Our RV Adventures

A little before 10am Jan and I headed out to Clear Lake for the day. After an hour and 15 minute trip, our first stop was the Twin Peaks in Webster for lunch. Since we planned to have dinner with our son Chris and his family, we thought we’d just have soup. In my case it was a bowl of their delicious Venison Chili, and Jan is hooked on their Creamy Tomato Soup.

But since we hadn’t had coffee or muffins this morning, we also added a side salad, which for a simple $2.29 side salad, turned out to be really good, and really big. With croutons, grated cheese, and 5 or 6 kinds of lettuce and cabbage, it was a meal by itself. If we had known how big it was going to be, we would have gotten cups of soups, rather than bowls.

Leaving lunch, we drove over to the SuperCuts so Jan could get her haircut. While she was there, I went next door to the auto parts store from some fuses. Then when she was finished we headed over to our storeroom to meet our son Chris to try and finish up cleaning it out. But it quickly became evident that the on-and-off heavy rains were going complicate things, to the point that we weren’t going to be able to finish up today. With the rain we weren’t going to be able to take loads of stuff to Goodwill. So it looks like we’ll have the storeroom for another month.

Finishing up with what we could do today, we headed over to the Fry’s Electronics and then on to EPO, another local electronics place, before dropping off a letter at the PO.

Then it was on to Chris’ to spend some time before we went out to supper. Linda said she couldn’t print from her desktop computer to the Samsung Laser Printer, so I took a look at the problem.

Tried printing a test page from the printer driver itself with no luck, so deleted and reinstalled the printer driver, again with no luck. Even did it twice to be sure.

Finally deleted the driver once again, then went into the registry and deleted everything left that related to Samsung. Next I went to the Samsung website and let their Web-based installer install the latest drivers. And this fixed the problem.

This problem fixed, we headed over to Barcenas Mexican Restaurant about 5:30 for a great dinner with Chris and Linda. Unfortunately Piper was out with friends.

Finally got on the road home a little before 7pm, getting back to the rig a little after 8pm. Another really nice day, if not as productive as we’d hoped.

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Thought for the Day:

Beware the pull on your heart-strings — it’s often the purse-strings that are actually being reached for. — Barbara Mikkelson

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Christmas Recap:

We were up Christmas morning about 7am. Luckily for us Landon’s not really an early riser. Unlike Chris and Brandi who were up at 5am, or even earlier.

Brandi did such a great job decorating the tree, I had to get a closeup.

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Landon was in charge of distributing the gifts to everyone.

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And here’s Landon’s big gift, a Ninja Turtles bike. His first bike, too.

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Chris and Linda and Nigel showed about 10 am to spend the rest of the day. Chris and Landon spent a lot of time checking out some of the online games.

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Landon also got a Mousetrap game and he and Piper had a lot of fun playing with it.

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And here’s Piper posing with her puppy, Nigel. Nigel is a Syorkie, a Shi Zhu/Yorkie cross, and a real cutie.

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Later in the morning, the tree was reset with the presents for all the family and friends coming over for the big party in the afternoon.

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We had about 30 people there, with a lot of great appetizers and snacks for everyone.

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Later in the evening they put out a Taco Bar, with ground beef, grilled chicken, salmon, shrimp, pulled pork, and all the fixing’s All really, really good.

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Then it was time for the second Christmas for all the kids.

Everyone had a great time getting together and exchanging gifts. And as usual everyone pitched in to help clean up, so Brandi wasn’t left with a messy house.

Jan and I hung until after 10pm, so we didn’t get home until almost midnight, a long but very fun day.

Today Jan and I headed out about 3:15 for lupper and some shopping. We were both hungry for a good burger, so we ended up at the nearby Culver’s. Jan got her usual cheddar mushroom burger, while I got the Double Pub Burger, and we both got a bowl of their delicious chili. But with a difference this time.

One of my Christmas gifts from Lowell and Brandi was some things from iBurn, a local store that specializes in ‘hot stuff’. And one of the items was this.

Here’s how it’s described on their website:

Tim’s 10 Pepper Flakes – This is pepper flakes on steroids containing; 3 variety of Bhut Jolokia (Ghost Pepper), 3 variety of 7-Pot, Moruga Scorpion, Fatali, Habanero and Scotch Bonnet. This stuff rocks and we know you will love it if you are missing that kick from your crushed pepper.

We both put some in our chili. I used about 4 sprinkles, which gave me about 5 or 6 particles of the peppers. Jan had a couple of sprinkles with about 2 or 3 particles making it into her chili.

Both of us agreed that based on a heat to particle ratio, this is the hottest stuff we’ve found so far. Tim’s 10 Pepper Flakes is now my ‘goto’ hot stuff. And with the size of the bottle vs. how much I’ll use each time, this is a lifetime supply. Thanks, Lowell.

Leaving Culvers, we drove across the road to brave Wal-Mart on the day after Christmas. But it really wasn’t that bad, with only the checkout taking a little longer than normal.

Next up was the Lowe’s right next door. I found that the stainless steel hose that allows us to pull out the faucet handle on our kitchen faucet and use it as a spray nozzle, had started to leak so I picked up new one.

Our last stop was at the Kroger’s across the Interstate to get gas for the truck. And I got it for 99 cents a gallon. Yep, 99 cents.

We recently bought a lot of Christmas gift cards from Kroger’s and got 4X the fuel points. This means that for the next 350 gallons or so, we get a $1 off each gallon we buy. And that goes for diesel too. Unfortunately you can only get 35 gallons at a time like this.

Tomorrow we head down to the Clear Lake area to try and finish up cleaning out our storeroom before the end of the year, then have dinner with Chris, Linda, and Piper tomorrow night.

Thought for the Day:

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