Our RV Adventures

Our last morning together until next Saturday, Jan and I spent most of it talking about our European River Cruise trip.

One thing I wanted to check out was which river, the Rhine or the Danube. They have cruises on both rivers, and both end in Amsterdam. A little Googling told me that they’re both about equal in beautiful castles and neat old cities, but the consensus seems to be that, overall, the Danube is more scenic along the way due to the heavy industrialization along the Rhine. So that’s settled, I guess.

Maybe that’s why they wrote a waltz about the Danube and not the Rhine. I guess The Blue Rhine Waltz just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

I did this from one of the cruise emails we get. Words to live by, I think.

10 Things Not to Do on a Cruise Ship Balcony

A couple of them are kind of obvious, but might be highly entertaining for the neighbors. As long as you don’t fall overboard.

For some reason, Fry’s Electronics does not like my PayPal Debit Card. It works everywhere else, but this is the 2nd visit to Fry’s that it’s been declined. On my side it just says ‘DECLINED’, but on the cashier’s side it says “Incorrect PIN’. But I know the PIN is correct.

In fact when I pulled out the PayPal card and stuck in my Chase card (they both have the same PIN) it immediately went through without my having to reenter the PIN. It took the number from the just Declined PayPal entry.

The reason we stopped at Fry’s on the way to meet Brandi, et al. at King Food was that Jan decided to take our laptop with her so she wouldn’t have to go all week without getting online. But I couldn’t find the mouse that went with it, and Jan doesn’t like to use the Touchpad/Keys that are built in. Of course I found the missing mouse as soon as I got back to the rig.

But before I even got to the credit card problem, I had a very difficult time find a mouse to buy. Or at least one I wanted to buy.

Fry’s had two long shelves of mice . . . mouses?. . . meese, whatever. The first shelf I found was the gaming mice. Did you know you can pay $260 for a mouse? And it has more buttons, dials, lights and sliders than you can imagine. Even the cheapest ‘gaming’ mouse started at $49.95.

And then for some reason, they hid the regular mouse shelf three rows over from the gaming ones. So now I’m looking at a 25ft row of mice, with every possible color and decoration, and ones with graphics for pretty much every TV show and Internet meme you can imagine.

Want a pink Hello Kitty mouse? They’ve got it. How about a Simpson’s mouse? That too. Captain America? Got it, etc. But the big problem was that they were all wireless’.

Now I hate wireless mouses and keyboards with a passion. I have been burned so many times over the years. And it’s not just dead batteries at the most inopportune time. That would be too easy.

No, it’s things like a worker’s keyboard and mouse randomly locking up or putting garbage on the screen multiple times during the day. Usually while they’re trying to finish up the Annual Report late on a Friday afternoon. And this was even after swapping out the keyboard, the mouse, and Bluetooth dongle.

I even temporarily swapped out the computer. All with no luck.

Finally I discovered that the cheap microwave on the other side of the wall in the break room was putting out so much RF interference that it was blanking out nearby Bluetooth signals. Even people a couple of cubicles over realized that the occasional weird garbage on the screen and momentarily freezing of their cursor they were seeing was from the same cause.

So obviously I wanted a wired mouse. But it took me almost 15 minutes to find one. Out of the 25ft row, and probably at least a 100 different mice, they had two wired versions, a Logitech for $9.95 and a Microsoft version for $14.95. And since Bill Gates doesn’t need any more of my money, I grabbed the Logitech one.

After our usual great meal at King Food, I sent my Sweetie on her way with Brandi and her family, and then I’ll pick her up on Friday afternoon.

Love you, Sweetie.

Thought for the Day: 

Armageddon won’t be pretty, but it’s not like it’s the end of the world or something.

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and No, not me.

A nice, quiet morning with my Sweetie, my first one in awhile. And tomorrow will be our last one for a week. Brandi, Lowell,  and Landon are coming back down tomorrow to pick up Jan for another week of Landon-sitting. So it’ll be just Karma and me again.

This was Jan’s first time to try the Café Du Monde coffee. Well, at least since New Orleans. I combined it by using two scoops of our Crème Brûlée flavor to one scoop of the Café Du Monde. This did work to cut some of the ‘bite’ from the Du Monde. But it lost some of the great flavor. So tomorrow I’ll try 1-1/2 scoops and 1-1/2 scoops and see that works.

We spent some more time talking over our European River Cruise plans. We’ve got some excellent advice from several of our readers that’s helped a lot. And my Sweetie came up with a great idea.

Right now the cruise we’re looking at, runs from Budapest, Hungry to Amsterdam, The Netherlands along the Danube River. It covers 15 days, 4 countries, and includes 12 guided tours.

Jan suggested we then take the train from Amsterdam to Paris rather than fly. It’s only about a 4 hour trip, but we could see more of the countryside. Then after three or four days in Paris, seeing Versailles, and as much of the Louvre as we can see in a day or so, we take the Chunnel train to London, again about a 4 hour trip, and spend our last 4 days or so there before flying home. So we’re probably looking at about 3+ weeks in total.

I doubt seriously we’ll make another trip over there, so we at least want to hit some of the highlights.

Later in the morning I put in call to our storage room place to see about getting another 5’ x 5’ unit, hopefully close to our other one, but no one ever answered the phone. I’ll try again later.

We headed out about 1pm, first for breakfast/lunch at the Victory Lakes Denny’s once again. One of our favorites. Then it was on up I-45 to make a return at Lowe’s. Last week I had bought a multi-conductor cable to connect up my new Digital Voltage/Amp Meter.

As I mentioned before, I’m going to hook up two of them on the output of our transfer switch so I can monitor the power coming into the coach. But what I had picked out just was not going to work. So back it went.

Our next stop was at the house to leave a set of keys for the buyer. I hid them out front  and then called him to let him know where to find them. Guess he wants to get his contractor in again to start making some more detailed plans.

Then it was a stop at WalMart for a few things, and also to make a return. A couple of weeks ago I bought a can of Killz spray paint to cover up an old water stain on the ceiling of the house. The leak had been repaired long ago but I wanted to cover up the stain. But the guy bought the house before I could take care of it. So I wanted to return the can.

I didn’t take time to dig out the receipt since if you have your cellphone and you use the WalMart Savings Catcher system, every receipt is detailed in your online account. Or if you know what credit card you used to buy an item, they also have everything you’ve ever purchased from them in their system.

Nice, convenient . . . and kind of scary.

Tonight I was ordering some stuff from Amazon and I decided to scroll down through my Wish List to see if anything caught my eye from the past.

And something did. An oldie, but a goodie.

It was all 4 seasons of Airwolf on DVD – for only $19.42. One of our favorite shows back in the 80’s.

As one reviewer said, “2 great seasons, 1 good season, and 1 awful season.”  But well worth $20.

Just only watch the first 3 seasons.

Thought for the Day: 

Some days I amaze myself. Other days I can’t remember where I left my glasses. And some days that’s all the same day.

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