Gold Canyon, Arizona

We are leaving Arizona in a little over a week, and yesterday I played in my last pickleball tournament here in the Valley of the Sun.

While there are pickleball tournaments all across the US and some in foreign countries, the Phoenix area is a mecca for tournament rats with the highest number and arguably highest quality of tournaments.

Yesterday I played with a total stranger. Nancy was a friend of a friend, and I offered to play with her at the tournament even though I would be playing up a level. I’m rated a 3.5 and Nancy’s a 4.0. Players can play up levels but they can’t play down.

I’m very thankful for all the pickleball play and tournament play I’ve had the opportunity to engage in while we’ve been in Phoenix. I used to drive 35 miles to play pickleball in Boise, and it’s been a blast to ride my bike less than five minutes to get to a game. 🙂

I’ve been very surprised at how my love of the game has shifted. I used to want to just hit spectacular shots and was pleasantly surprised on those rare occasions when I did.

Now I want to understand why a shot works and how it works. More importantly, I want to have the knowledge, skill, and consistency to make a  particular shot with a 90% accuracy.

That’s going to mean a change to how I approach my pickleball playing time.

I’m going to spend at least a quarter of my time working on skills and drills. I’ll be doing repetitions of particular shots over and over and over again until I feel confident that I can make them work the vast majority of the time.

Fine tuning and perfecting, reducing variables, and going more mental than reactive.

That’s my goal…

Gold Canyon, Arizona

Rich walks Sophie first thing every morning, and I take her last thing every night.

I think I’ve got the better time slot.

Walking around the park after the sun sets allows me to peek inside RVs and park models to see what people are doing. Most either have doors open and/or windows uncurtained.

So each night I have my own series of Jane Goodall moments.

Here’s what I’ve observed:

Valentine’s Day and Happy Birthday balloons are displayed outside so that everyone knows you got a gift.

Men do more dinner dishes than women.

Women surf the Internet while men change channels continuously on the television.

Women read books more while men take more cat naps on the couch.

Oh, and the smaller the dog, the more it barks. 🙂

Gold Canyon, Arizona

The last movie I saw in a theater was American Beauty in 1999–a long, long time ago…

American Beauty is a strange and amazingly good movie about a suburban father who has a mid-life crisis after becoming sexually infatuated with his daughter’s best friend.

Although I HATE going to the movie theater to watch a movie, I actually watched American Beauty twice: first with Carol, then two weeks later by myself.

Some of the movie scenes still haunt me 15 years later.

Here’s the video of the scene that I think of almost every day of my life:

And the startling transcript of the three minute scene:

“Do you want to see the most beautiful thing I ever filmed? It was one of those days when it’s a minute away from snowing. And there’s this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it, right? And this bag was just… dancing with me … like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. That’s the day I realized that there was this entire life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid. Ever. Video is a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember … I need to remember…

Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world … I feel like I can’t take it… and my heart is just going to cave in.”

Whenever I see things of intense beauty and/or intense pain, I think of the movie and inscribe that image into my memory as an American Beauty moment.

Wildflowers and cacti are beginning their bloom, and I can tell that the rest of our stay in Arizona is going to have lots of American Beauty moments, gazing at the desert in transition from winter to spring…

Artwork shamefully copied from Johnathan Harris, fine artist…

Gold Canyon, Arizona

Many years ago, I “saw” a play at home plate while Melissa was playing softball.

I was sitting in the score keepers’ box entering the game stats throughout the game. There was a play at home base where the runner just beat the tag, so she was safe and scored a run.

The play unfolded in front of my eyes so that it appeared to be in slow motion. I had never had that happen before, so I exclaimed, “Wow! That was amazing!”

Bob, the referee, asked me what I was talking about. I explained it to him, and Bob calmly said, “You ‘saw’  it.”

Apparently referees see it all the time, or at least they should. If they don’t, they shouldn’t be referees. 🙂

That was about twenty years ago, and I haven’t “seen” anything since.

But the good news is that I’m getting closer.

I’ve been working hard on my “soft game” in pickleball. In the soft game, the ball is hit back and forth slowly and softly (called dinking) until someone makes a mistake that allows the opponent to smash the sh*t out of the ball.

Dinking is the closest thing I’ve ever experienced to being in the moment since I saw the play at home plate.

More and more, dink play is slowing down for me. I can watch the angles of my opponents’ paddles and determine where the ball is going to go before they hit it. It’s getting easier to calculate angle, arc, and intensity.

It’s an amazing Zen-like feel. And it is awesome!

Gold Canyon, Arizona

We are back in Internet land, and while I love the Internet there are some ways that Internet accessibility and use are a pain.

Like most people, I use Google to find things. It’s fast, it’s easy, and it’s effective.

Google’s great!

However, I think Google has changed my expectations for the way I retrieve and process information. And many of those changes aren’t for the better.

• I expect answers immediately and get frustrated when I can’t find information in a nanosecond.
• I purposely don’t remember some things because I can readily look them up in the cloud.
• And, most importantly, I sometimes expect others to be Google-ized and able to provide information on demand.

I realized this big time when Rich and I moved back into unlimited Internet connectivity.

Google’s not the problem. I am.

While I will continue to use and love Google, I’m now on a personal mission to use Google more discriminately and effectively.

*’*’*’*’*

Explanation of “Gucking Foogle”:

I went to Reno High School and our mascot was a husky. A friend of my sister’s also went to RHS and told a story of when she was a cheerleader.  The basketball team was to play crosstown rivals who made a huge sign encouragng the team to “Huck the Fuskies!”

(Switch the first two letters… 🙂 )

Gold Canyon, Arizona

We are back at Gold Canyon RV Resort, and we are back with Dish television and Internet.

It’s hardwired to each spot in the resort.

Color me HAPPY!

I have loved data all my life.

One of my first jobs was as a data entry clerk entering numbers into columns in bookkeeping ledgers. And don’t even get me started on the thrill of running a 10-key adding machine.

Later when computers came along, I did data processing: entering data into computers where the computer programs did the calculations.

My first computer was a Commodore 64. It had a whopping 64 kilobytes of RAM (random access memory). I LOVED that machine!

As computers got more powerful and after graduation from college, I dove into databases: both design and implementation. Their capacity to store and manipulate data was a perfect fit for a data geek like me.

I loved my job as a data analyst and could lose myself for hours writing SQL code to extract data to help organizations solve problems.

I’m not working with data while I’m on ‘faux retirement’, but I still love data although now it’s in a different form.

I love Internet data!

I’m so thrilled to be back with full data that I can access through my phone, my computer, and my tablet. Sometimes all at once.

Yeeehaaaawwwww!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

El Mirage, Arizona

Sometimes I am surprised at how little Rich and I are spending on this journey compared to what I thought it would cost.

Sure, we have the huge expense of buying Homer. And then there is the cost of diesel to move from place to place. Homer gets a whopping ten miles per gallon.

But motor home insurance and registration have been less than we anticipated, and there are a lot of standard expenses we don’t have because we’re homeless: no property taxes, no utilities bills, less than half the auto insurance because we’re down to two cars and one is in storage.

All that being said, we are still incredibly tight with our money on some stuff.

Case in point–we are struggling with paying extra for Internet.

Actually, I should say were struggling. I’m not struggling anymore…

I started looking at our resort neighbors and most of them golf once a week. And good for them.

So I got to thinking, I don’t golf and pickleball doesn’t cost me anything for my daily sweat.

What if I pretended I golfed and applied my golf round money toward my Internet cost?

Problem solved. Now I have no problem paying for Internet.

Hmmm… I wonder what else I can justify buying because I don’t play golf… 🙂

El Mirage, Arizona

I am trying to change the way I process and deal with things.

I’ve been stuck in an endless loop of second guessing and over analyzing my decisions, internal thoughts, and communications with others.

It’s unproductive and annoying.

Time for a change…

I now have the Nike swoosh imprinted on my brain, and repeating Nike’s slogan JUST DO IT! has become my mantra.

This should make things interesting as Rich and I work towards figuring out our next steps… 🙂

El Mirage, Arizona

For Christmas I received a great gift from my wonderful friend Sharon.

Tangle Art: A Meditative Drawing Kit contains everything you need to get started in the playful and inspiring world of tangle art.

Also known as Zen doodling, tangle art is a popular trend that involves drawing repetitive lines, marks, circles, and shapes. Each mark is called a “tangle,” and you combine various tangles into patterns to create “tiles” or small square drawings. It is a fun, relaxing way to improve focus, spark creativity, and develop artistic confidence.

I just started tangling a few days ago, and I am really enjoying it.

The kit comes with everything needed to start tangling including detailed instructions for those of us who are scared to make a mistake and therefore delay starting new projects.

I’ve only done a few tangles on paper tiles that came in the kit, but I’ve noticed that I’m feeling more confident each time I tangle.

Perhaps more importantly, my tangling is becoming more free as I draw because I’m losing my sense of perfectionism…

All that being said, comparing my tangles to Sharon’s show that artistic ability counts. Sharon’s an amazing artist in multiple mediums.

But I know that both Sharon and I are enjoying our Zen moments as we tangle. We are relaxed, in the moment, and creative…

Thank you, Sharon, for the wonderful gift!

El Mirage, Arizona

Like bazillions is other people, I recently bought/received a FitBit.

I’m using it for motivation to move more and hopefully lose weight.

As of now, I’m moving more, but apparently part of my movement is toward the refrigerator because I’m not losing weight. 🙂

It has been fascinating to see how many steps and miles I put on my FitBit on a given day.

A goal of at least 10,000 steps isn’t too hard to reach if I take Sophie for a couple of extra long walks each day.

Playing pickleball adds steps exponentially. The other day I had over 7.5 miles logged during nine games played. And then I crashed… 🙂

My highest daily total: 21,014 for 9.49 miles. My lowest: 4,399 for 1.99 miles.

Carol recently had the flu and logged a whopping 700 steps on a sick day. One of these days, I’m go to see how low I can go. 🙂

I have no idea how accurate my FitBit is, but for a data geek like me it’s a lot of fun…

For those of you who are FitBit fanatics like I am, you might want to read this tongue-in-cheek essay in The New Yorker by David Sedaris: Stepping Out. (It’s long, but it’s hilarious!)