We are in a good place.  Randy is recovering nicely after his chemotherapy and we are enjoying some normalcy.  He still “feels” the poison in his body, and will for many months, but its effects are no longer incapacitating.  Surgery will be December 18.  That medical journey is blogged at https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/randysbladder

We are in a good place because we have family here.  Randy’s brother, Tim, made a cake for Randy’s 60th birthday.  We spent Thanksgiving and a number of Sunday afternoons with Tim and Yvette.  (Yup, no hair….)

We are in a good place because our friends come to see us.  Beth came through to hang out for a week!

And Mike came for a few days too!

We are in a good place at Val Vista Villages RV Resort in Mesa.  This is a 55+ playground.

We enjoy music and drinks in the courtyard a couple times a week.  I access all kinds of activities here and  at “sister” resorts.  We are making  friends.

When we first got here, there was a high pitched squeal from this pump on the other side of the canal.  Randy can’t usually hear those sounds but they are like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.

The noise made sitting outside very unappealing.   

Since we enjoyed our patio and sunset views, it became a project to see if there was anything to be done about the pump.

We determined it belonged to the Salt River Project and walked over and got some identifying information.  After contacting them we found we needed different information that was not readily available.   Randy did some deep sleuthing on the Salt River Project site and got the needed information.  Then I became a very pleasant squeaky wheel.   

Eventually I got a phone call from a maintenance engineer agreeing that pumps do get noisy as they age  – this was a 1950s model.  While explaining that the pump noise was still below the Mesa sound threshold of 60db, he said they would switch it out with another rebuild they had at the shop.  They would also add some plastic inserts to the fence.   I was impressed with his willingness to address my concern.

I’m not sure how much either fix actually helped but I stopped bothering them since they tried.   It also seemed like they were using the pump less often.

What really helped was time…time for the canal to go dry and to stop needing the pump!  Since then there has been a lot of activity to watch along the canal.

First they moved dirt to make ramps for bobcats to go into the canal and move and clean up debris.

See all the junk that ends up in the canals!

Now they seem to be repairing the concrete along the canal walls.   It is such an entertaining activity out our back window.

Also entertaining was the Mystery Dinner Theater in the resort.   I wrote about it on the Caring Bridge site already but, in a nutshell Randy, the problem solver engineer, figured out the mystery very quickly.   The rest of us tried to find flaws in his theory and couldn’t.   Our table got the win and each of us got a pin.

The next mystery to be solved is the identity of the fruit on the tree in front of our site.   Many sites at Val Vista Villages have fruit trees because of the orchards planted on the mesa.  The rules are that you can have the fruit growing on your own site or any vacant site.  Most resort trees grow grapefruit (yuck)  but there are a few other varieties.

Lemon trees are easy to identify!

This is a close up of the fruit on our tree.  We’re hoping for oranges!