DeSoto’s . . .
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Today was kind of a rest up day, or maybe a rest up morning, for Jan and I.
After breakfast here at the motel about 9, Jan and I lounged around the rest of the morning. I did go out to the parking lot to install my new spare tire cover to replace the one that the car wash ate last week.
And I really like this one. It’s a much heavier vinyl, and completely elastic, so no tie cords that have to be fastened down.
Then, a little before 1 pm, we headed over to the Silverhill area to pick up Claudia. We got a look at her new house that’s under construction. Really nice floor plan.
Then we headed down AL 59 to the Gulf Shores area, driving around for a while, checking out all the new stuff that’s been built since we were here last year.
Then it was on over to DeSoto’s Seafood Kitchen, a long-time favorite of ours, like 30 years or more.
Claudia got a Salad, Gumbo, and Fried Green Tomatoes,
while Jan and I each got the Seafood Platter, with Catfish, Shrimp, Oysters, and Crab Claws, along with Fried Green Tomatoes, and Sweet Potato Casserole.
Pretty much the same thing we get every time.
Claudia is one of the few people I’ve known longer than Jan. Checking back, we’ve known each other since the 3rd grade, with our mothers close friends and our fathers in business together at various times.
Finishing up, we finally headed back home, dropping Claudia off at her home, and getting back to the motel about 5.
This was kind of an abbreviated visit, saving the rest for about a week from now, when we’ll be staying 4 nights here on our way back to Houston.
Tomorrow we’re leaving about 10 am, heading for Tallahassee for one night, on our way to Titusville, where Jan and I met 58+ years ago.
Thought for the Day:
Apparently, free speech is only allowed until someone else doesn’t like it.
And Now On To Today’s Retro-Blogs.™
October 19, 2008
Chicken, AK
October 19, 2009
A Job Complete!
I wanted to spend the day finally getting the bathroom faucet changed out, so we ate a lunch of leftovers.
It took all afternoon and two trips to Lowe’s, but I finally got the old one off.
And, ironically, the Lowe’s trips didn’t help.
It just took a lot of brute force, i.e., a screwdriver and a big, honking hammer.
It turns out all I had to do was just beat the crap out of it.
Finally getting the old one out, I got the new one in and working in only about 10 minutes.
Here’s the result.
The old one was a two-handle model that couldn’t be repaired when it started dripping. This one can be fixed.
About 6 pm, we headed out for dinner at Ryan’s, dropping off a bag of garbage at the dumpster on the way out of the park.
We got back home a little after 7, ready to enjoy our new faucet.
October 19, 2010
Liberace and A Tea Party. . .
I read yesterday about the closing of the Liberace Museum. At one time it was one of the largest attractions in Las Vegas, with more than 450,000 visitors a year. Now it has dwindled to only about 50,000 a year.
When we were in Vegas this past Spring, we didn’t visit the museum, but we did take some photos of the outside. Kinda neat, actually.
They say they want to close the museum and put some of the displays on a traveling exhibition.
Personally, I think they ought to move it to Branson. It would fit right in, and the age demographic is certainly right.
I did find this recipe from a Liberace Cookbook for Sticky Buns. Looks delicious.
Ingredients:
1 cup white raisins
8 oz. pecan halves
1/2 cup light rum
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1/2 pound (two sticks) unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon each of ground nutmeg, allspice, cloves, and ginger
3 packages (18 buns) Pillsbury crescent dough.
Directions:
Soak the raisins in the rum over a low flame. Set aside. Preheat oven to 325 F. In a saucepan, melt butter and stir in the spices and the brown sugar until the mixture becomes a bubbling syrup.
Unroll the crescent dough, keeping each package in one flat place. Drizzle one quarter of the syrup over each individual piece of dough, reserving the last quarter for later.
Sprinkle one third of the raisins and spread one third of the chopped pecans on each of the three sheets of dough. Roll up each section of dough, jelly-roll style and cut into 1-inch pieces.
Grease two eight-muffin pans or three six-muffin pans with butter. Put a scant teaspoon of the reserved syrup and a few whole pecans in the bottom of each muffin mold.
Cover with the individual jelly-roll pieces, cut side up. Bake in preheated oven for the time recommended on the Pillsbury packages.
While pans are still hot, invert them on a sheet of heavy aluminum foil allowing the buns to be released. Replace any of the syrup and pecans that cling to the molds on the individual buns.
You should serve the buns while they are still warm and have that fresh-from-the-oven taste.
And that’s your cooking tip for the day.
As far as today was concerned, our son Chris called about 11:15 and said he was up (he works nights this week), so I drove over to his house to finish setting up his new computer. We’ve been trying to recover his iTunes account from his dead/dying laptop without a lot of success, but I’m still working on it.
After stopping by the bank, I got back home about 2 pm. Then about 3 we headed over to Monterey’s Little Mexico for some Chicken Tortilla Soup.
But before we left the park, I had to get a shot of the beautiful view of the water.
The weather has really been great here lately, with temps in the low 80’s in the daytime and in the 50’s at night. It doesn’t get much better.
Leaving Monterey’s we drove about 10 miles down I-45 to the Gulf Greyhound Park in La Marque to attend a Tea Party Rally put on by the Clear Lake Tea Party. We didn’t know what to expect as far as attendance so we got there early to just people-watch.
We knew it wouldn’t be anywhere near as large as the last one we attended in Searchlight NV in late March of this year.
That one was enormous, with over 30,000 people there. It looked like this.
and this.
The traffic was backed up for miles. Luckily we only had to drive down from Las Vegas and got there early.
Some people just parked their cars and walked to the site, some for almost eight miles.
We got to see Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber, Jerry Doyle, Sharron Angle, Andrew Breitbart, and many others, and had a great time.
Of course we knew this one wouldn’t be anywhere near that big, but it did turn out pretty good, as there looked to be about 1000 people there.
We certainly had a great moon overhead,
and some great speakers, too.
Among others, was Congressman Ron Paul,
Congressman Pete Olsen,
and State Senator Dan Patrick,
but the real hit was Apostle Calver
who brought the crowd to their feet several times. That man can really give a speech!
The event wrapped up about 9 pm and we were home in about 20 minutes. We had fun, but it turned out to be a long day, and it was good to get back to the rig.
October 19, 2011
Man the Lifeboats . . .
We seem to be on day 3 of the 40 days and 40 nights of rain. I expect Ark-Building to commence momentarily.
It’s the Lord, Noah!
Right!
For a real laugh, check out Bill Cosby’s take on Noah and the Ark.
After coffee, and later lunch, I headed back over to the RV/MH Hall of Fame. I think I’m finally on the downhill run on this, and hope to finish Friday, or Saturday at the latest, unless I run into something else unexpected.
Getting home about 5pm I found our daughter Brandi had sent us this new Landon picture. Wonder if he’s also wearing the cowboy boots we bought him?
Since I spent so much time at the RV/MH Hall of Fame, we wanted to eat close by. And our choice was King Wha and their great Chinese food. And they were really on their game tonight with a great meal.
Getting back to the rig, the pond surrounding our rig is getting bigger and deeper. If this keeps up we’ll have to break out our waders.
October 19, 2012
The Post Office Does Something Right . . .
Wednesday afternoon I sent off our absentee ballot requests to the registrar in Madison, SD via a Flat Rate Priority Mail Envelope. And lo and behold, it was delivered this morning at 8am.
Maybe the Post Office should just ship everything Priority Mail. Two days from Virginia to South Dakota is pretty good.
We had planned to drive down to the Gloucester area and sightsee. But when we got up about 8am it was pouring down rain and had been for an hour or so. So after checking and confirming the weather said it would rain all day, we went back to bed. We’ll try it again tomorrow
Only to wake about 10:30 and find it bright and sunny outside.
WTH?
Oh, well. There’s still tomorrow.
For lunch, since we were out of leftovers, Jan fixed cheese toast, and then we finished it off with a slice of delicious Pumpkin-Cinnamon Bread. Yumm!
A little later while I was outside, Charlie Kitchens walked over from a nearby site to say hello. His wife reads our blog and they actually stopped off here due to our blogging, although they thought we had already moved on.
About 3:30 I called the Bass Lake RV Park in Dillon, SC to check if they would have a couple of sites available for us on Sunday night. This will be our stopover point on our way down to Savannah.
It’s also only about 5 miles away from South of the Border, a famous tourist trap since 1949. Never let it be said that we would pass up a place like this. The name refers to the fact that the place is just south of the North Carolina / South Carolina border.
South of the Border does have an RV park, but it’s almost twice as much as the Passport American park right down the road.
We headed out for dinner about 4:30. On our way over to Colonial Beach we checked out the local Moose Lodge to see if they had any RV parking available. There were two RV’s parked there but no hookups, so no such luck.
Our destination for dinner was the Dockside Restaurant, the same place we ate our first night here.
After checking the menu I ordered the Andouille Sausage appetizer with Creole Mustard. Very spicy and very good.
After that Jan and I split the Fried Seafood Platter because we wanted to have room for dessert – the Pumpkin Cheesecake for Jan and the Whiskey Glazed Apple Cake for me.
And I’m glad we did. Both were really delicious, especially my Apple Cake. As much as Jan likes pumpkin anything, I think she was gazing wistfully at my Apple Cake.
Tomorrow we’re going to try our Gloucester trip again, so we’ll see how it goes. The weather is supposed to be better, but of course, they were wrong this morning so who knows?
October 19, 2014
Good Stuff . . .
Our vehicle count seems to have settled down for now, with today’s count of 181 pretty much the same as yesterday’s. We’ve been told that our last remaining frack still has a few more days to go. But we’ll see. Everything always seems to take longer than planned out here in the oil patch.
For the first time since we’ve been at this gate I heard coyotes (the 4 legged furry kind) about 5am this morning. I used to hear them every morning at last year’s gate. They sounded like they were right across the road, and probably were. But I never saw one.
We talked to our son Chris today about his bike trip out west. He and his fireman buddies went all the way out to Monument Valley in Utah. His best description of the trip was ‘Cold’. Cold on the bike, cold in the tent.
I finally remembered to ask one of the computer support guys for the password to the rig’s Wi-Fi network. My Verizon data signal here is sometimes iffy, so hopefully this will help.
For dinner tonight we had more delicious food from Ama’s catering. Frack Food, as we call it. This time it was really good Beef and Cheese Enchiladas with Rice and Beans. And one more thing that made it even better.
This past spring when we were orbiting back and forth between the Lake Conroe Thousand Trails and the Colorado River Thousand Trails, we met up with Greg and Lynette McHenry. And somewhere along the line Greg McHenry gave us a jar of his homemade hot sauce. Well, as can happen, the jar was put in the refrigerator and slowly worked its way to the back, while we were dealing with all of Jan’s breast cancer stuff.
But recently Jan was trying to clear room in the frig for all the Ama’s we’re getting and came across the jar of hot sauce. So we’ve been using it on all the Mexican dishes we’ve been getting, including tonight’s enchiladas, as well as the fajitas a couple of nights ago.
And this is some Good Stuff. Really good, as in ‘Greg should bottle and sell this stuff’ good. We’re really sorry we didn’t find this earlier. Of course, we would have already run out by now.
So, never mind.
October 19, 2015
Lights and Sheets . . .
Another quiet day, even apparently for the frack up the road. The water guys weren’t around, the frack pond pumps weren’t running, and the big blue hose was flat.
Since they just started fracking last Monday, I doubt they’re finished up, but probably just switching over to the second hole. Neither of these wells are as deep as any of our three were, so they might possibly be finished up next week.
Other than that, we had some tankers coming in hauling out water, and some other trucks hauling out some other stuff.
Later in the afternoon, I started filling our water tank from the well hose. I tried hooking up the hose directly to the rig, but with only about 20psi, it didn’t work out very well. So every week or so I just fill up our 500 gallon tank. Of course with the low pressure it takes two to three hours to top it off.
I’ve noticed a number of y’all still buying the Striped QUEEN Sateen Sheet Sets we mentioned a while back. We came across these a year or so ago and bought two sets.
They’re still very soft, with no pilling or wearing, and they still look great. They come in 9 different colors, and even better, they’re inexpensive (cheap). Only about $25 per set.
Several readers had asked me about how I liked the new Camco Bright White Light LED Bulb that I got for our shower after the old one burned out and blew a fuse.
After a little over a month it’s still working great. One thing I’ve noticed about this one is that there’s been no fade. Many LED lights, especially cheaper ones, tend to dim noticeably during the first few months. But I measured the output of this one when I first installed it, and then again a couple of days ago, and found no discernable difference. The same goes for the LED Strip Lights that I use as fluorescent bulb replacements.
And speaking of the LED strips, I mentioned a couple of days ago that I was going to use these strips to replace the 4ft fluorescent tubes in our kitchen when they died.
And of course, today they did die. At least one of them did, and they won’t work with just one bulb. So I dug into my storage bin and discovered I only had five strips.
I decided to do just a quick and dirty hookup until I could get some more strips. I had planned to use four on each side, but five would have to do for now.
After cutting the 12v wires going into the ballast, I wired up the strips using wire nuts. Like I said, quick and dirty.
I then used clear packing tape to fasten them to the diffuser panel. And when it was all closed up, it looked like this.
Based on the light output, the five strips shown here are brighter than the tubes they replaced. So I’ll just add one more strip when I get some more in. Although the point source effect of the lights doesn’t bother Jan or me, when I get the new ones, I’ll stick them to the top of the fixture using the furnished adhesive tape, which should diffuse the light even more.
I didn’t get to my laptop repair today because I couldn’t find one of my two soldering irons. I did find both of my soldering guns, but they’re too big for this fine work. I guess they must both be out in one of the bays, so that’s where I’ll look tomorrow.
October 19, 2016
Gas Buddy Lies . . .
Today being a travel day, Jan was up about 7:30 while I slept in until 8:30. Since I always get my shower at night, this gives Jan time to get her shower and then get dressed.
While Jan got the Bacon, Egg, and Cheese Biscuits ready, I started the coffee and then went outside to stow some more things away.
It had been foggy earlier and the dew was on everything, including this spider web covered in dew drops.
Pretty neat!
We were hooked up and on our way a little after 11. Friend and Park Ranger Barbara Spade even got a picture of us hitching up before we headed out.
Our first stop was at the halfway point, which turned out to be the Buc-ee’s near Luling for kolache’s for lunch, and Cranberry Nut Muffins for breakfast tomorrow. Oh, and also a large Coffee / Cinnamon Bun / English Toffee Cappuccino for me and a small Coffee / Pumpkin Spice Cappuccino for Jan.
Then a few miles past Luling, we turned south on SR 80 for the last 60 or so miles. I was actually going a few miles out of the way to make a diesel stop at the Stripes Truck Stop coming into Karnes City, rather than cutting directly over to Kenedy.
The trip down SR 80 was smooth and scenic . . . until we got to the last 20 miles or so. Which consisted of two 10 mile long one lane sections. We had to wait for a pilot truck to lead us through each 10 mile stretch, but that wasn’t the real problem.
That was the fact that that had the pavement completely torn up for repaving, and we were just driving on dirt and gravel. And because they were watering the dirt and gravel to keep the dust down, we arrived at the Lone Star RV Park #2 covered in a hard coating of brown mud.
I wanted to top off our tank before we parked for several months, and Gas Buddy said that Stripes had diesel for $1.96 a gallon, noticeably less than the $2.08 – $2.09 at the nearby stations.
I checked Gas Buddy again this morning and it was still $1.96 this morning as well. But when we got there about 1:30, it was now $2.08, but I was there so I filled up.
But to further rub my nose in it, when we actually got in Kenedy, the HEB had diesel for $1.94, and Gas Buddy didn’t even list it at all.
Some Buddy!
After we got parked, I called Nancy Christian, the park owner, to let her know we were here and what site we were in. Then a couple of hours later she showed up at the rig to ‘officially’ welcome us and give us a folder with all the park info.
She said to see how things are going to work out and then we’ll settle up. According to the info packet, the rate is $500 per month which includes electric, Wi-Fi, DirecTV cable with HBO, and a free laundromat.
Not bad at all.
After supper I emailed Todd to let him know we were here and ready to go. He said we’ll get together tomorrow for an hour or so at the local McDonald’s to go over things.
So hopefully we’ll be up and running soon.
October 19, 2017
It’s not the cars, it’s the oysters!
Jan’s feeling a lot better today, and I’m pretty much back to normal. Or as normal as I get, anyway.
A while back, I mentioned UpTimeRobot, a free service that lets you monitor up to 50 websites, checking every 5 minutes to see if your website or blog is up or down, sending you an email for any change.
If you need to monitor more sites (more than 50?), want UpTimeRobot to check every minute instead of every 5, or want to receive text messages as well as emails, it’s only about $5 a month.
Anyway, about 1pm I got two UpTimeRobot alerts saying that both my Clear Lake client’s websites had gone down, so I was immediately on the phone. Turns out that the phone guy was there, and had unplugged the wrong wire, taking the Internet down. And now he was scrambling to get everything back up.
But apparently he did, since while I was on the phone, I got emails telling me everything was now up and running again.
A great service, and it’s free.
While I’m mentioning good deals, I thought I’d pass along this email I received from La Crosse Technology, a well-known maker of weather monitoring and atomic clocks.
They’ve just announced a line of WiFi-enabled weather stations and are introducing them with large discounts.
For example:
