Desert Life.

Three photos of two sunsets. I will never get tired of sunsets in the desert.

Let’s see. When I woke up this morning my husband said, “Don’t freak out but something is wrong with the car. The Check Engine light is flashing and it’s lurching and losing power”.

Ah, another ignition coil bit the dust. Earl took the car in, they initially told him it’d be a week to even look at the car because “no one wants to work”. Let’s face it, “no one wants to work for your low pay”. But after calling in again indicating this was an issue a year ago with one ignition coil and asking why they just didn’t replace all the coils at once, a cancellation suddenly appeared, we asked them to change out all the coils since they had to take the engine apart to do it (love modern designs) and $1.5K later we have a well running car again.

In the midst of all this our main air conditioning unit died on a record heat day here in Arizona. Another technician for another problem and our unit has bit the dust. Because the unit is over 20 years old and the refrigerant used in it isn’t allowed anymore, we need to get a new unit but don’t worry, tax breaks and TEP (Tucson Electric Power) credits will make it bearable.

$16K later we will have air conditioning in the main part of the house by the end of next week, with a new furnace to boot. But don’t worry, there’s tax credits.

Meanwhile, I’m attending Zoom calls at work with fans pointed at me and a t-shirt in place of my usual polo shirt.

A thunderstorm mixed with dust at sunset makes for a very interesting sky!

I had just fallen asleep when the house shook and every light in the house blinked on and off a few times before coming on for real.

Another storm blowing through, some impressive lightning, and home automation lights confused by multiple power flickers. I’ll get some sleep later tonight.

A family of Javelinas passed through the yard early this morning. This was the first time I’d seen young ones this small. The big ones were not pleased as we no longer put out the garbage cans the night before pickup day. Javelinas like knocking over the garbage.

But the little ones are so cute!

As an early birthday gift to Chris and Mike we’ve installed a gas powered pizza oven in the outside kitchen. There has been a number of delightful pizza like experiences with this new appliance and they are enjoying trying different doughs, toppings, and the like.

Always surround yourself with culinary inclined folks when you are not a part of the culinary inclined folks.

One of the pizza “paddles” that came with the oven didn’t survive the first pizza experience and a replacement quickly arrived. The oven company didn’t want the defective paddle back, so Chris and Mike decided to turn it into a wall decoration. Using the myriad of tools out in the wood shop, they came up with this design. It is now hanging in our kitchen and I think it looks fantastic.

I went on a hike in Saguaro National Park on Saturday. I was planning on going to hike with our friends Matt and Carver, but schedules got a little tangled up so I ended up going solo. It was a beautiful day.

The recent snowfall lent itself to water coming down the mountains and the waterfalls were going in full force. I took a different route than I usually do and much of the climb was along an active wash with the sound of water accompanying my hike. That hasn’t happened very often in my desert hiking experience.

The map of my hike doesn’t give a lot of detail, but the hike looked like this.

And here’s some discussion about the Douglas Springs Trail portion of the trail (the top half shown in my route above). Douglas Spring Trail on AllTrails.

My knees don’t appreciate cycling like they used to but I’m still doing pretty well on my hikes. It was a great day.

Now, here are the photos. I’m giving iCloud Photos a whirl, so hopefully this link will open a gallery. They’re also available right here.