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A Vegan Weather Reveal Cake?

We pulled up to the Doggone Crazy Food Truck about 1pm, only to find it closed. Turns out that they’re only open Monday– Friday from 12pm to 8pm. I didn’t even think to check their hours since every food truck I’ve seen around here seems to be open 24 hours a day.

So we’re rescheduling for this coming Tuesday.

Then it was right down the road a couple of miles to the La Brisa location on SR146. Looking back in the Retro-Blogs.â„¢, it was back in 2018 when we ate here the last time.

In addition, when we staying at the Galveston Bay RV Park back in the day, we used to eat here all the time.

Sitting down, the first thing we saw on the front page of the menu was their Watermelon Rita, which looked so good we decided to share one. And tasted even better than it looked.

Looking over the menu, Jan went the Pechuga Monterey with Charro Beans,

while I got the Acapulco Platter, with a little bit of everything.

Both really good and we had plenty to bring home.

And since we’re coming back over here on Tuesday, we decided to wait and do our weekly Wal-Mart visit thentoo, instead of today.

* * * * *

PETA calls to end Groundhog Day tradition, replace Punxsutawney Phil with ‘vegan weather reveal cake’

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is calling to ax a beloved American tradition – and to replace it with what it calls a “delicious” vegan substitution.

The animal rights nonprofit organization is seeking to replace the Groundhog Day tradition with a vegan “weather reveal” cake. PETA announced the proposal in a news release on Jan. 20.

“PETA will deliver a delicious ‘Weather Reveal’ vegan cake each Groundhog Day in perpetuity if [the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club] agrees to let Punxsutawney Phil and his family retire to a reputable sanctuary, a move that will earn the outfit kudos from wildlife fans,” the press release stated.

Groundhog Day has been celebrated in the U.S. since 1887. Thousands of observers flock to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, every year on Feb. 2 to see Phil predict the weather.

Tradition dictates that if Phil sees his shadow at daybreak and runs away, six more weeks of winter will follow. However, if he has no shadow, spring will arrive sooner.

Not exactly sure how a Vegan Weather Reveal Cake is going to see its shadow or not.

And Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, said, “Come and take him.â€

* * * * *

Tomorrow we’re meeting Brandi, Lowell, and Landon up at the Monument Inn on the Houston Ship Channel.

Can’t wait to see everyone.

* * * * *

Sometimes you just really need a cigarette!

Thought for the Day:

Have you ever looked at someone and just knew that the wheel was turning, but the hamster was dead?

And Now On To Today’s Retro-Blogs.™

February 1, 2010

Two Weeks From Today !!!!

The Hitch Itch is getting bad!

We plan on leaving two weeks from today on 2/15. Although it may slip a day or so due to scheduling the on-site RV Mobile Repair people to come out and change the oil/filters/ belts, etc., on the rig.

I’ve also been trying to get a bunch of things repaired/upgraded, etc., but the weather is just not cooperating.

So far, I’ve replaced a leaky water tank fill valve and a leaky water heater pressure relief valve.

I’m in the process of replacing a broken cable on our house battery bank, and painting some rust spots on the framework that holds the batteries.

I’m also going to replace my headlight bulbs and adjust the aim, lubricate my PacBrake exhaust brake, replace a leaky tire pressure sensor, fix a balky roof vent fan, install a new door strut, and about a hundred other things.

Unfortunately, it’s been rainy and/or cold for the last several weeks which has put a real crimp in things.

I had also planned to pull up the carpet in the front part of the coach and put down Allure laminate flooring. However, Home Depot decided that this was not to be. I placed my order on 1/6 and was told it would arrive on 1/15, leaving me a month to get it installed. No problem.

On 1/15 I was told it was on its way and would be here on 1/18. On 1/18 I was told that it had not really been shipped and was actually back-ordered and would not arrive until 2/10, maybe.

At best that’s only five days before we plan on leaving, and of course, it may not show up in time. If it does show up, I’ll take it with us and install it on the road. If not, there’s always next year.

Sure am glad that I didn’t go ahead and rip the carpet up before the flooring came in!

On better news, it looks like we’ll be cutting our travels short this coming year by about 2-1/2 months, and return to Houston the first part of September instead of right before Thanksgiving as usual.

The reason this is good news is that we’re doing this to try and be here for the birth of our 2nd grandchild. As I tell people, we try to have a new grandchild every 17 years or so.

And it’s working out perfectly. This one is due on September 7th, which is the same day our granddaughter Piper turns 17.

And here’s our daughter, Brandi, on the left, and our granddaughter, Piper, on the right. Although they’re often mistaken for sisters, they’re really aunt and niece, since Piper is our son Chris’ daughter.

I’m hoping for a boy, but everyone else apparently wants a girl.

My thought is that we’ve already got one of those and she turned out great. So let’s try the other one.

But we’ll see how it works out.

February 1, 2011

Pelicans and Moose and Bears, Oh My . . .

8 Days and Counting . . .

Well, the weather around here has just gone to the dogs, if the dogs are Alaskan sled dogs, that is.

One of the reasons we spend the winter here in Houston is because we expect warm weather, not 4 nights in a row in the low 20’s, yes, the low 20’s! With the possibility of snow on Friday.

But the cold weather did make the morning’s coffee even better. Then Jan and I spend some time going over our schedule since we plan on leaving one week from tomorrow. There’s still a lot to be done and people to get together with before we hit the road.

I spent the rest of the morning pulling up the carpet in the front of the rig. It’s slow going because it’s very thick and tough, and hard to cut through, so it’s taken longer than I thought. Lucky for me though, it’s not stapled down like in some rigs.

On a different note, I collect mascots. Or at least pictures of them. We’ve seen them all over the country, and I’m always amazed at some of the paint jobs.

These pelicans are here in Seabrook, TX, right up the road from us.

This one’s really a stork, but I’m not sure why, though.

This one’s out in front of the Seabrook Hooters. I think it would be better if it were a female pelican.

These bears are in Easthampton, MA, a small town near Chicopee, MA, where Jan went to High School. These are just a few of the over 30 bears they have in the town. They even have a BearFest every year.

These moose are in Coeur d’Alene, ID.

This one looks like he’s in the habit of wandering off.

And finally, these mermaids are in Beaufort, SC where we lived in the early 1970’s when I worked for the Department of Defense.

Later we left the rig about 4 pm to pick up our granddaughter Piper and then met our friend Maria at La Brisa for dinner.

Then after that, Jan, Maria and Piper attended the visitation for Jackie Chattin, a friend of ours from the Alvin Opry who passed away this past Saturday.

More tomorrow. Our time here is growing short, and there’s still a lot to do.

February 1, 2012

Rockport and RAM . . .

We’ve had a lot of rain the last couple of days around here. I figure though, it’s just passing through heading down to Rockport and Mission. And apparently we’re supposed to keep getting rain through this Sunday.

This morning Jan and I had our Doctors appointments for the year, and $916 later, we’re just fine. Heck, I could have told her that for a lot less money, but this is the only way to get our prescriptions written so we don’t have much choice.

After we left the doctor’s, we stopped off at the Egg and I for breakfast about 10am. Then it was on to my clients to check and be sure the UPS Shipping system was working OK.

Last night I had upgraded it to the 2012 version and also moved it from an XP machine to a new Win 7 machine, and I wanted to make sure it actually would ship a package. I didn’t want them to start trying to do shipments this afternoon and find out it wouldn’t work.

And I’m glad I did. There was a problem with the label printer that didn’t show up until you tried to print an actual label. But I was able to get it figured out and working OK I guess because they didn’t call me this afternoon.

Leaving there we stopped off at Wal-Mart for a few things before heading home. Or at least trying to.

When we tried to leave it was pouring down so hard you couldn’t see the cars in the parking lot.

But finally it slacked off and we headed home, for a while at least. On the way our son Chris called and we set up dinner with him, Linda, and granddaughter Piper at Mario’s up in Seabrook for about 5:30.

When we got home, I found Mister in my chair doing his best Jabba the Hutt imitation, and giving me that look that says. “WHAT?â€

After dinner and a quick stop at a client’s, we went by Brandi’s to pick up the 2GB of RAM that had come in for a laptop I’m working on. After cleaning all the viruses and malware out, it was still glacially slow. Turns out it only had 640MB of RAM in it. But bumping it up to the max of 2GB really makes it run.

Today we had to get up early for 8am doctor appointments, tomorrow I have a 9am client appointment 45 minutes away, and Friday morning we have to take Brandi to the airport at 8:45.

This is getting up early is getting old quick. Stop it!

February 1, 2013

Two Down, One to Go . . .

Catching up on Yesterday.

A couple of things arrived in the mail. One was the two extra thermal fuses that I ordered so I would have a spare in case one blows again in our washer/dryer. Ordinarily I wouldn’t worry about it since the one I bought locally cost around $18, and if I ordered one from the Splendide supplier they’re $40. But I found them through Amazon for $2.69 ea. So I ordered two.

I figured I’d need another one sooner or later.

I also received the pair of Denso 26†wiper blades for the rig I ordered, also from Amazon. Fleetwood sells them for $40. Amazon had them for $18. Nice.

I headed out about 12:30 on an afternoon of client stuff. First stop was a client that’s still running XP on a computer I built for him in 2006. It does what he needs and he sees no reason to upgrade, but as it turns out his power supply finally gave up the ghost after 7 years.

Had a little trouble finding an ATX power supply locally, since all machines use SATA now, but I finally tracked it down. I’ll deliver it on Saturday and get him up and running again, hopefully for another 7 years.

I got back to the rig a little before 4pm, just in time to pick up Jan and then our friends Dick and Lillis. We were taking them to our favorite local Chinese place, King Food.

You’re always nervous when you take someone to a place you’ve highly recommended, but it turns out that they liked it as much as we did.

We got home about 7:30 and then I had to turn right around and go back up to Webster to do some computer stuff for a client that can’t be done during the day when they’re working.

The big problem as usual, turned out to be upgrading the UPS shipping software. Every January they come out with the new version, and every January it turns out to be a real pain. Something always doesn’t work right.

This time it turned out to be a problem with configuring the Remote Workstations located on other computers around the office. The setup sure doesn’t work like it used to, and there’s nothing in the instructions telling me how to do it differently.

About 11pm I gave up and headed home. I’ll call UPS Tech Support tomorrow and see what the problem is.

Back to Today.

I left the rig about 11:30 for more client stuff, and some errands. On the way home I picked up some MegaMillions Lotto tickets, and mailed Jan’s fingerprint cards back to Gate Guard Services for Jan’s Security Guard License.

Then I stopped and filled up the truck and WOW! A week and a half ago when I filled up, gas was $3.09. Now it’s $3.29.

Bummer!

Getting back to the rig, I took a look at the Day/Night shade on my side of the bedroom. And it turned out to be a simple fix. The barrel tie-downs on both sides had cracked letting the cords loose, so I was able to quickly repair things without having to restring the shade. Took me longer to take it down and put it back up than to actually fix it.

So that’s two down and one to go. Only the living room one is left.

About 5pm Jan and I headed out to meet some friends at the Kelley’s Country Cookin place in Alvin for dinner. Really good food.

Then we all headed over to the Alvin Opry for a great show. Since we’ve only got a little over two weeks left here, this will probably be our last visit for this time.

February 1, 2014

Four Years in the Making . . .

or The Installing, as it were.

Well, I’m getting pretty sick of this. I’ve had to get up at 7 AM two days in a row. And even worse, when I came out into the living room this morning, the flooring elves had failed to appear once again. I’m not leaving out snacks for them ever again.

So it looks like my son Chris and I (mostly Chris) will have to finish up the floor today. And by ‘finish up’ I mean, finally start actually laying it down.

And yes, this project did start 4 long years ago. But it’s Home Depot’s fault. I originally ordered the flooring on 12/6/10. It was supposed to be in by 12/15, leaving me two months to get it installed before we headed out for the year. But that was not to be.

The flooring finally came in on February 12th, three days before we were supposed to leave. So 2010 was out. 2011 has faded into the mists of time so I’m not sure what happened.

But 2012-2013 was going to be THE year. I was going to do the floor during all the spare time I had while we were gate guarding. But gate guarding consisted of guarding, sleeping, and eating, so that didn’t work out either.

So here it is, 2014, and today’s the day.

Here’s the first section laid out. When we’re finished, there will be a nice transition strip covering the joint between the tile and the flooring.

Since we have to start from the edge, but want to be sure that the flooring seam runs straight from front to back, we left some slack around the edges to allow us to adjust things when we had built out to the middle. But Chris did such a great job measuring, we didn’t need to adjust anything.

The Allure flooring we’re using glue strips on each edge and one end that hold everything together. But the strips do make it kind of difficult to trial-fit pieces without them sticking together prematurely.

Right before Chris laid each strip down, I lightly wet-mopped the area with a sponge mop to pick up any last debris that might get under the tile.

I will come back later and fill in the area behind the pedals so the flooring will go all the way to the firewall.

Here the front section is completely done. Yaaah!

And here’s the finished product. We’ll set the two front chairs in place on Monday afternoon after I finish the area under the dashboard.

And here’s a close-up of the floor.

Chris did a great job, especially getting it all laid in one day. And I want to compliment myself on my great job as supervisor, which consisted mainly of handing him things and otherwise staying out of his way.

The reason I supervised is that one, I knew he would probably do a better job, and two, since you have to lay the strips down in a certain order, only one person can really be working on it at a time.

At least that’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

It’s Official!

At the upcoming 54th Escapade in Goshen, IN this coming May I will be giving my seminar on Gate Guarding entitled “Gate Guarding for Fun? and Profitâ€. Jan and I will be imparting much of the hard-won knowledge that we’ve accumulated gate guarding for 7 months the last two years. Hopefully we can tell you things we wish someone had told us before we started.

I don’t have the date and time yet, but I will let you know. Looking forward to seeing you there.

Brandi and Lowell are going to a 40th birthday party tonight for Brandi’s BFF, and the theme is The 70’s. Everyone is supposed to dress the part, and it looks like they’re ready to go.

Peace Out!

February 1, 2015

Copters and Kisses . . .

The promised rain never materialized today. Instead it was sunny and in the mid-70’s. What’da they know.

I broke downthe other dayand ordered a quadcopter like this one.

UDI U818A 2.4GHz 4 CH 6 Axis Gyro RC Quadcopter with Camera RTF Mode 2

I was surprised at how easy it was to fly, much easier than some of the small ones I have. And it was probably easier due to the fact it WAS bigger. A good bit bigger.

In fact it’s more than a foot across, and very stable. For only $61 it’s a great deal.

I also ordered some extra batteries for it, so I won’t have to wait between flights.

Later in the afternoon, since the weather was still pretty clear, I decided to wash and wax the rig using my new pressure washer.

After filling the solution tank with the wash/wax concentrate, I used the high-power wash to thoroughly wet down an area, then switched to the mix position to spray the wash/wax on. Then using my telescoping soft brush, I scrubbed the area down being sure not to miss any spots. Finishing up, I switched back to the high power setting and washed all the dirt and suds off,

Doing about a quarter of the rig side at a time, I worked my way around all 4 sides. The concentrate that came with the washer seems to work pretty well and doesn’t leave streaks when it dries. The shine looks pretty good, but I don’t think it’s quite as good as the Zip Wax Concentrate I’ve used before. So the next time I do the rig, I probably use the Zip Wax.

For dinner tonight, Jan fixed up a batch of her famous Nachos, made with both fresh and pickled jalapeños, to go along with our leftover Mexican from Los Cabos last week. Really, really good.

Then later, I fixed us sundaes with Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla and several different kinds of chopped-up Hershey’s Kisses. The perfect dessert.

February 1, 2016

I wanted to call her Adolf . . .

We were up early this morning for a family get-together. Our son Chris was on his Yamaha bike traveling by here on his way up to Burnet to help a friend work on his house on Inks Lake.

He was stopping to drop off our granddaughter Piper’s laptop for a thorough de-lousing and de-gunking, and called about 7:30 saying he was about 30 minutes out, so a little later Jan and I drove down to the park office to meet him

While he was there, Bonnie Clegg, our next-door neighbor came by while she was walking with some friends. She admired Chris’ bike, saying she used to ride too.

Before he left we asked Chris if he wanted to go back into Columbus for Schobel’s Breakfast Buffet, but he wanted to get back on the road. But since we were already up, after Chris left, we drove into Columbus by ourselves. On the way we both decided that we didn’t want a big breakfast, so we ended up at Whataburger.

Along the way we passed the Colorado County Oil lot. When were here two weeks ago we watched the diesel price drop from $1.85⁹ to $1.75⁹. And in the last two weeks, it’s dropped another 10 cents a gallon down to $1.65⁹.

I thought about waiting to get here to fill up Sunday, but I didn’t want to push it.

Then getting back to the rig, everything changed.

Bonnie was back from her walk when we got back to the rig, and she and Jan started talking about cats, and suddenly we had a new cat . . . maybe.

A couple about 50 yards away had been feeding a semi-feral kitten after the mother was killed a couple of months ago. They would bring her in occasionally, but mostly she stayed outside.

In fact our first attempt to get her into our RV resulted in Jan getting scratched and the cat heading back home across the park. But finally we got her corralled again and in the rig.

Although she panicked for a while and kept bumping her head against the windshield, eventually she settled down on the sofa next to Jan. And as the day went on, she made herself more and more at home.

The only question right now is the litter box. She’s never used one, so we keep regularly putting her in it, hoping she’ll get the idea. We’ll see.

The only question is whether she’s going to try and make a break for it the first time we open the door.

I wanted to name her Adolf, but Jan said NO!

She said she had dreamed a couple of days ago that we would be getting a new cat soon, and that it would be black and white.

So we named her Karma.

We’ll see how it goes.

Our daughter Brandi is out in Scottsdale AZ for a business meeting and sent over these photos from her room’s balcony.

Must be nice!

February 1, 2017

Two Weeks From Today . . .

Two weeks from tonight we’ll be parked back at the Colorado River Thousand Trails park in Columbus.

We’ll be there for two weeks, mainly getting our doctor stuff out of the way for the year. But we have a lot of other things we want to do and people we want to see before we leave for Tucson sometime around the 10th of March.

That is, if I’m not still stuck in the mud here. I didn’t get a chance to try moving the rig forward today, so it’s put off until tomorrow. I haven’t been sleeping well the last couple of days so I just didn’t feel like doing it today. Luckily it looks like the forecasted showers will hold off another day too.

In fact today I was so discombobulated that I left the rig this afternoon without my phone, my watch, and my wedding ring. So I keep rubbing my ring finger where it’s missing from.

I’m also missing my phone because at least I could usually get email and text, even if I can’t make phone calls. I say usually, because sometimes I get nothing for an hour or so, and then email and text are back.

And my 3G AirCard is useless here. Right now it’s showing that I’m connected to a 3G signal and I have Internet access, but I can get absolutely no data of any kind through it.

However two miles south of here I show 4 bars of 4G with phone calls, data, and text. And my AirCard works great. And 5 miles west of here on the actual frack pad, everything also works great.

I’m starting to wonder if there’s some sort of interference in this immediate area that’s causing the problem. I’m thinking along these lines because 3 different wireless vehicle alarm systems are also flakey, including our normally very reliable Mighty Mules. They will work fine for a while and then just quit for hours and then start up again, very similar to the phone problems.

This is one case that really makes me miss the old-fashion gas station bells that Gate Guard Services uses. They pretty much just work.

There is a large production facility across the street from us with a lot of storage tanks and trailer office buildings. And there are also several 100-foot or so radio towers back behind the site, with microwave dishes on them.

And although none of the dishes point directly in our direction, a mis-tuned or leaky amplifier could be blanketing our area with enough RF radiation to overload local receivers, no matter what the frequency. If I had a spectrum analyzer I could try and track it down, but no such luck.

Anyway that’s my theory and I’m sticking with it.

When I came back into the gate this afternoon to relieve Jan, I also had to apologize to her. When she came in at 5:30 this morning she was visibly shaken and upset. When I asked her why, she said it was so foggy that she couldn’t see the road most of the time and it scared her to death.

I told her that she should have just driven slow and easy and she’d be OK.

But when I headed back to the rig on the same path a few minutes later, I ended up ‘visibly shaken’ too, and probably scared ‘half’ to death.

You just could not see the road. But it was not from the fog directly, but due to the condition of the road. Along about 10 of the 16 miles trip, there are no road markings at all. No center line, no edge strips, no nothing. Just asphalt.

And with the fog, there was no way to really tell where the road edge stopped and the shoulder (and the ditch) started. In some cases, the only way to tell was the ride got rougher when your wheel went on the shoulder.

It took me over 50 minutes to make the normal 20 minute trip.

Sorry, sweetheart.

On a final note, Jan has another admirer on the gate. A little after 6pm a guy was leaving in a company truck that I didn’t recognize, so I assume he was from the new workover rig that came in yesterday.

He asked me what happened to the cute blonde that was here earlier.

I said I sent her home, and he questioned, “She’s your wife?â€

I said, “Yep, for almost 50 years now.â€

“Damn, you rob the cradle?â€

I said, “Nope. It was kind of the other way around.â€

“So she was, what, 12 when you married her?â€

And then before I could say anything, he said, “Hell, are you from Alabama?â€

Before I could tell him Yes, he drove off.

I’m gonna have to keep a closer eye on that girl.

February 1, 2018

It Didn’t Work . . .

Jan and I headed out about 2:30 on our way to meet our friend Lynn at the Texas Roadhouse over in Pasadena, but we detoured by our son Chris’ to let him pull the oil pressure sensor connector and Strike-Hold it.

While we were there we got a look at his new (OK,old) bike project. It’s a 1998 Yamaha V-Star 650.

One thing noticeable is this piston as the gear shift knob. I assumed it was a real piston, but Chris turned it out of a solid block of aluminum on his metal lathe . . . which he also made himself.

This is his main ride, a Yamaha 1900.

Chris let the engine cool down for about 30 minutes before he took a crack at it. The biggest problem was getting the connector unlatched and off. But once he did, he sprayed it, latched it back on, and then Jan and I headed over to Pasadena to meet Lynn.

And within a few minutes, I could tell that cleaning the connector didn’t fix the problem. So now we’re looking at the oil pressure sensor again. Stay tuned.

Jan and Lynn worked together years (mid 80’s to early 90’s) ago at Medical Center del Oro Hospital up near the Astrodome, Since then Lynn has been in the marriage business.

As Minister Lynn Turner and Associates, she and her group of ministers travel all over to perform your wedding for you. She has some funny stories about weddings performed in prisons and other strange locations.

But my favorite story was when the groomsmen wheeled a coffin down the aisle on a hand truck, the coffin swings open and the groom steps out . . . in full Dracula regalia. Now Lynn had no idea this was going to happen, so she was wondering what the bride was going to be wearing . . . Bride of Frankenstein, maybe?

But the bride was just wearing a standard bridal gown. What’s up with that?

We had a great time seeing Lynn again and we want to do it again soon.

Coming home we made a Wal-Mart stop before getting home a little after 7pm.

Tomorrow’s kind of open since I’m not working, so we’ll see how it goes.

Before we headed out this afternoon, I set up Drop-In on our Alexa Echo and Dots. This lets us use them as intercoms between each other. It just takes a couple of minutes to configure them and also give each one a location, i.e. Bedroom, Living Room, etc.

Then you just say, “Alexa, Drop In on Bedroom†and you’re in a two-way conversation. Then when you’re done, you just say, “Alexa, stop.â€

Neat!

February 1, 2019

A Nice Long Chat . . .

My sale prices went online on the website right at midnight. Or I assume they did, since they were there a little after 1am when I checked. What didn’t work for some reason was that the banner ads did not switch over. So I had to do that manually, but that only took a couple of minutes, so no problem.

Of course we’ll see what happens when it’s all supposed to go back to normal at midnight on 1 March 2019.

I spent a good bit of the day at work adding a lot of new products to the website and the catalog, but I also got the new hard drive installed in the webserver. Luckily I was able to hot-install it without shutting down the server. Once I get it configured I’ll use it to do regular image backups.

I did have a nice long chat today with Cummins Tech Support concerning the rig’s oil leak, and he had actually seen something like this. It seems that if the thin rubber gasket around the edge of the filter is not thoroughly wetted down with oil, it can dry rot and very tiny pieces can stick to the mounting flange when the filter is removed.

Then when the new filter is installed this can be enough to cause a small leak under the pressure of the engine’s oil system. When I questioned whether or not losing 2 gallons in a couple of hundred miles qualified as a ‘small leak’, he laughed and said a large leak would pump all the oil out in just a few minutes.

When I asked about why we did a 90 minute test drive at highway speeds with no leakage, he said that the heating and cooling of the filter during the test drive could have reseated it slightly enough to cause it to leak the next time.

So at least now I’ve got an idea of what might be wrong, and where to go from here.

For dinner tonight we had our leftover El Bosque meal from yesterday. Combined with some of our own vegetables, it was almost as good as yesterday. Almost.

Tomorrow evening we’re headed up to Pearland for the 2nd Annual Tony Booth’s Birthday Bash. Tony is a long-time friend of ours from our Alvin Opry days, and we try to catch up with him when we can.

Tony has played with Buck Owens, Gene Watson, and many others, plus has had a number of charted hits over the years, as well as a number of ACM (Academy of Country Music) awards, including Most Promising Male Vocalist of The Year in 1972.

Really looking forward to it.

Beforehand we plan on having dinner at the Monterey’s Little Mexico there in Alvin. Always good.

February 1, 2021

Way To Go, Gwen!

This beautiful young lady is Gwen Robinson Bennet, our great (or grand) niece, depending on your predilection. She’s the granddaughter of Jan’s sister Debbie, and lives up in St. Charles, MO.

She graduated from high school on Wednesday, Jan. 13th, and started college the next day. A very smart young lady.

Over the years we’ve watched her grow up, from a little cutie like this,

well, two cuties above.

To this,

and this.

Congratulations, Gwen!

February 1, 2022

Just The Bear Facts . . .

Well, we got our Grimaldi’s fix today and it was just as delicious as always. And we got a bonus.

We started out with a small Spinach Salad,

with Baby Spinach, Red Onions, Cherry Tomatoes, Bacon, Crumbled Gorgonzola Cheese and Balsamic Vinaigrette Dressing. Really good.

One note about Grimaldi’s salads, unless there’s more than four of you, don’t order a large salad. The small one will easily feed four people, or two servings each, in our case.

We ordered a medium, or 16†The Don pizza, which comes with Italian Sausage, Pepperoni, and Meatballs. To which we added Bacon, Mushrooms, and Jalapenos.

The bonus I mentioned is that though we ordered the 16†size, we were served the 18†size by mistake. One of the managers bought it out and told us about the mistake, and that of course we would still only be charged for the 16†one. Nice.

She also told us to let her know if the crust was too blackened on the edges. We told her that wasn’t possible, and it would be fine. And it was.

In fact the burnt/blackened edges are what makes the pizza crust so good. We never have any pizza ‘bones’ left over.

And even better, we had half the pizza left over for tomorrow’s supper.

Finishing up, we shared a slice of their Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Cheesecake.

Really, really, really good.

So good in fact that as your forks are dueling over the last bites, you seriously regret sharing the slice to start with. It was that good.

One caveat about visiting a Grimaldi’s in the afternoon, it’s probably a good idea to call ahead and find out when they restoke their oven. As I’ve mentioned before, Grimaldi’s ovens are coal-fired, and must be shut down for an hour every day to clean out the cinders and then add fresh coal and restart them.

Seems like every Grimaldi’s does this at a slightly different time, in our case it was 2:45 to 3:45. But if you get there at the wrong time, you may have a wait.

But it will be worth it.

Afterwards, we made a WalMart stop, and coming out, we saw this guy. Don’t know if he was getting a jump on Valentine’s Day, or had really screwed up and was trying to dig himself out of the mess he’d gotten into.

Hope it worked out for him.

February 1, 2023

Shades of Jurassic Park . . .

When I was talking about all the different kinds of ‘noises’ in last night’s blog, I forgot to give the link.

Noises: What’s the Difference?

Work today was just more of updating manuals, catalogs, and websites. Blah!

Shades of Jurassic Park?

Well, maybe Ice Age Park or 17th Century Park

A biotech company called Colossal, is actively working to reincarnate the wooly mammoth sometime in the next 4 years.

The woolly mammoth’s DNA is a 99.6 percent match of the Asian elephant, which leads Colossal to believe it’s well on its way toward achieving its goal. Through gene editing, Colossal scientists will eventually create an embryo of a woolly mammoth. They will place the embryo in an African elephant to take advantage of its size and allow it to give birth to the new woolly mammoth.

And in a parallel experiment, they’re also working on resurrecting the Dodo, a large flightless bird found in the Indian Ocean area up until the mid-1660’s when the last one was killed.

And on a more recent note, Colossal is also looking to do the same for the Thylacine, also known as the Tasmanian Tiger or Tasmanian Wolf.

Hopefully this will turn out better than in the movies.

BTW Most of the dinosaurs shown in the Jurassic movies actually lived in the Late Cretaceous period, not the Jurassic.

But I guess Late Cretaceous Park just doesn’t have the same ring.

Landon’s latest 3D printing project is this dragon phone holder.

Neat!

February 1, 2024

No Rustika . . .

We had planned to meet our friend Tricia this afternoon at Rustika Cafe & Bakery over in League City, but she begged off. Said the cedar trees were trying to kill her again, and she didn’t want to be coughing all through lunch. So we’ll catch up with her soon.

So since we wanted to save our visit to Rustika for our Tricia get-together, after thinking for a bit, Jan decided she wanted to have lunch at Shafer’s Coastal Grille once again. We’ve been here several times before, in fact once with Tricia, and it’s always been great.

And today’s visit was no different.

So since it was a nice day, we decided to sit out on the enclosed porch with a nice view.

Jan got the Keto Shrimp Tacos, using avocado slices instead of taco shells.

She said it was one of her all-time favorite dishes.

I varied a little bit and got two appetizers as my meal.

Their Wedge Salad,

and the Deviled Eggs with Bacon.

These are probably the most delicious Deviled Eggs I’ve ever had. Really good.

Finishing up a very nice meal, we headed back over to our area to do our weekly Wal-Mart stop a couple of days early. Then it was home by about 4pm.

I’ve had a couple of days to try out the heating pad that I got for my computer chair.

And no, it doesn’t glow like that.

But it really works, and it’s amazing how fast it heats up. The heat can be felt almost immediately.

So far, so good.

I was outside the other day when an Amazon van pulled up with a delivery for me. And noticing he was driving one of the new electric vans, I asked him how he liked it.

“Wellllllâ€, he said as he looked back at it. When I mentioned that we’d had Amazon drivers asked to plug in their vans at our office up in Webster, he said, “Been there, done that.â€

“A lot.â€

Remember, to access our blog links,
Right-Click on The Link and Select ‘Open in New Tab’

“Carnival Cruise Line is reminding guests to keep their curtains closed while in port, to maintain privacy. The reminder comes after a recent incident where a couple in a balcony stateroom unknowingly provided a show for a neighboring ship. Carnival encourages guests to be mindful of curtains when dressing or moving around their staterooms.”

* * * * *

While we’re on the subject of cruising, you may or may not know that your cruise ship runs on jet engines.

In the case of our recent RCL ship, Jewel Of The Seas, it has 2 General-Electric gas turbines type LM 2500, running on LNG,and 1 steam turbine for a total of78.600 hp. The steam turbine takes the hot exhaust fromthe gas turbines and makes more electricity. Electricity that runs everything on the ship, including the electric propulsion pods and bow thrusters.

And even stranger, these same gas turbines, configured as the General Electric CF6 have powered the Lockheed L-1011, the McDonnell Douglas DC-10. the Boeing 747. and versions of the Airbus A300, A310, and A330, Boeing 767, Lockheed C-5M Galaxy, and McDonnell Douglas MD-11.

A very popular engine, both on the sea and in the air.

* * * * *

And along that same line, back the 1970’s, the Alabama Gas Company’s headquarters building in downtown Birmingham had a GE J-79 jet engine hidden in the basement. Determined not to buy electricity from the Alabama Power Company, they used the J-79 to generate the electricity to run the building.

For its part, he J-79 was used in the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter, Convair B-58 Hustler, McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, and North American A-5 Vigilante.

You never know.

* * * * *

As I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, tomorrow we’re going to check out aHot Dog Food Truck over in Bacliff. Jan and I are both Hot Dog aficionados, so we just have to check out a place called Doggone Crazy.

We’ll let you know.

Thought For The Day:

“The rush to be wrong first is just too hard for some people to resist.â€

And Now On To Today’s Retro-Blogs.™

January 31, 2011

So foggy even buzzards won’t fly . . .

9 Days and Counting . . .

We woke up this morning to such a solid blanket of fog that we could hardly see the bayou in front of us. We left the rig about 9:15, stopping by the park dumpster to drop off some garbage and do a little shopping while we were there. You remember Dumpster Shopping, don’t you?

Found this really nice painting that may end up in our granddaughter’s room,

and this nice hanging plant that we decided to leave for another shopper.

Heading down FM 517, we passed the vulture roosting area, only to find that the weather was so socked in that even they weren’t flying. They were just sitting around on buildings and signs in the area. Must be a real help to have vultures perched on the roof of your restaurant.

We got to the storeroom a little before 10, picked up the rental truck, got my mother’s washer and dryer loaded up, and were ready to roll. I couldn’t find a place to take them, so I just put them out on the street before the trash pickup today.

And according to our daughter, everything was gone this evening when they got home. Gone is gone.

We were running short on time to get the rent truck back, so we immediately headed down to League City, stopping off at the Raceway to top off the diesel tank, and getting the truck back with about 20 minutes to spare.

Next up was lunch at King Food for a big bowl of Hot and Sour Soup, certainly the weather for it. We’re really going to miss this place when we hit the road. Along with several others, as far as that goes.

Then we stopped off at a client’s to drop off about 4000 address labels for his next mail-out.

After that, we went by HEB to stock up on some of their coffees to take on our travels this year.

Next was Office Depot to pick up some ballpoint pens, and a large file box to hold some of my mother’s papers that we kept out of the storeroom.

About 2pm we met Chris and Linda at the storeroom to finish transferring the last of my mother’s stuff into our other storeroom.

Finally we were heading home with only two more stops.

The first was the Holiday World RV Sales tocheck on a part, that theydidn’t have,and then Kroger’s for Lotto tickets and Starbuck’s Cinnamon Dolce Lattes from Starbucks.

A few minutes after we got home, Eldy and Jeannie showed up so I took over a bottle of Joint Juice for Jeannie to try as they travel west.

January 31, 2014

Floored . . .

Well, the floor project is officially underway.

Before Chris got here, I had cleaned everything out and unbolted the chairs from their pedestals. The flooring on the left side of the screen is a test piece I laid down to see how it would look.

The first thing we did was pull the chairs and put them outside, where Mister decided he was going to spend the day camped out in one of them.

We then started going over the floor inch by inch, pulling up any of the missed staples that originally held down the carpet, and pounding out any bumps.

Chris also did a really good job getting the rest of the carpet out from under the steering wheel and cleaning that area up.

At this point, I realized I must have had a brain fa . . . eh, fade. I sure seem to remember pulling up the pedestals last time to get the carpet out from under them. But it quickly became obvious that they didn’t come up. In fact I even called American Coach to be sure.

I had thought that the pedestals were held down by lag bolts into the plywood flooring. But as it turned out, they’re held down by large bolts with nuts underneath the chassis, that can’t be easily reached. Oh, well.

Next I started patching the bolt hole depressions with Plastic Wood. These are the bolts that hold the plywood subflooring to the chassis.

Once we got all the prep work done, we knocked off for the day. We’ll start fresh tomorrow laying down the flooring and cutting around the obstacles with a jigsaw.

With a little luck, we’ll be able to finish up then.

Stay tuned. More floor to come.

January 31, 2015

TruMoo and Brûlée too . . .

After our coffee and toasted English muffins this morning, and the promised rain still hadn’t materialized, I decided to try out my Karcher pressure washer that I finally unboxed and assembled last night.

But since I only had about an hour before we were going to head into Katy, I decided to just try it on the truck. SoI added some of the wash/wax concentrate to the tank, topped it off with water and got to work.

It turned out to go pretty quickly, as I just had to wet the truck down one area at a time, Then I switched to the detergent setting and covered that area with the solution.

I found at that point I needed to use the scrub sponge included with the pressure washer to get the heavy dirt off and then it wasjust a matter of rinsing it off and letting it dry. I was surprised to see how clean and shiny the truck was after I was finished.

Later, checking the manual I discovered that they have a rotating brush attachment available for less than $20 from Amazon, so I’ll probably order one soon.

A little later, about 1:45 we all headed into Houston. Our first stop was in the Eldridge Parkway area so that we could check out the closest Home Depot, whereI was looking for a couple of things. First was what I’ve always called Telephone splices.

And although they’re not called that on Amazon, they do come up when you search for ‘telephone splices’, so I guess someone else calls them that too.

They’re used to splice 2 or 3 wires small wires together, wires much smaller than the normal crimp splices can handle. They’re easy to use, just insert the wires into the ports and squeeze with a pair of pliers. The inside is filled with a gel that makes them waterproof too.

After finding the splices, I went looking for the 1/4†right-angle connecter for my air compressor, and found it after a few minutes. Well, actually I found the empty plastic bag hanging on the peg. And it was the only one they had. So there’s always another Home Depot.

When I got back out to the truck a few minutes later, Jan had noticed a Dunkin’ Donuts across the parking lot, so we made a stop for munchkins (donut holes) for Jan,and TruMoo for me. About 4:30 wejust met at Little V’s Vietnamese Bistrofor dinner.

Brandi and I both had the Shaking Beef Vermicelli, while Jan had her usual Grilled Chicken Vermicelli.

Lowell, however, tried something completely different with the Roasted Duck Vermicelli.

Landon and I sat together, and in between his bites of corndog and myShaking Beef, wehelped each other make it through the harder levels of Angry Birds– Star Wars on my Galaxy Tab. It’s amazing how good he is at this, showing me some tricks that I didn’t know, but lucky for me, his PaPa was able to show him a few things too.

We all finished off our meal with their Crème Brûlée spoons, just perfect to end a great meal.

And after a stopover at Brandi and Lowell’s for a while, we headed home.

Tomorrow looks to be a rainy stay-at-home day for all concerned. Nice.

January 31, 2016

RV Checklists . . .

Since I did absolutely nothing yesterday to prep for our travel today, Jan and I were up about 6:45am to get a start on things, especially since we planned to head out about 8 to have breakfast at the Conroe Cracker Barrel.

I normally start marking things off on my checklist the night before we travel. But because we spent the afternoon having fun (and dinner) with Janice and Dave Evans, and it was dark by the time we got home, I got nothing done.

But after 8 years of RV’ing, we’ve pretty much got it down to a science, so in about an hour, everything was done, except to crank up, unhook power, bring in the slide, and roll.

Getting to CB only a little after 8am means no wait, unlike showing up later in the morning or early afternoon. And since we’re not in any real hurry, we had a nice, leisurely breakfast, getting back to the rig about 9:30. And after wrapping things up, we pulled out of the site. with Jan following me in the truck down to the Activity Center where we hitched up and headed out.

When we came back from Cracker Barrel, the weather was sunny, but I noticed while I was hooking up the toad, that it was changing. Clouds were rolling in and the temperature was dropping. And we encountered the change out on the Interstate too.

The winds really kicked up with enough strength to make it an interesting drive, to say the least. This was not a very relaxing trip at all.

About 30 miles down I-45, we stopped at the Pilot/Flying J, to take on some diesel. Unlike the other one on our route, out in Brookshire, this one has 6 straight-in RV pumps, and an easy out when you’re done. And since I was using the Pilot RV Plus Card, I got my usual 8 cents a gallon discount off the cash price. But there was a problem.

The first pump I tried was running at about 30 seconds per gallon, meaning that 120 gallons would take me about an hour. After reporting the problem inside (probably a clogged filter at the pump), I switched over to the pump on the driver’s side, and finished the fill-up from there. This one was doing a gallon in less than 5 seconds.

Back on the road, we finished up our wind-blown trip and pulled into the Colorado River Thousand Trails about 1:30pm. And although we’re in a different site from the last time we were neighbors, we ended up right next door to our friends, Vance and Bonnie Clegg.

For dinner tonight we finished up the remainder of last week’s chili, putting it over rice with cheese and tortilla chips. Really good.

I mentioned earlier about using a checklist. In fact I’ve used a program, an Android app, called RV Checklist for years. A free app, it comes with a number of pre-done rv-related checklists, including an RV Departure checklist, an RV Arrival and Setup checklist, and a Camping Preparation list

The Departure one looks like this.

But you can also make your own personalized ones, which is what I did. And it looks like this.

And when I check an item off, it turns green like this.

Over the course of a number of travel days, I wrote down every step needed for Jan and me to get ready to roll, most of mine outside, and all of Jan’s inside. The list has saved my rear a couple of times, usually because I was interrupted in the middle of things when someone came over to talk.

We also have one labeled RV 2 Motel Checklist, that was honed in 2012 when we stayed in a motel while our rig was in the shop in Las Cruces, NM. Every time we found something we’d forgotten and had to go back to the rig, it got added to the list.

And over the years we added and deleted other stuff to make it work for us.

Finishing up, in yesterday’s blog I was talking about how the Potatoe Patch’s ‘Throw’d Rolls’ aren’t as big or thrown as far as Lambert’s. Well, as it turns out, one of our readers, Joan Scott, left a comment that might explain the reason behind that difference.

Joan said she used to be the Insurance Underwriter for Lambert’s and that they have seen a fair share of lawsuits from their ‘throwed rolls’. It’s really hard to believe that someone could be injured by a soft, fluffy yeast roll.

A few years back, I think it was the Sikeston, MO Lambert’s location, I saw a roll come arcing overhead, right through the hands of the father, and hit a young boy in a highchair right in the face with a soft ‘plop’. The kid who also had his hands up trying to catch it, just picked up the roll from his tray and started eating it.

I think some people just want to sue.

January 31, 2017

Counting The Days . . .

Today was Jan’s first day on a gate in a week or so. As it stands right now she’ll work today, Tuesday, and tomorrow, all on day shift.

But since I’m on night shift, that means that we’ve got to trade the truck back and forth. So when Jan came in this morning at 5:30am, I took the truck back home, until I came in at 5:30pm. Then Jan went home.

But what this all boils down to is that if Jan doesn’t work Thursday then she still has to come back to the gate and pick me up at 5:30am. Poor baby.

Tomorrow while I’m home during the day, I’m going to see if I’m stuck or not.

When we first got here a week and a half ago, I recounted how the owner of the first RV park we tried got mad because we left ruts in his grass sites. Well, the park where we ended up also has grass sites, and since the ground was wet after all the rain we’ve had, we’ve sunk in some.

So tomorrow I’m going to put some large mats down in front of the rear duals and see if I can pull forward onto them. If so I should be OK until we leave on the 15th, even if we get more rain. If not, I’ll have to rethink the whole thing.

Of course, it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve parked somewhere and then found ourselves stuck due to heavy rains before we left.

Back in 2008 we were at the fairgrounds in Sioux Falls, SD, and while it was dry when we got there, it rained for the last four days flooding the RV area. After trying to get unstuck myself I finally had to call our roadside assistance service to get me out. They sent out a winch truck who was able to pull me forward about 30 feet until I was on the road. A real mess.

Two weeks from today is our last day on the gate. Then we’ll leave Cuero and make the 85 mile trip over to the Colorado River Thousand Trails in Columbus for two weeks so we can get our doctor stuff out of the way.

It’s going to be a busy time until we head west.

January 31, 2018

Back To Square One . . .

Things didn’t go too well today at work. We hadn’t heard anything from the direct mail company since I approved the artwork Monday afternoon, so I sent them an email asking what was happening.

And all I got back was an email requesting that I approve the artwork . . . again. But when I went to the approval page, it said the artwork had already been approved. WTH? So I sent off another email.

As it stands right now we don’t know what’s going on with them. Hopefully I’ll know something tomorrow.

I mentioned in Monday’s blog that I had set up the website to change over to the sale prices at 12:01am tomorrow morning, as well as the sales banner on the front page.

Well, when I came in this morning I found out that sometime this morning the new prices got posted on the site, and a couple of orders came in. No big problem, but it shouldn’t have happened.

But the sales banner didn’t change. And since it’s all tied together, it should have. So I turned the prices back off, and then I’ll check back after midnight to see if they came back on. If not, I’ll have to turn them on manually.

After I got home this afternoon we turned right back around and drove over to Victory Lakes to have dinner at Whataburger.

Once again we each got Double Meat Whataburger Jr’s as well as the Grilled Chicken Apple & Cranberry salads.

And as before we had leftover salad to bring home. Great as always.

Tomorrow afternoon we’re meeting an old friend and past co-worker of Jan’s at the Texas Roadhouse in Pasadena. Really looking forward to it.

Our son Chris called this morning to tell me to bring the truck by so he can clean the oil pressure sensor connector for me. So we’ll do that on our way to Pasadena.

Jan was supposed to have her checkup tomorrow morning, but her doctor called this afternoon to move her appointment back to next Wednesday the 7th. Apparently a piece of equipment they needed had died and wouldn’t be repaired until Monday. So we’re back to square one on that.

January 31, 2019

The Forest . . .

Our friends Charles and Chris Yust are passing through Houston on the way from their RV lot in Yuma to their RV lot in Florida, and they’re staying at the Lake Conroe Thousand Trails for a few days.

So we headed up there about 9am. It was our first trip back up there in over a year, so it was interesting to see all the new things popping up, especially the new construction at the Lake Conroe park.

We got there a little after 10:30 and quickly found their site over in the ‘E’ ring, one of our favorite locations there too. We spent a couple of hours catching up before heading out to lunch at our local favorite El Bosque Mexican Restaurant.

We’ve eaten here a lot of times, and we’ve never had a bad meal. And today was no exception.

Jan got her fav, El Presidente, with Six Grilled Jumbo Gulf Shrimp and their Pollo a La Parrilla, with Avocado, Tomatoes, and Charro Beans.

Chris and I both had the Beef Fajita Poblanos, with Bacon-Grilled Onions, Poblano Peppers, Tomatoes, Mushrooms, and topped with White Cheese.

One of my all-time favorite Mexican dishes. And both Jan and I had plenty of leftovers to bring home.

Charles had the Cheese Enchiladas, but they looked kind of boring so I didn’t get a photo. But it must have been good since he cleaned his plate.

And as usual, we spent almost three hours at the restaurant, with a lot more talking. We were there so long that our waiter finally gave up coming by to see if we needed anything else, and went to have his own lunch.

We got back to their rig for a while longer before saying our goodbyes and got back on the road a little before 4pm, only to find we not only had the Houston going-home traffic to fight through downtown Houston, but also a steady drizzle that fogged over everything, not a pea soup fog, but more of cloudy chicken broth one.

But it slowed us down enough that our normal hour-and-a-half half trip took us over two and half hours.

But it was still a lot of fun, and well worth the trip.

It looks like it’s going to warm up next week so I’m hoping that I’ll have a chance to get under the rig and follow up on my oil leak problem. But I’m going to have to make a Harbor Freight run to pick up a couple of 12†– 1/2†extensions.

The Filter Wrench I have needs a 1/2†drive, and since the Fleetguard filter is almost 12†long and I’m even further down, I need a longer reach to get the wrench up to the base of the filter.

Besides, Harbor Freight is always fun.

January 31, 2020

Sweet AND Spicy . . .

Since I worked yesterday, I was off today, a 3 day weekend. I went in yesterday because my client wasn’t going to be in at all and didn’t want to leave the office manager alone all day.

I spent this morning making the hotel reservations for our upcoming Alabama trip. Necessary because we’ll be driving the truck rather than our oil-leaking rig. In addition I also canceled our RV Park reservations for that trip.

Although back in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, I used to drive straight through to Birmingham every month to visit my mother, we’ll take things a little slower this time and spend the night in Slidell LA along the way. Actually both ways, going and coming back.

Since we liked our stay at the La Quinta in Luling back last November, I found a good deal on one there. As I mentioned in the blog at the time, I found out that, although I thought I got a good rate through Expedia, I found that when I re-upped for more days, the in-house rate was $10 cheaper. And several readers told me that they often found the same thing.

So I checked online first and then called the La Quinta directly. But this time the Expedia rate was about $8 cheaper than the in-house one. And I did ask for the best rate.

And I found the same thing with our Extended Stay Hotel in Montgomery and our Day’s Inn in Athens. I didn’t yet make our coming home reservation since that date is not nailed down yet.

About 1:30 we headed up to Webster with our first stop at Snooze for lunch. We were interested to find that they had new menus, and a few new dishes. But the one that caught my eye was their Bacon But Different.

It’s an order of their Tender Belly Bacon that’s rubbed with brown sugar, cayenne, and chili flakes and drizzled with black pepper maple syrup.

Sweet AND Spicy (Just like Jan), really delicious, and I’ll definitely have it again.

After our Snooze, I dropped Jan off to get her toesies done while I drove on over to the Ace Hardware in Friendswood. My computer chip key for our 2004 Dodge Dakota is showing its age. And its circuitry.

The rubber coating covering the parts on the key fob was beginning to wear off, exposing a corner of the circuit board. So I figured it was time for a new one.

I checked with both O’Reilly’s and AutoZone and they both said I had to go to the dealer. But when I checked with the local Dodge dealer I was quoted $245 for a new key.

Ouch!

But I remembered from a year or so ago that Ace Hardware advertised that they could duplicate computer keys, so off I went.

And once I got there I was testing my new key in about 15 minutes. And even better it was only $80. A nice savings.

And they said all Ace Hardware’s around the country should be able to do this.

Tomorrow night we’re heading up to Pearland for Tony Booth’s Birthday Bash, an annual Country Music Get-Together with a lot of old friends.

Really looking forward to it. And because it goes so late there’ll probably be little or no blog tomorrow night.

January 31, 2021

Where Did It Go?

Jan and I met up with my client and his wife at the Luby’s Cafeteria in Webster about 2:30, our first time at a Luby’s in years, and that was at the one over by NASA that’s now closed.

Our meal, especially the veggies, was pretty good, but probably not go-back-again good. Cheddar’s is better, and cheaper, actually. But we did have a really good time with Myron and Cindy, and hope to do it again soon, maybe on a regular basis.

Then it was on back down to the HEB in our area for a few things, and then home for the day.

January 31, 2022

Pizza, Pizza . . .

Didn’t sleep well last night and woke up with a bad headache this morning, so I played hooky from work, though I still processed a few orders online.

When we were up in Spring last week, getting together with Debi & Ed Hurlburt and Janice Evans, we got to talking about our favorite pizza places. Which got Jan and I thinking that we needed to make a pizza run really soon.

So tomorrow we’re going to our fav, Grimaldi’s Pizzeria at Baybrook Mall. We first ate at Grimaldi’s, the original (and only one at the time) in 2009 in New York City.

Well, Brooklyn to be more precise. In fact the approach to the Brooklyn Bridge passed right overhead.

And we all agreed it was the best pizza we’d ever eaten. So a few years later we were very happy to find that the one small NYC location had started spreading out across the country.

Really looking forward to tomorrow.

And on the subject of pizza, I came across this online article comparing frozen pizzas.

I Tested And Ranked The 7 “Most Popular†Frozen Pizzas, And I’ll Just Say It — There’s One Brand You Couldn’t Pay Me To Eat Again

And the two worse ones were kind of unexpected.

7. Whole Foods 365 — This was pretty much one of the most revolting pizza crusts I’ve ever tasted.

When I say “rubber crust,†I mean it. Tearing into a slice of Whole Foods’s “rising crust†pizza was like biting into an old tire.

6. Trader Joe’s — I genuinely think they meant well, but this pizza was drier than a literal desert.

Trader Joe’s may be a haven for many foods — frozen and fresh — but I can’t in good conscience recommend you buy this pizza.

But the two top ones may not be much of a surprise.

Of course there’s always Domino’s.

January 31, 2023

Too Many Noises . . .

Jan and I were on our way up to Brandi’s in Katy by 12:30pm, with our first stop at the El Pollo Loco for lunch first.

We both had the 3 Piece White Dinner with sides, mine with Mashed Potatoes and Broccoli,

and Jan’s with Pinto Beans and Broccoli.

We first ran across El Pollo Loco out in California in 2008, during our first year of RV’ing, before they started spreading eastward. And it became our favorite grilled chicken.

So we were very happy to find them showing up in our area, including two down in our Clear Lake area. But unfortunately they were very badly managed and neither one lasted very long. One of them is now a Chipotle and the other one is a specialty tea place.

Right now the nearest one is over in Pearland, about 20 miles away.

And along with our meals there, Jan also got one to go while she’s at Brandi’s.

YUMMM!

You’ve probably seen the ads on TV for the Better Sleep app talking about Green Noise and Brown Noise helping you to sleep better. Now I knew about White Noise and Pink Noise for a couple of reasons.

Both of them are used in setting up audio systems, which I did a lot of in my past life. And Jan and I have used this Radio Shack Sleep Machine since the late 80’s – early 90’s.

And over the years, we’ve found it very useful while RV’ing when parked near highways and railroad tracks.

But I had never heard of Green Noise and Brown Noise, which apparently is also called Red Noise. And it seems Brown(Red) and Green aren’t the only new ones.

There’s also Blue, Violet, and Grey. Now I just think they’re just making it up.

But I did get the Alexa App called Sleep Sounds that will let Jan and I check out the Brown(Red) and Green to see if they mask out outside noises better than White noise. And I’ll have to see if it has the other three.

Finishing up, Brandi sent over this photo of the view from her hotel room in San Diego.

Doesn’t look much like a business meeting to me.

January 31, 2024

Who Knew?

Tomorrow we’re having lunch with long-time client/friend Tricia at Rustika Cafe & Bakery over in League City. I say ‘long-time client/friend’ because she’s another one who started out as a client back in the 90’s, and became a friend.

Looks to be a lot like our fav Sunflower Cafeand Bakery down in Galveston. Looking forward to it.

Afterward, Jan and I will make our weekly Wal-Mart stop a little earlier this week.

Following up on this blog’s restaurant theme.

Who knew that –

“One of the Best Restaurants in the World Is In Kemah. And Nobody Has Heard of It.

It’s called Eculent and our son-in-law Lowell told me about it.

“A chef with a flair for the avant-garde serves up three hours of sorceryâ€

Tom Sietsema, Washington Post

And it’s kind of pricey too.

Dinner – $239 per person

+ 20% Service Charge (not gratuity)

Dinner is composed of 25-35 courses depending upon season and availability of ingredients.

So for dinner, the 20% Service Charge, and Sales Tax, that comes to a little over $310 per person.

And that doesn’t include tip.

or Wine, either. That’s extra

Classic Wine Pairing – $59 per person

Old World Wine Pairing – $129 per person

And here’s a sample ofthe Eculent menu.

Out of the Forest

edible moss, escargot, truffle foam, enoki mushrooms

Walking Down the Isle

hydroponic greens, pistachio butter, edible flowers

Pig in a Cloud

pork belly, noodles, prickly pear shrub, edible cork

I don’t know about you, but I’m certainly glad that the moss, flowers, and cork are all edible.

But the dishes are unique looking.

And think that with these prices, nobody’s eating there?

Think again.

The reservations window opens at 11am on the first day of the month for the NEXT month. In other words, tomorrow, Feb. 1st, they start taking reservations for MARCH! And there’s a $25 non-refundable booking fee too.

And it seems that by 11:30 all the seatings are filled.

Of course, to be clear, they only have 20 seats, and are only open Thur– Sat, with 2 seatings per night.

Jan said we’re going to have to win the Powerball to eat here.