Our RV Adventures

After this past week’s hurry-up finishing of the ad card for my client’s upcoming February sale, I’m going to be sure I’m ready for the next one.

The next one is in June so I’m going to start working on the ad card now, leaving out only the item prices to be filled in later. Then all I’ll need to do is cull the mailing list of the Unknown Address returns, and I’ll be ready to go then.

About 2pm Jan and I drove up to the Clear Lake area for a few things. First up was the SuperCuts in Webster so Jan could get her haircut by her favorite lady. But it turns out that she was off today and won’t be back until Tuesday.

So then it was on to our next stop, lunch at the Chuy’s Mexican Restaurant on I-45. Like many of our favorite places, we pretty much swim against the tide with what we order.

For example, when we go to Outback Steakhouse, Jan’s go-to meal is their Alice Springs Chicken, not steak.

Likewise our favorite dish at Chuy’s is actually a Cobb Salad, well, a Mexi-Cobb Salad. But really the only ‘Mexi’ part of it are the green chiles garnished on top.

Made with Fajita chicken, two kinds of cheese, avocados, tomatoes, and of course green chiles, all laid out on a bed of fresh, mixed salad greens, it’s a full meal all by itself.

Really great!

One thing neat about Chuy’s is the décor. Every room is different.

The one we were in today has a school of colorful wooden fish hanging from the ceiling on individual wires.

Each one has a slightly different 3D shape and color, and are mounted right along side each other. And the AC blowing keeps them in constant motion, almost like they’re swimming along.

In the main dining room the ceiling is completely covered in hubcaps, seemingly all different.

Neat.

Next was a stop at our son Chris’ house to get our mail. Jan’s still expecting a bunch of hospital bills, but nothing yet. What we did get were a number of tax 1099 forms for this year’s taxes. Oh boy!

Then it was on to the nearby Sam’s Club to pick up a prescription, and once again I had to get them straight on the price. Originally I had transferred the prescription down from the Conroe Wal-Mart to the one here. But since the last time I got it 3 months ago, the price had jumped from about $30 up to $55. And that was a jump since I got it 3 months before that.

So I checked the Sam’s Extra Value List and found they had it for $4 for 30 pills, or $12 for a 3 month supply. So I refused it at Wal-Mart and asked them to put it back into the system. Then I called Sam’s Club to have them fill it.

But when I got the text saying it was done, the price was $28, better than $55, but not the $12 I was expecting. So when I picked it up this afternoon, I once again had to get them to correct the price. You have to on top of them.

Tomorrow afternoon Jan and I are heading up to Brandi’s in Katy to check out the house that they’re renting while they look for a new one. They closed on the sale of their old one last Monday and they’re all settled into the new one. Afterwards we’ll have linner before we had back to Santa Fe.

The Word of the Day is:  Flakelet

Thought for the Day:  “The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies.” – Robert Conquest’s Third Law of Politics

I mentioned the other day about my time crunch getting a mail-out ad card designed and the mailing list  culled and cleaned up and off to the direct mail company by 1pm today.

It didn’t help that I was having to dodge the workmen putting up the new sheetrock ceiling throughout  the office. Everything needed to be uploaded by 1 so that it could be printed, addressed, and in the mail by Tuesday morning. And I did it just in time with 5 minutes to spare.

Here’s the ad card I came up with:

FRONT:

BACK:

I could have probably done a little better without the time-crunch, but the client was really happy and that’s what matters.

Up until recently there were three blogs I read every day.  The first one, and the only one still left, is our good friend Nick Russell’s Gypsy Journal Blog.

The other two were Dr. Jerry Pournelle’s Chaos Manor and Robert Bruce Thompson’s Daynotes Journal.

If most people have heard of Jerry Pournelle, it’s as a best-selling science fiction writer, authoring dozens of books over the years. But most people don’t know about his involvement in the very beginnings of the home computer revolution, and in the nation’s space program.

He is credited with originating the very first blog, before the term (weB LOG) was even created. He called it a ‘Daybook’ and it ran on BIX (Byte Information Exchange) and GEnie networks starting in the 1985 timeframe, almost 10 years before the World Wide Web got cranked up. However, he never called his Daybook a blog, since he never liked the term.

The other thing he was first in, was submitting the first major published book written on a home computer word processor . . . in 1977.

He started working in the aerospace industry with Boeing in the late 1950’s, working on the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. He also was a consultant on the space program to President George H.W. Bush

Unfortunately Dr. Pournelle died at the age of 84 in September 2017. So now I was down to two.

Robert Bruce Thompson started out in 1980’ writing top-selling computer books, like Building The Perfect PC, PC Hardware in a Nutshell, PC Hardware Buyer’s Guide. etc. His prolific output lasted into the early 2000’s when the market for computer books faded.

But Robert was a chemist by background and in 2009, lamenting the death of the home chemistry set, started producing a line of Chemistry, Honors Chemistry, Biology, and Forensic Lab Kits specifically aimed at homeschoolers, but usable by anyone who was interested.

The kits allow students to cover every thing normally available in the public school course, but on their kitchen counter.

And along with the kits, he also wrote the almost 400 page manuals that went with them.

In addition to all this, he was also into the prepping scene and regularly talked about long-term food storage, and being prepared for any disaster, natural or man-made, that might interrupt our way of life.

A real Renaissance man.

At 64 he seemed to be in good health, but about six weeks ago he caught a cold he couldn’t seem to shake and went to the doctor for the cough. The doctor gave him decongestants and other things and sent him home.

A week later he went to the ER because he was having trouble breathing. He was immediately hospitalized with congestive heart failure. And he never came out.

Although the blog posts from his wife and friends put a good face on how well he was doing, and how much he was improving, reading between the lines dispelled this.

He died six days ago on January 20th.

And that was two.

So don’t get sick, Nick. I’m running out of blogs.

The Headline of the Day: Fugitive inmate busted sneaking back INTO prison.

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