We finished October with a few days in the low 90s here in Mesa, Arizona. It cooled down a bit on Sunday with a high of 88 and today we expect a high of 82 degrees. The golf course is open and golfers have come out in force. We’ve had a few golf balls strike our roof.

Yesterday, while Donna and I were walking to the pickleball courts, we saw an unusual cactus in a neighbor’s yard that’s bearing fruit. I think it’s a variety of senita cactus called totem pole. It’s not native to the Arizona desert, but it’s often planted as a landscape feature. It does well here, but is originally found in the Baja California peninsula. It’s not frost tolerant.

Some cactus fruit is edible and there are many recipes for prickly pear fruit – it’s commonly harvested. Others, such as saguaro, are edible but cannot be picked in the desert, only from cultivated plants. Cholla fruit is also edible, but you’d have to be pretty brave to pick it – I won’t go near a cholla.

We’re having our roof coated with Cool Foam today. Bill Hansen, the owner of Sun Limited Foam is here with a helper. They’ll put a foam coating over the shingle roof of our park model home and the Arizona room metal roof and they’ll lay down OSB over the corrugated metal roof on the shop/shed/ham shack and foam it. The foam dries instantly and is then coated with a reflective white elastomer coating.

The total thickness of the coating is about one inch. It will reflect heat from the sun and provide an additional insulation barrier against heat and cold. It also effectively seals the roof against water intrusion. It isn’t cheap, but I think it’s a worthwhile investment in our home.

I skipped pickleball this morning to go over the job with Bill and be available as they started work. At noon, I’ll head over to the pickleball courts to give my first lesson of the season. I’m accepting four participants at a time for a 90-minute coaching session which entails about 20 minutes of oral presentation clarifying rules that are often misinterpreted and common strategies and then we drill on a few shots before scrimmaging games where we critique each point played. It’s fun and this format was well-received last year. It also helps my game as coaching this stuff reinforces in my mind the things I should be doing on the court.

I’ve been playing my Dumble-style OSD guitar amp daily. I had an issue at first that took me a couple of days to figure out. Many guitar amplifiers have a circuit called negative feedback and a potentiometer to control it. This potentiometer is usually labeled “Presence”. It boosts high frequencies and colors the sound. Regular tone controls usually labeled bass – middle – treble, cut unwanted frequencies to shape the tone. They are subtractive, they can’t add, they only cut frequencies. Presence on the other hand adds to the original high frequencies.

In a push-pull amplifier with two or four power tubes, one half amplifies the upper part of the sine wave (positive voltage) and the other amplifies the lower part of the sine wave (negative voltage). For the feedback circuit to work, you have to apply only the negative signal. If you have positive feedback, bad sounds usually result. I had a unique problem. My bass response went all wonky only when I played the fifth fret of the sixth string ( “A” note on the low E string). It turned out I had positive feedback, not negative. I had a hard time figuring this out because I never heard of positive feedback making bad things happen on one note only – usually guys complain of squealing or horrible sounds all the time. Anyway, it’s straightened out now and I love the amp.

With Donna back from her trip to Florida, I’m back to fine dining. She made a new pork tenderloin dish called best baked pork tenderloin which is seasoned with Italian seasoning and served it with shredded Brussel sprouts – another first. We loved it.

Last week I needed to retrieve some stuff from our coach at 202 RV Valet. They have great security there, but we have 24/7 access through a coded entry gate. It records the unique code used whenever anyone enters, so they have records of who came in and when. Many of the enclosed spaces hold high-end boats and a few are in the covered spaces where we keep our coach. I noticed a guy was visiting his boat and snapped a photo of his ride. He parked his Ferrari next to his boat.

We’re expecting another week of fine weather with highs in the low 80s and overnight lows in the mid 50s. The last half of the month should be cooler with daily temperatures in the 70s and overnight lows dipping into the 40s. No complaints here.

*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!