Our RV Adventures

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Ah, the mischievousness of Texas winter weather.

Yesterday it was 82° with a low last night of 65. Today was a high of 64° with a low forecast for tonight of 46.

It is nice to have winter back, though.

Thought first I’d finish up yesterday’s hit or miss dinner plans in San Antonio. Since we ate at Magic Time Machine last time we were there, the obvious choice was our other favorite, La Fonda on Main. But we had said we would get together there with our friend’s Jim and Peri Dean next time. Turns out they wouldn’t have been able to get together with us where ever we went because they were at an RV rally over in Sealy.

We both decided steak sounded good, but none, neither Saltgrass, Outback, nor Texas Roadhouse, were close enough to be attractive. Finally I said, “Magic Time Machine” and got a resounding, “YES” from Jan. And then a “How far is it?”

“5 minutes!”

And off we went.

Checking in at the desk, we ask if Lady GaGa was working and said we wanted her. Even though it was 8:30 and they supposedly closed at 9, we still had to wait 15 minutes to get seated, along with a number of other groups.

Lady GaGa remembered us which was nice since it had been almost a month since we were there before.

Lady was a lot of fun, and we enjoyed watching her perform for the kids at the other tables.

And the food was as delicious as always.

My Ribeye was cooked perfectly, Medium-Rare, with char around the edges.

Along with the soup and salad from the ‘Salad Car,

a 1952 MG TD Roadster, and of course, the hot fresh bread, it’s a $25 meal that’s hard to match. And since there’s enough food to eat half and take half home, it’s actually a $12 meal. Neat!

One thing that’s always impressed me about MTM is the fact that it DOES have such good food. The reason I say this is that MTM is essentially an entertainment venue, especially for the kids, not just a restaurant. And those kind of places don’t have a reputation for good food. Think Chuck E. Cheese.

The only exceptions I can really think of are Tilman Fertitta’s Rainforest Café and Aquarium restaurants. But he insists on top quality in all his locations, and is known for showing up unannounced at locations all over the country to check things out.

I mentioned in last night’s blog that I had finally gotten a chance to check out Sam’s Club’s new Scan & Go app. First up you link your Sam’s Club card number and the credit card(s) you want to use. You can link more than one credit card.

In my case it already knew my Sam’s Club card number from my email address

Then as you shop the store, you use the app to scan the bar code of each item. The app identifies the item and the price, and puts it in your app shopping cart, giving you a running total as it goes.

When you’re done shopping, you just hit the Check Out button. The app gives you the Total with tax, and then you hit the Pay Now button. If you have more than one credit card on the account, it asks which one you want to use. Then a bar code shows up on your phone.

As you’re going out the door, you show your phone to the checkout person there. She scans your bar code and then a receipt shows up on your phone. All fine and dandy.

Except . . . there’s always an Except.

Except the bar code scanner function doesn’t work with this app on my phone. The square box that shows your phone’s camera view that you center on the bar code just stays black. So every item that I buy I have to manually type in the bar code. But even with this, it’s still better than standing in line, taking every thing out of your basket, and then putting it all back in again.

Now my camera works fine by itself, and on other apps like the QR Code Reader. But strangely enough, the one other app it doesn’t work on, at least now, is the scanner on the Wal-Mart app that you use to scan your receipts for the Savings Catcher Rebate Program.

The Wal-Mart app used to work, and then it quit for awhile, and then it came back. And then it died, never to return. I always thought maybe that this was due to getting a new WM app update. But with Sam’s app doing the same thing, I’m rethinking that.

Googling the problem shows I’m not alone on this. But I’ve got some ideas and I’ll get back to you on it.

The Good is that gas prices are up and things seem to be booming in the Oil ‘Bidness’. The Bad is that gas prices are up and it hurts more to fill the tank in the truck.

Yesterday morning coming home from the gate at 5 am, the gas price at Wal-Mart was $1.99. Then when we stopped to fill up there on our way to San Antonio about 1:30 pm, the price was $2.05. Then this afternoon it had jumped to $2.09. Ouch.

And back in November it got down as low as $1.74. That’s 35 cents a gallon in just a couple of months. Ouch, again.

Finishing up, one thing I forgot to mention yesterday, was that as we were coming out of the Rogue One movie last night, Jan called our son Chris to tell him how much we had enjoyed it.

And in one of those strange coincidences that’s when he told us that Debbie Reynolds had died.

hhhhhhhh

Well that didn’t last long.

At 7am this morning, about an hour after I got to sleep, Todd texted me that I was off my old gate tonight and then start another new gate tomorrow night. And by new I mean one I’ve never been to before, or even heard of, actually.

I was happy about this since the Internet is so crappy here. But disappointed for two reasons. One, I was hoping this was going to be somewhat permanent gate, and Two, because thinking this was a somewhat permanent gate, I left my wall clock and floor heater there, since I thought I would be back there tonight.

As I was trying to get back to sleep, it dawned on me that this might be a good time to make a quickie trip into San Antonio to see the new Star Wars movie and also have dinner. And when I called out to Jan to tell her, she was all giddy.

But when I got up about 1pm and started trying to make everything work, the 25 mile side trip to pick up my clock and heater, the Sam’s Club/ Wal-Mart shopping, the movie, and then dinner, it ddin’t fit. So it looked like we have to try to make it all work on the fly.

And the first fly showed up as soon as we left my old gate after picking up my stuff. According my GPS, we would arrive at the movie 15 minutes after it started. OOPS!

So after running through plans B – K, I flipped the whole schedule upside down. We’d shop first, then movie, then eat.

I hope.

And because of all this rapid rescheduling, and not knowing when we were going to eat, and where, even, we didn’t call our friends, Jim and Peri Dean to meet us like we had hoped to. Sorry guys, we’ll catch you next time.

The other problem with the rescheduling on the movie was that we were no longer seeing the 3D version, just the standard one. But not really a problem.

But because we were pushing dinner back to the 8:30 to 9:00 pm time frame after the movie, Jan was going need to stop and get something to eat. Otherwise her blood sugar goes ‘wonky’ and she gets, well, let’s just call it ‘cranky’.

Yeah, let’s go with that.

And where better to relieve possible crankiness, but the Whataburger in Floresville, right on the way. So that we didn’t fill up, we just each got our usual Double Whataburger Jr., but nothing else. No fries, no drink.

With that problem out of the way, it was on to our Sam’s/Wal-Mart stop. I finally got a chance to check out the new San’s Club Scan & Go app on my phone. It both worked, and didn’t work, but I’ll follow up on this tomorrow.

Then it was on to the 5:40 showing of Rogue One – A Star Wars Story.

All I can say if you liked/loved the original 1977 Star Wars, you will LOVE this movie.

Rogue One is prequel to the very first one, and actually ends just minutes before the action began in the first movie. You could just bump the two films together and you’d think you were watching one lone movie.

I don’t want to give anything away, but the movie answers two main questions, as well as a number of others.

Did you ever wonder how Princess Leia got the Deathstar  plans than she gave to R2D2 to get to Obi-Wan?

Did you ever wonder why this planet-size space station could be taken out by a single missile down a ventilation shaft?

This is the first movie in a long time that had people applauding loudly at the end. The last one I remember was Independence Day in 1996. There was also a lot of sobbing from the audience going on at the end.

Not me, of course. It’s just that I have allergies. That’s why I was tearing up.

Yeah, let’s go with that.

Besides the great storyline and the action, the most amazing thing about the movie were the digital characters.

Peter Crushing, who played Grand Mott Tarkin in the original movie, and who died in 1994, was resurrected digitally for this prequel. And you can not tell him from the live actors surrounding him. He just looks real. It’s uncanny.

There is one other major digital resurrection that I won’t give away, but if you were a real fan of the original, you will also recognize some of the X-Wing fighter pilots from the first movie, some digitally reproduced, some redone from unused scenes from the original one.

For us I think this is also  the first movie in a long time that I could easily see again.

Note that if you’ve got young kids, this movie is darker than the first one. A lot of people that you want to live, die, so be prepared.

It’s getting late, so I’ll save save our last minute change of dinner plans and the great time we had, until tomorrow.

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