Our RV Adventures

or Lost in Translation.

Well, that didn’t go as planned.

Jan was up about 8 this morning, to get ready for our trip down to Katy to our daughter Brandi’s for a family get-together for our son Chris’ birthday. I was going to get up about 8:30, and we were going to leave about 9:30, picking up Rudy’s BBQ for everyone along the way. Jan was also bringing a big pan of her Sopapilla Cheesecake that everyone was looking forward to.

But getting up, Jan found several phone calls waiting for her, from both Chris and Brandi. Somehow we all got our wires crossed, and although Jan and I were sure we heard Saturday, apparently everyone else knew it was Sunday.

Now I think we would have noticed if it was going to be Sunday, tomorrow, because that’s the day we move back to the Colorado River Thousand Trails in Columbus. So, a quick change of plans.

First things first, I went back to bed. Nice!

So now, we’ll change our schedule for tomorrow’s trip. We’ll skip our usual Cracker Barrel breakfast and pull out of the site about 8:30. After hooking up, this should put us out on I-45 south about 8:45. Then it’s a stop for diesel at the Flying J along the way, right before we get on the Tollway.

Now, sometimes we’ve been in and out there in 15 minutes, and once it was over 45 minutes, so I’m allowing extra time for that. But we’ll make up most or all of that because we won’t have to make the Rudy’s BBQ stop.

And that was because this afternoon we decided to drive down to the Rudy’s in the Woodland’s area and pick our BBQ today. And even better, it gave us a good excuse to have dinner at the Torchy’s Tacos in the same area. A Two’fer!

I guess you could call Torchy’s a ‘gourmet’ taco place. I mean, with ahi tuna tacos, grilled salmon tacos, or ones with Jamaican Jerked Chicken, Fried Avocados, or Jalapeno Sausage, it’s hard to call them anything else.

We started out with the Green Chile Queso & Chips.

This time Jan tried the Baja Shrimp, as well as her usual Brushfire, which is the Jerked Chicken.

Me, I stayed in my usual tasty rut, with the Jalapeno Sausage and the Green Chile Shredded Pork.

Jan liked her Baja Shrimp, but will probably go back to her Trailer Park taco, which has Fried Chicken and Green Chiles, with cheese and pico de gallo.

After a delicious meal, we drove on down the Interstate to the Rudy’s for our BBQ. They were pretty busy, so it took about me about 15 minutes to pick up 1-1/2 pounds of moist brisket and 1-1/2 pounds of lean (or dry and chewy as I call it). This is Jan’s favorite.

I also got a couple of quarts of the Creamed Corn. Jan doesn’t really like corn, but she loves the way Rudy’s does it. A loaf of bread and a lot of Rudy’s Sauce, and we were on our way back north.

Our final stop was at the Conroe Sam’s Club for a case of Joint Juice for Jan’s knees and joints. We had checked at Wal-mart and several other places, and everyone was out of it. But we’ve never not found it at Sam’s. Until today.

But before I could look for the Joint Juice, I needed to renew my Sam’s card. Now normally I would do this at the register, but this time I wanted to downgrade my Plus card to a regular card, saving $30 over the Plus card’s $99.

We had originally upgraded to the Plus a few years ago because it offered additional prescription discounts. But then Sam’s stopped honoring Wal-Mart’s $4 – $10 prescription list, so it ceased making a difference.

The line at the Customer Service was long enough that a manager came over help out. And luckily for me, he was a little rusty on the computer. He was able to give me my new, downgraded card, but he couldn’t get the system to charge me the $69 for it.

So finally, in frustration, he handed my new card and said, “Here! It’s free this year.”

Nice!

But I didn’t get to used my shiny new card for Joint Juice, because they didn’t have any either. And the pharmacist said she hadn’t seen it in a while. So now we’ll have to look elsewhere.

Jan has been taking Joint Juice for years, even before we started RV’ing. And she knows from experience that if she goes off it, within 3 or 4 weeks, she’ll start having a lot of knee pain. So when we got home I went online to see what I could find.

Amazon had it for $34 for a case of 30, with free Prime Two Day Shipping, but that’s about $10 more than Sam’s price. So I did a generic Google search and found Jet.com

I’m sure you’ve seen the TV commercials with people’s exploding heads and purple smoke. That’s Jet.com. And they have great prices, and great service.

The case of Joint Juice that Sam’s sells for $25, and Amazon sells for $34, Jet.com sells it for $18.26. And that’s with Free Two Day Shipping. In addition, I got another $0.26 cents off because I waived Free Return, and then another 1.5% off because I used a debit card, rather than a credit card. Nice and Nicer!

I’ll probably be ordering more stuff from Jet.com at these prices.

Thought for the Day:

When you continuously jumps to conclusions, you inevitably come to a cliff.

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I spent most of the afternoon working on client webstuff, trying to set up an online MySQL database and link it to a webpage so the customers can search for their orders and their status.

But since the website is done in Godaddy’s Website Builder, which does makes some things much easier, but restricts my access to the bare code, I’m having a problem setting up the programming I need. But I’ll get it figured out eventually.

Later in the afternoon, while I was let some ideas percolate, I decided to take a little time and check out the Winegard Carryout Satellite Dome that I found by a park dumpster last Sunday. You can check it out here: Kitty Road Trip

The dome looked in good shape, and since whoever left it at the dumpster didn’t through it actually throw it away, I was hoping it was in working order. But there was no power cord with it. So since Jan was reading, and we weren’t recording anything, I took the power cord off my dome and plugged it into the new one. And I heard it immediately start running.

So I took it over to where my dome was sitting, and replaced it with the found one, and plugged in the signal cables. And by the time I got back inside I had video on the screen. I decided to just leave it in place, so I stowed the old away in the truck. That way I can double check that there wasn’t a long-term problem with the new one.

So my dumpster-diving pays off again. And I have no idea why someone would throw away a perfectly good satellite dome. But I still need a power cord for it. Checking online, I found prices ranging from $30 to $52, for the same cord. But then I remembered something I think I might still have tucked away

Three years ago or so, the power cord on my dome broke off at the dome end of the plug. So I called Winegard and they sent me another one for free. But I’m pretty sure I saved the old one. Of course I would need to replace the plug on the cord, but since it’s some kind of proprietary connector, I’ll just replace both ends with a generic one.

Miss Karma is pretty much back to her old self and her old ways, and seems to have recovered fine from her operation.

A little before 5pm Jan and I drove into Conroe for dinner and Wal-Mart. Our dinner choice was another visit to the Asian BBQ & Grill, Conroe’s version of Little V Vietnamese Bistro down in Katy. Not quite as good, but very close. And a lot nearer than Katy. And actually cheaper too. By about half. Nice.

Jan had her usual Grilled Lemon Grass Chicken Bowl with Vermicelli, while I went with the Grilled Pork and Shrimp Bowl with Vermicelli

After our usual really good meal, Jan and I went across I-45 to pick up some things at Wal-Mart, and then we headed home for the night.

Tomorrow we’ll head out about 9:30 to travel down to Brandi’s in Katy for Chris’ family birthday celebration.

Thought for the Day:

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