Sharing Is Caring . . .
Well, it turns out that one ticket in Illinois won the $1.337 Billion Mega Millions lottery last night
Our daughter Brandi, covering all her bases, messaged this to Jan’s sister/family in Illinois.
Unfortunately the luck of the Illinois bunch wasn’t any better than ours here in Texas.
Though I did win $4 on my $20 ticket. Whoopee!
But I’m not sharing it.
However I wasn’t able to even check my ticket until this evening, because every time I checked it during the day, the Texas Lottery app either wouldn’t respond or said it was too busy. Guess too many folks were checking their tickets.
Jan and I were on our way up to Webster a little before 1pm for lunch at Texas Huddle once again.
And like Angie at Denny’s, and Sylvia at Twin Peaks, Juana, who’s only waited on us twice before, brought us our correct drink order right off the bat, and also remembered what we also order.
After we both started with a side salad, Jan got her Mushroom Cheddar Bacon Burger (no bun) and a side of their Steamed Veggies.
I of course, got the PB&J Bacon Cheeseburger, heavy on the PB&J.
And as usual I dusted the burger with some of my Carolina Reaper Volcanic Pepper Flakes, for that extra touch.
Then when the manager came to see how we were doing, she told me that some people order it with the Flaming Raspberry sauce that they have for their Chicken Wings, instead the Grape Jelly, or in addition to it.
Next time for sure!
Thought for the Day:
July 30, 2009
Eastbound and Down . . .
Today was a travel day.
After having breakfast at a local restaurant, we headed east toward Clinton, CT a little after noon.
We were only going about 130 miles, but it took us about 4 hours due to all the traffic on I-95. A good part of the time we were only doing about 40 mph.
The only ‘highlight’ of the trip, if you can call it that, was the fact that it cost us $23.75 to cross the Tappan Zee bridge which spans the Hudson River about 25 miles above New York City.
And traffic across the bridge was very slow due to what a flashing sign said was police activity on the bridge. We could see police lights in the distance and a helicopter hovering overhead, but by the time we got to that part of the bridge everybody was gone.
Jan jokingly said “Maybe somebody jumped!”. And it turns out she was right. A 66 year old women from NJ jumped from the bridge and was killed when she hit the pilings at the base of the bridge.
Apparently this happens enough that they have installed phones all along the bridge that connect directly with the Suicide Prevention Hotline.
July 30, 2010
EnterTRAINment Junction . . .
We’re presently parked at the Little Farm on the River RV Park in Rising Sun, IN, about 25 miles from Cincinnati, OH.
This park is in the middle of a working farm that runs right down to the Ohio River and we’re surrounded by corn and soybean fields
About 10:00 am we headed into Cincinnati. Strangely enough, although Ohio is just across the river, we have to go through Kentucky to get there. Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky all come together right here in this corner of the country.
Our first destination was Quaker Steak and Lube, a hot wing place we first ate at in Buffalo, NY last year on our way back from Newfoundland. When we were there the big promotion was their “Atomic Wings”. These rate about 150,000 on the Scoville Heat Scale (a jalapeno rates between 2500 and 8000) and you have to sign a release before they will serve them to you. Jan and I got a sample order (5 wings) and we both thought they were pretty hot, hotter than anything we’ve eaten before. Jan could only eat one.
This time they have a new deal. “Triple Atomic Wings” with a 500,000 rating. Unfortunately they don’t offer a sampler of the Triples, and I didn’t want a whole order of 10, so we didn’t get to try them.
But Jan and I both agreed that either we had both lost a lot of taste buds, or these “Atomic Wings” today weren’t as hot as the ones we had last year. But they were good. We also had some regular Hot Wings and some Buckeye BBQ, which rates at about 5000.
One thing I really like about Quaker Steak is that their chicken pieces are a good bit bigger than either Hooter’s or Buffalo Wild Wings.
After lunch we stopped off for gas and a car wash before heading over to the main course for the day, EnterTRAINment Junction. Yes, it’s spelled correctly.
EnterTRAINment Junction is a train-themed attraction that has a railroad museum, and what I was really there for, the world’s largest indoor model railroad.
With over 25,000 sq. ft., 90 trains with more than1200 cars, 2 miles of track, and over 6000 handmade trees, it’s really something.
I had a large HO layout when I was a kid, and if we weren’t living in the RV I might think about building another one. But in the meantime I still like reading about them, and visiting large layouts when possible. Last year I visited the Model Railroad Museum near Lancaster, PA, but this one is much bigger.
As I said, my layout was HO, which at the time was the smallest scale at 1/87 real size. The trains we saw today were G scale, or 1/22.5
Now there are two smaller scales than HO N scale, at 1/160, and Z scale at 1/220. An locomotive in Z scale is less than 2 inches long.
We also enjoyed the American Railroad Museum, which had a lot of interesting displays and artifacts.
One thing that I found funny about the building of the Trans-Continental Railroad was that when the Union Pacific and Central Pacific work crews approached their meeting from opposite directions, they passed each other by and kept on going for another 100 miles. They were getting paid by the mile and didn’t want to stop. Finally the Government stepped in and declared Promontory, Utah the meeting point.
Leaving the Junction we head back to the rig, but detoured through downtown Cincinnati to get some flavor of the city. It’s a very nice town with a lot of new big buildings going up.
I kept looking for the Flimm building, but never found it.
Getting back to the rig a little before 5 we decided it was nap time for an hour or so. Then about 6:30 we headed out for dinner at Skyline Chili, one of two chili-based restaurants in this area, the other being Goldstar Chili.
Everything is pretty much chili. Chili Dogs, chili burritos, salads with chili on them, and even chili spaghetti. And of course, all of it covered with grated cheese and onions.
And it was delicious. Hopefully we’ll get to try Goldstar some other time.
Tomorrow we head north about 135 miles to Celina, OH for the night before getting into Elkhart, IN on Sunday.
July 30, 2013
Guards and Buffalos . . .
More on the Gate Guard front:
This morning, before I got up, Jan got a call from someone looking for Gate Guard Services. I wasn’t sure why they had called us, but after thinking about it for a while, I figured he had got our number from one of our rig’s Company Men as a Gate Guard Services contact.
All the Company Men we worked with had both Jan and mine’s phone numbers and email addresses in case they needed to call us on the gate. Curious, I gave the guy a call back and that’s what had happened. Another Company Man, apparently one that we had worked with last year, had given him our number.
In addition, earlier this morning, I got an email from Jerry and Rita Scarbrough, who also work for Gate Guard Services, telling me that GGS has finally switched over to Direct Deposit for our paychecks. This will make it a lot easier for us since when I used Chase’s Online Deposit last year, I kept running into a problem because Chase has a limit on how much money you can deposit online in any one month. Who ever heard of a bank that doesn’t want your money?
About 1pm Jan and I headed out for the afternoon. Our first stop was at the RV/MH Hall of Fame to check in with Al Hesselbart, the director there, and a long-time friend. After talking for a while we made a date to meet for dinner tomorrow night at King Wha, a great local Chinese restaurant.
Next up was a stop at the Sam’s Club over in Mishawaka, about 15 miles away to pick up Jan’s prescriptions and get some other Sam’s-type stuff. Since we wanted some other pharmacy items we went there first. When I went to pay for the prescriptions, I thought they were kind of high at $136.
So I pulled out my Pharmacy Discount Card. I think I’ve mentioned this before, but I picked one of these up from the payment counter at my doctor’s office last February. Figured it wouldn’t do much, but what the heck, it’s free.
When I first used it at the Sam’s Club in Friendswood, I was surprised to find that it saved me about $50. Yeah! I was also told that I only had to enter the card into the system once and it would apply to all prescriptions from then on.
Kind of.
I showed the Pharmacy Tech my card and asked her to be sure it was still in the system and if it would save me anything today. She said these cards never made much difference but she would check. She went away for about 15 minutes and then came back with a big smile on her face.
I asked her if it make any difference and she said “You could say so”. So I asked “How much?”. She just hit a few keys on the cash register and a new total came up.
My $136 total was now $50. WOW!
The other thing I found out is that the card has to be re-entered each time we move our prescriptions to a new Sam’s Club or Wal-Mart. Which for us is pretty much every month. Note to self.
Leaving Sam’s, we went right next door to the Wal-Mart to get me some new socks since Sam’s didn’t have what I wanted.
Then, after a quick stop at a P.O. to mail a letter, we headed over to Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner. Usually we get the regular wings, but this time since the Boneless Wings were on sale, we got those instead. We both got the Mango Habanero sauce on them, which is their third hottest sauce, behind ‘Wild’ and ‘Blazin’, which is the hottest But I always get a small cup of the ‘Blazin’ sauce as an added hit.
I do this because I like the heat of the ‘Blazin’, but overall I also like the sweetness of the Mango Habanero, so I get the best of both worlds.
On the way back to the RV park, we first stopped off for a car wash, and then a quick stop at a Chase bank to get a roll of quarters. Jan wants to use the big washers here at the park laundromat to do some of our rugs while we’re here.
July 30, 2014
Stuff Every RV’er Should Have . . . Maybe
Since today was a rainy do-nothing day I thought I’d continue with a list I started on a post back in June. It’s a combination of things we like and use, and some of the items from the 10 Things Every RV’er Needs seminar that I used to give at Escapades and other rallys. We’ve found all of these either very useful, or very necessary, or both.
First up are things electrical.
1. A Three Light Outlet Tester is just plain necessary, for your home or your RV. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve plugged into a 20 amp or 30 amp campground outlet and found a Open Neutral, an Open Ground, or a Reversed Open/Neutral. All of which under some conditions can get you shocked. Or keep the power from making it through your Electrical Management System (EMS) and into your rig. About $6.
2. The Kill-A-Watt is another must-have. With it you can check the voltage of the outlet of course, but also the current draw in Amps of whatever you have plugged into it. And you can also check the frequency in Hz, the power consumed in Watts and KWH (Kilowatt Hours). I use it to set the frequency on the diesel generators when we gate guard, so our clocks run right. About $23.
P3 Kill A Watt Electricity Usage Monitor
3. A Digital Volt Ohm Multimeter (VOM) is another must-have item. With it you can check battery voltages, fuses, pretty much anything electrical. About $6.
3a. Just a better VOM, this one with auto-ranging which means you don’t have to preset the voltage range before taking a measurement, I.e. 0 to 200 volts, or 0 to 20 volts. About $20.
INNOVA Auto-Ranging Digital Multimeter
4: These are the super bright LED strips that I came across recently due to Ed Hurlburt of the RV Tips area on Facebook. They’re bright white, and are perfect replacement for your F15T8 fluorescent bulbs. Here’s my blog post on how I replaced my fluorescent tubes with these. About $9 per set of 2.
Super Bright COB White LED Lights
5. This is a temperature-controlled outlet that I use during the winter. I have a small cube heater that I put in the our water bay during very cold weather. The heater plugs into this outlet which is plugged into the rig AC power. The heater is turned on, but only operates below 35° and then cuts off at 45°. About $12.
6. This one is for diesel rig owners. You should always carry a spare filter or filters when you’re on the road. I can attest to that. What I was surprised to learn about was all the Cummins Fleetguard products that Amazon carries, including both of my fuel filters shown below.
The FS1022 is a very fine particle filter located right on the engine on our 1999 American Eagle. About $22.
This FS1242 is a 1st stage coarser filter located near the back bumper on our 1999 American Eagle. About $20.
Fleetguard FS1242 Fuel/Water Sep
Of course, your locations will probably be different. One thing nice about getting these through Amazon is that they’re cheaper than directly from Cummins.
7. I went through a number of different inside dual extensions that always started leaking after a few months, until I found these braided stainless steel ones. Going on two years now, and they’re still airtight. About $19 for a set of 2.
8. This Water Pressure Gauge has backed up a couple of my complaints about low water pressure at several parks. They would say the pressure was fine, and I would show them that 10 psi is way too low. About $12.
Watts Water Pressure Test Gauge
9. This High Flow Dual Outlet lets me hook up a hose for washing the truck or the rig, or even the pressure gauge above. And unlike a lot of cheaper ones, it doesn’t restrict the water flow. About $18.
Nelson Rezimar High-Water Flow Dual Outlet Kink-Free Flex Hose Adapter
10. Staying with the water theme, every RV’er seems to rave about the Oxygenics shower heads, and we’re no different. Low flow so your hot water lasts longer, high pressure for a good shower, and easy installation. About $33.
Oxygenics Handheld Power Massage
11. These last two are my favorites. The first up is this Flying Ball Helicopter that’s great for flying inside, or outside too. But the globe protects the blades in the close quarters of the rig without hindering the flying, and makes for more enjoyment, and cheaper flying. About $22.
ROBOTIC UFO 3-Channel I/R Flying Ball RC Helicopter with Gyro
Hopefully this list will prove useful to you, so if you have any questions or comments, let me know.
July 30, 2015
A Delayed Rendezvous . . .
Well, just as we’re wrapping it up here, it cools off. Pretty much since we’ve been here, the temps have been in the mid to high 90’s, and staying in the mid to high 70’s at night. But today it was only 93 degrees, with 66 tonight. And that’s how it’s supposed to stay until we leave here on Sunday.
As I mentioned before, we had planned to make a last visit to Charles Vergos’ Rendezvous for some more of their fabulous ribs. But Jan woke up with a migraine this morning and just didn’t feel like making the hour and 45 minute trip into Memphis, and of course, back home.
But she did feel like making a 30 minute drive in the opposite direction to the Cracker Barrel in Corinth, MS. Thursday being Jan’s favorite Turkey and Dressing day, it was the perfect fix.
Jan of course got her T & D, while I went with the Cracker Barrel Sampler, something I’ve never had before.
It comes with samples of Chicken and Dumplings, Sugar-Cured Ham, Meatloaf, and Mashed Potatoes, and then I added Turnip Greens and Fried Okra as my two sides.
I mean if you’re at a comfort food place, then you should have comfort food, right?
Everything was great, especially the Turnip Greens. Well, everything but the Meatloaf. Although it tasted good, it was dry and chewy, and in crumbles, like it was scrapped off the end of the pan. But all in all, it was a good meal.
They have plenty of parking here, so we’re thinking about stopping here for breakfast on our way to Alabama on Sunday. We checked it out and they’ve got plenty of parking in back. But we’ll see how busy they are when we get there.
One thing I noticed as soon as we came into Corinth is that they must be having a gas war here. Everywhere had unleaded at $2.19 or less. In fact we filled up the truck at $2.15. Nice!
Too bad they’re not having a diesel war too. It was still in the $2.40’s.
Not bad, but not as good as we saw last week over in the Memphis suburbs, where it was in the $2.26 area.
We’ll see how Jan feels in the next couple of days, to see if we’re going to try Rendezvous again.
WARNING!!
The last few days I received several emails with this heading.
Warning: Inbox for [email protected] is limited [13 undelivered messages]
If you get one with your email address on it, delete it.
This is an autmomated email sent from our SSL severs to inform you that there is an error in your email configuration.
This error was identified on: 2015/07/25 and we have not been able to deliver 13 contact email messages from this date.
To retrieve your emails and reconfigure Port 486,Click Here
Warning: Failure to do this will lead total suspension of your email account.
This message has been sent to:[email protected].
Please delete and Ignore if this is not your email address.
First off, note they’ve misspelled ‘automated’ in the first paragraph.
And when you put you mouse over the Click Here link (which I unlinked for your safety), you see this
http://doctortarucan.com/images/blocked/mailer-daemon.html?
I’m not sure who the hell Doctor Tarucan is, but he has nothing to do with my email.
July 30, 2016
Scratching the Itch . . .
Saturday’s usually a sleep-in day for me. Instead of getting up at 11am, I get up at noon. But I didn’t go to bed until almost 4am, so cut me some slack.
Of course, 15 minutes after I got up, and before I even had my coffee!, a client called and needed help.
By the time I first had my coffee, and fixed the problem, it was almost 2pm. So after snapping a photo of our electric meter, I headed down to the park office to settle up on our electric bill for the almost-month we’ve been here.
Turned out to be $195.12 for the month, which along with the $375 rent, totals $570.12 for our 28 day stay here. That’s $20 a day.
Not too bad, I guess.
Later, around 7pm, after it had cooled off a bit, I went outside to stow things away for our travel tomorrow, and also to take another look at my AC blower problem that seemed to center on the resistor pak.
The pak gets hot in operation, so it actually sticks up into blower airflow to help keep it cool.
And after I got it out and unplugged it was quickly obvious what the problem was
There was a burnt pin on both the pak and the connector.
A little Googling said this was a fairly common problem. The long-term solution might be to replace both the plug and the pak, but I wanted to get it fixed now.
So a paperclip to the rescue.
I let it run about 15 minutes, and although it got hot to the touch, it wasn’t hot enough to burn, so I deemed the repair a success.
For now.
Of course, I only have one speed now, high. But we pretty much only run it on high, anyway.
Finishing up, I stowed away the water and sewer hoses, as well as the chairs. So all we have to do tomorrow is unplug shore power, raise the levelers, and hit the road.
Tomorrow night we’ll be at Poche’s Fish N Camp near Breaux Bridge, LA., finally scratching the itch.
July 30, 2017
Smooth and Cool . . .
We took our time getting up and on the road this morning, not pulling out until about 10:30.
I think the spaces here at Capitol City RV Park here in Montgomery are some of the largest I’ve seen. At 85ft x 45ft, you could park a couple of RV’s in each site.
Though these are their ‘Premium’ sites, I was given a free upgrade when, noticing all the Auburn University stuff on the walls of the office, I told her I had gone to Auburn. Of course I didn’t tell her I had also gone to Auburn’s arch rival, University of Alabama too.
It took us about 10 minutes to get out on I-65N, heading towards Athens, AL, about 180 miles away.
Based on past trips through Birmingham, I was expecting the same really bad roads, especially coming into town from the south, but they’ve obviously been doing some work since we were through here last year. Nice and smooth.
And being Sunday, there was really no traffic to worry about, so we just cruised right through, with the only slowdowns being the many hills.
We pulled into the Northgate RV Park in Athens and were met by my cousin-in-law, Helen, at the park office. After getting in our hello’s and hugs, we got parked and set up about 2:45.
About 4pm Jan and I headed to have dinner at Catfish Cabin, our regular ‘first night here’ restaurant.
One of the best things about this place is that pretty much every thing is homemade. From the salad dressings,
to the Hushpuppies,
it’s all made in-house.
And all of their catfish, shrimp, and oysters, are all fresh, and then breaded and prepared at the restaurant. The only thing bought pre-prepared are the stuffed crabs like on my Combination Platter.
Jan always gets the Cabin Platter, because she really likes the whole catfish on it.
Really delicious as always.
One thing we’re enjoying up here is the cooler weather, with highs in the mid-80’s, and lows in the low-60’s, temps we haven’t seen since Rapid City, SD back in May.
Cool.
Tomorrow we’re making a daytrip back down to Birmingham to drive around, and then have dinner with our old friend’s Bill and Carol Alverson.
Bill and I both worked as broadcast engineers at WBIQ, Ch. 10, the local Alabama Public Television station back in the early 70’s, before we moved to Montgomery. We also both worked part-time at WENN, a black radio station in town, also as broadcast engineers.
So we’ll have a lot to catch up on.
July 30, 2018
GPS Fixed?
We’re still waiting for the last two house offers to come in, hopefully in the next day or so.
I thought I might have another possible buyer today, but it didn’t work out. My client gave me an ad card for another local company that buys houses, so I gave them a call.
They sounded very interested and kept me on the phone for almost 30 minutes giving them info on the house, and finally setting up an appointment for Thursday afternoon at 2pm.
Then on my way home I got a text asking me to call back to discuss what they could pay for the house. I thought that’s what they would decide after they looked at the house on Thursday. But I gave them a call when I got home.
The young lady said that she had turned over my info to the property buyer, the guy who would be checking out the house on Thursday. She said he told her that he was presently paying $75,000 to $125,000 for houses in our area, and would that be a price range that I could live with?
I told her that since I had offers for $137,000, $139,000, and $140,000, what did she think? After she was quiet for about 10 seconds, she said, “Oh, I guess not.” Then she said that she would cancel the appointment.
Now I’m not sure what was going on, but I really doubt he’s bought any house in our subdivision for $125,000, much less $75,000. But at least they didn’t waste my time.
The high bidder sent me a copy of the contract we will be using if we go forward with the deal, already filled in, so I can look it over. I was glad to see it was the standard Texas Real Estate Commission 10 page form, and not some in-house version with a lot of possible gotchas.
It now looks like I got off easy on my GPS problem. As I mentioned the other day, the new power cord did not fix my problem of the unit constantly rebooting. So I started looking at replacements units on Amazon.
Googling had told me that sometimes the problem could be caused by a bad update, but I hadn’t updated recently so I didn’t think that was the cause. And anyway, to fix it, you have to save all your data off, do a factory reset, and then spend a couple of days downloading all the new updates, and then load your data back on. Seemed like a lot of trouble to go to, especially since I was kind of looking for an excuse to get a new one anyway.
But Friday, while I had the GPS plugged into my laptop to download the latest copy of my Favorites from the unit, I saw that a new update was available, so I thought I’d give it a shot.
And it fixed the problem!
It worked perfectly all the way up and back to Brandi’s on Saturday, and then again to and from work today.
July 30, 2019
TV Guide . . .
As was forecast it did rain off and on all day so the only thing I got done outside was to get my local digital antenna mounted and and up in the air.
Coming inside I switched the TV over to Off-Air and hit Scan. And in a few minutes it had found 111 local channels. WOW.
That’s almost 3 times what it found before I put it up on the pole. Of course, about 80 of those are in languages we don’t understand.
One thing Jan was worried about is how to find out what was on the many channels since there’s not a guide like on our DirecTV. We did find one online that showed the local channels but it would be a real pain to have to check the computer every time you wanted to know what was on.
Then as I was looking at the TV remote I noticed a Guide button. So out of curiosity I press it, and suddenly I had a channel guide.
And just like our DirecTV guide, it not only time and program name, but also gives a short synopsis of what the show is about.
Neat
But now my question is, where is this coming from? It has to be coming over the air, but who is putting it together, and what channel is it coming in on? It doesn’t show up when you scan through the channels, just when you use the Guide button.
It must be something standard around the country, since I assume it works everywhere since it’s on the remote. But so far Googling hasn’t turned up anything.
So I’ll keeping looking.
As I mentioned yesterday I got an email from Panasonic saying they were repairing my camera, and then today I got another email saying it was done and they were shipping it out this afternoon. Very fast service.
July 30, 2021
Trip Prep . . .
Jan and I spent this evening starting to book stuff for our Christmas in Branson visit. First up were our tickets to Yakov Smirnoff’s show on December 5, the day we arrive in Branson. We had to do this one first because that’s his last show of the season.
Next up we got tickets to see SIX once again, on Monday at 8pm at the Dick Clark’s American Bandstand Theater. Again, we were kind of constrained by the times of their shows and the times we had open.
Next up was a Dinner Cruise on the Branson Belle, the riverboat that cruises Table Rock Lake. We had hoped to do the 8pm one, but they didn’t have any open during the week we’re going to be there, so it will be an early dinner, at 4pm on Tuesday, the 7th.
One thing I found is that it’s cheaper to book directly through the theater, and not through one of the online services like BransonShows.com or others. In fact we saved over $30 on the tickets for Yakov’s show alone.
I finally ended up setting up a spreadsheet to keep track of shows and times we had open.
And in other ticket buying news, I went online this morning to the Houston Museum of Natural Science and got tickets to the Pompeii Exhibit there,
and it’s going to be family and friends excursion, with Jan and I, Brandi and Landon, and Landon’s BFF, Sophie.
And besides Pompeii, there’s also the Body Worlds exhibit,
and Victoria, the T-Rex.
So we’ve got bodies encased in stone, bodies encased in plastic, and a T-Rex. Sounds like the perfect afternoon for a couple of almost-11 year old’s.
And us adults too, of course.
As we’ve done on past Museum visits, we’re going to meet up first at nearby Cleburne Cafeteria for lunch beforehand. A great place to eat.
We’re set for August 10th, just before Landon and Sophie start back to school the next week on the 16th.
Then the following Thursday, the 12th, we’re meeting Debi and Ed Hurlburt, and maybe Janice and Dave Evans, for lunch at Razzoo’s Cajun Café up in Spring. Then coming back south, I’ll drop Jan off at Brandi’s so she can dog-sit while Brandi, et al, spend the weekend at the lake.
So it’ll be just me and Karma for our weekend.
Thought for the Day:
Dear Karma, (again, not our cat)
I have a list of people you missed.
Me
