Our RV Adventures

I got a call from my doctor’s office a little before 11 this morning, giving me the results of the lab tests from our visit this past Monday.

And overall, they were really good. Most importantly I’m off Metformin. My A1c was 5.7, which is great, and a good drop from last year. The only real downside was my calcium level was a little low so they changed my blood pressure meds to drop the diuretic.

Jan and I headed up to Webster about 11:30 to meet with her oncologist as a follow-up to her recent lab tests and mammogram. And Jan also got some good news.

All her lab tests came back normal, as well as her mammogram as I had already mentioned. AND her doctor also said that if she’s still problem-free this time next year, Jan can stop taking her Anastrozole. It’s not expensive, and it doesn’t seem to have any side effects for her, but the less stuff you take, the better. At least that’s always been my view.

Finishing up, the doctor told her that it was 4 years ago today that she was first diagnosed with Breast Cancer. Ironic.

With this good news we headed right down the street to have lunch at King Food. Next it was on out to Friendswood to our GP’s office to pick up the changed prescriptions for both Jan and I. Then it was on over to Brock’s Car Care with a stopover at the Krogers on the way to fill up Chris’ truck before we returned it.

But at Brock’s, our-so-far-great day skidded to a halt. After paying the bill and picking up the key, the first thing I did was to try to put the truck into tow mode, since it involves the transfer case that was replaced.

And it didn’t work.

The procedure is to turn the key to the ON unlocked position, put your foot on the brake, and then put the gearshift in Neutral. At this point you press a ballpoint pen into a depression at the bottom left of the 4WD switch.

The lights on the switch flash and there’s a Click-Clunk and the transfer case is now in tow mode. If the truck is not already hitched up or the parking braking is not on, the truck will roll away. In fact the truck is towed in Park.

When we get to our destination, I just reverse the procedure before unhitching.

But now nothing happened – No lights, no Click-Clunk, no nothing. Plus the Service 4WD light was now on. Going inside I told Dennis about the problem and gave him the key back. He said he’d be in touch.

Putting in a call to Chris to tell him we’d have his truck a little longer, we drove over to the nearby Sam’s Club and Wal-Mart to drop off our new prescriptions and pick up a few things.

Finishing up about 4pm we sat out in the parking lot for a while thinking maybe we’d hear from Brock’s before we headed back down to Santa Fe, but no luck. So about 5pm we started toward home, going down Hwy 3 to avoid all the going-home traffic on I-45. I did make a stopover at Fry’s Electronics for a few minutes before we got home about 6pm.

Thought for the Day: 

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Not much new at work today, just the regular day to day crises and potential catastrophes.

I even had to work late to get a machine repaired and out the door with UPS.

Coming home, I got a call a little before 5pm from Brock’s Car Care letting me know that our Dodge Dakota is ready to go. We plan of picking it up tomorrow. Jan (and 1) will be happy to give Chris his truck back. Being a full size Chevy, it’s a lot harder to climb up into, especially since it doesn’t have any step rails.

A number of you have contacted Jan concerning SPAM Facebook messages you’ve received.  But it was not just FB, but also email, and even a phone call.

I got an email from Jan addressed to me, about 5 people I recognized,  and about 20 others that I had no idea who they were. And one of our blog readers/FB friends actually got a PHONE call from an unknown Jan White. At least that’s what showed on his caller ID.

I’ve contacted FB and they’re looking into this, so stay tuned.

I just finished up Nomadland, the book I mentioned before about RV’ers and how they live and work on the road. I was initially a little leery about it, thinking it was a put-down on full-time RV’ers, especially workampers.

But it was really a look inside the lives of people somewhat on the down and out, many forced into the RV life by some combination of divorce, job loss, bad economy, pension loss, or in some cases, all of the above. 

Some of the subjects in the book went from 7 figure salaries down to living in the back of a beat-up van. But they all seem to have a never give up attitude, no matter what.

I was impressed by how the author got into the lifestyle, spending over 3 years following RV’ers around the country in an large old model van, rigged up for full-time living. She did the Quartzsite thing 3 times, plus worked at Amazon and harvested beets. So she pretty much covered it all.

A really interesting book.

A couple of days ago I got the notice from Verizon that the long-awaited Android 8.0 OS (Oreo) was now available for download to upgrade my Samsung Galaxy S8+ phone. Android 6.0 was Marshmallow and 7.0 was Nougat. I think I detect a pattern here.

It added a number of nice features, including camera software improvements and facial recognition encryption, among many others. The only downside seems to be that it confused some of my ringtones and notification sounds, but that was easy to fix. Now I’ll spend the next several days checking out the new stuff.

Thought for the Day: 

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