Daily Archives: November 2, 2022
Side By Side . . .
Monday night Jan and I finally had a chance to watch the new Hocus Pocus 2 movie. We thought it was pretty good, not quite as good as the original. Not that much is, actually.
And it certainly set it up for more sequels.
Our park owner, Rob, is continuing to prepare the new area of our park, now adding trees to the area,
four oak trees like the one next to our rig.
However rather than in between the rigs like we have, these are at the back end of each site.
Yesterday we started out to have lunch at Torchy’s Tacos’ but somehow ended up having breakfast at Snooze right down the block.
Jan went with her usual Bravocado Toast,
while I tried the 3 Egg Omelet, with Ham, Bacon, Sausage, PepperJack Cheese, and Jalapenos.
And we split an order of their Bacon, But Different. Made with Brown Sugar, Cayenne Pepper, Chili Pepper Flakes, Black Pepper, and drenched in Maple Syrup.
Delicious!
And the Omelet was pretty good, though not Denny’s Ultimate Omelet good.
This past Tuesday morning SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy for the 4th time, the first since 2019. And the reason it’s been so long is that the government payloads it was supposed to carry were delayed over and over for technical reasons.
One of the things that always amazes me about the Falcon Heavy is watching both boosters come back to earth and land side by side. And here’s a video really up close.
Jan’s got a number of programs she watches on YouTube, but she’s upset that they’ve apparently gone into Holiday Ad mode. Where previously they would run commercials, showing 1 of 3, or so in the upper left, now they’re running 1 of 10 or 11.
Too Many!
Thought For The Day:
Any organization is only as good as the worst psycho they tolerate among them.
November 2, 2009
“Hitch Itch” Scratched
Today was a fairly long travel day for us. We left Michigan about 8 am headed southwest about 330 miles to Vernon IL to visit Jan’s sister, Debbie, for a few days.
But since the trip was almost all Interstate/Tollroad, it wasn’t that bad. We stopped at a rest area about 40 miles down the road to get a breakfast sandwich at McDonald’s. The rest areas on the tollroads up here are full service, with gas, and several restaurants, not just restrooms.
It was raining slightly for the first couple of hours, but no problem.
I’m really appreciating the new shocks. They’re still a little stiff, but they’ll loosen up in the next few hundred miles. But, the excessive roll and porpoising are gone.
About 1 pm we stopped at a McDonald’s in Rantoul, IL. Luckily it had a large parking lot in back so we had no trouble getting in and out. We did get some strange looks from people, though. I guess they thought we were trying to go through the drive-thru line.
We pulled into our parking spot about 3:30 pm, having gained a hour since we crossed into the Central Time Zone again.
We’re parked next to a barn owned by a relative of my brother-in-law, Jim. And even better, we have a 30 amp outlet to plug into. Since we leave the cats in the coach, we leave the heaters and a couple of lights on, so plugging in keeps the batteries charged.
Jan’s sister Debbie had a great meal for us that evening and it was good to talk over old times. We’ll be here until Friday or Saturday at least.
November 2, 2010
Rain and RED, again . . .
Today, actually last night started out with a heck of a thunderstorm. It’s the first time I’ve ever felt the entire coach shake, rattle, and roll just from the thunder rumbling overhead.
Here’s what the radar looked like when I got up, and it wasn’t really moving. It just sat there.
Here’s what it looked like outside the rig.
Even Jan’s bird feeder ended up under water. The ground got so soggy the pole pulled out and fell.
One side effect to all the rain was that we discovered some new leaks in the rig. Of course with the rain blowing sideways a good part of the night, it’s not really surprising. But it looks like I’ve got some more caulking to do.
About 10am I headed out to check in with a couple of clients. Then getting back home about noon, Jan and I headed back out to the Star Cinema Grill to see the movie RED again.
We really enjoyed it when we saw it the first time last week, and wanted to see it again. It seems that with all the action going on, it was sometimes hard to keep up with the dialog.
And it was still good the second time around.
Leaving the movie we stopped off at Home Depot. I’m looking for a check valve that I can install in the water line going to my water pump. Apparently the check valve inside the pump is leaking so that the onboard 100 gallon fresh water tank fills up and then leaks out of the overflow.
There’s nothing else wrong with the pump so I thought I just add a external check valve instead. I think I found one that will work, but I want to check out what kind of connectors I need first.
Leaving HD we stopped off at PETCO and then
headed home.
Getting back to the rig it had cleared up enough so that Jan and I could take our walk, but we’re supposed to have more rain tonight and tomorrow. Oh Boy!
November 2, 2011
Another nice, laidback day . . .
Once again, another laidback day.
Sometimes it’s not even easy to nail down the location of a part on the RV. The manual will say one thing, and then, not finding it there, you call the factory and they tell you, well, check here or there.
So the factory is not always sure either. I’ve been told that where something is located can even depend on who installed it. One guy likes to mount it in one location, but the guy working on the next rig on the line is too big to squeeze in there, so he mounts it somewhere else.
Just keeps life interesting.
A little after 1 pm I put Mister outside on his leash and drove down to the office to get a new barcode card, after we got locked out yesterday.
Turns out we weren’t the only ones to have a problem. Apparently the gate operator was not supposed to change the code this week since the park closes this Monday, but he did, and then left for the season. So there is no one manning the gate anymore since no new rigs are coming in.
It’s starting to get real quiet around here. Three more rigs, including the monkey people, pulled out this afternoon, so things are really thinning out. It will be interesting to see how many will be leaving on Monday like us.
About 4:30p I drove down to the Exxon station by the Interstate to buy some Powerball tickets. It’s up to 245 million dollars tonight so I thought I’d take a chance. Crossing my fingers.
November 2, 2012
Down Home Alabama . . .
After sleeping in a little our first day back in Alabama, we headed out about 10:30 for lunch and some errands in Huntsville.
But our first stop was at the Athens Post Office where we dropped off our South Dakota Absentee Ballots in a Priority Mail envelope. They’ll be there Monday just in time to go to the polling place on Tuesday.
Next we headed about 20 miles over to Rosie’s Cantina in Huntsville, our favorite Mexican place in this area. Jan says their Chili Relleno ranks up there with some of the best, and my combo Chicken/Beef Fajitas were great, too. They also have a great Tres Leches, but we were just too full.
After that great lunch, we headed down the road a couple of miles to Sam’s Club to pick up a few things, mostly vitamins.
Then heading back toward Athens, we stopped off at Books-A-Million, probably our favorite bookstore. They have a much wider selection of magazines than Barnes & Noble, including many I’ve never found anywhere else.
We got back to the rig about 2pm and after putting things away, we had plenty of time for a nice nap.
About 4pm we drove right next door to my Aunt and Uncle’s house for dinner. My Aunt Jan fixed a great dinner of Chicken Wings, Cole Slaw, and Potato Salad. Really good.
Later we were joined their son Wes, my cousin, his wife Helen, and their kids, Stahlie, Darby, Luke, and Harland. We had a great time talking and catching up with the rest of family. It always feels good to come back home here.
We finally headed back to the rig after everyone started yawning. Tomorrow we’ll be getting together with some other branches on the family tree.
November 2, 2014
Not Too Bad . . .
So Far.
Don’t know if it was the fact that we were doing two fracks at one time before, but this time we’re only doing 8 or 9 pages a day. Much better than the 13 to 14 pages last time.
Halliburton is using our pad to stage the frack sand trucks as they come in, since they can only fit 3 trucks at a time on the pad where they’re fracking right down the road.
As it is, it’s a tight turn getting out of here.
In fact the Halliburton guy came down a little while ago to ask if he could move the light tower back about 6 feet. I told him, “Sure, but it’s not going to help much.” He said, “What do you mean?”
I said, “This trucking company you’re using has a lot of guys who can’t drive. Most of them know to swing wide and have no trouble, but a lot of them are going to have a problem no matter how far you push it back.”
And sure enough, while we were standing there talking about the frack job, another sand truck cut it short, knocked over the Stop sign, and set the light tower rocking like an upside down pendulum. He just shook his head and went over to yell at the driver.
My great-niece Darby Calvin has a book of poetry out in Kindle format. Or maybe I should say a ‘book of poem’, since that’s what it is. Called “The Queen of the Dance”, it’s a 67 page epic poem in the manner of Sir Walter Scott’s “Lady of the Lake”.
The poem tells the story of a beautiful elf and her adventures in the world of the mortals.
Stahlie, Darby’s equally talented sister did the beautiful cover art. Really nice.
It made it down to 38 degrees last night, the coldest night on the gate so far this year. I did OK, but I think I’m going to pick up a box of those chemical handwarmers at Wal-Mart this week. If I wear heavy gloves so my hands are warm, I can’t write in the logs, so I wear light gloves with the fingertips cut off. But then my hands get cold. So maybe these will help.
OK, two days of fracking, and still no Frack Food.
What’s wrong with this picture.
November 2, 2015
Turkey Day’s Coming . . .
And Landon’s ready.
Well, today’s AM Cloudy / PM Sunny forecast started out right on schedule, but the PM Sunny part apparently took a wrong turn somewhere because it never showed up. Instead we got an afternoon of very overcast sky with no sun to be seen, more like it was trying to rain, but couldn’t quite get up the energy.
I started noticing this morning that our Mighty Mule Driveway Alarm that monitors vehicles coming into our gate, seemed to be missing a truck every now and then. And this was unusual since it’s never missed a beat since I installed it the first part of September. Then when I brought our coffee out at 11:30, Jan said it had done the same thing to her. She’d look up from her book and a truck would be pulling up in front of the gate.
At this point my first thought was batteries. Although the receiver here at the canopy has a ‘Low Bat’ light on it, I’ve never seen it on, and it wasn’t on now. But since these were the original set of ‘AA’s that I installed when I set up the Mule, I figured changing out the batteries was a good start to fixing the problem. And it turns out it did the trick.
Since the second Mule was replaced by Amazon, and since we’ve only got three weeks left here, the batteries in that unit will hopefully last.
About a half hour after I took over from Jan at 1pm, I hear the rig door open and a stern voice say, “Gregory White, get in here.”
Oh, Lord, what have I done now. At least she didn’t use my middle name.
Turns out that this woman, who stomps on scorpions while wearing sandals,
and watches tarantulas stroll by a foot from her chair,
she was terrified of a tiny, smaller than a dime, spider on the ceiling of the rig. So I performed my husbandly duty, one of them anyway, and removed the spider from the rig.
I mean, aren’t tarantulas big spiders? They’re OK, but little tiny ones are scary?
Who knew?
Late Friday afternoon I placed an Amazon order and was told that with free Prime 2 Day Shipping, it would be here Tuesday. Ok, no problem.
Then later that evening I got an email saying that the first of my three boxes had already been shipped. Then early Saturday morning, I was told the two remaining boxes had been shipped. WOW!
And with Amazon’s usual great service, everything showed up today, rather than tomorrow.
With service like this, why do they need drones?
I’m sure readers will remember my Tale of Two Laces from a few days ago, Well I think I’ve found what I need, on Amazon of course. These 550 Paracord Steel Tip Boot Laces are made from 550 pound test Paracord, or parachute cord.
Anyway, they’ve certainly got to be better than the ones made from cheap Indian cow parts (as Lolita Gupta said, “Our kind of Indian, or the Come to Our Casino type of Indian). And at $11.50 for two pair, they’re actually cheaper, too.
Unfortunately I didn’t come across them until after I placed my order this past Friday, so I’ll wait until we’re at the Lake Conroe Thousand Trails to order them.
BTW one of the 8 colors available for these laces is ‘Coyote’. Is that really a color, or just a made-up one, like mauve or fuchsia.
Our daughter Brandi sent over this latest piece of Landon’s artwork. She ask him to draw a turkey, and here’s what he came up with in about 10 minutes.
He even put the Pilgrim hat on top (note the gold buckle), as well as the flowers and the tree, all on his own.
In case you didn’t remember, he’s FIVE. And they’ve even made comments at school about his artwork. He must get this from his uncle, our son Chris, who also is a talented artist.
I must say though, with all the multi-colored tail feathers, I would suspect some hanky-panky with the NBC Peacock.
Just sayin’.
November 2, 2017
It Was GoDaddy’s Fault . . .
I think.
After my client’s email problems last night, I was up early since I figured I’d would have to go in this morning, but it turns out it was all working OK and all the missing emails had shown up.
After I got home last night I began to wonder if the problem was not with our email server, but with the domain name itself which is hosted on GoDaddy. When an email comes in, it gets fed through GoDaddy and then down to our server. The fact that some emails were coming through after a long delay, and some not at all, led me to believe it wasn’t us. So hopefully it’ll settle down for now.
I’m still trying to figure out how the rain gauge is supposed to work on my new La Crosse Weather Station.
Yesterday morning about 5am it poured down rain for about 45 minutes so when I got up about 9 and checked the display, I was surprised to see that it hadn’t recorded even .01 of an inch. So when when I got home from work last night I brought it inside and removed and replaced the batteries, and then put it under a drip in the sink.
And in about 30 minutes it was reading 3.65 inches, so I guess it was working now, and I set it aside. But then when I happened to look at the display a little later, about 7:30, It was showing 0.00 again.
Now weather stations I’ve worked with in the past, at TV stations and NASA, monitored the rain on a 24 hr. basis and would reset at midnight, so I’m not sure what this one is doing. Just something else to look into, I guess.
About 5pm, Jan and I headed over toward I-45 to try out a Vietnamese place in the area called Phở 20. We were looking for a local restaurant to replace the Asian Grill in Conroe and Little V’s in Katy. It had 4.4 stars on Google so we had high hopes.
We started off with an order of Pork Spring Rolls, good with a really good peanut sauce, though not quite as good as Little V’s. But good enough that I forgot to get a photo.
Next up, I had a bowl of Miso Soup,
very, very good, while Jan got their Crunch Salad with Tempura Crunchies.
Also very good.
For our entrée, Jan got the Chicken Vermicelli Bowl,
while I got the Beef, Chicken, and Shrimp Vermicelli Bowl.
Everything was really good, and we’ll certainly go back.
The owner waited on us, and we enjoyed talking to him and his wife. Very nice people.
Since we had had spring rolls and soup/salad to start, we both had leftovers from our entrées, and as we were getting into the truck, the owner’s wife came running out with a big order of Fried Rice to take home with us. Very nice.
Tomorrow it’s back to work, and then dinner with friends at Jimmy Changa’s tomorrow night. Really looking forward to it.
November 2, 2018
Everyone Is Unique!
Our venerable Lasko tower ceramic heater died this morning, so I guess we’ll be heater shopping this weekend. I think we got it in 2008 when we first started RV’ing, so I think we’ve gotten our money’s worth.
We first use it this winter a couple of days ago and it was working fine. But this morning when it was down to about 50 degrees, I turned it on and it worked for about 10 minutes and then shut off.
The red power light was still on, but that’s it. I can unplug for about 15 minutes, plug it back in, and then it will work again . . . for about 10 minutes.
It maybe clogged up and overheating, kicking off the thermal switch, so I may try to take it apart and see if the vents are clogged. Though it doesn’t look like it’s really made to take apart.
But when has that ever stopped me?
Coming home from work, I finally got gas at the new Costco. Of course the last time I tried it, I couldn’t get the gas cap cover open.
I don’t know if it’s some grand opening special or what, but the gas here is $2.17, 18 cents a gallon cheaper than the next closest, $2.35 at WalMart. Hope it holds up.
For dinner tonight we finished off the last of Jan’s famous chili. Even better this time since she added more ground habanero powder.
Still didn’t hear anything from Snider Transmission today, but I told them to take their time, so I figure early next week. In the meantime I’ve been browsing online, looking over possible Dakota replacements. but nothing has reached out and grabbed me yet.
FWIW when we were toad shopping in 2007, we both thought the Dakota was the one.
Spent a little more time calling around looking for the Shingrix shingle vaccine with no luck. If we don’t find some by the end of the month, we’ll probably go ahead and get the old Zostavax shot.
They’re not as effective for seniors as the Shingrix, which is actually a two shot treatment, but it’s supposedly better than nothing. And it won’t interfere with the Shingrix shots later.
November 2, 2020
Well, It’s Not That Hot . . .
Since we got there too late on Saturday, I went by Dunkin Donuts this morning on the way into work to finally get a taste of their new Spicy Ghost Pepper Donut.
It’s a yeast cake donut with Strawberry Icing infused with Cayenne Pepper and Ghost Chili Pepper spices, and coated with Red Sanding Sugar.
I got two, one to have with my coffee at work, and one to bring home so Jan could have a taste, and just a taste, since she didn’t want a whole one of her own.
And though it’s probably really hot for some people, it’s more lukewarm to mildly warm for me, since I regularly sprinkle Carolina Reaper flakes, now the hottest-rated pepper and much hotter than the Ghost Peppers,
on my omelets, shrimp & grits, taco salads, and tortilla soups. Now that’s hot.
Coming home this afternoon I stopped in once again to our new Cowboy Coffee kiosk that just opened this past Saturday. I was happy to see a long line at the place this morning, and a much shorter line at the Starbuck’s that I pass a few miles down the road.
I got Jan another Pumpkin Caramel Scone coffee and I tried the Egg Nog version. Both very good as before. I also got Jan a small regular coffee so she can dilute her Pumpkin for the sweetness.
She doesn’t like things too sweet, (maybe because she’s already so sweet) so she uses a little plain coffee to de-sweeten hers.
Several of our local friends have wondered about this small drive-thru coffee shop and I told them you see these a lot out west and up north, especially in Alaska. But this is the first one I’ve seen in this area.
Hope they continue to do well. Nice people!
November 2, 2021
Phở Barr . . .
Jan and I were out and about a little after 1pm, with our first stop at a new place up in Webster called Phở Barr. We were interested because they’re supposed to be opening one down in our area.
A small, somewhat nondescript place in a strip center, near another favorite of ours, Texas Huddle Grille, home of the PB&J Bacon Cheeseburger, it’s much nicer inside.
And the food was really delicious too.
We started out with an order of Grilled Pork Spring Rolls, with a really good peanut sauce.
Next we moved on to their Vermicelli Bowls. Jan’s with Grilled Chicken, and mine with Grilled Ribeye.
We both talked about how much this reminded us of Little V’s Vietnamese Bistro up in Katy.
We asked for Iced Tea and got this delicious black tea with Sea Foam.
Not sure exactly what ‘Sea Foam’ is, but it was very tasty.
We will definitely be back here, and soon. In fact, probably this Thursday.
It was that good.
Then it was on down to our WalMart for some groceries. And it was noticeable how empty some of the shelves were. Like the lunch meat section here.
And this wasn’t the the only area of bare shelves.
