Our RV Adventures

Well, it looks like Jan inherited my foot problems from last week after my foot got better. She woke up this morning with a very painful left heel that made it hard to walk. She also used words I didn’t know she knew. If we had a Swear Word Jar she would have been down all her bingo money and then some.

It seemed to improve somewhat during the day after she took a bunch of Advil and used our Dr. Scholl’s Foot Bath, which usually helps me, too.

Since the left heel was hotter than the right one, it’s probably gout, which Jan gets occasionally, but certainly a lot less than I do. Hopefully, it won’t last too long.

Any hope of getting more things done around the rig was finished off by the heavy rains and wind we had almost all day. But I did manage a trip down to Kemah Hardware and found the stainless steel hardware I need to mount my new wheel well flanges.

But it will have to wait until tomorrow.

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That’s Father Greg to you…

Later in the day, Jan was watching Tori & Dean – Home Sweet Hollywood, where Tori Spelling was going to perform a wedding, and to be able to officiate, she got her ordination online. This sounded interesting so I thought I’d check it out.

Five minutes later I was an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church and able to perform legal weddings.

Who knew.

Now I guess all I need to do is to order my Ministry in a Box kit, and I’ll be ready to go.

Since this church is also a Monastery, maybe I’m now a Monk too. I’ll have to check that out.

Hope I don’t have to take a vow of silence, though Jan might think it’s a good idea.

We were going to meet Brandi, Lowell, and Landon at Pappasito’s Cantina at 5:45 so Jan started getting ready about 4:30. Things were going all right until Jan tried to put her shoes on. She quickly found that she could not wear any of her shoes, even her Crocs with no heel strap.

So after Jan decided she wasn’t going to go barefoot, and after she made a few more contributions to the Swear Work Jar, I had to call Brandi and tell her we weren’t going to be able to make it.

Maybe we’ll be able to try again tomorrow.

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Thought for the Day: Murphy’s Other Laws

1. Everyone has a photographic memory. Some don’t have film.

2. He who laughs last, thinks slowest.

3. A day without sunshine is like, well, night.

4. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.

5. Back up my hard drive? How do I put it in reverse?

6. I just got lost in thought. It was unfamiliar territory.

7. When the chips are down, the buffalo is empty.

8. Seen it all, done it all. Can’t remember most of it.

9. Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don’t.

10. I feel like I’m parallel parked in a diagonal universe.

11. He’s not dead, he’s electroencephalographically challenged.

12. She’s always late, in fact, her ancestors arrived on the Juneflower.

13. You have the right to be silent. Anything you say will be misquoted and used against you.

14. I wonder how much deeper the ocean would be without sea sponges.

15. Honk if you love peace and quiet.

16. Pardon my driving, I’m reloading.

17. Despite the cost of living, have you noticed how it remains so popular?

18. Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.

19. It is hard to understand how a cemetery can raise its burial costs and blame it on the higher cost of living.

20. Just remember…if the world didn’t suck, we’d all fall off.

21. The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there’s a 90% probability you’ll get it wrong.

22. It is said that if you line up all the cars in the world end to end, someone would be stupid enough to try and pass them.

23. You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?

24. The latest survey shows that 3 out of 4 people make up 75% of the world population.

25. If the shoe fits, get another one just like it.

26. The things that come to those that wait may be the things left by those who got there first.

27. Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will sit in the boat all day drinking beer.

28. Flashlight: A case for holding dead batteries.

29. The shinbone is a device for finding furniture.

30. A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.

31. It was recently discovered that research causes cancer in rats.

32. Everybody lies, but it doesn’t matter since nobody listens.

33. I wished the buck stopped here, as I could use a few.

34. I started out with nothing, and still have most of it.

35. When you go to court, you are putting yourself in the hands of 12 people that weren’t smart enough to get out of jury duty.

36. Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.

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Since we’re just a little over month before we plan to leave here, it’s time to start going thru my to-do list for the RV.

One of the things I started today was removing the three damage wheel well flanges and replacing them with new ones, or at least new to me.

Here’s what one of the damaged ones looked like. Note the broken off white section to the right of the tire.

The flanges are held on by 9 steel rivets, and because they’re steel they’re pretty tough to drill out. In fact, I was only able to do two of them today because I ran both batteries down on my drill. I’ll have to finish the 3rd one tomorrow after I recharge.

At some point things are loose enough that I can just break off the flanges by hand.

The flanges that I’m installing came off this burnt-out American Eagle that we found at last November at Colaw RV Salvage in Carthage, MO. If I had bought these new from Fleetwood, they would have cost me over $500 each. This was because they would have had to pull the mold out of storage and make them from scratch.

But I got these for $100 each, much, much better. Of course they didn’t match our coach, so I knew I would have to get them repainted.

But that didn’t happen until this past August in Elkhart, IN when I had them painted by Michele Henry of Phoenix Commercial Paint when she did the damaged cargo bay doors. Michele did a great job on the doors and the flanges. If you want any paint work done on your coach, she’s the one to see.

I’ll bring the new ones over from the storeroom tomorrow, and hopefully, by then I will have found the hardware I need to remount them. I want to use stainless steel bolts and not rivets this time.

Jan said when she saw this burnt hulk that looked so much like our rig, it made her knees go weak. Based on the burn pattern and the hotspot, it looks like this started as a refrigerator fire. That’s one reason that I bought a refrigerator compartment fire extinguisher from Mac McCoy, the Fire Guy, as soon as I could.

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Nick Russell called a little after 2pm to talk about whether he should upgrade his 3 year old computer from Windows XP to Windows 7. I told him with a computer that old it’s usually better to just get a new one.

The old one is more and more likely to have something fail, and you’re going to get a faster, better machine under warranty. It normally just makes sense.

We left the rig a little about 5pm to meet Bob and Maria at Monterey’s Little Mexico before Jan and Maria headed out to play bingo. I can’t get enough of their Chicken Tortilla Soup. It’s great and I really miss it when we’re on the road.

After I left the restaurant, Bob and I went by Lowe’s before I dropped him off at his house. I was looking for some screws to mount the wheel well flanges, but they didn’t have what I needed.

Jan is really doing well at bingo and I think she’s getting hooked. She won a $100 a few weeks ago, and then last week she won $750.

But tonight she only won $125. Bummer!

No, not really.  

She’s worked her way up to playing 24 cards at a time. You can get cards in sheets of 9 or 12. She started out playing two 9’s, then a 12 and a 9, and then two 12’s. I told her she should add another 9, but she’s afraid she’ll lose track of the numbers and miss one.

Nick called again a little before midnight to say he was having trouble accessing my blog, although his wife Terry could see it just fine on her computer.

I told him I wasn’t having a problem here, and that I hadn’t had anybody else say they were having a problem either.

If anyone else is having a problem, please let me know.

Otherwise I’ll just have to believe the problem is really just with Nick, and not the blog.

More tomorrow…

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Thought for the Day:

The real reason you’re so jealous is that the voices talk only to me.

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