Retirement

2021 Wickenburg Bluegrass Festival

We attended the starting ceremonies of the Annual Wickenburg Bluegrass Festival today. We stayed for the first performing group (shown above), The Sonoran Dogs Bluegrass Band. They were very good, playing and singing. The combo included Bass Fiddle, Mandolin, Guitar and Banjo.

When The Sonoran Dogs finished their set, we went to the vendor area above the stadium and got a couple of souvenirs before heading home. It was a nice outing and we enjoyed some spectacular Arizona Weather with clear skies and 85° spring-like temperature in the middle of November.

The Festival continues for the rest of the weekend, but we were satisfied with our short visit this afternoon.

Upgraded WordPress Today

1955 Packard Clipper

Sun Dog

And now the fun begins figuring out how to use the blogging interface – so far I can’t see how to add photos or to use my old custom buttons from the old version of WP.

FINALLY! it took an hour of poking around both on the blog and on-line help to figure out how to restore the classic editor which is now a plug-in. Still a long way to go to make it compatible with my customized way of doing things.

Retirement Day!

palazzo rvOn this day, October 1, 2021, we’re celebrating our twelfth year of permanent retirement. I say permanent because this date is actually my second retirement, the first being ten years prior to 2009. To make a long story short, we retired rather than take a layoff in 1999 due to a manpower reduction. I immediately found another job at a competitive company to the one from which I had retired which eventually was acquired by my first company. Thus, I retired from the same company twice and now receive two pensions from them.

IMAGE: Thor Palazzo Motorhome ready to roll. Click on the image to enlarge.

In our retirement post last year, we mentioned hitting the road sometime in 2021, but that has not happened (yet). We did not go anywhere in the spring or summer in the big RV for various reasons, but the thinking now is to at least have a two or three-day excursion semi-local somewhere in Arizona. Since I am still healing up from hernia surgery, we need the surgeon’s go-ahead for that, but plan to get it done before it gets too cold for camping.

As far as keeping the RV ready for our next excursion, we have a routine where the engine gets started up and run for a while every week. We run the 6KW generator about once a month with a load, like both A/C units running. We currently have the black and gray tanks filled with a water-bleach solution which will be purged and prepared for use prior to our next run.

We’re thinking that our destination might be in the high desert north of the Mogollon Rim, perhaps Winslow, Holbrook, Homolovi SP and Petrified Forest NP. More on that when we make final plans.

So, join us in celebrating our twelfth AND twenty-second retirement anniversaries!

23rd Wedding Anniversary

Today is the 23rd anniversary of our wedding. We were married in the city of Avalon, on Catalina Island, California.

We both say that we should have gotten married long before we made the decision to do so, but things have a way of happening and it is what it is. We are certainly glad that we are together now and always will be.

For several years, after about our fifth year of being married, we would celebrate by going to Catalina Island the week of our anniversary. We stopped doing that for several reasons, not the least of which was we relocated to Arizona. Avalon was getting too crowded and the crime rate started to be too “marginal” for our safety.

Now, we’re so happy to be on “permanent” vacation in our retirement home in the desert. We take occasional excursions in our Motorhome to let us see some of the rest of our country and will be taking another trip real soon.

Of course, we celebrated this year by getting Verna a trinket featuring an Imperial topaz Gemstone listed for the 23rd Anniversary.

Lot Combo Approval

Lot Combo Approval

Image: Aerial Photo Map showing the combined properties (green outline)

Way back in 2018, we started the process of combining our two adjacent properties into a single parcel. This process included (1) purchasing the adjacent parcel, (2) obtaining approval from the Town Zoning Administrator and (3) getting a lot survey to provide the legal description for the combined properties. Those three activities were completed.

That left the fourth, and final, approval from the County Assessors office to be done. In May of this year (2021), we finally applied for the lot combo through our attorney. Now, the lots are combined into a single property.

The combined properties are now eligible for us to begin construction of an RV garage in the south part of the lot. Had the lots not been combined, town ordinances required that the first structure would have to be a residence. Now, we have a go-ahead for the RV garage plans to be submitted for approval by the town.

Stay tuned for RV Barn Progress . . .

Fifteenth Blogaversary

Roman Numeral Fifteen over a Saguaro Flower

Our first post on VERNABOB.COM was on July 17, 2006. We put up a couple of photos of us taken in our leisure time since we were still reporting to work in those days.

Now, after nearly twelve years of retirement, we’re still going strong in our desert abode. We are currently in a phase of summer weather called “monsoon season” where it isn’t exactly a “dry heat” in the Arizona desert. Even so, we’re mostly indoors where it’s a nice cool 80° with controlled humidity. It’s very comfortable.

As we move further into our retirement years we plan to keep blogging here from time to time. There will be a change in the blog format since we’re being forced to upgrade the WordPress blogging software to the latest version which is compatible with the latest version of PHP on our host servers. We may experience some outages as that conversion takes place.

The image above is of one of our summer saguaro flowers with the Roman numeral fifteen superimposed upon it. To see the flower image full size, click here.