After writing my post on Monday, I rode the Spyder to my new favorite grocery store. I went to WinCo Foods a few miles away from here on Southern Avenue at Power Road. I first shopped at a WinCo store in Washington when my daughter, Alana, took us there. WinCo is an employee-owned business with stores in eight western states. They have a great selection of groceries in clean stores with great prices. The history of the company is interesting – you can read about it here.

I wanted to get a few things at the store, then cover the Spyder before the rain started. Right on cue, the rain came around 1:30pm. It rained off and on all afternoon and into the night, with heavy showers at times.

We still had a few showers lingering on Tuesday morning. Donna had a physical therapy appointment for her shoulder – she injured it ice skating when we were in Santa Fe last fall. Her appointment was at 11:20am and the rain stopped falling around 10am. We were thinking it was only a mile and a half or so to the therapist’s office and Donna felt like walking there. By the time I finally got around to mapping it out, I found it was actually 3.3 miles and would take at least 45 minutes to walk there – it was too late to walk and make the appointment.

I rode the Spyder and dropped Donna off at the corner of Brown and 80th. It was a mile and a half walk from there and she wanted to walk. While I was out, I made a stop at CVS to buy wine for Donna – they have a great sale on Lindemann’s Pinot Noir. The nearest CVS had sold out of the wine, so I went a few miles down Ellsworth to the next store. It seems like there’s a CVS Pharmacy every two or three miles around here. I bought the last four bottles they had.

I parked the Spyder and came inside and was surprised by the crack of thunder. Rain started pouring down!  It was still raining at noon when Donna sent me a text telling me she would walk back to the park. I told her it was raining here. She was west of our location and told me the rain had already passed and was moving east. She was confident it would move on before she got here. She was right, but only barely as the next round of showers started as soon as she arrived here.

Donna spent the afternoon working on a project she’s been thinking about. She has a greeting card company that caters to professional organizers (Organized Greetings). Ten years ago, we had boxes of cards on shelves in the garage and Donna would fulfill orders from our home. Later, she changed her business from stocking cards to a print-on-demand model fulfilled by Cafe Press.

Now she’s offering the organizing cartoons featured in her greeting cards under license to professional organizers for use in blogs, newsletters, and social media. I spent most of the evening formatting the cartoons and watermarking them so she could put up samples.

Donna made garlic and lemon roasted chicken thighs with oranges in her cast iron skillet – she started out pan frying on the induction cooktop, then finished it in the convection oven. Served with sweet potato and green bean’s it was a delicious meal.

Chicken thighs with sweet potato and green beans

We watched the president’s address to congress on TV. I thought Donald Trump gave a great speech, very Reaganesque with a message of confidence and prosperity ahead.

On Wednesday morning, the rain was just a memory as we had blue skies and a dry landscape. It was breezy though. I played in the 3.0-3.5 round robin pickleball match and got 10 games in – the windy conditions made it tricky and we switched sides of the court at six points. Then I made a quick run to Costco to buy Keurig coffee K-cups. It seems odd to many people to go to Costco for one or two items, but sometimes it’s worth it to me. Costco is nearby and you can’t beat the price for K-cups.

In the afternoon, I went through Donna’s greeting cartoons again and standardized the format for electronic fulfillment. The original formatting seemed haphazard with different resolution settings and sizing of the images. Then I kicked back and read a book outside in the sunshine.

Today we woke up to clear skies with no threat of rain in the forecast, but it’s windy. I would guess we have gusts up to 25mph – it’s enough to feel it in the coach. The funny thing is – the weather forecast calls for gusty winds tonight and tomorrow. No mention of the wind gusts we had overnight or the current gusty conditions. I checked three weather forecasts and all said the same thing – gusty winds later today and tomorrow. Hey, take a look out the window!