WELCOME
Things that have happened this year
Who is Who/A guide to explain the names used.
Carol Richelson-Bruce's sister, married to Gary.
David Richelson-Bruce's nephew, son of Carol and Gary
Gary Richelson-Bruce's brother-in-law, married to Carol.
Julie Richelson-Bruce's niece, daughter of Carol and Gary
Bruce and I wish you a most Happy New Year and hope you had a joyful holiday season!!!!!!!!
Week of December 26
Thusday Bruce was going to go to a financial seminar/luncheon but cancelled to go shopping with Gary, Carol and David who had came up to Phoenix to do shopping. Everybody spent several hours shopping at a home furniture store and at an electronics store for a computer. After dinner all returned home. New Year's Eve was spent quietly. Bruce took his annual New Year's Eve walk. Bruce's activities can be pretty much summed up as "watching football", sometimes several games at once.
Week of December 18
Friday Bruce attended a dinner/health seminar. The speaker did not show up. Free dinner. Weekend was full. Bruce went to Tucson for the weekend. He met Gary and Carol for dinner. Sunday the family went out for breakfast and were joined by a friend of Bruce's and his date. Then Bruce headed home. Christmas day Bruce helped a friend finish up preparing Christmas dinner spent the evening eating dinner and watching two movies with some friends.
Christmas gifts: Bruce got a shirt, sweat shirt, sweat pants, a can of beer and a big tin of popcorn.
Week of December 4
Bruce was asked to take a friend's dog to the dog's Graduation Day training class. Bruce worked with the dog every day during the week getting him ready for the training class final.
Week of November 27
Bruce thinks he is now about 98% recovered. He seems to be getting better. He has had a cold since a week ago Tuesday. He is now down to some serious coughing about 3 times a day. The good part is his lungs are pretty empty when he takes a deep breath and his nose is dry. Bruce went to a neighborhood meeting put on by the city to see what was going on in his neighborhood and in and about the city.
Bruce won a copy of the new Microsoft Flight Simulator X from a contest he entered. Bruce was so happy, another airplane program! He installed it on me and then spent two days having to tweak the program. A friend's computer hung up for some unknown reason and would not shut down and when it was turned off and rebooted it had a disk problem. Bruce had to spend the rest of the week reloading his friend's operating system and all his software. Bruce took a friend's dog to his doggie training class because the owner went to an Arts Fair to spend money.
Week of November 20
Bruce continued to be sick from last week. Monday Bruce went and bought out a drug store. The last 5 days he has been drinking cough medicine. He has emptied out four different types of cough medicine.
Bruce went to have dinner at a friend's family (about 20 people) Thanksgiving Day. He was there from about 2 until 6:30. Bruce got back home about 7:30, watched TV until about 8:30, set up the VCR and called it a night. Bruce went with some friend's to downtown Glendale to take in Glendale Glitters Friday night. It was very crowded (estimated 35 thousand people).
Week of November 13
Bruce was sick all week with a bad cold. Still that did not keep him from attending two more dinner seminars.
Week of November 6
Bruce voted by dropping off his early ballot at his polling place. Saturday Gary, Carol and David came up to Phoenix for the day to shop and go sightseeing. In the evening Bruce went with Gary, Carol and David out for dinner and then back to Bruce's house for an impromptu birthday party for Carol. Sunday morning Bruce killed the morning shopping for all sorts of items.
Week of October 30
Bruce finally received the CD for a new version of a cell phone maintenance program. Several weeks ago Bruce had downloaded a very large update (4 hours long). The download/update did not go well, induced errors and caused the program not to work properly any more. After talking to the company he was promised a new program. Two weeks went by and he called to inquire what the hold up was. It turns out the company never got around to sending the new program CD at all. The only problems he had was getting the new program to accept the old program’s data base information. Bruce had a friend (who is severely mechanically challenged) who lives on the other side of town pick him up a 5 AM, then they went back to his friend's house and spent most of the day playing handyman, building an entertainment stand and repairing several plumbing problems for his mechanically handicapped friend.
Week of October 23
Wow! What a whirlwind of fun and such a great occasion to be together!
Bruce left Friday morning about 6 AM [so as to have plenty of time/but it didn't turn out that way] to attend a wedding in Santa Fe. He made a short stop in Winslow so Bruce could get his driver's license renewed (no lines as in Phoenix). Bruce screwed up-he was about 10 miles out of town when Bruce discovered he left a pair of glasses at the driver's license building. He turned around and drove back to get them. Bruce got to Santa Fe around 4 PM AZ time forgetting the time difference and that the dinner party was at 6:30. A quick change and he hurried to the dinner party that was held at the ski basin at Hyde Park. He got lost going to the dinner party because he read the instruction wrong and partly because of bad directions. It took another 30 minutes to get back to Hyde Park from the ski basin but he made it. The theme of the dinner was October Fest. All the
Germans were dressed in their German clothes with hats and women wore their German dresses. They certainly looked festive. There was a German band with German music, food and dancing. For the guests that did not have hats, German hats were available on the tables. The food was ok but the dessert was Wonderful...... Bruce sat at the same table with the groom's brother and his family in from Germany. His daughter was used as a translator-boy Bruce's German sucks! Wedding day (Saturday) It was cold and windy. Bruce went sight seeing downtown where he visited the Loretto church and walked around the plaza and downtown area. He went into the Loretto Church because Bruce really wanted to see it. Then the big event. The wedding was held in the Loretto church. The priest did a great job and was even funny. After the ceremony the guests went next door to the Inn at Loretto for dinner, dancing and meeting all the old friends. The newly weds looked to so happy & beautiful. There are lots of group pictures up on the Internet at: (members.aol.com/ribsnwmrk/pictures.htm). Bruce drank a lot (scotch) ate a lot and got sick back at the hotel....but was fine the next day.....Sunday morning he had brunch with the family and said goodbye....... On the way home Bruce went to Old Town Albuquerque to see the plaza and the historic church and to meet up with a childhood friend from Tucson that Bruce had not seen for almost 40 years. They had a nice visit. He finally left Albuquerque around 4 PM and got home before 11 PM.A little tired Monday but it was a great trip.....
Week of October 9
Looks like everything is more of less now done at the house Bruce has been helping with. Bruce spent some time over the weekend patching holes, spot painting throughout the house and finishing hanging curtains in order to finish up the remodeling of his friend's house. Bruce had a great time watching all the sports this week. Sunday Bruce got pulled away from his football by a neighbor to handle an instillation project she could not finish.
Week of October 2
The garage door Bruce repaired last weekend seems to be working well.
Week of September 25
The week was basically three activities. Jury duty, repair and going to a party. Bruce had to appear for jury duty Tuesday but was not chosen. He has had a SEVERE case of tendentious in his knee since last Tuesday. It has been so bad he could hardly walk or straighten his leg after sitting. Friday afternoon Bruce started to repair the weather stripping at the bottom of a friend's garage door. It took all weekend where Bruce ended up completely disassembling the entire garage door system, doors, springs, pulleys and cables. He finished the reassembly and adjustments late Sunday night. No football games for him all weekend. The only break he took from working on the garage door was Saturday afternoon when Bruce went to a birthday party, picnic and swim. Great party! Bruce was in bed and asleep within ten minutes after he shut off the car motor.
Week of September 18
Free meal week. Tuesday after work Bruce attended an old people's retirement presentation with free meal. The next day Bruce went to a reverse mortgage presentation with free lunch included. Thursday evening Bruce took his lawn chair to a city park to watch a two hour "Ballet Under The Stars" outdoor ballet performance by Ballet Arizona on the park lawn.
Week of September 11
A friend bought an under the sink storage rack and asked Bruce to install it. It was one of those simple, half hour, put it together yourself projects. Ya, right! Over all, it took four days to finish up. The weekend was spent doing home decorating-putting up curtains and mounting all sorts of decorations, car repair, intermixed with watching football. Bruce voted.
Week of September 5
Bruce did not like the way his lawnmower was working, so he took it apart Monday. Finally he put it back together Saturday. Works better than expected. Wonder went wrong? Bruce spent most of the week watching the US Open tennis, baseball and football on TV.
Bruce has been looking for a tool set for over a year to leave at a friend's house so he doesn't have to keep transporting his tools back and forth from his house. Last month he saw a very interesting ad for a tool set with a 4-draw tool chest included. He keep putting off going to look at it because so much of his time was taken up sitting in front of the TV watching the us open tennis (priorities). Then last week there was another ad for 20% off any purchase. When there was a break in the action he whipped off to take a look at it. For use at his friend's it was very impressive. At $60 list (seems about the right price), on sale for $40 and with the discount it came out to $32 and something. Bruce went through the tools and their uses with the friend and she was dually impressed.
Week of August 28
Bruce put up more decorations in the house, mostly in the living room and kitchen. Bad Labor Day weekend. Saturday a friend's car battery went bad. Easy solution? Just jump start the car, right? The dead battery caused the anti-theft alarm to activate. Every time the jumper was attached, the alarm would go on and the ignition system would be shut down. Bruce had to go to his friend's work place to see what could be done. The result was there was a large, heavy rainstorm and it became dark. About all Bruce could get done was to disconnect the horns to keep the car quiet. The friend decided to have the car towed to the dealer. Somehow the tow company forgot to log in the call and blew off the job. After several repeat calls, Bruce and the car got picked up 4 1/2 hours later. Sunday the tow company called that the car was working. Bruce went off to buy a new battery while the tow company brought the car back to his friend's house. When Bruce went to install the new battery, the car alarm re-activated and shut down the car. Bruce went ahead anyway to install the new battery and after experimenting around got the alarm to deactivate.
Week of August 21
Bruce finally got around to celebrate their long past birthdays. Bruce asked the waitress to bring two birthday candles and a muffin. Bruce stuck the candles in the muffin and the waitress lit the candles for them. Then Bruce got up on the bench seat and turned off the table light off so they could have dinner by candlelight. The friend thought it was just so neat! At the end of the meal the restaurant served them complimentary two good sized pieces of ice cream cake.
Saturday was one full day. It started about 6 am with Bruce finishing the trimming of the base of one of the front yard palm trees. It took four days to dig up around the base, trim the trunk of the palm tree, cut away the excess around the base 
and then fill in the tree well. Bruce went downtown to meet Gary, Carol and David to tour the Phoenix Science Museum. After the tour of the museum they all went out to eat. Gary, Carol and David went to do technical shopping and Bruce went home to wait for them. Everybody met back up, visited, did odd and ends before Gary and Carol headed back to Tucson about 10.
Week of August 14
Lots of birthday celebrations this week. Friday evening after work a friend took Bruce out and was joined by an other couple for dinner. They had an hour wait before seating. While they were waiting in the patio area they got to watch a brawl take place in the parking lot and all the activity afterwards when the police, fire and EMS personnel showed up. It was hard to believe that it was 10 PM when they ended
having dinner. Saturday was another full day. Bruce did lawn work, home decoration shopping and buying a plant to put in the flowerbed. In the afternoon Bruce and a friend had a good time watching sports. The day finished up by them going out for Korean Food.
Week of August 7
Sunday Bruce spent the morning doing yard work, still cleaning up the back yard and putting up the decorations and curtains.
Week of July 31
Saturday afternoon Bruce met Gary so Bruce could borrow Gary's hammer-drill so as to be able to drill holes in a spa platform and went furniture shopping buying two dinning room chairs. Bruce trimmed up some wood paneling and moved the stove in place to complete the stove's installation. Sunday Bruce spent the morning putting cement anchors in the spa platform and finished securing the gazebo in place
over the spa. Bruce and a friend spent 3H:14M at the grand opening of an outdoors equipment store. The afternoon activities were finished off by going to dinner. At the dinner a waitress tipped a tray crashing about 8 glasses and 15 plates. Bruce had just asked her about twenty minutes earlier when the last time she had dropped a tray.
Week of July 17
Friday Bruce and a friend had dinner with another couple at a steak house. During dinner they passed around pictures from both their trips.
Week of July 10
Bruce still continues to reinstall software on his friend's computer during the week. Gary and Carol came up for the weekend while David is visiting friends in California.
Week of July 3
Something happened to a friend's computer when Bruce restarted it after coming back from Tucson. It had a lot of software problems so Bruce decided to reinstall the operating system. He has been reinstalling software during the week.
Week of June 26
Saturday Bruce drove to Tucson to attend an organizational meeting to Israel sponsored by Gary and Carol's shul. He returned back Sunday and went next door to a neighborhood bbq and swim party.
Week of June 19
Gary, Carol and David came up to Phoenix to shop. Bruce met them for lunch. Bruce Marie went to a local concert he wanted to attend. Turned out he was one day late, so he went out to eat. The new grass got its first haircut and Bruce started to prepare the flowerbed. Julie returned back from her camp training to pick up her car to return to Tucson. Because it was late in the evening Bruce and Marie suggested Julie stay over to get a restful night's sleep, have breakfast and return Sunday. Saturday afternoon Bruce took a leisurely 4 1/2 hour shopping trip to several different stores. He went home furniture shopping, had lunch, bought garden tools and supplies, clothes and shoes, and a nice bookshelf for the computer room which Bruce assembled and put up. Sunday Bruce dug up the new flowerbed several times to loosen the ground.
Week of June 12
Bruce finished making the final adjustments to the back yard sprinkler system of his friend. Now it can be used to water the new grass that has been laid in the back yard. Late Friday night Bruce got a call from Julie that she is coming up. Bruce stayed up another hour generating a map of directions to email to Julie. Julie arrived about 5:45 Saturday morning. Bruce stayed up until Julie's ride came to pick her up (6:30). At 8:30 a neighbor knocks on the door to give Bruce a present for watering his plants. Bruce cooked a ham for dinner for several friends that came over to drink beer and watch sports. Bruce and his friend drank beer and watched sports until they sat down to have dinner.
Week of June 5
Bruce found a baby bird walking around in his front yard and even got to see the parents feed it. Bruce met Gary and David for lunch. Gary came up to get a part that he asked Bruce to buy that was on sale while Gary and his family were on vacation. Bruce stayed home because someone had to sign for several pallets of grass. Bruce gets a call at 5:40 in the morning because the drivers were lost. This happened even after Bruce had the day before explained to the company where to make the delivery. Bruce went to check out the sprinkler system in his friend's backyard and found several things that had been broken by the workers. Over the weekend he spent his time watching the French Open, digging up the friend's back yard and fixing the broken pipe and sprinklers. Saturday Bruce went to a barbeque.
Week of May 30
Bruce's friend's gate would drag on the new pavement and would not close. The solution, Bruce just decided to rehang the gate.
Week of May 22
Bruce took care of three dogs belonging to a friend while she went to Chicago to visit her family while they were staying in Chicago. Bruce had been developing a barbeque invitation for a neighbor. It was a series of tweaks here and there. Bruce finally got the neighbor to come over to finalize the invitation.
Week of May 8
Thursday Bruce attended a financial seminar. When the seminar was over Bruce went to a friend's home to wait for the cabinet installer. The installer was there to inventory the cabinets delivered last week. Friday Bruce got two discount coupons for dinner, so Bruce and three other friends met for dinner and Bruce let two of the guys use the second coupon. Saturday started out with Bruce working to fix a friend's front door. After Bruce took off the front door, Bruce went to get new weatherproofing, had to go back a second time because he didn't have the right kind of staples to attach the molding to the bottom of the door. Finally Bruce got the weatherproofing attached to the door, put the door back on, and found it would not close correctly. Bruce made a shim for the door, adjusted the door jam and finally got the door to close.
Week of May 1
Bruce attended a financial dinner. While Bruce was out riding his bike around he found a twenty-dollar bill.
Week of April 24
Tuesday Bruce met some friend's at a mid-town restaurant to celebrate their son's 22nd birthday. Good food, good conversation, pretty good time, poor service. The waitress was so bad Bruce attempted to get a replacement. Sunday Bruce was taken out for breakfast because he is spending a lot of time getting dusty moving rocks in his friend's yard where the ground is to be dug up and cement pored.
Week of April 17
Bruce is dog sitting four dogs at his house while a friend is having her house painted. Tuesday Bruce attended a financial dinner at a buffet restaurant. Good deal. He took the bus there for 60 cents, got fed well, and got a ride back home with a woman that he met there that happened to live close to him.
Friday evening Bruce went to the Glendale Jazz Festival. Bruce got a panic call to come over and fix his friend's computer after the painters put it back together. Nothing would work and Marie had emails piling up. Took Bruce almost 6 seconds to fix the problem and get the computer to start working.
Week of April 10
Bruce bought and cooked an Easter ham.
Week of April 3
Bruce went for a physical as part of a medical survey he was accepted in. There were some things that were found that may be related to his sudden weight loss.
Week of March 27
Tuesday Bruce attended a presentation/dinner about financial planning. The dinner really upset Bruce; the service was so slow that he had to leave before the main course was served. Saturday shortly after going swimming Bruce began getting a pain in his side which he thought was a cramp. The pain got worse over time eventually causing him to become sick. It ended when Bruce took a strong pain killer. Bruce thinks it was a kidney stone attack.
Week of March 20
Tuesday Bruce attended a presentation/dinner about the new Medicaid plans.
Week of March 13
Tuesday Bruce voted. Saturday Bruce went to Tucson to meet cousin Janet (Janie) Sinder who was in town from Maryland on vacation. It was a food weekend. Saturday after getting into Tucson Bruce, Gary, David and Carol all met for an All You Can Eat lunch. Sunday evening all the Tucson family had a family reunion with Janie at the same downtown Mexican restaurant as was used for the last family dinner (see week of February 20). After dinner, the family went over to Dorothy and Henry's home for desert, catch up on family talk and look at pictures. Bruce finally got home about 11 PM Sunday night.
Week of March 6
Thursday Bruce attended a presentation/dinner about the new Medicaid plans. Friday Bruce attended a barbeque. Saturday it rained. It was the first rain in 142 days (since last October). Bruce and some other people attended a Korean dinner. Bruce was asked to assemble a Gazebo that a neighbor bought. Sunday Bruce finished installing the top canopies and put up the netting on the gazebo then Bruce and some people moved the spa to make space for the gazebo so the gazebo could be put in place.
Week of February 27
Thursday did not turn out as planned. Bruce took a friend's car in for an oil change and later was to drive the friend to her dentist. The dentist's office called to say that the appointment had to be cancelled because the dentist was sick so Bruce completed painting the spa skirting. The car dealership wanted 74 dollars to rotate the tires and check the brakes. He thought that was just out of line so Sunday he rotated the tires on his friend's car.
Week of February 20
Bruce has been helping his friend sort out even more pictures of his New Zealand trip that his friend got on a CD sent to him by his sister. Bruce spent the evenings going through them sorting them out for duplicates and which ones will be wanted to have printed. Saturday Bruce went to Tucson for the weekend to meet cousin Ken Shindler who was in town to attend a conference. Bruce's Tucson family went to meet Ken as he deplaned. Sunday Bruce went to watch baseball spring training practices, bought a pair of tennis shoes from a roadside merchant, had lunch with Gary and Carol, then had a family reunion with Ken at a downtown Mexican restaurant. Bruce finally got home about 11 PM Sunday night.
Week of February 13
Bruce finally got his friend's New Zealand trip uploaded to the Internet. Valentine's Day Bruce and a friend went with another couple for dinner at a high class resort for dinner. How high class? How about $422 worth of dinner!!! The dinner wiped out the evening (four hours of food and conversation). Sunday Bruce helped his friend paint about half of the spa siding before calling it quits for the day. In the evening Bruce went to a surprise birthday party dinner for one of Bruce's friends.
Week of February 6
Bruce is still working on cleaning up his friend's backyard and restored now that her spa is in. Bruce spent Friday evening and most of Saturday shopping for new clothes including returning clothes that didn't fit and doing personal errands. Sunday morning Bruce cleaned up his friend's backyard by getting all the tree limbs, wood and trash left during the installation of the spa allowing the dogs to reclaim their backyard again. Bruce dragged the tree limbs from the back yard to the front driveway, cut the tree limbs down to size and piled the trimmings up for the city to pick up. Sunday night after dinner Bruce finally finished organizing and reviewing his friend's New Zealand trip pictures, Bruce was invited to initiate the new spa.
Week of January 30
Bruce spent a lot of time working hard on organizing the pictures his friend took of his trip and trying to correlate them to his activities in New Zealand so as to get them printed out and put on the Internet. Saturday Bruce went to the Downtown Glendale Chocolate Festival (more like a street fair). Sunday joined a bunch of guys to watch the Super Bowl.
Week of January 23
Bruce was hired to dig up areas of a friend's back yard in order to remove parts of the sprinkler and drip systems and cut down and remove an orange tree. He helped the contractors pour the slab of concrete for the spa to rest on. Friday evening his friend took Bruce out for a relaxing dinner to celebrate the work done in the backyard in preparation for the installation of the spa. Saturday evening his friend invited all the people that helped move the spa over for an Enchilada dinner. Wonderful meal and evening. Sunday Bruce wanted to bicycle over to a restaurant for breakfast but his friend fell down twice within two blocks of the house scraping her arm and knee, so they cancelled the ride and drove to the restaurant.
Week of January 16
Bruce and two other people loaded a spa that was given to a friend onto a trailer. Bruce and one of the other people then moved the spa Bruce's house where spa installers later moved it to its final location.
Week of January 9
Bruce is still dog sitting and watching football games.
Week of January 3
Bruce is watching football games and taking care of a friend's three dogs. Bruce even gave the dogs a trim while their owner was away. Bruce was so upset that his friend's cable went out for a while during one of the football playoff games Bruce called the cable company and got a credit towards the charges.
Bruce and I wish you a most Happy New Year and hope you had a joyful holiday season!!!!!!!!
Week of December 27
Bruce spent some time up on a friend's roof repairing a broken tile. Friday night Bruce took a friend out for dinner as going away present. Saturday Bruce took a friend to the airport for his two week visit to New Zealand. He is going to dog sit and take care of his dogs while he is gone. He gave the dogs a trim while their owner was away. Bruce took the dogs on his annual New Year's walk. It was dead all over the neighborhood. Bruce watched lots of football games. His friend's cable went out for a while during one of the playoff games. Bruce was so upset he called the cable company and got a credit towards his friend's charges. Talk about multi-tasking. With three TVs going, Bruce watched several football games at once, watched VCR tapes during commercials and doing paper work that have been stacking up.
[Return to Home Page][Visit Bruce's Computer][Visit Bruce]
1/19/07