BLUE SKY, WHITE CLOUDS, WHAT MORE D'YA WANT?

The sky over Phoenix.  This afternoon.  Late.

DARCY & CHERYL

Darcy and Cheryl, our Canadian neighbors, are in town and came over for happy hour tonight.  They arrived bearing gifts.  For SWMBO . . .

That brought a smile to her face (and lips).

For me . . .

. . . WOW!  An official cap.  Darcy is a fire captain with the Edmonton Fire Department.  And now I'm an honorary.  Well, I got the cap anyway.

BTW, you will notice the temperature on the device on my desk.  At 8:30 p.m.  95.5 degrees Fahrenheit!  It's still hot in Arizona.

And lastly but definitely not leastly . . .

. . . Cheryl's maple-bacon wrapped jalapeno poppers!

OH!

So good.

What's better than good neighbors?  I can't imagine.

BASEBALL FUN

Thanks to my friend, Steve, I went to a baseball game tonight at Chase Field and watched my beloved Diamondbacks beat the Chicago Cubs 3 to 1 to split a four game series with them.

This is my view of the field from what I kiddingly tell Steve are the "nosebleed seats" in the third deck.  But the view, nearly right behind home plate gives a good look at the stadium action.

Here are my seat-mates.  Steve on the right appropriately attired.  His friend Frank on the left is, for some unknown reason, wearing an Oakland A's cap.  (And it is not for the benefit of that other A's fan who reads this blog and comments on it from far-off Germany, even though his name, too, is Steve!  ☺)

As I arrived at the stadium tonight I encountered these two guys from the Legends race held at some time during each game.

They represent a couple of Diamondbacks legends, Mark Grace and Matt Williams.  They are joined by legends Luis Gonzales and Randy Johnson in the evening races.  It's part of the joke that of all of them, Matt Grace is the only one never to win a race.

All part of what happens at Chase Field on what President and CEO Derrick Hall refers to as "an entertainment stage."  There's nothing quite like an evening or an afternoon at the ball park.

KITTY UPDATE

It's been awhile since I've posted pictures of our family.  So here are a couple I took just the other day.

Muggles the magnificent, posing near a pot which SWMBO says sort of shares her colors.  I think she kind of disappears into the floor.

And the beautiful but bored Blackwell, perched on the back of the couch.  He seems somewhat suspicious of having his picture taken.

Say what you will about cats.  They are our friends, our children, our much loved family.

MEAT LOAF

Sure, that's the "singer" known as Meat Loaf.

But that's not the one I had in mind to write about today.

This is the one.

This is the before picture of SWMBO's meat loaf that she made yesterday.  Couple pounds of ground beef, a pound of breakfast sausage, 3 eggs, sauteed onions-leeks-carrots-celery, some bread crumbs, some Mrs. Dash, some Worchestershire sauce, some salt, and some Ketchup.  Mix it all up, shape it into a loaf, then (for Low and Slow's benefit) top it with bacon and finish with a sprinkling of smoked paprika.

Here's the finished picture.

The cook gets the heel.

And I get a healthy slice.

Oh, and there's some roasted potatoes and onions and peppers, too.

Pretty doggoned good!

AND THEN . . .

Finally . . .

A cell came over the mountain just south and moved directly over us at mid-morning today, dropping heavy and cooling rain for perhaps 10 minutes.  It was glorious.

PROMISES, PROMISES

We had clouds and lightning and wind and the temperature dropped to near 80 degrees and we got a few drops of rain.  But that was all.  Watching the weather radar, the storm moved in mightily from the east, then split and went south of us by a few blocks or miles or whatever.  But here was our promise before all that.

Pretty.  But like a flirtatious but fickle young lovely, ultimately disappointing.