Another Day

 Thursday's lunch special was BLAT sandwiches.  (bacon, lettuce, AVACADO, and tomato).  Yum.  It included a bag of chips and a cup of potato salad.  Of course, we also took advantage of the special to buy a beer at only $3.  Great summer meal!!

The salad bar is quite a favorite of mind because I love to heap the lettuce with all kinds of goodies.  It's so much nicer than making a salad at home where I have to chop it all up.

Don thinks I'm crazy because all he wants on a salad is tomato and cheese.  I say "how boring" that is.  This is MY kind of salad.  That's why I love that salad bar! 😉

We stopped by the horseshoe courts one morning.  The heat isn't too bad at their early 8:00 starting time and they seemed to be having a good time.

The palm trees are definitely coming into full bloom.  I tried to get a close up of the blossoms in our tree so you could see all the little black bees that LOVE the blooms!  Just imagine how many of these bees are in the park now that all 3,000 trees are coming into blossom.

Don had a funny episode on his housewatch rounds this week.  He walked around to the backyard, turned on their irrigation to make sure it was working, took a few pictures, and then finally walked to the front yard.  AHA!  There was a big split in the hose and it was spraying out into the street and directly into the golf cart where Don parked.  😂

You can see the dry spot on the golf seat where his paperwork was resting.  (now WET paperwork).  He walked back to shut off the system.  As he was getting ready to make the repair, one of our Palm Creek maintenace men happened by and very graciously offered to do the repair since he had all the tools on hand.  

It was so kind of him to help as Don tried to dry the golf cart but wound up driving home on the wet seat.  😀

Our hero!

The main pool will be closed for quite a while while it gets redone.  It was already done over in 2019 but guess the tiles don't last very long.  

Another reminder that our resort-wide water will be shut off on Tuesday, June 18, from 9am to noon.  Chef says he will be able to work around that issue and still have our Taco Bar on Tuesday.  See you there!!

Nap time for all three of my Hepler men.  They only need one chair.

Time to share a little breakfast.  Scooter prefers the egg from Don's sandwich.

Nap time again in his favorite tray in the cat tree.

Taco Tuesday SUCCESS!!

 OMG!!  Chef and crew really outdid themselves today for our first taco and fajita bar!!  It was delicious!

We had a pretty good crowd for the day. 

 Build your own tacos!

All the toppings were available!

The rest of the June menu looks GREAT!

We must also have more water lines to repair?  This water outage notice was in our mailbox for next week.  Mark your calendar!

I also want to give credit to whomever made all the cute table decorations.  I'm sure it took quite a while to do each one.  Cute and creative.

Say hello to Melanie Pohl

Mel is our new Activities Supervisor

Looks like a good trio to get all the work done.

Sara (Assist GM), Melanie (Activities), Gabby (General Manager)

Kittens are so cute. Scooter was trying his best to stay awake but his little head fell farther and farther until.........

he crashed and finally slept nose down for quite a while.

He is usually bright eyed and bushy tailed.  Cute as can be.

Ouch!  Our dishwasher died.  It was Jeff to the rescue.  Jeff owns his own business of Jeff's Appliance Repair.  He is our first "go to" guy for refrigerators, dishwashers, wash machines, dryers, microwaves, etc.  He has served us on several incidents over the years.  He has a family owned business so Jeff is not only the repairman but also the phone operator and bookkeeper.

Jeff's Appliance Repair

520-431-1243

jeffsappliancerepair@outlook.com

Taco Tuesday & June Menu Changes

 ATTENTION:  We have a new menu for the month of June!  Announcing TACO Tuesday plus a Fajita Bar.  Looks like fun!  Hope to see you there.

I had a very hard time copying the document so did some cropping to make it more readable.

Your favorite Reuben Sandwich is scheduled for Wednesday, June 12.

Note:  The food service will be closed on Wednesday, June 19 in honor of the Juneteenth Holiday.

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Even the spiders are wearing slippers so they don't have to walk on the hot pavement. 

 Protect your pets!

Just weather, birds, and cats?

 It was 76 degrees when we went out to the patio for coffee at 5:15 this morning.  We brought out our nice big fan on low setting to keep us comfortable.  We are definitely into a bit of a heat wave with temps over 100 daily.  😎  Welcome to Arizona summer.

9:02 a.m. Sunday June 9 -- Just received a notice from Alexa warning us of excessive heat warning coming June 11-13.  Yikes.

It's fun to watch the palm trees break into bloom.  When the white petals fall to the ground, we call it Arizona snow.  Here's a quick picture from the tree across the street.  To some readers, this is old news but many folks comment that they had no idea this happened so I keep posting year after year.

My neighbor's cactus has a blossom this morning.  The woodpeckers love it!

We held a cell phone class again yesterday.  It was a small attendance but we had fun.  I heard from a couple people today already that they're using some of the new points they learned.

• How to create an image sticker
• How to add a sticker to a photo
• How to find our keychain passwords

We demonstrated some amazing samples using CoPilot...writing essays, creating poems, drawing cartoons and designing photos.  The world of AI is amazing!

I have time to add a few Scooter pictures and then I must go to the nice cool Adobe room to play pegs & jokers with friends.  Have a great day!

Menu

Ballroom Cafe Menu:

Wednesday, June 5, Bacon/Swiss Burgers

Friday, June 7, Tomato Soup & Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

Come support our food service!

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NEWS UPDATE

John McGuire is an avid citizen of Casa Grande.  He stays very current on city and county government and has become the news source to the public.  John was here at Palm Creek last summer as a guest speaker in our education seminar series.  I saw this update from him on Facebook this morning.

Casa Grande Info & Perspectives

John McGuire

SO - I have now seen the first "official" documents that have been submitted to the city regarding the update of the old CG Mall. These documents make the first official mention of Hobby Lobby.

These are not "site plans" with renderings etc. - but rather "site improvement" request plans - basically outlining the demolition requests and how the center will lay out.

First of all - to the sadness of some - the buildings will NOT be demo'ed completely. I am sure cost was a major factor in that decision. The developers must feel comfortable they can attract some decent tenants by just upgrading the existing structure.

Again - this is all preliminary - but the plans show the old K-Mart - which was approximately 100K sq feet - being split into two parts - the part closest to Pueblo Drive will be approximately 45K sq ft - and there IS a possible tenant coming into this space - but I am not yet comfortable enough releasing that name. (Remember my #1 goal here on the group is never be the cause of someone NOT coming).

Then - the OTHER half of the old K-Mart will be a 54,000 sq ft Hobby Lobby - which is about the average size for any of their stores.

As part of this - the front part of the old K-Mart facade where the doors are, as well as a few, but not all of the smaller suites will be demo'ed and that entire frontage will get a new facade and parking will be moved right up to it.

The remaining buildings will be improved etc. up to the Oil Depot/Wash n Roll - which will not be a part of the initial renovations.

No other tenants have been announced yet for those buildings. Some will be office, a few suites will be small retail like they are now, and then there will be 3 or 4 "mid-sized" stores between 15K and 25K sq ft in size.

SO - that is all I know for now. Again - no "renderings" or anything with the architecture styles or anything are out yet.

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Talk about new technology!

We have had an automatic litter box for our cats for several years. We thought it was wonderful. After 7 years of loyal use, it finally broke down and couldn't be repaired. Because Don is in charge of litter removal, he immediately turned to the internet to order a new box. He was amazed to read about how far these contraptions have advanced....so, of course, he ordered one.

I must admit that the machine is truly amazing. Usually, in my estimation at least, Don tends to buy anything that runs electronically or is controlled with an app. I must give the new unit a 10+ for a rating.

It has a trap under it that catches the soiled litter and holds it in a filtered, air-tight container to avoid any smell so the box is always clean. It detects when a cat enters and exits so it knows when to cycle and clean the litter.

It even weighs the pet to identify who did what, when, and how frequently.

The green line tells us the status of the litter tray and the blue line tells us when to empty the waste compartment.

That's probably more information about a cat box than you ever wanted to know, but we find it a fascinating step forward in technology.

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FROM THE JUNE CALENDAR

Tomorrow (Wednesday, June 5) 10a.m. in Sonora North is our monthly summer bingo game. Sign up in activities. While you're there, get a ticket to the Tuesday morning coffee & donuts event. June 12 is a 3-13 rummy tournament so again look for the sign up sheet. We still have at least two full tables of Swoop players every Monday and Friday in the Adobe Room. Come join us in our nice air conditioned rooms for a fun afternoon.

Saturday, June 8, 9:30 in SanTan Room:

iPhones, Apple Watch, & Intro to CoPilot AI

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Kat tolerates Scooter:

Ballroom Lunch

 Our card group meets on Friday morning and then we head to the Ballroom for lunch.  We were so surprised to see the place so empty today.  That scares me as I don't want management to think that we're not supporting our wonderful restaurant.

Remember that Fridays are FRY days so you can get a yummy fish or shrimp dinner.  An added bonus since they're not open on weekends is that they sell their cookies, pastries, and ready-to-go sandwiches at half price!  That way everything is new, fresh, and ready to go on Mondays.  We all went home with cookies or pastries to get us through the weekend.

Entire kitchen staff consists of three steady hard workers:  Chef, Bridgette, and Connie.  Thank you to all they do for us.

Connie says that Wednesday is their really busy day when they serve their specialty sandwiches.  They're all very popular. 

Our new tree trimmers are here already and are working in specialty sections of the park.  They finished the big tall palms by the office entrance today.

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Do you know who rents space 1665?  We see their site every morning while we sit outside for morning coffee.  We've commented several times at how fast their new little trees seem to be growing.  I'd like to forward them a couple photos.

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Here is a photo of me and little Scooter.  I took this picture using my Apple Watch.  Learn how to do this at my class on June 8, 9:30 a.m. in the SanTan Room.