Monthly Archives: March 2015
Convenience Can Be Expensive . . .
There’s joy in the Oilpatch tonight. For the first time in months, the rig count actually went up this week. By ONE whole rig. But, hey, it’s something.
A little after 12 I went down to register and pay at the Countyside RV Park office. The ‘resort fee’ TT members pay at Encore parks has gone up from $3 to $4 this year, but still not bad at all, especially since it doesn’t count against our 50 free TT days.
Finishing up at the office, I drove up to the Wal-Mart SuperCenter on Apache Trail to pick up some antifreeze for the truck. My radiator has a small leak that I’m pretty sure I can fix, but it’s toward the bottom of my list since all I have to do is add a little coolant every couple of weeks or so.
I’ve normally just grabbed a jug of the pre-mixed 50-50 type, which goes for about $10.50 a jug. But a jug of the old-fashion concentrate type caught my eye, and then the price difference caught my eye too.
As I said, a gallon of 50-50 costs $10.50, but a gallon of full strength, i.e. twice as much, costs $12.50, only $2 more. Convenience isn’t cheap.
While I was there, I checked out their sewing department, and found just what I need for my solar screen project. It’s a black crochet thread, the perfect size for what I need.
About 4:30 we picked up Nick and Terry at the Santa Fe RV Park and made the 20 minute journey over to the Famous Dave’s BBQ at SanTan Village, just at the other end of the block from the Grimaldi’s Pizzeria where Jan and I had dinner last night.
Everyone walked out of there happy and stuffed with BBQ, and enough left over to take home. Always good.
If tomorrow morning is like this morning, i.e. not much wind, I plan on putting a first coat of gray paint on the rig bumper that my son Chris repaired a month or so ago. Apache Junction is pretty much the first place we’ve been that hasn’t been windy.
We’ll see how it goes.
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Thought for the Day:
“No cause is truly lost as long as there is one fool left to fight for it.” – Darby Calvin & Jack Sparrow
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Fooled Us Again . . .
We pulled out of the Santa Fe RV Park a little after noon, heading 4.4 miles away to the Countryside RV Park where we’ll be for the next two weeks. And at this point I’m not sure if I really did anything to make a difference, but I had no problem with the rig’s air compressor/airbags this morning.
But unfortunately, I did TWO things differently, not just one. First, right after I cranked up, went to high idle, and brought the levelers up, I cycled the Manual Air Dump switch 3 or 4 times to see if that would make any difference, and second, I walked over to talk to the park manager for a couple of minutes, and over to Nick and Terry’s to let them know that we were leaving. When I came back to the rig about 10 minutes later, we were up on the airbags and ready to roll.
So I don’t know what made the difference. I’m pretty sure that I had let it idle this long before, so I don’t know. Maybe it was cycling the dump switch. I guess I’ll find out in two weeks when we head up to Verde Valley.
Jan and I headed out about 3pm on our way over to SanTan Village, and the Grimaldi’s Pizzeria there. Along the way though, we stopped off at a Michael’s so I could picked up some heavy-duty sewing needles to use on my magnetic windshield shade project. I was hoping to also find some heavy black thread to go along with my new needles, but they don’t really carry sewing stuff, just larger yarns for knitting. So I’ll have to find a JoAnn’s or a Hancock’s to pick some up.
We thought we had it scheduled out. Every Grimaldi’s we’ve ever eaten at restokes their coal-fired ovens from 3 to 4pm, so by getting there about 4:15, we should have been all set, with no delay. But maybe because Arizona isn’t on Daylight Savings Time, or something else, the Grimaldi’s at SanTan restokes between 4 and 5. Bummer. Fooled again.
But we weren’t in any hurry, so we got our salad, and just sat and talked, and people-watched, one of our favorite pastimes
Then, a few minutes after 5, our pizza, a large with Pepperoni, Mushrooms, Meatballs, Italian Sausage, and extra Mozzarella. showed up at our table and was just as delicious as always.
Since we brought home some of the salad, and half the pizza, we decided we had room for dessert, so we split a piece of their really delicious Bailey’s Irish Crème, Oreo Crust Cheesecake. Well worth the splurge, believe me.
The other day after Jan and I had dinner with Nick, Terry, and Nick’s cousin Bev at Dry River Co. in Tucson, I wondered if the fact that Grimaldi’s pizza was always crispier than others was due to their coal-fired ovens. And according to their menu, the coal-fired ones run hotter than either, gas, electric, or wood-fired ones. So now we know.
And it looks like Jan and I will be right back at SanTan Village tomorrow evening, along with Nick and Terry, to have dinner at a group favorite, Famous Dave’s BBQ. Really looking forward to it.
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Thought for the Day:
“It’s ironic that alcohol containers have a warning against women drinking while pregnant since that’s HOW many of them got pregnant in the first place.”
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