Our RV Adventures

With Fever, Aches, and Chills, Oh My!

I mentioned in last night’s blog that Jan and I had received our second  (and last, thank goodness) Shingrix Shingles shot.

We both commented to each other last night that we were surprised to not notice any problems. But that all changed overnight.

Both of us had trouble sleeping last night, and then it went downhill all day. I had trouble at work keeping awake, and by the time I got home I was experiencing the above-mentioned fever, aches, and chills. Oh, and dizzy, too.

All in all, this is worse than our first shot. Or at least I told Nick that I was thinking that these symptoms were not as bad as getting the shingles, but I was beginning to reconsider that.

I did gather up enough energy to call the Houston Museum of Fine Arts to order our tickets for the upcoming Van Gogh exhibit. Although it is on exhibit until the end of June, we’ll try to get there before we leave on our trip.

Jan’s Shooting Star earrings came in today, but she felt so cruddy when I got home she didn’t even try them on.

But they should look great on her on the ‘elegant casual’ or ‘casually elegant’ nights on our cruise.

I did talk to Chantelle Nugent, our travel agent today to tell her that I had already moved the money into my checking account, and she could go ahead and pay off the last part of our cruise, the Paris-London Land part.

Actually, as cheap as I am I normally don’t like to give anyone my money any earlier than I have to, which in this case would be the upcoming Saturday, the 16th. But the Chase Checking Account I moved it into, doesn’t collect interest, so I told her to go ahead. And I’m glad I did.

I figured she would just pay it with a wire transfer like she did before, but this part needed to be paid by credit card. So I gave her my PayPal card, but it didn’t go through. TWICE!

Since the PayPal card pulls directly from the Chase account, I then gave her my Chase card info, and Chantelle again gave it a go. And it was again denied . . . TWICE. So then I was on the line to Chase. Only to find that they had recently changed their daily withdrawal limits . . . apparently without telling anybody, especially me.

When I ask why this was done without letting us know, I was told that if they did that then the criminals would also find out.  Like I was going to tell them?

And when I asked why would happen if we were in Europe in the May, and for some reason went over my unknown limit, it got really quiet on his end.

“Well . . .”

But I did tell him how much I was trying to charge and he did raise my limit. So our total trip is now paid for.

NICE!

Thought for the Day:

Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Except for bears. They’ll kill you a little, then eat you alive.

ghdg

Jan and I headed out for brunch at our favorite SnoozeAM a little before 1pm. Jan got her BRAVOCADO Toast with scrambled eggs and dressed greens,

while I got the Classic 3 Egg Breakfast with Bacon, Fruit, and an English Muffin.

Then it was on to WalMart for a few things. And, as has been our habit recently, we stopped off at the Pharmacy to see if they had gotten any more Shingrix Shingles vaccine. We were already on the call list, but we lucked up this time and we were able to get our second and final shots. Glad to have that out of the way.

This past Sunday I finally got a chance to get outside and catch up some chores. First up was to finish upgrading our rig’s windshield wipers.

The rig originally came with 26” Denso wipers and that’s what I used to replace them with after our first year. But then, after that, I found that Denso no longer made the ones that fit our wiper arms. So I improvised something, but it was a pain in the butt.

The new style were only set up for the ‘J’ hook arms, and my arms were configured so that the wipers fit between the flanges with a bolt passing through to secure the blades.

But the new blades were wider and didn’t have a hole for the bolt, so every year I had to heavily modify the wipers by removing the ‘J’ hook mount and then drilling a hole through, which was not easy in this hardened steel frame.

It also didn’t help that the new blades were wider so they didn’t really fit between the arm flanges.

Then a few weeks ago, when I was buying new Rain-X blades for the truck, I noticed that these blades not only had the ‘J’ hook mount, but also had a hole for the pivot type of mount.

So getting some new hardware, I came up with this mounting system, which will now only take me a couple of minutes next time to replace the blades.

I also upgraded the arms from 26” to 28” ones, giving me this.

And no, there’s not a problem with the arm on the right side. Due to the way the articulated arms work, that side is always lower.

Feeling I was on a roll, I decided to crawl under the rig and do a trial loosening of the rig’s oil filter. So I dug out my filter wrench, extensions, and ratchet handle, and gave it a go.

This is what it looks like from underneath.

Fitting my wrench around the filter, I tried to loosen it. I was happy to see that it wasn’t loose and took some effort to break free. But once that was done I decided to keep unscrewing it see how it came it acted. And then suddenly it was free in my hand.

So now what to do? I hadn’t really planned for this so I tried to just screw it back in. But trying for about 5 minutes I was unsuccessful. Due to the electrical cables running besides filter, I really couldn’t get it lined up and started.

So I carefully pulled the filter out from under the rig with me so I didn’t spill the oil inside. Then I crawled back under and stuffed a shop rag up into the mount to keep it clean.

When I’m ready to install the new filter, hopefully this weekend, I’ll use some large Tie Wraps to temporarily hold the cables out of the way.

Grabbing a bucket I propped up the filter and took a look.

There was no obvious damage that I could see, even when I pulled off the black gasket ring. I all looked OK. But then the problem is supposed to be debris on the mount, and not the filter. At least according to Cummins.

I’ll know more this weekend, I guess.

Thought for the Day: 

Isn’t making a smoking section in a restaurant like making a peeing section in a swimming pool?

fgjhh