This report covers Friday, June 9, 2000, Day 5 of our Las Vegas/Henderson trip.
More run-of-the-mill stuff, so this should be a quick read for anyone interested, and a VERY quick read for anyone else.
We started this day by visiting the Anthem Center to obtain our Sun City Anthem Community Association membership cards. Our photos were taken and in just a few minutes we had our membership cards.
Back to the house for a 10:30 appointment with a carpenter and plumber, who did the cutout on our counter top and installed the missing utility-room sink.
The Sprint technicians don't carry phone books with them when they do installations, and the area Sprint offices no longer stock phone books that can be picked up on a walk-in basis. We were told that the only way to get them is to call a certain phone number and then wait about 10 days for delivery; this is not a good procedure for us since we only have another week in which to do a lot of research and make phone calls before heading back east.
Through some inquiries, I learned that a private company called ADA, on Arville just down the street from The Orleans, warehouses and distributes the phone books. I called them, and they were happy to give us a couple of sets of books if we drove over to pick them up. We went over there, and the books were all bagged and waiting. We then stopped for lunch at my favorite burger joint, the In-N-Out at Industrial and Tropicana, and went back to the house to await the next service call.
Cox Cable arrived in early afternoon to get us hooked up. The visit took some time because the installers discovered that the wiring for cable had not been fully taken out to the street as expected. But everything went fairly smoothly, and before long we were back in touch with the world via expanded basic cable. Our plans are to stop service when we leave for our "other" home, then resume it upon return, to be followed by installation of DirecTV in the fall.
My Canadian readers, and perhaps a few others, may be familiar with the gentleman I am going to mention next. His name is Conrad Black. While not well known in this country, the British citizen is a media magnate along the lines of Rupert Murdoch, and reportedly controls the world's third-largest media empire. The conservative Mr. Black has lately been going about the business of trying to compete with Canadian national newspaper stalwarts such as the Toronto Globe & Mail by publishing a national newspaper of his own. And he has a lawsuit going against Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien, whom he claims intervened to try to prevent Black's appointment to the British House of Lords.
When we ate lunch at Rubio's Baja Grill a day earlier, we struck up a conversation with a Sun City Anthem resident whose husband is Conrad Black's chief financial officer. She invited us over to see her landscaping and the home office the couple had just installed, so we called ahead and then drove a few minutes to see their home. It is quite magnificent, with a spectacular site overlooking the golf course. Just a wee bit more than we could afford.
After a phone conversation with a consultant from Eagle Sentry Systems to discuss cabinet specs for our future home-theater installation, we resumed our never-ending shopping excursion. We picked up a lovely living-room area rug we had ordered from Home Depot, had a quick supper at Kenny Rogers' Roasters, then went over to the La-Z-Boy Showcase store on Sunset to order a guest-bedroom sofa bed that Roz has spotted back in April. Finally, after another day of taking care of business, we returned home (I love that word).
As darkness settled over the Valley, we stood outside in our little circle and met more of the neighbors. The operative word at this time is "friendliness." In these communities, no matter where you go, everyone has a smile and a big hello for almost everyone they meet. Strangers start conversations as if they were longtime friends, and within minutes they ARE friends.
And as Roz and I went back inside and settled in for the evening, we said a little prayer of thanks that the neighbors on both immediate sides of us are exactly what we are not: home handymen who can build, repair and advise on almost anything structural and mechanical. Thank God for these small blessings!!
And so ended Day 5.
Click here to see photos (no new ones).
http://albums.photopoint.com/j/AlbumIndex?u=657150&a=6635718
--Best wishes from Roz and David in Las Vegas/Henderson
