We slept in this morning and did not get up until almost 8:30.  Yesterday was not an unusually physical or stressful day but we were tired and slept well overnight.  I have noticed over the last 10 years that some RVers continue their routines into retirement with almost military precision, getting up at a certain time each day, usually Oh Dark Thirty, walking their dog(s), and cleaning the entire outside of their rig before breakfast.  Not us.  We have a window in the evening during which we usually go to bed, and Linda is more regular in her sleep pattern than I am, but bedtime is governed by what we are doing (or what is on TV), how tired we are, and whether we have to get up the next morning.  We usually get up when we feel like it unless we have to be up at a certain time, such as for my trip to Suncoast Designers in Hudson’ Florida this past Monday.

I made our morning coffee and Linda prepared our cereal and juice for breakfast.  After breakfast she pulled the litter tray out of the shower and cleaned out the residual litter, which we do not want in the waste tank, so we could take showers.  She got her shower, got dressed, and got back to work on her counter cross-stitch project.

I finished up yesterday’s post, e-mailed it off to myself, and started working on this one.  After letting the hot water tank recover I took my shower and trimmed up my beard, which was starting to bother me.  Not enough to shave it off—that would freak out the cats—but enough to need some attention.  I got dressed and settled in to work on our holiday letter.  Now that I have the special paper I can finalize the layout to fit the panels.

Except for a quick lunch break and a walk around the resort I worked until 4 PM on the layout.  I placed four of the panoramas on the last two panels by turning them 90 degrees, and enlarged them to fit the space.  That part was easy but getting captions on them required the use of text boxes which are a pain to work with in Word.  I used the space that was freed up by moving these images to rearrange others and enlarge some of them.  When I was done I had space for four more photos, if I can find ones that are:  a) technically good, b) interesting, c) from the needed time period, d) of something that is not already represented, and e) in the correct orientation (portrait vs landscape).  If not I will just enlarge a couple more that are already there.

Microsoft Word is really not the right tool for this kind of project.  Everything flows and every time I changed something everything after it would move.  That would just be annoying if it moved in a way that made sense but sometimes things would jump around or completely disappear, which is aggravating.  I think the addition of the four text boxes was responsible for that behavior but I wouldn’t bet on it.  The correct tool for this project would be something like Microsoft Publisher but I only do this once a year and never feel like going through the learning curve until I already have too much time into the project and are too close to being done.  Maybe next year.  Or maybe I will work on this throughout the year, adding one or more photos at the end of each month.  Yeah, right.

Linda made Spicy Broccoli Cole slaw and put it in the refrigerator to chill.  We then sat outside for an hour enjoying the cooler tail end of another gorgeous day.  Linda made Spicy Potato Curry for our main dish and we ate at 6 PM.  Like last night we changed into warmer clothes after dinner.  Even with the high temperature in the low 80’s it cools off quickly once the sun sets.  We left around 6:30 and walked to the firepit with our well-provisioned wine tote.  John had the fire going and there were already eight people there so we were not able to claim our usual seats.  John had switched his and Ali’s seats and I ended up sitting next to John and Linda sat next to Ali so we could chat.

By 10 PM everyone had left except the four of us.  I had restacked what was left of the fire logs and they were still burning nicely but John had to go close up so he and I spread them out and we walked back to our coaches.  Linda made a bowl of popcorn (at my request) and we put on the TV for background noise while we used our iPads.  Our Wi-Fi Ranger had lost its connection to the Internet.  It was able to connect to the resort Wi-Fi signal but could not reacquire Internet access.  We tried connecting directly to the resort Wi-Fi with our iPads but still could not acquire the Internet.  I finally gave up and turned on our Verizon Mi-Fi so we could do a few things before going to bed.