Almost Home . . .
but not quite.
I left the rig about 1pm this afternoon, expecting a smooth, easy trip down to the Clear Lake area from Conroe. It was after all, Saturday. But of course, it was after all, Houston.
There were two bad accidents on I-45N coming out of downtown Houston, and of course, everyone on my southbound side had to slow down and gawk. Then south of downtown, my Garmin GPS’ Traffic Alert system warned me of a 45 minute delay on the 3.5 mile stretch between Sam Houston Toll Way and FM 2351. But luckily I was able to detour off and bypass the problem.
As soon as I got to Chris’, Jan and I headed out for a couple of errands, first to the storeroom to go through some Christmas stuff for the rig. Jan’s decided to do a live tree in the rig this year, using a small Norfolk Pine, so she wanted to dig out her moose Christmas ornament collection. She actually has enough moose ornaments to decorate the 9 1/2 foot tree we had in the S&B. Luckily that won’t fit in the rig.
Chris has done a great job cleaning out the storeroom, so hopefully we can get rid of it by the end of the year.
Our next stop was to drop off some pants to be hemmed, but it turned out they closed at 3pm, so we’ll try again another time.
Our last stop was to check out the new Fresh Market that recently opened across from Baybrook Mall. It looks to be a combination of a Whole Foods and a regular Grocery Store, pretty nice with a lot of fresh-made salads and stuff. We’ll check it out further when we have more time, but now we needed a Starbuck’s fix. So we headed across the parking lot to the nearby one. And due to an order screw-up, we both have a new favorite Starbuck’s favor. But it looks to be short-lived.
I ordered my usual Cinnamon Dolce Latte, but due to the cashier’s bad handwriting on the side of the cup, the C dl looked like C pl to the barista, not the first time this has happened, she said. So what I got was a Chestnut Praline Latte, one of their Christmas Special Flavors. The barista quickly realized her mistake and gave me my Cinnamon Dolce, and I got to keep the Chestnut Praline too. And Jan and I both thought it was delicious. At least for as long as the Christmas season lasts.
About 5:45 we met our friends Bob and Maria at King Food for dinner. We’ve known them since mid-80’s when we met in a computer store, so it’s always good to get back together when we’re in town. And Bob had another batch of his fresh-roasted Peruvian coffee for us. Always great.
I mentioned that Jan was dog sitting here for one of Chris and Linda’s dogs, PJ
and the two guest dogs, Walker
and Coco.
Jan said they’ve all been pretty good, with no real problems. But apparently Walker’s a chewer, so he and PJ go outside when we leave for a while.
Tomorrow afternoon we’ll head back to the rig by way of Brandi and Lowell’s. Hopefully our South Dakota tag stickers will be there, especially since my current ones expire tomorrow. Here’s hoping.
Wrapping up, I just realized that tonight will be the first time I’ve spent the night in this house since we moved out January 1st, 2007. We moved into an apartment down the street so we could remodel the house prior to selling it as part of our journey toward full-timing that began January 6th, 2008. But plans changed along the way, and we ended up keeping the place with Brandi moving in first, and then Chris, Linda and Piper last year.
Both of them made nice improvements along the way, and the house looks great.
As I was typing this, I realized that I keep calling this place our house, and not our home, even though it was our home for 30 years. But it’s not our home any longer.
Our rig is our home, and will be for the foreseeable future. We just enjoy the vagabond lifestyle too much to give it up.
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Thought for the Day:
Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos.
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