreciates the 45% savings and we are still watching what we want.

So how do we now watch Television?

OTA

 Over The Air. Also known as free T.V. We added a better antenna and suddenly got a lot of local stations. We did have the local stations on DirecTV but you were only able to see the one basic station. A lot of the stations have additional programming tied to their station. Surprisingly, we have been watching a lot more of these programs.

ROKU

As we don't have a smart T.V., we have to use a device that connects the Television to the Internet. We selected the Roku for various reasons. This is like the old Mac Vs. PC, VHS Vs Beta when people talk about the streaming device they choose.
We bought a Roku enabled universal remote to tidy up the collection of remotes.

STREAMING T.V.

While we had DirecTV, we also subscribed to Netflix, CBS All Access, and Hulu.
We may be evaluating whether or not to keep Netflix and Hulu. We don't use them much.
The big service change was of course SlingTV. We subscribed to both Blue, Orange and some add in packages. They cover over 95% of everything we used to watch.
The picture quality seems better. We do occasionally have buffering problems, but that seems to be going away. Certainly no more disruptive than a monsoon rain storm blocking the dish.

Then there is all of the other channels.
Roku lets you add from a video buffet of channels. Most free, others requiring subscription, like Netflix, Disney+, and CBS All Access.
We have the basic free You Tube, CW Seed, The Roku Channel itself, Pluto, Tubi, Amazon Prime, Google Play, A number of network news channels, Crackle. The only one we pay for is Amazon Prime which, of course, comes with Amazon Prime subscription.

There are a lot of other channels out there with more being added all the time.

So we are braving the new cable-cutting frontier quite well. The only lingering question is what to do with this old obsolete set box and dish! They don't want them back.

June 1 2020 - Nightly curfew put in place for a week due to rioting and looting.

May 29 2020, Near hit at I-101 and 7th. Ave.

Desk Cat

Garden Video May 2020

Here is a quick tour of our backyard Garden taken in early May 2020. We had already been hit with some very hot days before this video was taken.

Scrap Garden

Garden Summer 2020

Photos of the Garden, Day and Night.

April 19 Quiche breakfast

Ham and Spinach. Enough to give some away.

Working at Home

Palo Verde sent me home to work in the early part of March. We set up Sue to work remotely from home on April 7.

Orchids

Our Neighbor showed us how to get the Orchids to bloom again. And they did!

Easter 2020

Sierra came down from Flagstaff, of course we watched our social distancing and took all necessary precautions to stay safe and well from Covid-19.
Sierra made the Croque Madam for Breakfast.
Sue had the traditional Ham dinner.  The Asparagus came from our garden.

Easter Rabbit on wheels

Sue spotted this Easter Rabbit rider on the way to work.

Orange Cake

March 22, 2020. Sue made an Orange cake from the leftover pulp when we took our Oranges and juiced them. Really orangy, and moist.

My Neon

I have a Neon Collection. It isn't too big, but I like it.

This is the major part of the collection.

The Kachina was make by a friend of mine. I added the neon tube behind it.

Sues brother Chester Gernon was a bender, someone who makes Neon. Both the Parrot and the Dinosaur are his.

March 2020 - Spring arrives.