Today was easy and delicious.
The ‘delicious’ part was lunch at King Food Chinese for our usual Chicken with Hot Garlic Sauce, Extra Spicy with added Jalapenos. And of course, Hot & Sour Soup to start.
In thinking about it, Jan and I realized we’ve been eating here for almost 45 years, since December 1978 when we moved out here from Montgomery, Alabama. When I started work at NASA-JSC, it was the first place where we all went to lunch. And then a couple of nights later I took the family there for dinner. And the present owner is the fourth one since we started eating there.
Chris was 10 and Brandi was 5, and they didn’t want ‘anything from China’. Chris’ words. So we had to stop and get them Happy Meals on the way. But it wasn’t too many visits later until Chris decided that “Shredded Spicy Beef’ looked really good, and if he was going to eat it, Brandi was going to eat it too.
So from then on, we had to share.
For the easy part, it was on over to Kroger’s for some Kroger-specific stuff that Jan likes, before getting home about 3pm.
For Jan’s Birthday, I got her one of these 3D PopUp Musical Birthday Cards.
When you open it, it flashes different colors and plays ‘Happy Birthday’.
And if you blow on the candle, you hear cheering and applause.
She loved it.
She also loved the box of Autumn Spice Essential Oils I got her for her diffuser.
With Cinnamon, Apple Cider, Vanilla, and Pumpkin, it pretty much covers Autumn, I guess.
So now it’s the Smell Of The Day.
However, I do wonder about some of the names they give these oils. What is Fall Leaf or Harvest Spice supposed to smell like?
Or Hocus Pocus from one of her Halloween collections.
I mean, what does a 350-year-old witch supposed to smell like?
Maybe I don’t want to know.
I guess it’s kind of like those made-up paint color names.
So what color is ‘Carolina’ or ‘Heirloom Quilt’ anyway?
I’ve just about got my new computer at work set up like I want it. Just some small stuff I call ‘fiddly bits’ left to do, mostly configuration-type stuff.
Finishing up, 6 years ago today, in 2017, we moved down here to Santa Fe to the Petticoat Junction RV Park where we’ve been ever since. A really nice place to live.
Thought for the Day:
It’s Called Irony
And Now On To Today’s Retro-Blogs.™
October 26, 2009
Tilting at windmills…
Today started with Jan and I taking our coach down to M & M Fabricators to have our new shocks installed.
We got unhooked and headed out about 8:45 to drop the rig off. Jan followed in the toad. Leaving the rig there, we drove back to the park, stopping off at McDonald’s for a breakfast sandwich.
Back at the park, Jan headed out to run some other errands.
About 2 pm, M & M called and said our coach was ready so Jan and I drove over to pick it up. Driving it back to the park it was easy to tell the new shocks made a difference.
We got it finished up and then went to Bob Evans Restaurant for a really great meal about 8:30 pm. Arriving back at the coach an early bedtime was in order.
It was a long day…
October 26, 2010
Mister is Missing . . .
When we left the rig this afternoon about 12:45 pm, it looks like the door did not lock correctly. When we got home about 6 pm the outside door was partially open and our cat Mister was missing.
He’s a big guy, about 25 pounds, and very friendly. He has a name tag with his name and our phone number on it.
We spent about an hour walking around the park calling for him. One lady thought she had seen him about 30 minutes before she saw us. We looked all around that area, which is close to where we parked for the last two years, with no luck.
We ask both Ken and Tony, who are parked on either side of our old spot, to be on the lookout for him.
I’m hoping he walked up to someone and they took him in.
I went back out after dark with a big spotlight, but still with no luck.
We’ll head back out early tomorrow, and hopefully, we’ll have better luck.
More then…
October 26, 2012
Bombs Away!
Today started about 11am when we headed down to Pooler, GA to tour the Mighty 8th Air Force Museum.
We started out by going through a ‘full immersion’ show of a typical 8th Air Force bombing mission.
We began our flight by sitting in Quonset hut and listening to the flight briefing given through a combination of video and a live presentation from an actual 8th Air Force crew member. Then it was on to an excellent movie about the flight line and preparing the B-17’s for the bombing raid.
The final presentation was multi-media presentation simulating a bombing run over Germany, complete with loud flak explosions, bright flashing lights, and even rushing wind as the bomb bay doors open.
A really moving presentation.
The 8th Air Force Museum is located in Savannah because that’s where it was born. It was activated on January 2th, 1942 at Savannah Air Base, Savannah, GA, less than one month after Pearl Harbor.
During its 3 year operational history, over 350,000 men cycled through the unit. And of that number, there were 26,000 deaths and 28,000 casualties, with the loss of over 4000 planes.
Toward the end of the war, the 8th Air Force was sending out raids with over 2000 planes and 1000 fighters on a single mission to multiple targets.
It is said that by early 1945 there was nothing left to bomb in Germany. Every target of strategic or military value had been destroyed.
Leaving the presentation we walked through the many exhibits. They even had a couple of fantastic dioramas. This one depicted a raid on a German refinery. Very realistic.
And this one shows the 8th Air Force field at East Anglia, England.
They also have a number of planes on display, including this B-17, “The City of Savannah”,
which was the 5000th plane processed through Hunter Field in Savannah in 1944.
Here’s the P-51 Mustang, the most successful long ranger fighter of WWII. Its introduction allowed, for the first time, fighters to escort the bombers all the way into Germany and back out on even the longest missions.
And here’s one of the P-51’s adversaries, the German bf 109.
They also had a few more modern planes outside. Here’s a F-4C Phantom like I once worked on for the DOD.
A MiG 17A.
And finally, a Boeing B-47 Stratojet, our first swept-wing all-jet bomber.
We both really enjoyed the 8th Air Force Museum, especially Jan, who was an Air Force Brat.
This is a must-see when you visit Savannah.
Leaving the museum, we made a couple of Post Office and bank stops before spending some time just driving around old Savannah taking in all the old homes. Then we made a couple of trips down along the waterfront checking all the neat shops and restaurants.
By this time it was after 4pm, and with everyone hungry, we headed back to Jalapeno’s Mexican Restaurant, where we ate a couple of days ago.
It was that good. So good that everyone ordered exactly the same thing we got last time.
Heading back toward home, we made a Wal-Mart stop along the way. We also made a few more passes up and down some more of Savannah’s streets.
Getting back to our rig, we put away our groceries.
The perfect end to a great day.
October 26, 2013
They Broke Our Well . . .
Or at least it seems like it. They’ve been in Production here for a couple of weeks now which means they’re getting crude out, and there’s been a steady stream of tankers in and out ever since. At least until a few days ago, then things slowed down.
Now it turns out they have a problem and are going to have to redo the ‘coiled tubing’ phase again. Don’t know yet if there’s debris in the hole, or a clog of some sort. But the good thing for us is that it makes it more and more likely we’ll be able to stay at this site until we leave on the 23rd of November. Here’s hoping.
Also hopefully we’ll get a little rain (emphasis on little) in the next few days because the dust is getting really bad. Last year they had water trucks that would go through every few days and wet down the roads, but I’ve only seen that happen once, early on right after we got here.
You may have noticed a couple of new tabs at the top of the page: Jan’s Favorite Recipes, and What Were They Thinking?. We get a lot of requests for her recipes I mention here on the blog so now I have a place to put them.
I’m going to start out with some of what she calls her “Gate Recipes”, simple, quick, and very good, and then we’ll add more as we go along.
First up, Strawberry 7-Up Cake, Pineapple Angel Food Cake, and her famous Crockpot King Ranch Chicken. Enjoy.
As far as my What Were They Thinking?, it might also be titled How Dumb Can Someone Be?, and will be my spot to illustrate some of the rampant stupidity at large in the world today. For some strange reason, there’ll be a lot of government stuff on there. Who knew?
Under the heading of Where’s Landon, he’s now firmly of the opinion he doesn’t like his picture taken. So much so that he goes out of his way to avoid the camera.
See if you can pick him out in this photo.
Hint: He’s the one in the middle with his back to the camera. He stayed that way the whole time.
But Brandi finally got a shot when he ran up to her.
Had something a little strange happen at the Wal-Mart in Pleasanton yesterday (Friday). I was there getting groceries and also picking up Jan’s 4 prescriptions. Told the young lady that I would just pay for them when I checked out with my groceries, so she clipped one of those anti-theft thingies you see on clothes, to the bag and off I went. When I got to the checkout, the lady removed the thingie and scanned the prescriptions in. The register beeped and said “Already Scanned In”. In my mind I figured it was because the pharmacy had already started scanning them when I told them I’d pay up front. So the cashier hits a couple of keys and then scans them again. Everything went through fine and off I went.
Later in the evening, after I went to bed, I got a voicemail from the pharmacy asking me to call them. When I did this morning they asked ‘politely’ if I had paid for the prescriptions. Told them as far as I knew I had. Said the cashier had taken the thingie off and scanned them through. I did mention about the “Already Scanned In” problem. She asked if I still had my receipt and could I check it. I said I’d dig it up and call her back.
And as it turns out I almost got $82.84 worth of free prescriptions. On the receipt, it showed they were scanned in, but then immediately voided. I never noticed the price change because I had looked at the running total after they were first scanned in and the amount seemed right. I didn’t look at the final total since I would have had to take my glasses off to see it on the small screen.
I told the pharmacist that I wouldn’t be back over there until next Thursday, and did she want me to just give her a credit card number over the phone? She said no problem, just take care of it when I come in next week.
And I almost got away with it.
October 26, 2014
We Miss Our Tree . . .
Well, we’re still settling in at our new gate, trying to get things configured like we like. Unfortunately, some things we’re just going to have to not like, but put up with.
Right across the entrance way from us is a set of production tanks to store the crude coming out of the wells until a tanker comes to pick it up. Don’t know if they plan on putting a pipeline in yet. There are almost 15 wells back in here, with more on the way, so it would seem to make sense.
We’re parked parallel to the entrance to the pad so our rig faces south, and with no trees for shade, our rig A/C’s are once again having to earn their keep. Not sure yet if I’ll put up the Reflectix radiant barrier in the rig windshield. Today didn’t seem too bad so I’ll give it a few days and see.
The other problem is that due to the way we’re parked here, our canopy and seating area is about 30 feet back from the road, so it’s a short hike out to the road to log people in. But the extra exercise is not the real problem. The real problem is going to be when it’s pouring down rain.
The entrance road coming from the highway is just to the left of the generator trailer.
At our old gate, the canopy was close enough to the road so that if it was raining we could stay under the edge and still check people in without getting things wet. And by ‘things’, I’m not talking about us, but the log sheets. We’ve found no workable way to keep the log sheets dry while logging in people in the rain, Jan often uses a pocket voice recorder, but this won’t work if we’re busy. It takes too long to transcribe login info when you’ve got six more trucks coming in. But we’ll work something out. We always do.
The FRC clothing has turned out to be pretty comfortable. We got the FRC T-Shirts, which although they’re long sleeve, are not too hot.
And finally, on the Landon front, here’s this.
October 26, 2015
Monday Morning Coming Down . . .
And it just keeps on coming down.
Even later this afternoon, when the radar showed clear skies in the area for miles around, it was still drizzling here. It just doesn’t seem to want to let go. But it’s supposed to be just ‘Cloudy’ tomorrow, and ‘Sunny’ and 80 degrees on Wednesday.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how ‘Wet’ the ‘Cloudy’ is going to be.
But since we’ve been able to stay inside pretty much all the time, it hasn’t been a problem. All our stuff under the canopy has been staying dry, and I’ve got all the electrical connections wrapped and taped, so we haven’t had any problems with the genset’s GFCI popping.
And since our GGS service guy Todd replaced the bad sewer pump macerator last Friday,
that’s not popping the GFCI anymore, either.
We’re still waiting for our Flowback crew to show up. As it was we only had the two frack water guys come through as usual. Oh, and one guy who was lost, looking for the other frack.
He came in, said he was here to repair a pump, and headed down to the pad, which is totally black with no lights. There are light towers down there so I figured he was just going to crank one up and get his work done. But as it turned out he was just lost.
I do sometimes wonder though how some of these guys find their way around. He showed me his directions and they were correct. He just didn’t follow them. They said to turn off the main highway, go 1 mile and turn left at the ‘T’.
But he went 1 mile, turned right at the ‘T’, went another half mile, and then turned left onto our road.
Ya just gotta wonder.
October 26, 2016
Jan’s All Giddy Again . . .
She got the day off.
And it looks like we’ll both have the day off tomorrow. And we’ve been told that it will probably be a couple of days before we’re reassigned to another gate.
Todd texted me this morning that I was to come in, but Jan had the day off because he had a couple of other guards he wanted to run through her gate for training. Then about 6pm he texted me that this gate was shutting down as of 6am tomorrow morning, i.e. the end of my shift. He said he hopes to have us another gate ASAP.
We already knew they were rigging down from flowback here, but there was some talk that the gate guards would stay until the completion crew came in because of all the equipment still here. But it seems that’s not going to happen.
Well, it was a nice gate while it lasted. On to the next one.
It has only taken me a few days to figure out that the person(s) who wrote this eWatch Gate Guard Logging program have never worked a gate with it. If they had it wouldn’t be written this way.
In some cases, it’s just small things. Like when you have a vehicle come in, you click on the Entry box and the Entry screen comes up. So we tap the Tag# box and the keyboard comes up. But it comes up in Alpha mode and not numeric mode. So it’s another click to get there. And with the 100’s of vehicles I’ve entered in the last four days, not one of them had an Alpha character in the last four digits of the tag number.
And it’s just a single command string in the Open Keyboard code to make it work correctly.
Yeah, it’s a small thing, but when you’re entering dozens (or hundreds) of vehicles a day, and the drivers are wishing you’d hurry the hell up, it’s annoying.
And it seems to sometimes lose track of people. For example, earlier this evening I had a truck come in with Antonio driving and Sergio as a passenger. Then about 10 minutes later, the truck leaves, but now Sergio is the driver and he’s left Antonio behind.
And the log shows this correctly.
But then a couple of hours later, Jorge, Jose, and Brian leave in another company truck, the same one they all entered in earlier, and now they take Antonio out with them. So on the Exit page, I add Antonio as a passenger and then Exit the whole bunch.
And the log shows that Jorge, the driver, and Jose, Brian, and Antonio, passengers, all left in that vehicle. But when I now look at the Personnel log that shows everyone supposedly still onsite, Antonio is still here. And I can’t find any way to manually get rid of him.
Then about 9:30 all 12 of one company’s trucks left in a convoy, one after the other. And there is absolutely no way to handle this on the iPad.
To Exit a vehicle, you first have to wake up the iPad (it goes to sleep automagically after a minute or so of non-use), then slide the graphic on the screen to unlock it, and then click the Exit box.
Next, from the list of everyone on site, you click on that truck, the data of which is then populated into the form. And this point you can now click Submit, the system asks “Are You Sure? You click Yes and they’re gone.
But now you’re back at the opening menu screen. And it starts all over again. Of course, by this time 8 of the 12 trucks are already through the gate and off down the road. The only logical way to do this is with a pad and a pencil, and then enter it into the iPad.
But we’re told to do everything on the iPad.
Right!
October 26, 2017
Who Doesn’t Have Bananas For Oatmeal?
For our move down to Santa Fe, we were up about 7:30 to start packing stuff away for the trip.
We were pretty much done by 9, so we headed out to the Conroe Cracker Barrel for our traditional travel day breakfast.
Jan had her usual eggs, bacon, and hash browns,
while I had their Oatmeal.
I really wanted bananas rather than the other fruity stuff, but Cracker Barrel doesn’t have bananas. I’m sorry but it’s not really oatmeal without bananas.
Back at the rig by 10:30, after saying our goodbyes to Dave and Janice Evans, we were hitched up and on the way by 11:30. and we weren’t out of our site for 5 minutes, when someone almost immediately grabbed our site while we still hitching up.
Even through downtown Houston, our trip was pretty smooth with no problems at all. Our first stop was the La Marque Buc-ee’s about 1:15 to top off our rig’s diesel tank at $2.27 a gallon, the cheapest I’ve seen recently.
After traipsing through Santa Fe neighborhoods, we pulled into the Petticoat Junction RV Park about 1:45. Finding no one around, I put in a call to the park owners and was told to take site #7. Since it was right behind us I unhitched the truck and then backed us right in.
After resting for about an hour, we drove up to Clear Lake, first to my client’s to pick up Jan’s other birthday present. This:
Instant Pot 8 Qt., 6 in 1, Pressure Cooker.
So Jan’s the proud owner of an Instant Pot. Now to learn how to use it.
Then our next stop was Floyd’s Cajun Seafood, one of our long-time favorite places. We’ve been coming here since the mid-90’s when the place first opened as Thibodeaux’s. When it closed under mysterious circumstances, Floyd Landry, who had been a silent partner, and furnished all the recipes, took it over
Jan, as usual, got her favorite Chicken Fried Chicken, with Fries.
while I went with the Seafood Gumbo and a side of Floyd’s Potatoes.
Every time I’ve been to Floyd’s recently I’ve been alternating back and forth between the Seafood Gumbo,l which had Shrimp and Crab Meat, and the Shrimp Gumbo, which has, well, Shrimp. I think I like the plain Shrimp Gumbo better. Actually I wish they offered Oysters with the Seafood Gumbo, but they don’t.
Years ago I tried to talk Floyd into making it that way , and he said it would make the gumbo too expensive. Told him he should just offer it as an extra cost option, then we could order it if we wanted to. But never could convince him.
Tomorrow it’s back to work, but with a much shorter drive. Nice.
October 26, 2018
A New Project . . .
I heard back from Snider Transmission with so-so news about our Dodge Dakota. There’s nothing externally wrong with the transmission, so the next step is to take a look inside. And that will cost me $300.
That’s the charge for removing it, disassembling it, and diagnosing the problem. If at that point I do decide to repair it, the $300 will apply to the bill.
But that doesn’t include putting it back together afterwards if I decide not to get it repaired. And in fact due to all the O-rings and gaskets that would have to be replaced even without actually repairing, it wouldn’t be cost-effective anyway.
But I decided to roll the dice and hope I don’t Crap out.
For a while now I’ve been trying to get my client to take a look at how they do shipping. Numerically, our order totals are pretty much equally divided between USPS and UPS. We do ship a few orders via FedEx, but they’re mostly international shipments. But money-wise, the $ totals are about 3 to 1 for UPS.
But there can be a lot of differences in shipping costs between the various methods. For example, if we ship a 10# package to New York City, NY with USPS, check out the possible differences in cost.
Via standard Priority Mail (weight-based) it would be $28.45.
Via a Priority Mail Medium Flat Rate Box, it would $11.60.
And via a Priority Mail Regional Rate Box A, it would be only $9.70
That’s a big range!
To make things more confusing, there’s actually a fourth shipping method called Priority Mail Cubic, that’s only based on the size of the box.
And that’s not even bringing UPS into the mix.
The problem turns out to be how to quickly and easily figure out the cheapest way to ship a package. Your variables are package weight, shipping distance (Postal Zone), and package size. And the same weight package will ship cheaper either of 4 different ways, depending on how far away it’s going.
So what we need is a program that will take the weight and the destination zip code and tell you which way is the cheapest. There are a couple of online sites that purport to do this, but mostly seem to try and get you to ship through them.
So my new project is to write a program that will take the shipping weight and the destination zip and tell you the cheapest way to ship it.
I’ll probably just do the first version in Liberty BASIC since it’s quicker for prototyping, and then once the logic flow is nailed down, I may move it into something like C+. But it may work just fine in Compiled BASIC. I’ll just have to see.
But at a quick glance, the first problem I see is that the USPS charts I need, like the Domestic Zone Chart that translates Zip Codes into Postal Zones, doesn’t seem be available in computer form, just printouts. But I’ll keep looking.
Tomorrow we’re meeting up with Miss Piper for breakfast at The Egg and I, then she and Jan are going to get Mani-Pedi’s. Well, just a Pedi for Jan.
Then Sunday we’re going up to Brandi’s in Katy and lounge around their pool while Lowell grills something.
Really looking forward to it.
October 26, 2019
A Big, Shiny New One . . .
Several of our readers suggested that I just chuck the old filter adapter and buy a new one. And after looking at it closer this morning, I agreed and put my order in with DieselPartsDirect this afternoon.
Hopefully it will be here by the end of next week so I can wrap this up.
I mentioned yesterday that I had noticed pitting in the gasket area which I thought was strange on a piece of steel like this. But then it sat outside last night and got rained on, and then this morning I noticed the white rust corrosion spotted over it.
So it wasn’t steel like I was told, but aluminum, which explains better the pitting on the surface. And since some of the pits are along the gasket edges, I don’t want to take any chances with any leakage under pressure.
So a shiny, new one it is.
Coming from Jan’s Birthday dinner last evening, we stopped and got gas at Costco, and the price dropped again, from $2.08 two weeks ago, $2.04 last week, to $1.98 yesterday.
Nice!
Also forgot to post this of the Birthday Girl yesterday.
Jan and I had dinner this afternoon at our favorite Los Ramirez Mexican Restaurant. Then we made a stop by our storeroom to pick up our two electric heaters. It’s been going down in the low 50’s the last few nights, and we’re looking at the 40’s next week. Of course knowing Texas weather, we’ll have some 90’s mixed back in there again.
Finishing up, Brandi sent over this photo of Landon’s 1st Prize Halloween costume.
Readers will remember this as his Mr. Pug persona from his Facebook page.
Great going, Landon!
October 26, 2021
More Gogh . . .
First off Jan wants to thank everyone for all the many Birthday Greetings she received.
I also got some emails about yesterday’s blog title, My Cougar Is Back. It refers to the fact that with Jan’s Birthday, we’re back to our usual Cougar/BoyToy situation, since she’s now a year older than me once again.
Here’s a couple of more photos of the Immersion Van Gogh exhibit from yesterday.
Even the videos I posted yesterday don’t convey how impressive this all is.
This one is done by the same guy who did the one we saw in Paris in 2019. So we were happy to find that it was not just the same performance, but completely different.
And we’ve still got another one next month, this time with Brandi, Lowell, Landon, and Sophie. Really looking forward to it.
Afterwards, our next stop was at the Trader Joe’s out in Katy for a few things she’d seen on sale. Next we had planned to head back down to Webster to have Jan’s Birthday Dinner at our favorite Saltgrass Steakhouse, but we decided we didn’t want to wait that long, so drove over to Mason Rd. to that Saltgrass.
Our steaks were as delicious as always, but the highlight of the meal for Jan was her own piece of Pumpkin Cheesecake. No splitting with me this time.
Jan declared it a very nice birthday.
October 26, 2022
Starting Year 6 . . .
Jan wanted me to thank all of you for the many emails, blog comments, and Facebook posts wishing her a Happy Birthday!
Today marks the beginning of our 6th year here at Petticoat Junction. We both agree that it really doesn’t seem that long.
Sure seems like home now.
Tomorrow looks to be Twin Peaks and Costco once again.
Somehow in doing yesterday’s blog, I neglected to post a photo of the Birthday Girl herself.
