Adventures with Jan

Jan and I braved the Mall yesterday on Black Friday at Macy's, Burlington Coat Factory and Bealls. Very impressive bargains, lots and people and Christmas decorations are now up.

We dropped into the Superstition Mountain Museum and saw Elvis, small models and an autograph.
There is a large sun dial in the earth with a tall cactus as the marker.

 Jan just loved it here and is trying to figure out how to retire as fast as she can.

She hadn't seen Saguaro cactus before so saw many here and we cracked up at the headstones at Boot Hill.

We've Lost a Good Friend

Our dear friend Donna from our condo passed away Thursday. I sold her 'farm' in Surrey and when she bought into the Tivoli we followed her there and have shared 20 years of love and laughter with her and the condo group. She must be happy because now she's with Bruce.

Happy Thanksgiving

We celebrated the American Thanksgiving today. I hosted our table of 9 so I collected the free 15 lb. turkey from the park and cooked it with dressing and gravy. The others did the rest. It was delicious and then our friend Jan (who's here for 3 days) and I spent the rest of the afternoon at the pool. We were nearly the only ones there - I think the rest were sleeping off their big noon meal.

Curtis Entertains

Our neighbour Curtis from down the street was today's entertainment in the courtyard. He is an amazing performer, very talented and wore about 10 different hats for all his different styles - from Country to Classic to Rastafarian. Lost of people were up dancing.

Friends joined us and it was a great afternoon.

Busy Days

I rode my bike for 2 hours Sat. morning visiting all the patio sales in the complex. Gail gave me a pair of salmon coloured capris that didn't fit her right and I found a matching top for 25 cents. A new outfit!
We went to play shuffleboard Sunday and everything was locked up at 2 different courts so that was put off.

Here's the guys.
onday Ron went to Bocci and I played in the mixed pool league. Here they play 1/ 15. If you are high or low, you have to sink the 1 or 15 ball in the specified side pocket before you can sink the 8 ball and of course the opposition tries to block this play. It is very different and can change in an instant. Good fun.
Here's an interesting license plate we saw at the mall.

HoBo Carnival

Today was a HoBo Carnival at the Fiesta complex. You bought $5.00 of HoBo Bucks, won a whole bunch more in carnival style games and bid on auction items.

There was lots of fun and good prizes.

Organ Stop Pizza

We had the most fantastic experience last night - great pizza at this restaurant that was built to house the largest Wurlitzer Theatre pipe organ in the world. In the silent film era, motion picture Theatres had pit orchestras and pianists providing background music. As labour costs escalated, Theatre organs took over, described as part military band, part symphony and part theatrical sound effects. We heard them all last night. This organ originated at the Denver Theatre in 1927 but talking pictures came in, the 1930's depression took over and a fire silenced it in the 1930's. At the beginning of the evening, the organ and Organist are raised from the pit by a 8000 lb. rotating hydraulic elevator.

 

Organ Stop Pizza purchased this Organ as a 3 manual console with 15 ranks/sets of pipes, renovated it to a 23 rank Organ installing it in their original restaurant in 1975. Above the Organist is a set of dancing cats which move to rinky tink music he plays. They have continued to improve and add to this Theatre organ, including a massive set of 32' wood diaphones, resulting in 78 ranks, 17 tuned percussions, innumerable traps and effects with 6000 pipes.You can see the bellows below the pipes above, this on the left 1/2 of the room with  the drums on the mezzanine on the left with a grand piano behind and bongo drums and player piano to the right side.The 43' ceilings provide unparallelled acoustics.
There are 4 huge turbine blowers to provide the massive amount of wind need to power all of this.

The Organists are all world famous.It was a wonderful experience and if you are ever in Phoenix/Mesa area this should be on your list for fun and great food.