Our RV Adventures

As I’ve mentioned before, Tuesday has become a Stay At The Rig Day for us, a day to just do pretty much nothing. But as Jan says, “I don’t do ‘nothing’ well”, so I usually have some chores lined up.

So yesterday, I wanted to take a look at the front window on Jan’s side of the Jeep. A while back it started making funny sounds when I tried to lower it, and what looked like a snake came up from inside the window.

So here’s what I started with.

Moving on to this. I removed the two screws and then used a big screwdriver to pop loose the connectors.

Pulling loose the covering from the sealant, I had this.

And after I tried to lower the window, the ‘snake’ appeared, and I figured out what it was.

The ‘snake’ was the drive cable that moved the window up and down.

The two white pieces shown above should be one piece. It’s the covering for the drive cable.

It should look like this, with the covering in one continuous piece.

I thought about pulling the window regulator out to see if I could join the two pieces back together somehow, glue, Gorilla Tape, etc.

But if it didn’t hold, I’d just have to do it again. So I decided to just order a new one and be done with it. So that’s on for next week.

Something else I replaced yesterday was the Otterbox protective cover on my S21 Ultra phone. It stood me well for the last 3 years, and has protected me from a number of drops, falls, and spills. But it become a little frayed around the edges as you can see on the right.

A great product, and the 3rd phone I’ve used one on.

Tomorrow we’re heading up to Conroe to meet up with Debi and Ed Hurlburt for our monthly get-together, this time at the Outback Steakhouse there.

Yummm!

Thought For The Day:

They’ve got the right idea.

But This Seems To Be A Better Idea!

Your Retro-Preview Highlights –

2010 – Poppies, Poppies, Poppies

2017 – Lunch At Margaritaville

And Now On To Today’s Retro-Blogs.™

April 17, 2010

Poppies, poppies, poppies…

Jan and I had a craving for Chinese for lunch, so after Googling ‘Best Chinese Buffet Lancaster CA and coming up with the Super King Buffet right down the road from us, we headed out about 11 am. Turns out it was really good. Better than the place in Las Vegas. Great Hot & Sour Soup. We’ll go back.

Coming back to the fairgrounds about 12:15, we drove over to the Good Sam Rally area to get a day pass. And a lot of good it did us.

After they took our $20 ($10 each) we found out that the rally was over at noon. Seems like they could have told us that ahead of time. The schedule online said that the rally was taking place on Friday and Saturday. Bummer.

Leaving the rally we drove over to the Antelope Valley California Poppy Preserve. It was about 15 miles out in the country. As we got closer we realized that this was the orange hills we had seen in the distance. The California Poppy is the state flower of California and Lancaster is the best place in the state to see them. And the view was really spectacular.

Note the poppies up the hillside.

Almost as pretty as the bluebonnets in the Texas Hill County.

After making the drive we headed back home about 2:30 pm.

Then about 6 Jan fixed her world-famous tuna noodle casserole and we settled in to watch the new Dr. Who.

April 17, 2011

More Landon Skyping . . .

This morning got off to a great start. First with good coffee, but more importantly, with Landon Skyping. We spent almost 20 minutes online with Brandi, Lowell, and Landon, having a great time. It was obvious that Landon could see and respond to us, as he would giggle and squeal when we called out and waved to him.

He spent some time playing with his favorite toy, a wooden spoon, that he loves to beat on the floor.

Toward the end, he started to show off his ‘almost crawling’ ability. He’s just about got it down. He just needs better traction.

These last two photos were taken from the videos that Brandi sent later in the morning.

These three videos show that Landon has also got a great butterfly stroke for swimming. He just needs a pool to try it.

Landon Almost Crawling 1

Landon Almost Crawling 2

Landon Almost Crawling 3

Later, after we said our goodbyes, for lunch Jan heated up some of the El Pollo Loco chicken, beans, rice, and soup that we brought back from Mesa the other day. And lucky for us, we have enough for another meal. Their marinated fire-grilled chicken is fantastic.

After lunch, Jan and I went outside to try and put the cargo bay door back on. We had removed it to take down to RV Renovators in Mesa to get an estimate on the repair for the damage that was done at the fairgrounds in Tucson.

I say ‘try’ to put it back on because we couldn’t get it to latch up. It’s always kind of picky.

I spent the afternoon working on client website stuff, then took a nap, while Jan read, watched TV, and took a nap.

Naps are nice!

A little before 5, after dropping the garbage off at the dumpster, Jan and I drove over to have dinner at the China Buffet. Pretty decent Chinese buffet for a small town.

Tomorrow Jan and I are going to drive a few miles up I-17 toward Flagstaff to check out the Montezuma Castle National Monument Indian cliff dwellings, and also the nearby Montezuma Well Oasis area.

We still plan on leaving here Wednesday morning to head over to the Elk’s Lodge in Show Low for several weeks before heading over to Coarsegold, CA, and the Yosemite area.

See you back here tomorrow.

April 17, 2013

Here Comes Peter . . .

Really nice weather here in Apache Junction today. A cool front came through and took things from the low 80’s to the high 60’s. Really nice.

Jan and I left out a little after 12:30pm heading for the Sam’s Club at SanTan Village over in Gilbert. But we first took the next exit past SanTan to get a good shot of the new Mormon Temple that’s under construction there.

Very impressive.

Then after our stop at Sam’s Club, we came back a different way so we could stop at a nearby El Pollo Loco to pick up some of their delicious chicken to have for meals later this week.

For the last week or so we’ve noticed this nest built on the sign for our park exit.

Haven’t seen any sign of chicks yet, but maybe before we leave.

The stop to photograph the hawk also gave us a good view of Superstition Mountain, the supposed home of the fabled Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine.

Down at the base there, you can see our Countryside RV Resort.

Coming back past the park we made a quick run up to Fry’s to pick up some groceries, and finished up our trip with a couple of Cinnamon Dolce Lattes at the store’s Starbuck’s

For dinner Jan fixed a couple of her delicious Chili Taco Salads, using Skyline Chili. Really good as usual.

Later after dinner, we did a 1+ mile walk around the park, and as usual, encountered a number of these cottontails. We’ve seen as many 10 at one time roaming around the park, with probably a lot more that we don’t see.

Some people put out carrots, while Jan decided to try some of the leftover lettuce from our salads tonight.

Finally one he fits in:

While we were at Sam’s, Jan picked up a slightly larger box for Mister. It’s a tight squeeze, and the sides bulge, but he fits. Just barely.

April 17, 2014

Too Close To Home . . .

or Do You Know What Your Neighbors Are Doing?

Apparently last night there was a murder/suicide right here at the Thousand Trails park in Lake Conroe.

Based on the photos, and the fact that I heard nothing, and had the windows open, it looks like it was on the other side of the park. You can read more about it here.

http://montgomerycountypolicereporter.com/murder-suicide-lake-conroe/

Although it wasn’t announced beforehand, the park water was off most of the afternoon, but we just turned the water pump on and went about our business. Guess they were working on something.

Later for dinner, I fixed us salads, and then we heated up some of the fantastic Chicken and Sausage Gumbo that Chris Yust sent us home with last Sunday after our get-together at their place at the Escapees Park over in Livingston. And I think it aged like a fine wine. It may have been even better than it was before.

Even better, we’ve got another batch in the freezer.

And to round out the meal, I made up some garlic French bread to go with the gumbo. All really good.

Thanks, Chris.

Yesterday, Jan and I had dinner at the Rudy’s BBQ down in Spring. One of our 3 favorite BBQ chains, Rudy’s does it all right. And as usual, I got enough for us to bring home for other meals. Although it’s not a chain, I pretty much have to add Peter’s BBQ over in Ellinger to our favorite list. We’ll definitely go back after we move back to the Colorado River TT this coming Monday.

Our daughter Brandi, and our granddaughter Piper should be very glad Jan and I didn’t come across this Easter (or Halloween) costume when they were this size.

On the other hand, a photo like this could traumatize a kid for years.

But, then, isn’t that a parent’s job?

April 17, 2015

Cupcakes and Hippies . . .

After a nice quiet morning, Jan and I headed out about 3pm for some errands and dinner. Our first stop was right up the road heading into Cottonwood. I had left some keys at a locksmith on Tuesday to be duplicated, so we stopped off today to pick them up.

Then it was out on 89A to drop some mail off at the Cottonwood PO, before heading right down the road to visit the Clemenceau Heritage Museum. But we were 30 minutes too late. Despite the fact that the web said they were open until 5pm, they actually closed at 3pm. So maybe we’ll have a chance tomorrow.

When we were at the Escapade in Tucson last month, Jan asked a friend of ours, Barb Westerfield, where she got the shirt she was wearing. Barb said she got it at the Ye Old Hippie Emporium in Old Town Cottonwood,

so that was one of the places Jan wanted to be certain to visit, so we stopped off there next. Jan quickly found a couple of blouses that she really liked so she was very happy.

After that, it was right down the road a little ways to have dinner at Hog Wild BBQ.

This is our second visit here, and we already knew what we were going to have, Just pulling into the parking lot and smelling the smoke coming off the BBQ pit in the parking lot.

And this was what we ordered, the Sampler Platter.

It’s a 1/3 slab (4) of ribs, 1/2 pound brisket, 1/2 pound of pork, garlic fries, two sides (we got Cole slaw and BBQ beans), and Texas Toast. Really delicious.

Even their BBQ sauce is really good, except for the fact that it’s a little wussy. But then I have some of my ‘magic’ powders that takes care of that problem.

And we had enough brisket and pork to have sandwiches later at home, probably after we get to Las Vegas this Sunday.

Finishing up with dinner, and since Barb Westerfield had given us such a good tip on the Old Hippie Emporium, we decided to check out her other recommendation, Irish Rose Cupcakes.

And she hit a home run on this recommendation too. Here’s what we got.

On the top left is my Butterscotch, with my Salted Caramel underneath. On the top right is Jan’s Lemon with her White Chocolate Raspberry. One thing unusual about their cupcakes is that most of them are available in both vanilla and chocolate cakes. Needless to say, both of mine were vanilla. Later tonight we each had a cupcake for dessert, and Jan said her Lemon might just be the best cupcake she’s ever eaten.

Finishing up, here’s a photo of my Sweetie’s pretty painted toes that I did yesterday.

Tomorrow will be our last day here in Cottonwood, at least, for two weeks. We’re heading over to Las Vegas on Sunday. Then in two weeks, we’ll be back here for ten days or so, before we head out to Illinois for our big Memorial Day weekend family reunion. Really looking forward to it.

April 17, 2016

Mea Culpa . . .

First up, blog reader Mike Rado alerted me to the fact that the story I related, about the guy destroying his company with one line of bad code, was a hoax.

When I looked at the story a few days ago when it first appeared, everyone assumed it was true. And I was in good company getting fooled, with company like Kim Komando, Popular Mechanics, and several other tech sites

However, for what it’s worth, in the same circumstances, the ‘rm –rf’ command will work exactly as described.

Mea Culpa.

The promised oncoming bad weather keeps dodging all around us, with only the windy part showing up. But they’ve issued flood warnings for the Conroe area, so maybe it’s still in the works. We’ll see.

Sometime later tonight or tomorrow, I’ll start posting Greg”s Favorite Apps to the blog. I’ve already created the pages for the 12  different categories I’ve come up with. and around 80 different apps.

In the past I’ve mentioned 3D printers and all the amazing things they’re doing with them, from printing working guns, to prosthetic limbs for injured soldiers, to replacement duck feet, and even printing food.

But now here’s a 3D printer that will print a house in just a day or so. Check it out.

And even more wonderful things are on the horizon, including the 3D printing of human organs. So no more transplants with all the inherent rejection problems. Instead they’ll just print you up a new heart, lung, liver, or kidney, from your own cells. So no more rejection problems. And no more people dying while waiting on the transplant list for a matching organ.

April 17, 2017

There Was A Reason It Was Free . . .

First off, thanks to everyone for their kind comments and emails about yesterday’s post about the recent United kerfuffle. I’ll keep you updated if anything more substantial comes along.

Early in the afternoon, I headed down to the Home Depot to get a new exhaust pipe for my generator. I had called a nearby garage and a couple of auto parts places with no luck. It seems that no one really does exhaust system/muffler work anymore, except for custom work and special orders.

So at Home Depot, I found a 10’ section of 1-1/4” E.M.T. conduit

and an E.M.T. coupling in the Electrical area.

I only needed about 3’ but they only had the 1-1/4” stuff in 10’ sections. I asked them if they could cut it for me to make it easier to get it home. They said No. They don’t cut pipe for you at Home Depot.

Huh?

So I took my pipe down to the plumbing area where they cut it for me in about 30 seconds.

I’ll use the coupling to connect the present exhaust pipe to the new section after smearing the ends of the two pipes with high-temp sealant to seal from any exhaust flumes leaking out.

After talking with the company about my Transfer Switch problems about a month ago, to see if I had missed anything, I ordered a new one this weekend which arrived today. You can read about it here.

MacGyvering It

Turns out the coil that controls the main contactor had opened up.

I’ll probably replace the unit tomorrow.

About 4pm we headed over to the Strip to have dinner at Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville, located in the Flamingo.

And what do you have at Margaritaville?

Why, a Cheeseburger in Paradise, of course!

It was delicious, but it wasn’t a Cheeseburger in Paradise. At least based on the song lyrics. I’ve put the lines together that describe the burger.

But a big warm bun and a huge hunk of meat.
CHECK!

Heaven on earth with an onion slice
NO ONION SLICE!

Medium rare with Muenster’d be nice
AMERICAN CHEESE, NOT MUENSTER!

I like mine with lettuce and tomato,
CHECK!

Heinz Fifty-seven and French fried potatoes.
FRENCH FRIES – CHECK.
HEINZ 57 – NO  But I probably could have asked for it.

Big kosher pickle and a cold draft beer.
KOSHER PICKLES – CHECK
NO BEER   We had a Margarita, instead.

Now a lot of people think the line is
Medium rare with mustard’d be nice

and many lyric sites say the same thing. But if you notice the lyrics list all the ingredients EXCEPT cheese.

When Jimmy was asked about this, he said it was Muenster, not mustard. And then he said, “Who the hell puts mustard on a cheeseburger.”

A little disclaimer here: I put Mayo on mine.

As we were walking through the Margaritaville Casino on the way to the restaurant, we were given a coupon for a free Margarita if we spent $20 or more at dinner. Not a problem since our burgers were $15 each.

So, hey, a free Margarita.

But there was a reason it was free. There was absolutely no alcohol in this drink. At first, I questioned why they would give us a coupon for a free one anyway. But then I realized that most people who get a free Margarita are going to order paid ones for everyone else. At $10.75 ea.

But Jan and I only ordered one to split. Which probably explains why they didn’t put any alcohol in ours.

April 17, 2018

John Wayne Ate Here . . .

Jan and I headed up to Baytown about 9:30, making the 1 hour trip going up Hwy 146 and crossing the Houston Ship Channel over Fred Hartman Bridge as we came into Baytown proper.

Jan calls this the Sail Bridge, for good reason as you can see. A very beautiful bridge.

We got to our destination a little after 10:30, and while Jan went down to get together with Rudy’s wife, Caroline, Rudy Leggett and I started looking at the problem.

The property owner has a remote-controlled gate, but he wanted to control it from further away, like anywhere in the world. So he purchased what he thought was a BFT cellular gate controller like this from a local fence company.

But after the owner had a friend install it, they could never get it to work right. It was supposed to have video from the gate with two-way audio, as well as remote gate control, all using a phone app. But the only that worked was the video, and only when standing right by the gate.

Rudy had texted me info on the whole layout last week and right off the bat I saw some problems, like this wasn’t actually a cellular-connected unit, just WiFi. The cell phone versions are completely different models.

Plus they wanted to hook it up to the router in their house about 600 feet away. They had trenched in conduit and pulled 3 CAT 5 Ethernet cables through it, one to use and two spares. Always a good idea.

However, 600 feet of CAT 5 does not a good signal make. At an absolute maximum, a CAT 5 ()or CAT 6 for that matter) is good for 100 meters, or about 328 feet. And that’s under perfect circumstances.

If you want to be sure you’re to have a good signal, 200 feet is a better, more realistic goal. But that would mean digging down to the conduit, cutting into it, cutting and re-connecting the cable, and then inserting two Ethernet switches as repeaters in the line every 200  feet.

And then you’ve got to get power to the switches. Now the obvious thing would be to use PoE (Power over Ethernet) switches, but the BFT manual says that’s a No-No.

They did all this because they didn’t think they could do a WiFi run, but it certainly looks doable to me . . . with the right equipment.

But all of this was moot since the gate controller didn’t work directly at the gate. And we spent several hours trying to get it set up, configured, and talking to the phone app. But nothing worked.

We even tried rebooting the box and starting over, but we were never able to even see the video. Nothing we did looked anything like what the manual said we should be seeing. So at this point, I’m pretty sure there is a problem with the unit. So now the owner needs to decide how he wants to proceed.

Giving up for now, we followed Rudy and Caroline into beautiful downtown Baytown to have lunch at a local landmark restaurant, Rooster’s Steakhouse & BBQ.

Besides the good food, Rooster’s was known as John Wayne’s favorite eatery when he was in the area filming Hellfighters in 1967-68,

R0oster’s even has ‘Wayne’s Wall’ commemorating Wayne’s visits.

Hellfighters was loosely based on the life of Red Adair, Adair, ‘Boots’ Hansen, and ‘Coots’ Mathews, all famous oil well firefighters, served as technical advisors on the film. And besides Wayne, the film also starred Jim Hutton and my former next-door neighbor, Katherine Ross.

Jan got the Grilled Chicken with Green Beans and Fried Okra, while I had the 2 Meat Combo BBQ Plate, with Brisket and Ribs, along with Green Beans and Fried Okra

The ribs and the sides were all delicious, as was the sauce. But we’ll have to agree to disagree about the brisket. In fact the only times I’ve had brisket like this was up North. Down here in Texas, it’s called ‘roast beef’.

Only about 1/8” thick, it was gray and kind of tasteless. Next time I will get the sausage. But we will go back.

After saying our goodbyes to Rudy and Caroline, Jan and I headed home with a stop-over at Kroger’s for a few things And that was it.

A very nice day.

April 17, 2019

Wheeeee!

This morning I put in a call to the Enterprise office to schedule a pickup for 9:30 –10:30

Nirvana (her name) showed up about 10:20 to drive me back to the office in Dickinson. When I reserved the car last night, it said a ‘Ford Fusion or Equivalent’ so I was surprised to find that the Chevy Impala that I was picked up in was my rental car.

Neat!

When I last rented a vehicle last November while I was getting the transmission in our truck rebuilt, I had an Impala then too. And I was very impressed with it. Especially the pickup/acceleration.

The first time I was merging onto the Interstate I punched it and Woww!

I was suddenly doing 80!

Wheeeee!

We’ll keep it until either next Thursday afternoon or Friday morning before we leave. Our car service is supposed to be done about 10:30am, so if I wait until then I’ll have to drop it off early. But then it’s not like we’ll get much sleep Thursday night anyway.

I mentioned earlier that I was going to get a SIM card for my Verizon Galaxy S8+ for use on our European trip. But it turns out that I don’t need one.

When I called Verizon a couple of weeks ago to see if my phone was unlocked so I could use a SIM card, I found that I could sign up for Verizon’s TravelPass for free.

It gives me better access, cheaper rates, and higher data limits. So it looks like I’m good to go. I only have to configure my phone for WiFi Calling and set the Roaming conditions.

We attended the new Alvin Opry this past Friday and we’ll be going again this weekend. But at a different location.

Turns out after only two shows, they outgrew the facilities and have moved right down the street to the American Legion Hall, with a larger venue and much better parking. Looking forward to more great shows when we get back from our trip.

I had mentioned a while back that I was going to get a VPN for our trip, and had decided on ExpressVPN. However several readers thought I should be using NordVPN.

I did do a lot of research on this, especially concerning its use in Europe. So I thought I’d pass on this comparison that was part of my decision.  ExpressVPN vs NordVPN

Tomorrow we’re going to try and get our wills signed at one of our banks, and also get our pre-cruise haircuts. And probably lunch/breakfast in there somewhere.

Wrapping up, I’ve been using Runkeeper for several years, even upgrading to the paid version somewhere along the line. But recently it has been almost impossible to use.

Despite Google Maps and other location apps immediately getting a GPS lock, most of the time Runkeeper would keep telling me it didn’t have a lock. And a little Googling showed a lot of other people having the same problem. And a lot of different solutions.

For some people turning the GPS off and back on, others uninstalled and reinstalled the program, etc., but none of these worked for me.

So finally I just deleted Runkeeper and installed MapMyWalk, another walking/running app. And for the last two weeks, it has worked first time, every time, even tracking up inside WalMart and Sam’s.

Well Recommended.

April 17, 2021

Gators And Rainbows . . .

Well, I think someone owes me a commission. Since last night when I posted about the $290,000 ‘box’ on sale right down the street from us, it looks like they’ve got an offer on it.

So now to figure out who I need to call about this.

I did work outside on the patio area for a while, but finally gave up with the rains coming in. Plus I need some black much.

About 2pm Jan and I headed out over to the Interstate to get our hair cut at the local TGF, though since the last time we were there, it’s now become a CostCutters, rather than a TGF.

We also hit up the HEB right next door for a few things while we were in the area. Then after we were done we stopped off at the Home Depot to get some more black much, and then a quick WalMart stop, before we drove down to Dickinson to have dinner at a brand-new place, Gator’s Bar & Grill. So brand-new, in fact, that today when we walked in at 5pm, they had just opened to the public for the very first time.

It was what they call a ‘soft’ opening in the restaurant business, where you don’t advertise that you’re open, you just let it out by word of mouth. And it seems that the word got out, because there was a crowd in the parking lot when they opened.

And the place started to fill up very quickly.

They’ve done a really good job resurrecting an old Pizza Inn.

Since we hadn’t had lunch, we decided to order an appetizer, the Soft Pretzel Bites with Shiner Bock Beer Cheese.

We ordered the small, but we got the large, so we had plenty to take home for later.

Jan had the Fried Chicken Sandwich with Sweet Potato Fries.

Jan said the sandwich was really good, thick and juicy, and she loved the Sweet Potato Waffle fries.

I went with the Cowboy Burgers, an Angus beef patty, with cheese, Texas Toothpicks, and BBQ sauce.

Also really good, especially the ‘beefy’ taste of the patty.

So how did we know about this unadvertised ‘soft’ opening? Well, as it turns out we’ve known the owner for a long time. She used to be the manager of the Monterey’s Little Mexico place right around the corner. And our waiter at the Monterey’s up in Alvin told us about the ‘soft’ opening this evening. So we were there when they opened the door.

And Margie, the owner, remembered us when she was out in the dining area and stopped by to talk for a while, checking up on people we all knew. And we also got to meet her husband Keith.

Really nice people, and really great food. We’ll definitely be back soon.

And to top off a really nice day, we had this coming home.

April 17, 2022

Happy Easter To Everyone . . .

Jan and I were on our way up to Webster and the Saltgrass Steakhouse about 1:30 for our Easter dinner. And even though they were very busy with people waiting, our 2pm reservation got us seated immediately.

We both started off with our usual Wedge Salads, always delicious.

Next up, Jan got her usual Center Cut Filet with Grilled Green Beans,

while I got my fav 16oz Ribeye, again with the Green Beans.

And of course we had to close out the meal by sharing a piece of their Carrot Cake.

And here’s my favorite personal Easter Bunny.

Hippity Hop!

April 17, 2023

Amazon’s Camperforce No More?

Well, this morning SpaceX’s Starship Heavy launch got done to the last 10 seconds before they scrubbed the launch. They had actually figured out they had a booster pressurization problem earlier in the countdown, but let it go down to the last few seconds, using it as a further test of the system.

The next possible launch window is this Wednesday.

Last week I was working on my client’s ‘95 T-Bird. Then today I was at his house trying to install and set up a new Xfinity Flex Voice-Controlled 4K Streaming system.

Consisting of a cable box with a WiFi Hotspot and a remote set-top box connecting to the TV via an HDMI Cable

I finally got it connected and set up, but I have an idea that I’m going to be over there a lot more trying to show him and his wife how to use it. This makes 4 remotes they’ve got to keep track of.

Well, it looks like Amazon’s Camperforce program is no more. According to this article, Amazon Cuts Ties With Campers, Amazon quietly ended the program at the end of 2022.

With no major announcement, Amazon quietly ended its popular seasonal employment program, Camperforce. They’ve scrubbed their website of any mention of the program and have deactivated links for the site. Some are experiencing shock that Amazon gave the program the ax. However, not everyone was caught off guard by the news.

One industry expert said, “the writing was on the wall.” Many felt it wasn’t a good sign when the company switched to the system. The program included Amazon providing additional money to employees for campsites. In exchange, the company no longer offered assistance securing spots or dealing with the logistics.

Well, I guess there’s always Gate Guarding.

And over at the Gulf State Park RV Park in Gulf Shores, AL, one of our favorite parks, high winds rolled over a small camper and smashed it into a 5th across the street, trapping a man underneath.

You never know.

And down in Titusville, FL, where Jan and I met almost 56 years ago, a man staying at the The Great Outdoors RV Park there got his leg bitten off by an alligator

Gator Attack At Titusville RV Park

You never know.

A couple of funny things happened the other night at the Bernadette Peters performance down in Galveston.

The guy sitting in the aisle seat right in front of me, seemingly there with his wife and another couple, looked like he wanted to be anywhere but there.

He was really hitting his large wine cup and looking around everywhere, but at Bernadette up on the stage. And if he clapped at all, it was just a perfunctory two claps and that was it.

Don’t know if he was looking for someone specifically, but he kept turning his head all around. And when everyone stood up to applaud after the last song, before the encore, he was just gone, leaving his wife and the other couple behind.

Then a few minutes later, as Jan and I were leaving, we exited off to the side rather than the center aisle, which was more crowded. And as I turned the corner at the end of the aisle and started up the ramp, I bounced off the wall a couple of times due to my wimble-walk. And as I did, I felt a hand on my back steadying me, which I appreciated.

But then the hand became an arm around my back holding me, and a female voice in my ear asking, “Where do you live?” When I told her that we lived up in Santa Fe, she then asked, “Are you driving home?”

With that, I suddenly realized that due to my ‘bouncing’ off the wall a couple of times, she thought I was drunk. So I turned to her and said, “I’m not drunk, I’m just crippled!”

She blushed bright red and stuttered, “That’s . . . that’s not what I meant.” and her arm left my waist.

So if she didn’t think I was drunk, was she just offering to come home with me? Jan might want to say something about that.

Then this past Sunday, our ex-Texas Huddle server, Juana, texted us that she was working a shift that afternoon at her new spot, BoomerJack’s. So we headed up there for lunch.

It was really good to see Juana again, and it looks like she’s fitting right in her new place.

While Jan had the Blackened Catfish with Double Grilled Veggies,

I got the 5 Wings with the Mango Habanero Sauce.

I was kind of surprised to find out that BoomerJack’s doesn’t allow you to order ‘all drums’ with your wings. You just get what you get, I guess. They’re the first place that’s ever told me this.

More Catching Up Tomorrow.

Thought For The Day:

These Two Stories Were Published On The Same Day A Few Weeks Ago.

So does it just cancel out?

Your Retro-Preview Highlights –

2012 – Our very first gate in our Gate-Guarding Adventures

2013 – Our visit to Organ Stop Pizza with the largest Wurlitzer Pipe Organ in the world

2014 – Flashback to 2008, our first year on the road to Alaska

And Now On To Today’s Retro-Blogs.™

April 16, 2010

Under the weather…

Jan woke up with a migraine so we decided to not do any sightseeing today, But by noon she felt like getting some lunch, so we went out for soup and sandwiches from Crazy Otto’s. We ate here last Sunday on our first night here and wanted to try it again. They make a great chicken salad sandwich.

When I got back we had an email from The Bonnie Hunt show saying they had some extra tickets for the 6pm show and would we like to also attend that taping as well as our 2pm one?  We, of course, said yes.

About 6 pm Jan heated up our leftover Famous Dave’s BBQ from earlier in the week. Just as good as the first time, too.

Tomorrow we’ll probably do a day pass to the Good Sam Rally that’s right next door.

April 16, 2011

A Day of Ear-Popping Fun . . .

This morning was another early one. That makes two in a row. This has got to stop.

The reason for this early start was that this was another road trip day, this time north to Flagstaff.

Our first stop was about 2 miles away for two fill-ups, gas, and a quick breakfast at the Mcdonald’s next door. Then it was out onto I-17N heading for Flagstaff, a little over 50 miles away.

The trip was a really spectacular drive, especially when you take a curve and get your first glimpse of San Francisco Peaks that loom over Flagstaff.

This shot, taken in early April 2010, shows a little more snow.

Humphreys Peak, on the left, is over 12,600 ft. high, and is the highest peak in Arizona.

Our first stop as we came into town was the parking lot of Bookman’s, a really great used bookstore. Really a used book, used magazines, used toys, used video games, used small appliances, store.

While Jan and I enjoyed Bookman’s, we noticed outside Bookman’s was the local version of the town mascot. In this case, it’s a mountain lion.

We’ve seen javelinas in Sedona,

moose in Coeur d’Alene, ID, (I’m not sure if this guy is chained down because he keeps wandering off, or he gets moose-napped.)

and mermaids in Beaufort, SC.

After we did the bookstore thing, and Jan and I shared a cappuccino in the coffee bar, we piled into our truck to drive around.

Old Route 66 passed through Flagstaff so we took some time to drive the old downtown area, checking out the little shops and stores. Heading on out on 66, we stopped off at an Office Max for a few things. There were still some snow banks in the parking lot, left over from last week’s snow, and by the exit, this indication that they weren’t sure that last week’s snow was actually the ‘last’ – a snow shovel and a bag of salt for the sidewalk.

Our next stop was right down the street. where I did the Best Buy, while judging by the large bags she lugged back, Jan tried to buy out the World Market store right next door.

By now it was almost 1:30, and with us getting hungry we decided to have lunch at Salsa Brava, a Mexican restaurant that we really liked when we were here in March of 2008.

And apparently, we weren’t the only ones who liked it. A while back, Salsa Brava was featured on Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-Ins’ & Dives, and you can check it out here on Salsa Brava on Diners, Drive-Ins’ & Dives.

The food was delicious, in fact so much so, that Jan and bought a copy of the Salsa Brava Cocina Cookbook shown here.

After a great meal, we drove back to the Bookman’s parking lot for a quick stopover at the Michael’s store right next door.

We decided to return to Verde Valley by way of Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon along AZ-89A

Listed as one of the Top 5 Scenic Drives in America, the switchbacks through Oak Creek Canyon only cover a little over 2 miles, but drops you over 2600 feet in elevation.

Talk about your ear-popping!

In fact the whole trip was ear-popping. Starting at about 3200 ft. in Verde Valley to a little over 7000 ft. in Flagstaff, and of course, back again to Verde Valley.

The stop-and-go driving through downtown Sedona took a while, but we got back to the rig about 5 pm, after another long, but very enjoyable day.

Tomorrow we’ll be Skyping with Brandi, Lowell, and of course Landon. We can’t wait.

April 16, 2012

Gate Guarding – Day 1

We were awakened yesterday morning about 7:45am and told we had a gate waiting for us.

We were given our hats, orange safety vests, login forms, clipboard, and a hand-drawn map to the gate. Jamie said our supervisor Larry would be waiting for us.

We were ready to roll a little before 9, with our first stop right across the street at the Exxon station to top off my tank with about 80 gallons of diesel for $4.10 a gallon. When I’m going to be parked for a while I always like to do it on a full tank to cut down on condensation and algae growth in the tank.

About 9:15 we were on the road heading to our gate. Our route took us on all two-lane roads from Whitsett southwest over to Fowlerton, about 45 miles away. But it was the last 8 miles of dirt road that was a problem.

It was so bad that I was only able to do 8-10 mph. And even then we had drawers come open that hadn’t come open in 5 years. It almost 45 minutes to finally get to the gate site, where our supervisor, Larry Ross, was waiting for us with our utility trailer just as promised.

It only took us about 10 minutes to get parked and set up. Larry pulled the generator trailer behind the rig and got us hooked up with AC power to the coach.

A little later Larry headed back to town to bring out our sewer trailer, while Jan was up and running on her new Gate Guarding career.

And we quickly had our first visitor, not a truck, but a friendly roadrunner. He walked back and forth right in front of us, just a couple of feet away.

Supposedly they’re really good about keeping snakes away. Jan certainly hopes so.

The only downside to our location is we not only have no Internet service, we have absolutely no Verizon cell service at all. NONE.

In fact I had to drive to Cotulla, 35 miles away to get a good signal. Apparently, AT&T works in this area, so I’ll have to see about getting a cheapie phone at Wal-Mart. But I’m still not sure what I’m going to do about Internet. I’ll have to work on it.

UPDATE:

We only had about 20 vehicles in and out yesterday, and the site was closed from 7:30pm to 6 am.

Nice!

April 16, 2013

Third Time’s the Charm . . .

This is Annisten Robinson, Jan’s great-niece and granddaughter to Jan’s sister, Debbie. She’s really growing up fast.

And this red-haired beauty is Zoe Nadeau, two days old and Landon’s new 2nd cousin.

About 4pm we headed out for dinner at Organ Stop Pizza. And it turned out to be a real experience.

What you’ve got is a pizza place, putting out very good pizza, and, oh by the way, they’ve also got the world’s largest Wurlitzer Pipe Organ.

Originally built for the Denver Theater in 1927, and used into the 1930’s, talkies and the Great Depression led to its silencing. Then it was purchased by Organ Stop Pizza in the early 70’s and installed in their restaurant. Since then, parts from other ill-fated Wurlitzers have been added on, making this almost 6000 pipe organ, the largest in the world.

In 1997 the restaurant commissioned the building of a new console to better support the many controls, keys and pedals.

The console resides on an 8000 pound hydraulic elevator that raises, lowers, and rotates the console, allowing it to appear and disappear from the stage.

The organ also has a lot of lighting effects, and other things like bubble machines.

This final photo shows how the pipes and other instruments cover the entire rear wall. It also shows the stage with the console retracted.

Oh, and the pizza was pretty good, too. A crispy, thin-crust pizza, it wasn’t doughy or crunchy. Very good, especially for a place that you also go for the entertainment.

Well worth a second visit.

April 16, 2014

On the Road to Alaska . . .

Thought maybe I’d relate some of our travels during our first year on the road. We weren’t blogging then, so all we have are all the photos we took, and some emails Jan sent to friends and family.

Although we left Houston on February 6th, the Alaska part kind of started on April 9th, 2008. But between then, we did Las Cruces, Casa Grande, Yuma, San Diego, Long Beach, Las Vegas, Flagstaff, Phoenix, Tucson, Denver, Casper, Billings, Sturgis, and Coeur d’Alene.

After Coeur d’Alene our first stop was Cle Elum, WA. The attraction for Cle Elum is the fact that it’s right down the road from Roslyn, WA, which stood in for the fictional town of Cicely, AK, in the TV show Northern Exposure.

And it’s all still here.

The Roslyn Café.

Chris’ KBHR Radio Station

The Brick Bar

But the inside is completely different from the show.

And here’s Ruth-Anne’s General Store.

The first thing you notice is that Cicely (Roslyn) is much hillier in real life than on the show.

And you remember Maurice’s big house on the lake. Well this is what it looks like in person. It’s actually pretty run-down. No lake anywhere nearby, either. Just goes to show you how TV shows can fool you.

Northern Exposure was supposedly loosely based on Talkeetna, AK, but the town did not want the TV show filmed there, so Roslyn was selected. All of the inside scenes were filmed in a converted warehouse over in Redmond, WA.

On April 13th we entered Canada at Sumas, WA, about 25 miles northeast of Bellingham, and spent our first night at the Brookside Campsite in Cache Creek, BC after a 172 mile trip.

Note Mister out front wondering what all the fuss is about Canada.

One funny thing we found when we got up the next morning (note the time) was Mister sound asleep atop the kitchen cabinet. We’re not even sure how he got up there.

And from the look on his face when he finally woke up, neither was he.

We spent the second night 269 miles away at the Southside RV Park in Prince George, BC, and saw our first Moose Warning sign.

And then a 254-mile trip took us to Tubby’s RV Park in Dawson Creek, BC, the official beginning of the Alaskan Highway.

We also saw our first Magpie’s there.

We ended up spending 3 nights in Dawson Creek due to bad weather and very high winds. In fact semi’s were banned from the highway.

And if the semi’s ain’t going, I ain’t going either.

I’ll follow up with more Alaska another time.

April 16, 2015

Resting Up . . .

Jan and I did so much walking yesterday during our visit to the Out of Africa Wildlife Park, that it was really nice to pretty much goof-off all day.

I came across an interesting article the other day called The Real History of Fracking. Amazingly, fracking is not the recent invention that most people think. Would you believe the Civil War?

A interesting article. Check it out.

I spent a couple of hours this morning working on some web client stuff, after which I called our daughter Brandi to ask why she and Lowell and Landon were in Washington, D.C. this past weekend.

Her response was “What . . . what do mean? Washington?”

I laughed and said,”Well, I heard on the news that a 4-year-old boy crawled under the White House fence and then led the Secret Service on a merry chase through the bushes before they finally rounded up the wily culprit. Brandi agreed that it certainly sounded like something Landon would do, but it wasn’t him.

First this, and now a gyrocopter. The Secret Service just can’t win.

Later in the afternoon, I painted Jan’s toes for her. First, a clear base coat, then two coats of polish, and then a clear top coat. She says I do a better job than the salons because I take my time. I haven’t told her that’s because I enjoy playing with her toes.

Like yesterday, today was another beautiful day. It finally crept up to 61 degrees here, but with the sunshine almost all day, it was really nice.

And tomorrow looks to be more of the same.

April 16, 2016

Always Be Prepared . . .

Or Oops!

Nothing much new this morning, just the same old, same old. Coffee, breakfast, and webstuff.

About 3:30 I headed into Conroe and the Sam’s Club to pick up the prescription I dropped off yesterday. And always being prepared saved me $73.62.

For some reason every time I pick this one up, the price is all over the place. Sometimes it’s $25, sometimes it’s $42.17, and today, it was $83.62. But it should only be $10.00

So I always carry a printout of my Walmart/Sam’s Club prescription history when I go to pick up this particular one. It shows the price I’ve paid in the past. And strangely, the clerk couldn’t find the $10 cost, until I showed him my list, and then he found it immediately.

Funny how that worked out.

On the way home, I made a Kroger’s stop to pick up a couple of Kroger-specific items – 2 bags of their Private Selection Coffee, and a couple of containers of their really good Cranberry Fruit & Nut Salad.

Then it was home just in time for Jan to have a great dinner ready for us. One that starts with Chicken Rice-A-Roni, adds large chunks of grilled chicken, and some extra spices, and gets served with a side of the Cranberry Salad, and some sliced tomatoes. Really good.

Tomorrow night we’ll finish off the Cheesy Beef & Potato Casserole from the other night., with hopefully, some more of the Cranberry Salad. Looking forward to it.

Under the Oops! heading, here’s how to destroy your company with one line of Unix code. And this is it.

rm -rf {foo}/{bar}

‘rm’ is the ‘remove’ command, I.e. delete
’r’ stands for ‘recursive’ which deletes this directory
and every subdirectory below it
(the article has this command wrong)

‘f’ is the ‘force’ command, which means ‘Don’t give me any of those pesky “Are You Really Sure You Want To Delete This?” messages.

But that wasn’t his only mistake. Because he had an error in the script he wrote that contained this command, the variables ‘foo’ and ‘bar’ were undefined.

So when he ran the script, ‘rm –rf’ started at the very top directory (called ‘root’) and began deleting everything under it. In other words, EVERYTHING!

But wait, it gets worse.

He had correctly done his backups before he ran this script to clean up some old Temp files and other unwanted stuff, BUT he left them mounted, I.e. online. So when ‘rm –rf’ was finished with his main drive, it moved over to his backup drives and started deleting everything on them too.

OOPS!

And it was the owner of the company who did this. He owned a small website hosting company with about 1500 customers, so he actually deleted all of his customer’s websites.

This is the reason that, although I host all my websites on Godaddy, where their backups have backups, I have full copies of all my client’s data on my hard drive, which is backed up on two different external hard drives.

You can’t be too careful.

April 16, 2017

A Real Do-Nothing Day. . .

We never left the rig. In fact we never even opened the rig door.

Very nice.

I did spend a good bit of time working on a new website, trying to configure a lot of photos so they can be posted. I’ve got a ways to go.

Still enjoying my new Jetpack MiFi. I checked the speed this morning about 2:30am and got over 30 Mbps.

Looking forward to picking up my new Galaxy S8+ this coming Friday. Of course, then I’ve got several days work loading and setting up a lot of apps. But this will be a good chance to weed out programs that I really don’t use anymore.

Following the recent story of the doctor who was thrown, literally, off a United flight. I’m always interested in how the story changes after one of these big events break, and this one has been all over the place.

But right now the consensus of the many law blogs I read is that he’s in line for a big payday, maybe as big as 8 figures ($10,000,000), but we’ll see.

Initially, everyone pointed to what’s known as the Contract of Carriage, the 30+ pages of Federal rules, the fine print on your ticket.

Because the initial story said the flight was ‘overbooked’, people looked at that section of the rules. And if you’re still at the gate on an ‘overbooked’ flight, they can deny you boarding for pretty much any reason. But the kicker here was that the flight was not overbooked, but was fully booked, with every seat filled.

And all the passengers, including the doctor, had been seated.

Then four United cabin personnel showed up at the gate and needed to get to Louisville so they could work a flight the next morning. The gate agent then went on the plane and asked for four volunteers to take a later flight (at 3:45 the next afternoon) and offered up to $800 in compensation.

When no one volunteered after repeated tries, they had the computer pick four passengers at random, who were basically told to get off or else. The ‘else’ being they would be forcibly ejected. At this point, two passengers left.

Turns out that the ‘at random’ picking wasn’t really random, but used an algorithm that looked at what class they were flying, (economy class got kicked off before business class who got kicked off before first class, etc.), what clubs they belonged to, how many miles they had, and how early they had checked in for the flight. The problem with all this was that once the Doctor was on board and seated, a whole new set of Federal rules come into play.

Under Part 21 – Refusal to Transport, there are 19 specific reasons a passenger can be ejected from a flight, like being drunk, barefoot, smelly, 9 months pregnant without a note from your doctor, blind with no escort, etc.

But not one of these reasons is needing his seat so a company employee could fly instead.

So then when the Doctor refused to deplane the ‘police’ were called  The problem here was that the three gentlemen were NOT really police, NOT Law Enforcement Officers. They were Chicago Aviation Police, I.e. they were licensed non-armed security guards, just like Jan and I are for gate guarding. In fact it is questionable whether or not they had any legal right to even be on the plane.

According to eyewitnesses and the several videos, when the Doctor refused to leave the plane, he was tazered, punched in the head several times, dragged from his seat, hitting his head on the opposite armrest, and was knocked unconscious.

At this point, he was dragged out of the plane and left bleeding and still unconscious in the jetway while the three ‘gentlemen’ went to find a gurney or stretcher. I guess they figured that just continuing to drag him through the terminal would be bad form.

At some point, he came to, and dazed, confused, and bloody, stumbled back onto the plane, mumbling both that he had patients to see tomorrow morning and he wanted his laptop.

At this point, he was once again dragged from the plane.

He ended up hospitalized with a severe concussion, a broken nose, and two missing teeth.

At first, the United CEO blamed the whole thing on a ‘rowdy’ passenger that they were required to ‘re-accommodate’. But that didn’t stick, as the videos of the bloody, unconscious 69-year-old Asian doctor went viral on the Net.

Then it was a ‘sincere’ apology. And when that didn’t help, the CEO promised to never, ever throw a passenger off a United plane again.

At this point, the rest of the Internet piled on with some really hilarious themes.

Fly Delta – We Beat The Competition, Not Passengers!

United Airlines – We have an offer you can’t refuse. No, really.

Flight: $400, checking a bag: $25, getting dragged down the aisle: priceless

And even new seating charts.

So that’s pretty much the story at this point. The three ‘gentlemen’ have been suspended and will probably fired. But we’ll see how it plays out for the rest.

April 16, 2018

The Texas City Disaster . . .

Not much new at work today, mostly just looking at some YouTube videos on different WordPress themes. When I finally move our two company websites from our in-house server up to Godaddy, I want to change the WP theme to something new, and a little easier to support.

I did get some use of my Spanish when we had an order from Zaragoza, Spain. We needed some clarification on the order so I gave it a shot. And I guess it worked because I got an answer back that I could also read.

I did have to be careful, because Spain Spanish is different from Mexican Spanish is different from South American Spanish. And South American Spanish is what I’m most familiar with.

Even the address can be strange. In Colombia, South America, where I lived, 3rd floor would be translated as ‘3er Piso’, or ‘Piso 3’. But in Spain, 3rd Floor is 3°.

Yes, that’s a degree sign. It actually stands for the ‘o’ in ‘piso’ or ‘floor’. And since many apartment buildings don’t have numbers on the doors, you can also see an address like 3°, 5^a. This means ‘3rd floor, 5th door’, with the ‘a’ coming from the word ‘puerta’, the Spanish word for ‘door’.

The other problem is getting the USPS online shipping software to take these strange addresses and print out a shipping label. But we finally got the package on its way.

When we moved to Texas and Houston in Dec. 1978, we very quickly heard about the 1947 Texas City Disaster.

On April 16th, 1947, 71 years ago today, the SS Grandcamp, tied up in the Texas City Harbor and loaded with 2,200 tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, caught fire and exploded. It sent a 15’ wave of water for 100 miles,  leveled over 1,000 buildings, destroyed the Monsanto Chemical Company plant, and 1000’s of cars.

Then 15 hours later the nearby cargo ship High Flyer, also loaded with ammonium nitrate, exploded, killing many of the police, firefighters, medical personnel, and even sightseers, who had rushed into the area.

Officially 567 people were killed, with 63 never identified.

Additionally, 113 people were listed as missing, since no body parts were ever found. And it is speculated that there might be 100’s of other dead, visiting seamen and their families, travelers, etc.

On a more personal note, 27 of the 28 members of the Texas City Volunteer Fire Department were killed.

So imagine how Jan felt when years later our son Chris announced that he had just been hired as a Texas City Fireman.

Tomorrow Jan and I are heading up to Baytown for a consulting gig. A friend of a friend has an access gate that is controlled by a WiFi/Internet phone app. But it doesn’t work. In fact it seems it’s never worked right.

I’ve done some research, including downloading the manual, and I’ve got some starting ideas on what the problem is, or at least one of them. I suspect that this might be one of those cases where it’s a two-part problem. So we’ll have to see.

April 16, 2019

Not Worrying About The Brakes Anymore . . .

I spent the morning on and off making changes via email for the new ad card for our upcoming May sale, which we didn’t find out about until this past Friday. So it was a rush to get it done ASAP to get it out for May, and also to get it done before I leave town.

Also talked to Chantelle Nugent, our travel agent, about what we needed as far as luggage tags, passport wallets, etc. Turns out that she has included all that in our box of documents that goes in the mail today, and we should have it Friday.

Jan and I headed out about 1pm with our first stop at the Cheddar’s in Webster for lunch. Then it was on by my clients to pick up a bunch of Amazon stuff that had come in.

We had also planned to have my client and the office manager witness our wills, but it looks like we will still need a Notary, so I may just have it done at the bank on Thursday.

Then it was on over to WalMart to stock on B. C. (Before Cruise) stuff, and a few things to take with us. Last it was by the dry cleaners to pick my blazer and Jan’s pashmina for the trip, and then we headed home.

But ‘headed’ is all it was. Although I can’t see exactly what’s happening, it looks like we have a leak in a bottom radiator hose on the truck. I tried to limp it home, but finally decided to just call our roadside assistance and get a tow home.

Getting home and thinking it over, I decided that this was a straw/camel situation. With both the radiator problem and also needing a disc brake pad replacement, I just don’t have time to fix both. So I’m renting a car from Enterprise starting tomorrow and then I’ll drop it off Friday morning before we leave for Budapest.

Wrapping up, we saw this interesting cargo coming up the Interstate from Galveston, or maybe Texas City, last weekend.

That’s just one long, long trailer. Must be interesting on corners.

April 16, 2020

Less and Less . . .

Needing some groceries, and Jan not having been out of the rig since last Saturday, we headed out for WalMart about 1pm,

And it looks like less and less people are worrying about using masks, just a small minority, and I saw no one wearing gloves this time. And although the rope entrance lines were still up at WalMart, people were just bypassing them and walking straight in and out. And nobody was stopping them.

And looking at the news around the country, more and more people are starting to rebel against some of the overly strict rules. One web article talked about the rise of petty tyrants all around the country.

For example, Calvert County Maryland is proposing that people only be able to shop for groceries on certain days depending on the first letter of their last names.

Or the two churches in Greenville, MS where the police raided two drive-in Easter church services and gave people $500 tickets (later dropped). And then there’s the governor of Michigan who started declaring some items sold in WalMart as essential and others as non-essential.

I’ve seen PSA’s on TV telling you to use your time at home to plant a “Victory Garden’, but Gov. Whitmer banned the sale of plant and vegetable seeds. Or the people decided to use their stay-at-home time to do some home remodeling. However the governor banned the sale of many building materials.

Or if you want to do a little solitary recreational fishing out on the lake, you can only do it in a canoe, or kayak, not any kind of powered craft, even if it’s electric.

And with all the kids at home needing things to keep them occupied for your sanity, let’s ban Arts & Crafts supplies, and of course, Toys & Games. That makes sense, right?

And, unfortunately, it’s not just the governor. A Michigan judge has issued an order authorizing a county health officer and police to arrest and jail anyone they suspect of being sick with the coronavirus.

So, let me get this straight. They’re letting real criminals out of jail to protect them from the WuFlu, while throwing WuFlu sufferers into jail. Yeah, that makes sense.

Well, all these draconian rules garnered the governor a big protest where 3000-4000 cars clogged the streets of the capital to vent their frustration.

To paraphrase Star Wars, “The more they tighten their grip, the more people slip through their fingers.”

And then there’s the county in Montana that wants residents to wear pink armbands to be allowed to shop in local stores. At least it’s not a Yellow Star.

Yikes!

Before we left the WalMart parking lot, I put in an online order to the Black Bear Diner right across I-45 to pick up on our way home.

I got my favorite Bacon Cheeseburger Salad,

while Jan tried something new, their Roasted Turkey Dinner.

Both as good as the in-house versions.

April 16, 2021

it’s A Box . . .

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday about our get-together at the El Palenque restaurant up in Spring is that like many other places here in Texas, masks were optional, even though they still had the signs up, and the staff was still wearing them.

It was interesting to watch people walk in the front door, look around, and then off come the masks.

Another thing I forgot to mention about yesterday’s get-together is that our friends Janice and Dave Evans are the reason we’re here at the Petticoat Junction RV Park in Santa Fe. They’re good friends with the owners, Rob and Debra, the park owners, and so Janice and Dave recommended them when we were looking for an RV park down in this area.

And we’ve been here for about 3-1/2 years so far.

For the last year, there’s been a new home going up about 3 houses down from our park entrance. Set on a large lot, it looked like it was being built by the owner since the progress was so slow. We drive by it almost every day, and it seemed like we wouldn’t see any real progress for days(weeks?) at a time.

Since there were usually a couple of boats, and a camper parked on the property, we figured it was just going to be something like a vacation cabin. I mean it was pretty plain, just a big rectangle with no real pizazz.

But then in the last month, they really started sprucing it up, with shutters, trim, shrubbery, and an entrance path.

And then one day a For Sale sign appeared out front.

Since it was so plain vanilla on the outside, just a big box, we wondered what it looked like on the inside, and what they were asking for it. So I Googled 5525 Ave L, Santa Fe, TX, and found this.

A very high-end build, that really looks nice. It’s a 1500 sq. ft., 3 bedroom, 2 bath, but the real surprise, to Jan and I at least, was the price.

$289,900

For a box. A nice box, but it’s a 30’ x 50’ box!

It will be interesting to see how long it stays on the market.

April 16, 2022

An Onerous Task . . .

That turned out to be relatively easy.

Jan and I headed out for lunch about 12:30, after loading up the Jeep with a lot of winter stuff destined for the storeroom.

Lunch was at Yummy Yummy once again, our favorite local Chinese Buffet place.

We thought we’d lost it for a while when it closed down during the height of the virus stuff, and it was closed for almost 18 months. But when it finally reopened last September, we were there as soon as we heard it was back.

After Yummy’s we drove over to the big HEB on Hwy 96, hoping to get our weekly HEB visit out of the way.

Now being the day before Easter, we expected them to be busy, but not overflowing parking lot busy. So we came in one side and went out the other, without stopping.

Another day, I guess, but not tomorrow either. All HEB’s are closed on Easter.

Coming back toward Santa Fe, we got a close-up look at the new Amazon warehouse at the corner of Hwy 96 and FM1266. The gates were open, and it looked finished, but there was not a Prime truck in sight.

With this one, and the one down on I-45 in La Marque, we now have two Amazon warehouses in our vicinity.

As it is right now, I ordered something at 2pm today, it was shipped at 4:15, and I got it at 8pm. If it gets much faster, I’ll be getting stuff before I even order it.

On our way back toward home we made a storeroom visit and dropped off two heaters, two large bags with our winter blankets, and my Rollator, which I haven’t used since Branson back in December. It’s nice to have that stuff out of the way. At least until next Fall.

The onerous task I mentioned was defrosting our freezer. And it turned out to be easier than I had hoped.

The last time our freezer was defrosted was in 2017 when a repair place in Louisiana turned off the rig’s 12 volt system to work on it, and did not turn it back on when they were finished. And without 12 volts, the gas function of the refrigerator doesn’t, well, refrigerate.

So we picked up a rig with a refrigerator with a lot of spoiled food in it.

But this time things worked out better.

We got a large Styrofoam Crawfish Cooler from HEB, as well as a couple of blocks of dry ice that they also sell.

At about 2 cu. ft. the cooler was large enough to hold everything from the freezer, with a dry ice block on the bottom. underneath the food, and another block on top. I also put a remote-read thermometer in there too.

At about -100°, the dry ice kept the food frozen solid for more than 24 hours. And by cold, I mean very cold.

Yes, that’s -38°. And it was down to –46 with the lid closed. A lot better than using bags of regular ice. And a lot less messy.

After we removed all the food, and turned the fridge off, we repeatedly heated up Corning Ware casserole dishes full of water in the microwave, placed them in the freezer and closed the door. After we did this 5 or 6 times, I was able to start using a plastic chisel to carefully help the defrosting along.

All told, the total job only took about 4 hours, with most of that just waiting for the hot water to speed things along.

Finishing up, I wiped everything down to dry it, and then then turned the fridge back on. At that point the fridge temp had only climbed up to 40°, not a problem.

Since the stuff in the cooler was staying nice and cold, we decided to let the freezer cool back down, so we waited until this morning to restock it.

Hopefully, that’s done for another few years.

With Brandi and her family up in OK with Lowell’s parents, Jan and I are just doing lunch at Saltgrass for our Easter. I figured they might be pretty busy, so I made a reservation for 2pm.

Mmmm! Steak!

April 16, 2023

Hardly A Day Goes By . . .

Lunch today was at Denny’s once again, with Angie taking her usual great care of us.

And once again we both had our usual Ultimate Omelets, both pretty much the same, except Jan’s has no Green Peppers and mine has added Ham.

Then it was right across the Interstate for our weekly HEB stuff, and then home, just in time for today’s Amazon Prime delivery.

Hardly a day goes by.

The other day I received a couple of items from Amazon to let me bump up my Amazon Firestick. It only comes with 8GB of internal RAM, which sounds like a lot. But after installing a lot of apps like YouTube, YouTubeTV, Apple+, Pluto, Crackle, etc., you start running out of room to install anything more.

The Firestick has a way to add more memory, but rather than make it easy by just being able to plug in a micro SD card, you have to do it externally, using a USB flash drive and a special cable.

OTG Cable

128GB USB Flashdrive

Then there’s a whole rigamarole on hooking it up, partitioning, and then configuring it. Here’s some more info on how to do it.

How to Add Storage to Fire Stick OS

And for you Mrs. Maisel fans out there, if you didn’t already know, Prime Video started off the 5th (and last) season this past Friday by posting the first 3 episodes. Then they’ll release one new episode a week for the next 6 weeks, which will wrap up the 9 episode season.

One thing new this season is a number of flash-forwards to the 1980’s when, by then, Midge is a big star.

Check it out.

And don’t forget, tomorrow morning at 7pm starts the first launch window for the Starship Heavy down at Boca Chica, TX.