Our RV Adventures

Back in the mid-late 90’s, I dabbled in stocks, and I made some decent money. I probably could have made more, but unfortunately stock trading wasn’t like it is today.

Back then it was hard to find a brokerage that would handle small accounts >$1000. And if they did, the commission rates made it hard to make money on small trades.

However today, with companies like E*TRADE, Ally, and Charles Schwab, etc., offering $0 trades, as well as $0 to open an account, as well as all the good quality companies with severely depressed stock prices, I know where our Stimulus checks are going to go.

Probably my best trade was back in late 1996, after reading about a number of clinical studies showing the efficacy of zinc in treating colds, I bought $100 of ColdEze when it was basically a penny stock. Then 18 months later I sold it for about $5000, which paid for our Holland America Alaskan Cruise in May 1998 with a good bit left over.

But most of my profits came from short term trades (3 – 6 months) for maybe $500 profit on a $100 buy. So we’ll see how it goes now.

Jan and I went out this afternoon and put some more time in on the shed, ending up with this.

I’m using the full Kitty Litter bucket to help hold it down in case the wind comes up.

And like before, there was a couple of problems with the instructions. The latches that hold the wall sections together were labeled ‘Q’ in the manual, but the parts I had were labeled ‘WC’. Plus some of the photos didn’t really match the parts that I had. But we got it figured out.

Thursday we’ll start working on the roof, including the front part that slides back and forth to make access easier.

We’re putting it together on the patio to be sure it’s level and square. Then when it’s done, we’ll slide it onto a raised frame behind the patio concrete.

Back when I booked our upcoming September 2020 Alaskan Cruise I didn’t book our flights at that time, because we weren’t quite sure about the dates. We already planned to fly into Fairbanks a week early so we could spend some extra time there, but we weren’t sure what we wanted to do when our cruise ended in Vancouver, B.C. on September 13th, 2020.

So Jan and I were talking the other day, about the one time we’d been to Vancouver was on our first Alaskan cruise in 1998, and then it was only to ride a bus from the airport to directly inside the cruise ship, and how we’ve like to spend some more time there.

We disembark from the Noordam September 13th, about 7am, then rather than get on the bus to the airport, we’ll take an Uber to whatever hotel our friend/travel agent, Chantelle Nugent, finds for us. Then we’ll fly back to Houston on the 17th.

So yesterday I went back to Expedia to check flights and prices, and boy, was there a difference. When l looked at flights/prices back in October, a One-Way ticket from Houston to Fairbanks was between $550 – $650 per person. And a One-Way ticket from Vancouver to Houston ran about $400 each.

But today, the same ticket to Fairbanks was now only $188. And the Vancouver ticket was only $147. That means that all 4 tickets totaled only $670, only a little more than one ticket to Fairbanks.

Of course, it’s all because of the WuFlu situation, and I wish the money we saved wasn’t for that reason, but of course there’s always a chance that Delta and Air Canada will be out of business in September and I’ll lose the money anyway.

Jan and I headed out about 3:30 to make a Kroger stop and then pick up dinner at Los Ramirez on the way home. Kroger wasn’t especially busy, and Jan was able to score some baby wipes for the first time, so she was happy.

And our Los Ramirez was as delicious as always.

Well, the virus curve didn’t flatten yesterday, but it didn’t grow as fast as in the past. And in several states, like California and Washington, did see the curve flatten with less case over the last few days. Hopefully it will spread to the rest of the country ASAP.

Thought For The Day:

Don’t worry about what people think. They don’t do it very often.

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After our successful AC repair on Saturday, Sunday seemed like a good day to get started on our Rubbermaid storage shed. I had already opened the box to get out the manual and some of the parts bags,

So, following the manual I pulled out the 3 floor pieces and laid them out on the patio. But before I could screw them together I first had to use a screwdriver to punch out the holes in two of the panels.

After I put the first couple of screws I could tell my battery-powered screwdriver wasn’t going to hack it for all 16 screws, and it was going to be a lot easier if I drilled some 1/8” pilot holes in the planks. And it did make a big difference.

I was pleasantly surprised at how sturdy the flooring was, with not sags or give when I walked on it. Next I laid out the side and roof panels in place to see how it all fit together.

Because of the emphasis on keeping the shed level as it’s being assembled, so we decided to put it together on the patio and then

I sometimes wonder if the people wrote this manual ever had an outsider put together a shed using it. For example, the manual tells you to punch out the screw holes in the left rear wall panel,

and then snap the panel into place on the floor. But the panel has to be held upright by one person while the other one is told to punch out the holes in the rear wall and then set it in place.

OK, why not just tell you to punch out ALL the holes in ALL the panels before you start putting it together, rather than have someone just stand there holding a panel up.

We decided to just as much prep work as we could on Sunday and then start the actual assembly on Tuesday. Hopefully we’ll be able to get all the walls up and fastened together, and maybe a little of the roof done.

it looks like the FDA has finally caught up with the many ‘anecdotal’ studies about the efficacy of  the HydroxyChloroquine, Azithromycin (Z-Pack), and Zinc Sulfate combination.

Don’t know what the several state governors that actually made it against the law to prescribe HCQ are going to say now. And I kind of wonder about some of the doctors/scientists that say we shouldn’t be using it until we do double-blind controlled studies to be sure it works, since pretty much all of the ‘anecdotal’ studies had been done using patients that were in very critical shape.

So if you were in the hospital on a ventilator, would you want to be in the Control Group that gets the placebo? That’s the problem with these kind of studies at a time like this. The drug test can be a success, but you’re dead.

Now I have heard of some tests where the results are so obvious that the researchers will break the blind and give the real drugs to everyone. But the problem here is that things can go so bad so quickly that breaking the blind might happen too late for some.

Novartis and several other drug companies are reactivating production lines to start making HCQ, which might really be needed if the next HCQ revelation comes to fruition.

Many doctors on the front lines have been reporting excellent results from taking HCQ prophylactically. Not not that kind. It means taking it as a preventative, not to cure it, but to prevent you from catching in the first place.

Which is exactly how HCQ is used against its original nemesis, Malaria. I took it as a cure for malaria in South America, while soldiers in Vietnam took it every day as a preventative.You can read about the first couple of HCQ studies here.

If you remember last week I alerted you that the guy in London who forecasted 2.2 million deaths the U.S. from the WuFlu, had revised his prediction down a little.

Down to about 50,000. Yeah, that’s a ‘little’, all right.

The latest figures from the authorities is 100,000 – 200,000 deaths, which others researchers say is ‘poppycock’, and is just another ‘chicken little’ situation.

One thing to look for in the next couple days is the rate of new cases. Sunday’s new case total of 18,469 was down almost 1,000 from Saturday’s total. So is this just a momentary blip, or has the curve started to flatten, as they say?

We’ll know in the next couple of days.

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Thought For The Day:

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