New Year's eve did not go as planned. First plan was that Bruce was to have dinner with Gary, Carol, and several other friends. Carol was on call. Then dinner plans never got completed. Then one of Bruce's friends didn't feel like going out. Result was his friend went to sleep at 6:30 and Bruce watched football and sports. Bruce woke his friend up at 11:53 and they took a walk around the neighborhood looking at Christmas lights and fireworks. They stayed up to about 1:30 before they called it quits.
New Years day Bruce had three TVs going watching all the football games.
Thursday turned out to be real frustrating day. Earlier in the week Bruce went to seven different car dealerships trying to get tickets for the Phoenix Auto Show. Well after collecting enough tickets for a group, arrangements were made for Gary, David and Bruce to go to the show. Friday Gary and David came up from Tucson. David was sick and not feeling well. Bruce and Gary went to the local library to search the internet for a new replacement computer for me. Then Gary, David and Bruce then went downtown and had trouble finding a parking spot. Well after a while they all walked over to the car show. The visit was shortened because David was not feeling well so it was decided to leave the show after a very short stay.
Saturday afternoon Bruce attended a co-worker's wedding held downtown outdoors at Heritage Square. The wedding started an hour and a half late. Because the weather was cold he left shortly after the ceremony.
How did Bruce spend Christmas? The usual way. He watched two football games and worked on putting on new front brake pads on a friend's car.
Bruce got blown out in the singles tennis tournament he played in this weekend.
Bruce finally got to pick up his second pair of glasses. Bruce spent the whole day in Tucson. He started out by visiting Biosphere2 near Oracle, Arizona where he wandered around the grounds for about two and a half hours, went to visit his mother for a while, spent the remainder of the afternoon with Gary. The day finished up when the family all met at a restaurant for dinner. That sure took care of Saturday.
Bruce had to be retested for glasses. His original prescription was off in the left lens by a few degrees. He says he sees better with his new glasses. He only got his bifocals redone; his tennis glasses will be done next week. Ah the same. Bruce went to Tucson to spend the Thanksgiving weekend with his family. While he didn't get to play backgammon while he was visiting, he did get to visit friends, watch football (especially the UA/ASU game) and flying the simulator on Gary's computer. His best accomplishment was that he learned to fly the Bell helicopter. Bruce concludes that his problems controlling the aircraft when using Flight Simulator is I am too slow for the games. Also Bruce was impressed with the graphics of the program while using Gary's computer.
Bruce played in his tennis club's tournament. He and his partner got blown away in their two matches. Bruce was still stiff from the tournament Tuesday. He blames part of it on his Monday hitting friend because his friend didn't confirm their hitting.
Bruce watched the final game with intense interest. He was very happy that the Snakes won. I thought it was unusual how he reacted. Bruce reanalyzed the games and felt the Snakes should have won in four games.
Bruce voted Tuesday. Actually he was on the losing side, but he had his say.
Saturday was a day where just about nothing went right or as planned. For what basically was a long day he had a good time. Here is a list of things that went wrong - It started out with Bruce installing one of his CBs radio in his car. He could not get it to work, and on top of that then blew a fuse. After trouble shooting the problem the radio was installed. He finally got on his way - one hour late. A few errands and stops on the way out of town were done before he really got going. A stop in Tucson to visit a friend took longer than planned before he got to his Mother's house to pick her up. Instead of taking her to Gary's and Carol's house as planned, everyone met for lunch. After lunch the action got busier. Bruce took his Mother to Carol's home where David, Carol and Bruce showed her how to navigate web sites and helped her look at this web site so she could see it. The plan had been to leave about 4 PM to attend a party back in Phoenix. Well Gary didn't get home until after 5 and then after everyone got together they all decided go out for dinner. Then as I was told there was the decision making of where to go to eat. Finally everyone got seated, took a while to order, waited some more for the food. Bruce even commented "That had they gone to a buffet everyone would be eating by now". At least the dinner food was good and they all had a good time. Finally Bruce headed home, ran low on gas and had to get refueled before finally getting home about 11 PM. What a long day but I was told it all turned out to be a pretty good day.
Not much. Bruce watched the World Series rooting for the Diamondbacks. Bruce finally found time to go to the movies. Two weeks ago he went to see Shrek and since there was no baseball game Friday Bruce went to see Legally Blond. He enjoyed both movies.
Bruce now has the general aircraft and their landings of the flight simulator program under control. Now he is going after trying to handle the Bell helicopter. As for TV sports, what a depression he had. No baseball playoffs, no tennis and little football during the week. The weekend was another story altogether. He practiced tennis throughout the week and then played in a tennis tournament this weekend. Three matches Saturday followed by two matches Sunday (five sets). He and his partner ended up losing in the finals.
To further fill up the weekend Bruce went to a very successful monster World Series Watching party Saturday. "Great party"!
Same O-same o. Bruce was just somewhat busy. He now has me and the flight simulator program pretty much under control. He seems much happier now. He made three consecutive landings at Glendale Municipal airport in a row. That airport had given him a lot of trouble, He even went looking for airports in the NYC area trying them. As for sports, what a week he had. The baseball playoffs during the week, the weekends watching baseball, Davis Cup, lots of football and playing tennis throughout the week.
Saturday turned out to be a full day. Gary came up from Tucson and Bruce and Gary met Mark Saturday morning as the three of them went to Microsoft's XP Extreme presentation. In the afternoon Bruce gave a tennis clinic organized as an American Cancer Society fund raiser event.
Bruce is in TV heaven. He has the baseball playoffs, football and Davis Cup tennis to watch. Bruce when not watching TV (and sometimes when listing to it) is now spending a lot of time practicing landing different airplanes at Phoenix and Glendale. He lands fairly well at Phoenix Sky Harbor but can not land at Glendale Muni worth a damn. I think he is running 90% crappy landings of which 80% are crashes.
Bruce finally got rid of the lawnmower he fixed. The owner came over to pick it up and was given a class on maintenance and operation of the lawnmower. He gave Bruce a check for parts, labor and extra to buy dinner for himself.
What to do, what to do? With the new TV shows finally starting after being delayed Bruce has been overloaded in what to watch. The TVs and the VCRs are going overtime.
Bruce played in a tennis tournament over the weekend. He and his partner lost in the semi-finals. He said the other team was much better that he and his partner. Bruce finished after spending a lot of time on producing panoramic photographs for a friend. The way it worked was Bruce would make a picture or changes, send it to his friend and wait to be told what changes needed to be made. The friend would then tell him what changes were to be made. Then he would start the process to change the photograph again.
Bruce is still working on learning the commands for FS2000. He also has been spending a lot of time trying to practice landing at the airports in the Phoenix area. I can tell you he did much better with a real airplane.
The loss of the World Trade Buildings affected a friend quite a bit. The friend has remembrances from a trip to New York taken two years ago. Bruce's friend went through all the photographs that were taken in New York. Bruce was given three pictures to modify.
Not much. Without sports on TV for 4 days has allowed Bruce to spend hours and hours on the computer practicing and trying to learn how to master Microsoft FS 2000 (Gary's birthday gift to Bruce).
It happened again. Bruce had to dig up a section of the sprinkler system to make a modification. What should have been a two-hour project turned into a three-day project.
Bruce had dinner with Bruce's Cousin Barbara who was in town to attend a wedding.
Bruce had been following the advertising for computer monitors. He spotted what he thought was a good sale price. He now has replaced my old monitor with a new 19" monitor. Bruce says he really likes the new monitor because the screen is easier to read.
Bruce's tennis club had a group night at the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball game. Bruce went to the Bank One Ballpark to see the game.
Busy week. Two friends did a really fine job of arranging a surprise/not so surprise birthday party for Bruce Saturday since it was Bruce's birthday. It seems they went ahead LAST month and made the arrangements, sent out invitations and printed maps. But Bruce after talking it over with one of the planners last week went ahead and invited some people for a joint dinner since one of the people and Bruce have birthdays only two days apart. Bruce made the big SIX OH. Some of the people Bruce invited said they would not be able to make it. Boy you should have seen the look on Bruce's face as too how surprised he was to see those who attended. There were 11 people who attended. During the dinner one of the couples invited called long distance to offer congratulations and apologies. That also surprised him. It was a very nice surprise/non-surprise party. The camera malfunctioned, but what pictures might come out will be posted.
Don't laugh now at this. Bruce's leg had healed. Thursday he went for a walk. When he got back home and started walking around he noticed the calf muscle had torn again. Old age injuries huh?
Bruce did it again. Bruce volunteered to fix a co-worker's lawnmower. Bruce worked on the lawn mower during the week in order to bring it back to life. It is ready to go back to the owner.
A friend saw Goren Ivanisevic play at Wimbledon and liked his goatee. So now Bruce is growing one.
Bruce pulled a calf muscle Sunday. After a week the leg is almost pain free.
Sunday Bruce went to a steak house and had dinner with two good friends.
In order to get out of the summer heat, Bruce decided to go to attend the Prescott Street fair. On the way he encountered rain. When he got to Prescott because of the rain, there was not tent one. All the displays had packed up. So he went on to Jerome. It rained there too. He then went on to Camp Verde for dinner before returning home.
2/24/04