Lots of outside work to do this weekend now that the heat has broken. Scraping old paint off the patio frame in preparation for painting, and a final cleaning of the pool filter prior to resetting the vacuum to run winter hours. In celebration of all that hard work, my lovely wife brought me a Sam Octoberfest in a chilled glass, and I took one final swim in the 66-degree water. It was a bracer, I’ll tell you that!

It’s been interesting checking out my previous posts to see how the pool season went this year. Christened the pool back on April 17 when the water was a pleasantly refreshing 72 degrees. On July 22, the water temperature hit 95, as high as it got this year (our all-time record high – at least what we know – was 98 degrees two years ago), and it toggled back and forth between 94 and 95 for two weeks until August 5, when it finally started downward ever-so-slowly. I didn’t get to use the pool as much this year as in the past because of my surgery and not wanting to disturb the surgical strips from my operation, but there were still some nice swims during the monsoon season.

That doesn’t mean the pool won’t be used anymore – even when it drops in the fifties I still like to sit by the pool and swish my feet around in the water, especially when there’s a bright moon out. I love to see the green and white reflections in the swirling water. Next April, it will be time to drain the pool and start anew the preparations for another Arizona summer. I wonder what life will be like then? Hopefully by that time we’ll have paid off all the house renovations that took place this year, and we can start preparing for the next round – the replacement of all the cheap windows the house was built with, with new energy-efficient ones.

But that’s a long time away, time to focus on paying the bills for this year and enjoying te holidays and another Arizona winter.