Category Archives: Medical-Dental

20240820_Can-you-hear-me-now

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NOTE:  This is a longer post with one (1) photo, with caption, taken by me using a Google Pixel 6 Pro.

 

TUESDAY 20 August 2024 — An audiology appointment (Bruce); An RV inspector; flooring, furniture & railing decisions; another UPS; garage doors; a ZOOM call; and the DNC on PBS

The RV inspector arrived before I left for my 10:30 AM audiology appointment at the UofM Health Brighton Center for Specialty Care.  The audiologist (Sheri) was great, and it was a pleasant/interesting experience.  I’ve had my hearing tested before, but it’s been quite a while, so I no longer recall when or where it was done, or what the results were.  Today’s testing included examining the movement of both eardrums before testing my detection thresholds (faintest sound I could detect at various frequencies).  It also included a test of bone conduction and my ability to correctly identify spoken words from a recorded male voice.  The bone conduction test was interesting to me because Linda had a BAHA (bone anchored hearing apparatus) before she got her Cochlear implant, and I have recently seen ads on Youtube for headsets that rest on the bone in front of the ear rather than in the ear canal.

My hearing in both ears was in the “normal” range up to about  5 or 6 KHz (5,000 to 6,000 cycles per second), and about the same for each ear.  I do not know, however, if “normal” was an age-adjusted metric.  From 6 KHz – 8 KHz, my threshold increased in volume for both ears, with one of them slightly more affected than the other.  A graph of the data was displayed on a monitor in the soundproof booth and Sheri explained what it meant.  The upper end of the frequency scale was 12 KHz, but my hearing was only tested up to about 10 KHz.  I am not a strong candidate for hearing aids (frequency selective amplification devices) at this point, but might benefit from them in certain circumstances, and might need them all the time in the future.

I was aware that “normal” age-related hearing loss affects the highest frequencies first, so the results were not surprising.  When I was a teenager, and probably into my 20’s and 30’s, I was able to hear sounds as high as 20 KHz.  This was important for the full enjoyment of music, which was the major focus of my life from ages 10 to 21.  Music still sounds fine to me (which is not the case for Linda), but that is no longer a major concern.  My hearing is still good in the frequency range for human speech, although the roll-off in higher frequencies would affect my ability to understand females more than males.

Sheri suggested I return in one year and have my hearing tested again.  Not that she expects my hearing to change much in just one year (barring an accident or illness), but today’s measurements will only provide a baseline for future data.  Two measurements will identify if my hearing is changing and. If so, by how much.  When I was doing data analysis work as part of my last employment, conventional wisdom was that it takes a minimum of three data points to establish a trend, and more points are better, so I might go back again in two years, or perhaps skip a couple of years before testing again after next year.  But that will also depend on what the audiologist recommends after each visit.

On the way home, it occurred to me that we might want to go ahead and donate our dining room table and (4) chairs, along with the buffet cabinet, to the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore sooner rather than later.  We have been discussing this for a while and had already started looking at possible replacement furniture, but the new insight was that donating it now would mean we did not have to find someplace in the house to store it while the oak floor was being refinished (in October).  Linda was onboard with the idea, so I called the local HfH office when I got home and left a message.  They called back and indicated they were approximately two weeks out for donation pickups, and that someone would call next week to set up a date.  I was reminded that all items needed to be in the front of a garage or outside; their employees will not come in the house to collect items.

Keith arrived to mow the property while I was at my appointment.  It was a nice day for mowing and, as usual, he did a great job.

Some wonderful fungi growing on the north side of the base of the large oak tree by our first driveway entrance.  I’m not sure exactly what they are, so I do not know if they are technically mushrooms.

The new Tripp-lite UPS & surge protector arrived today, several days after Amazon originally said it would be delivered.  To be fair, they provided updates on the delivery date.  I unboxed it and plugged it in to let the battery fully charge.  It is NOT a LFP unit, using an SLA (sealed lead-acid) battery instead.  The instructions said it could be mounted vertically on a wall, however, which was our use case.  The battery is easy to replace, and are available from EATON, which owns Tripp-lite.

This is a smaller, less powerful, unit than the big ones we have, but will be more than sufficient for running the small network switch that is mounted on the wall by Linda’s desk.  That switch is currently powered by the large Tripp-lite UPS that also powers her laptop computer, calculator, and the small canon ink-jet printer that she keeps on her desk.  The reason for the new UPS is that we are going to temporarily move her desk into our bedroom while the hardwood floor is being refinished, and the large UPS has to move with it.  The small switch will remain by her normal desk location, and needs UPS protection to avoid network interruptions from a loss of utility power.  Indeed, all network-related components in our house are plugged into UPS units, as are all computers, monitors, printers, the Synology NAS unit, and most of the media equipment.  We also have a whole-house generator, but it takes a few seconds to start and come online once it detects a loss of utility power, so the UPS units fill the gap, and provide power for some amount of time in the event the generator fails to start.

I had the garage doors open for much of the day to air out the space and let it cool off.  The high temperature today never reached 70 deg F, and we have a string of 3 to 4 nights coming up with lows in the 40’s.  That’s early fall weather for our part of the country, but we’ll take it.  We will be well up into the 80’s again by the weekend, so summer is not over yet.

When I closed the small garage door it stopped and went back up.  I pushed the button again and it went almost all the way down and then came back up.  I tried a 3rd time to close it and it went most of the way down, stopped, and jammed.  Whaaat?  I examined it and discovered that the vertical track on one side (opposite the motor operator side) had come loose from the wall and twisted.  I also noticed that the lift cable on the end by the motor operator had come out of its pulley wheel and started to wrap around the spring shaft.  Nothing for me to do at that point other than text Dan (Everlast Doors) and let him know.  He texted me back quickly and said he could be here around 7:30 PM.  While I thought it would wait until tomorrow, he was concerned that the garage was not secure as the bottom edge of the door was not touching the floor.

Linda set up a 5:30 PM ZOOM call with Paul & Nancy.  We had a good chat, and it was fun, as usual.  After dinner we watched the PBS coverage of the Democratic National Convention.

Dan showed up when he said he would.  He disconnected the door from the motor operator (there’s a pull cord for this), got the door unjammed,  got the lift cable back on its pulley wheel, and got the door all the way up.  I then moved Linda’s car outside.  He lowered the door onto the floor manually, I set the deadbolt latch manually, and the garage was secure for the night.  He offered to return tomorrow to fix everything correctly, but Thursday was better for us, and turned out to be better for him as well.  Until then, Linda’s car would live outside, which has for most of the time we’ve owned it.

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20240817_Lots-of-balls-in-the-air

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NOTE:  This is a longish post with no photos.

 

SATURDAY 17 August 2024 — BdW guests leave & arrive, overseas travel planning, wood floor refinishing, DR furniture donation (HfH), ACI CPP via HH/BW, e-waste recycling and UofM Health.

Mike & Sheila came to front door to thank us for hosting them and say “farewell until next time” before pulling out.  Not long after they left I got a call from our Ontario, CA friend and fellow bus nut, Bill G.  I had commented to Linda several times over the last week or so that I needed to call Bill (and Marty, and Ed), but he beat me too it.  This happens a lot.  We had a nice/long chat, mostly about house/shop projects and cruising.  He and Karen have been going on at least an annual (January) cruise for years and are much more experienced cruisers than we are.  They have mostly sailed on Royal Caribbean, so they have a lot of loyalty points, but they are doing a Princess Cruise Lines repositioning cruise in the spring of 2026 from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to Southampton, England because Royal Caribbean does not offer a similar cruise.  We will have to check the PCL website, but it sounds like the same cruise we are doing in the spring of 2025, with perhaps slightly different ports-of-call on the European continent.

After the phone call, Linda helped me load the electronics we were recycling into the back of the F-150 and drove to the county e-Waste recycling location.  The line was short, and I was in and out in very reasonable amount of time.  On the drive out of the facility, the line of vehicles coming in was backed up all the way to road, a considerable distance.  Timing is everything, and good luck helps a lot.

When I got back home, Linda and I had a long conversation about the floor refinishing project and its implications for the house and our ability to use it while the work was ongoing.  She has wanted to replace the dining room table and buffet/sideboard for a while now.  They are matching pieces to the living room and recreation room furniture that we have already donated to the local Habitat for Humanity (HfH) ReStore.  Most of our bedroom furniture is also from this same Bassett Mission-style product line.  We bought all of it the J.C. Penny store in NOVI, Michigan many, many years ago.  We still like it, but we have gotten our use out of it and are ready to pass it on to some who can use it, and getting something different for our house.

There are quite a few things we have to do before the floor refinishing work commences, and a few things we have to do after it is completed.  It was time to make a list.  The decision to donate the furniture, for instance, was a result of thinking about this task list.  By donating it we won’t have to find a place to store it.  And, we won’t need to replace it until after the floor project is done.  Genius.  This decision, of course, led us into an online search for a new dining table and buffet/sideboard.  More to come on that in future blog posts.

We have been in this house for just over 11 years, and plan to still be here for more years than that.  The recent flurry  of projects is motivated by wanting to refresh and improve things now, so we can enjoy them for many years, but still have the house and appliances in nice condition if/when we decide we want/need to sell.

While we were working on task list, BdW guest RamTam19 (Randy and Tammy B.) showed up.  They were our first visitors this year (April 16), so they just pulled in and parked in our guest RV site.  Normally I have people stop in the street but they new just what to do and just went ahead and did it.  No problem, in this case.  I went out to help get them into final position.  It was starting to rain, so we only chatted briefly and I left them to make camp.  They will be here for 5 nights, so I hope we have some good weather and get a chance to chat.

I got a reply from Kathy G. regarding the ACI/HH CPP system.  She was on vacation, but replied promptly.  While not necessary, it was appreciated.  She indicated that she was meeting with the ACI Executive Director and the HH software team on Wednesday, and would share my e-mail with them.  I replied to her e-mail, and reiterated the details of an unresolved concern regarding the logic of the BdW stay request system.

I spent the rest of the afternoon working on blog posts, and e-mail.  I received an e-mail a few days ago about the passing of a long-time member of the South Lyon Area Amateur Radio Club (SLAARC), Larry G.   Larry (K8UT/SK) was a technical superstar, especially with computer networking, a highly skilled operator, and an important contributor to the Ham radio hobby in SE lower Michigan.  I received an e-mail today with the visitation information (tomorrow) and funeral Mass details (Monday).

Earlier in the day I got a message from UofM Health reminding me to check in for my upcoming audiology appointment on Tuesday.  I don’t think I have any serious hearing issues, but my new primary care physician in the UofM-H geriatric clinic sort of indicated that he would like a baseline measurement.  It’s been a long time since I have had my hearing tested, so this seemed like a good idea, even though insurance won’t cover it.  While logged in to do the check-in, I also checked for any new invoices or outstanding balances.  I did not have any.  Linda does a great job keeping our bills paid, as long as she knows about them.

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20240807-08_Home-&-Travel-Tasks

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NOTE:  This post does not have any photos.

 

WEDNESDAY 07 & THURSDAY 08 August 2024 — Cleaning, cruising, dental, electrical, & flooring/CAD

 

Wednesday 07 … Cleaning continues and some CAD work for the floors

As usual, we started the day with coffee and breakfast.  Around 9:30 AM I started calling the short list of floor refinishing companies Linda had compiled.  The father of the father-son team scheduled for tomorrow afternoon, the medium firm for Friday morning, and the larger firm for next week on Wednesday morning.  And just like that, our floor refinishing project was moving in the direction of becoming a reality yet this year.

Linda continued her deep-cleaning and reorganization of the kitchen and I worked on the CAD layout of the hardwood floors, which occupied the rest of my day.  After dinner we watched the NBC recap of the Paris 2024 summer Olympics.

 

Thursday 08 …  A crowning achievement, cruise finances, and a first look at refinishing hardwood floors

I had an 11 AM dentist appointment to get my new (replacement) crown.  I left around 9:45 AM for the estimated 1-hour drive.  The drive to the clinic was no worse than I expected, and I arrived a bit early.  The appointment lasted about an hour.  I decided to stay off the highways on the drive home; it took longer, but at least I was moving most of the time.  I do not like sitting in stopped highway traffic.

Our final/full payment was due today for our December 2025 Virgin Voyages cruise to the Windward Islands in the southern Caribbean.  Linda also checked to see if we could start booking shore excursions.  We could, so it was time to look at what was on offer, make decisions, and then make reservations.  Soon, but not today.

I turned my attention to the new electrical circuit for the new heat-pump dryer.  I spent some time studying the situation and decided to surface mount a PVC electrical box behind the dryer location and use a piece of PVC electrical conduit to get the new wire from the ceiling to the box, where I would install a 20A duplex GFCI receptacle.  Linda helped me use a 100’ tape measure to get an idea of how many feet of wire I needed.  It turned out to be more than 50 feet, and since most of it would be run through holes in the joists for the main floor of the house, I would need Romex (non-metallic sheathed multi-conductor cable) rather than the individual insulated conductors I had run through conduit in the barn.

Michael, from Heritage Hardwood Floors (Howell), called to confirm his appointment, and showed up around 2:30 PM.  He was on site for about 75 minutes and took the time to understand what we were looking to have done, discussed the details with us at length, and explained how he would approach the job.  He was obviously very experienced and knowledgeable, and we were confident he could do the job.  The last time we had floors refinished (at our previous house) we used a father-son team, and they did fabulous work, so we were comfortable with this business model.

Michael’s visit had raised questions, but after he left I returned to working on the new electrical circuit.  Dinner was followed by watching the Olympics recap on NBC.

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20240805_Health_&_Home-Tasks

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NOTE:  This is post does not have any photos.

 

MONDAY 05 August 2024 — A home health visit, deep-cleaning, and the start of an electrical project

We had a home visit with Signify Health this morning.  These visits are provided as a benefit of my Michigan Public School Employee Retirement System (MPSERS) Medicare Advantage health care plan, administered by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan (BCBS-MI).  This was only the second such visit we have had since I retired in 2012, and the first one was very cursory, lasting 20 minutes at most.  ABWR, the only “testing” done during that visit was to check our blood pressure.

Today’s visit was very different, and much better.  The provider was an older, semi-retired, male nurse-practitioner.  He was friendly, with a great demeanor, clearly experienced and knowledgeable and genuinely interested in assessing our state of health.  The visit lasted two (2) hours, and was very thorough and informative.  For each of us, he checked our temperature, blood pressure, blood oxygenation, and peripheral artery blood flow.  (He was not able to get the peripheral artery measurements for me, done at the hands and feet, because my resting heart rate is slow compared to “normal” and this confused the measurement device.  Rather than submit bad data, he did report any findings for this test.  He had a peek at our eyes and inside our mouths, and applied a simple cognitive test while doing a comprehensive review of our medications and supplements.  We had an excellent discussion, and even talked about diet and activity.

In the afternoon, Linda started deep-cleaning the kitchen cabinets and installing new bumpers on the drawers and doors.  She also identified hinges that were loose and had me tighten them.  With the hinges done, I started working on wiring the new dedicated electrical circuit for our new Miele heat-pump dryer.  The washer and dryer could be here next week, so I needed to get this done.  Following the latest NEC requirements, the dryer needs a dedicated 120VAC / 20A circuit with GFCI protection.  GFCI (Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter) is a useful safety feature that is appropriate almost everywhere, but is required by code (NEC) in “wet” locations, including (at least) bathrooms, garages, kitchens, laundry rooms, and outdoors.

The washing machine also requires a dedicated 120VAC / 20A, GFCI protected circuit.  The current washing machine is plugged into a 120VAC / 15A duplex receptacle in the laundry room.  Analysis of this circuit revealed that it is wired with 12 AWG 2+G wire (12-2+G NM-B aka “Romex”) and protected by a 20A circuit breaker, but shares the circuit with three (3) duplex receptacles in my office, at least one outdoors, and does not have GFCI protection.  The good news was that the laundry room receptacle is the end (last) device on the circuit.  As a temporary measure, I could simply replace the duplex receptacle in the laundry room with a duplex 20A GFCI receptacle and have power to the new washing machine that was in conformance with the NEC except for the requirement that this be a dedicated circuit.  So, that is what I intend to do.  My slightly longer-term plan is to run a dedicated circuit for the washing machine, just as I was about to do for the heat-pump dryer.

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20240801-04_A busy-start-to-August

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NOTE:  This is a moderate length post (for me).  It has two (2) photos with captions, both taken by me (Bruce) with a Google Pixel 6 Pro.

 

THURSDAY 01 thru SUNDAY 04 August 2024 — Heat, rain, mosquitoes, and a busy week (BdW guests, laundry appliances, dogs, glasses, finances, and more) but no more yard work

 

Thursday 01 August … New glasses, a dead battery, more work tables, and Wild Turkeys in a tree

I got a text message yesterday that my new/remade tri-focal glasses were ready, so we made a trip to the Brighton SVS Vision Center to pick them up.  But not in the F-150.  When I tried to start it, the battery was completely dead.  It turned out that the headlight switch had been moved from the AUTO position to the Running Lights position, and left that way overnight.  Mea culpa, and I should have known, but I ignored the chime that continued when I turned off the engine last night and removed the key.  Dumb.  We took Linda’s car instead.

My new tri-focal glasses were correct this time, improving my distance vision just enough to make road signs at various distances sharper.  The reading and middle portions of the lenses were the same as before.  The optician made adjustments to the ear hooks and the nose pads until they sat correctly on my face with its slightly askew nose, which was broken many, many years ago.  I also had her look at my reading glasses.  I got the lenses there a month or so ago, but had them use an existing frame that I liked.  One of the ear covers had cracked and separated into two pieces.  She was able to heat them both up (left and right, one at a time) to remove them and replace them with new ones.  She also noticed that the nose pads were cracked and needed to be replaced, so she did that as well.  She then adjusted the ear hooks and nose pads so they sat correctly on my slightly crooked face.  No charge for the extra services.

Back home, we stopped at the barn and I retrieved a battery charger and a set of jumper cables.  The truck was in the garage.  The engine compartment is “tall”, so I placed the battery charger on the fold out platform of a 6 ft stepladder.  This allowed the battery cables to reach the battery in the engine compartment and the power cord to reach a nearby ceiling outlet.  I connected the cables, plugged in the power cord, and set the operating parameters:  AGM, 25 Amps.  The display quickly ramped up to 25.8 Amps and stayed there.  That was good news; some battery chargers will not work unless they detect at least some minimum voltage level from the battery.  I am hopeful that the battery will recover; it’s only a few years old had never been abused prior to this accidental discharge.

The bottom end of one of the Rockler Rock-Steady 32” legs with the adjustable foot installed, but not adjusted or tightened.

The Rock-Steady leg is a simple, but cleaver, design.  A flat sheet of steel is machined with various openings, both round and square, to allow other components to be attached, either with machine screws/bolts, or with carriage bolts.  The bottom end is partially slit at the mid-point to form two tabs, one slightly longer than the other.  The tabs are then bent 90 degrees, shorter one first and then the longer one.  The entire sheet is then folded along its midline, forming an angle iron, with the tabs overlapping.  The overlapping tabs are drilled to accept the adjustable feet, and the whole piece is then power-coated.

I changed into my work clothes and headed to the barn to assemble the last (for now) Rockler Rock-Steady Work Table.  I attached this one to the table along the south wall of the shop that was already attached to the Corner Table in the SE corner of the shop.  In this configuration, I will have a work surface along the south wall of the shop that is at least 20” deep and 144” (12’) long.  It will end just shy of the “protected” (no storage allowed) area in front of the shop/storeroom electrical sub-panel.  A picture will make this much clearer.

The workshop (in the barn) as seen from the entry door looking east.  The Corner Stand to the left (NE corner of the shop) has two Rock-Steady Work Stands attached.  The Corner Stand to the right (SE corner of the shop) also has two Rock-Steady Work Stands attached, plus a third Rock-Steady Work Stand along the wall on the right, which is attached to the one from the Corner Stand.

It was warm in the shop, even with a box fan running, so I got a bit sweaty and took a shower before dinner.  Having only had a muffin for breakfast, and skipping lunch, Linda made a large salad and we had an early dinner around 4 PM.

As we were eating, Linda noticed a lone Wild Turkey resting at the base on one of our large White Pine trees to the east of the valley for our walk-out basement door.  We thought that was odd, but it seemed to be okay.  As we were clearing the table, I saw a small turkey (jake) drop out of the tree, and then another one.  I called Linda over, and we watched the entire flock, including the other adult, drift down out of the tree.  So, it wasn’t a lone turkey after all; it was our usual flock of 10.  It was the second time this week that I had seen them in a tree, and the first for Linda.

 

Friday 02 August … Boondockers, bus chat, and financial chat

Rick (BdW PeachyTravel) was out this morning with their dog, Barkley, and we had a nice chat.  They pulled out before I left to meet Chuck S. at 11:30 AM for lunch at Leo’s Coney Island in S. Lyon.

Chuck and I had a lot to catch up on, and occupied a booth for three (3) hours!  The restaurant was busiest from noon to 1 PM, but had open seats the whole time there, and no one suggested we should move on.  It rained off and on while driving there, while we visited, and on the drive home.  By 5 PM we had a lot of standing water in the usual low spots around our property.

During the afternoon, I got a call from Kishen, one of our financial advisors at Stifel-Nicolaus.  We had a nice chat and made an investment decision.  We have been 100% satisfied with this company and the specific team of people we work with directly.  Sometime during the day, Linda also talked to Nan (of Paul & Nancy) regarding the cruise we are all taking in early December.

BdW guest Marcia B was supposed to arrive today for a 2-night stay, but cancelled last night.  It happens, and cancelations are never a problem for us as long as we know.  We are also RVers, and we understand that things can happen, even at the last minute, that change travel plans.

 

Saturday 03 August … A birthday and party planning

Today was our son’s 46th birthday (1978).  Linda wanted to have the family over to celebrate, but today was not convenient, so it was set up for tomorrow.   I do not recall what I did today, but it probably included a trip to Recycle Livingston to get rid of our household recyclables, doing laundry, and working at my desk.  The mosquitos have been very bad, so we have temporarily eschewed working on the property.  Linda spent a good part of the day preparing for the family get-together.  That included cleaning the house, a trip to the grocery store, and preparing food.  At some point, I brought chairs up from the basement and we put the expansion leaf in the dining room table.

 

Sunday 04 August …  A family gathering and a birthday celebration

Linda arranged a family gathering for today at our house to celebrate our son’s birthday.  Brendan was there (of course) with his daughters (Sadie and Madeline) and our daughter, Meghan, was there with her husband, Chris.  Brendan’s wife, Shawna, whose birthday was in 11 more days, had previously made plans to go out of town for a weekend with her girlfriends.  She was missed, but everyone still enjoyed themselves.  Our daughter made a vegan peanut-butter chocolate cake for dessert; vegan for us and peanut-butter/chocolate for her brother.  It was amazing.

When everyone had left, we just relaxed.  In the evening, we continued watching the NBC recap of the Paris 2024 Olympics.

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20240719-21_3-days_lots-of-stuff

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NOTE:  This is a longer post that contains one (1) photo with caption, taken by me (Bruce) with a Google Pixel 6 Pro.

 

FRIDAY 19 thru SUNDAY 21 July 2024 — Vision, cruises, SW licenses, yard work, Boondockers, and a Buck Moon

 

Friday 19 … More vision, a cruise dream, and a software license

Yesterday was a hard day so today was an easier day, by comparison.  Linda had a 1 PM follow-up visit with Dr. V, her ophthalmologist at the KEC-BCSC.  She got an excellent report; both of her eyes are healing well.  Dr. V tested her vision and gave her a prescription for bi-focal glass lenses.  Linda can actually see fairly well now without glasses, both for reading and distance.  She is far-sighted in one eye and near-sighted in the other, and Dr. V inserted lenses that work with that difference.  But she still does not see quite well enough for extended work at her desk, staring at her laptop computer and working with our personal financial and travel records, or reams of accounting printouts from the bakery.  And while her distance vision is okay, the glasses will make it better, especially in her near-sighted eye.  This will allow here to see better while in a vehicle, whether driving or as a passenger helping to read road signs.

We got a brochure in the mail today from Oceania Cruise Line (OCL).  Oceania is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings (NCL-H).  Having sailed twice on NCL, they know who we are and they know where we live.  OCL is a luxury cruise line featuring smaller ships than the ones we have been on (so far).  Their cruises are commensurately pricey, so not something we have seriously considered.  But just like the Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs at Christmas (when we were kids), we went through the brochure to see what was on offer.  They offer a lot of cruises in the Far East, including Australia and New Zealand, the Caribbean, and the Mediterranean.  But the one that caught our eye departed from Buenos Aires (Argentina) and ended in Santiago de Chile (Chile) with a 2-day stop in Antarctica and a trip around Cape Horn through the Drake Passage.  The sailing dates were northern hemisphere winter, so southern hemisphere summer, when the Southern Ocean is not quite as fierce as it is in the southern winter.  And it was on sale for what seemed to be a relatively good price.  Setting foot on Antarctic continent is a true bucket list item for me, but it won’t happen in 2025 (we already have two big trips planned) and probably not in 2026 (when we plan to RV to Alaska).  The 2025 trips are set in stone (as much as any trip can be) but 2026 is still just an unplanned intent.

I have been using the QCAD software package for a few years now.  I made extensive use of it to design the barn, but I use it for other things as well.  The basic version is open source and free to download and use, but the professional version unlocks some important features and provides access to updated versions as they become available.  For $39 a year, having the professional version is a no-brainer for me.  My current license expires this coming Sunday, so I went ahead and renewed it tonight.  I always use PayPal for things like this, and it will be interesting to see how this hits my credit card.  I selected $USD on the website/store but the invoice came up in $EUR.  I don’t know if this was related to the worldwide CloudStrike/Windows outage, but the transaction completed successfully using PayPal.  While processing this transaction, I discovered that my password app on my phone would not allow me to log in with my fingerprint.  Humm; that was strange and annoying as this is how I usually open the app.  I got the password from one of our other devices and logged in that way.  In the app settings on my phone, the ability to biometrically authenticate (face scan or fingerprint) was turned OFF.  I did not turn it off, so it probably got reset as part of an update.  I really hate it when that happens.

Last, but not least, UPS delivered most of the Rockler Rock-Steady work stand components and kits.  I knew these weighed quit a bit as all the pieces are steel and the driver confirmed this immediately upon arrival.  I asked if would deliver them to the barn, and he was more than willing to do so.  I helped him unload everything and get it into the barn.  The delivery included two (2) Corner Stand kits (complete), and the following components for the five (5) 56” x 20” x32” Work Stands:  5 x 4-packs of 56” Stretchers, 5 x 4-packs of 20” Stretchers, 5 x 2-packs of 32” Center Supports, 5 x 4-packs of Stand Connectors, 10 x 2-packs of Drawer/Shelf Brackets, and 1 x 4-packs of 32” legs.  Missing from the delivery were 4 x 4-packs of 32” leg sets for the five (5) 56” x 20” x 32” Work Stands.  We checked the order on Rockler’s website and verified that they were still on backorder.  Also, that we had only been charged for the pieces that actually shipped.

 

Saturday 20 … More yard work

I knew the refill date on my blood pressure medication was coming up soon, so I logged into my online pharmacy to check.  I quickly discovered that they were going to automatically refill it, so nothing for me to do except wait for it to show up.

After coffee and breakfast, we got dressed to work in the yard.  I had previously added enough material to our firepit to justify lighting a fire, and we knew there were enough tree limbs on the ground in the west yard to keep us busy for a few hours.  Linda eventually turned her attention to weeding under the large stand of pine, and fir trees just NW of the house, which included cutting out saplings.  We worked from 10:00 to 13:00 and put our tools away.

A shower and some lunch and we were good as new.  I then settled in to work on blog posts and launder the bed linens while Linda made a new batch of her amazing granola.  Our middle grand-daughter was due back today from a two-week stint at the YMCA camp, but we did not get a chance to Facetime with her.  Dinner was the second go-around of the Mexican corn salad, and it was just as good as the first time.  After dinner we settled in to watch our usual Saturday evening TV programs on our local PBS station.

The “Buck Moon” about 8 hours before it’s precise occurrence.  This photo was taken a 10:20 PM, about 20 minutes after moonrise.  The view is southeast from the end of our first driveway, the only place on our property that afforded an unobstructed view of the orb, and I had to wait for the disk to be above the tree line of the properties southeast of us.  This is a long/night-mode handheld exposure that received more than my usual post-processing.  In particular, I tried to make the details on the surface of the moon at least a little bit visible, while also bringing out some details in the surrounding clouds and the trees along the bottom of the image.

I had noticed for the past week that the moon was near full.  A news headline popped up this morning about tonight being the “BUCK MOON,” the name given to the full moon in July.  Online research indicated that in North America the name is ancient and spiritual, and refers to the time of year that male deer start to grow their antlers.  The actual time of the Buck Moon was tomorrow morning, but we had an excellent view of the moon this evening, low in the southeast sky but above the trees.  The weather was clear and the moon appeared very large and very bright.

 

Sunday 21 … Another BdW guest arrives

The exact time for the “Buck Moon” was 6:17 AM EDT, but we did not see it this morning; I was up, but the weather was cloudy.  We also have trees in our yard, as do adjacent properties to the east and southeast, that obscure the eastern horizon, so we often cannot see a moonrise.

We continued our work on the property again today.  Linda pulled weeds while I cut down one of the four (4) “bushes” that grow in the northeast portion of our yard.  They are not attractive, consisting of a tangled mix of samplings, vines, and wild raspberries with plenty of thorns.  Even mowing the grass near them requires some care.

When we had a sufficient pile of material in the burn bit I started the fire.  I then switched my attention to the stand of large pine trees in the northeast corner of the property.  I removed limbs and branches that were already on the ground, and then cleared a path around the east side of the stand.  I then pruned a few of the lower/dead branches from the trunk of one of the trees.  I hadn’t planned on pruning today, but we needed more/larger wood for the fire, and these were easy to get to and relatively close to the fire pit (compared to material from the western portion of the property.)  We worked for about 3 hours and then called it quits.

BdW members Patrick & Ruth W. notified me around 17:30 that they would arrive at 20:30.  Our preferred arrival window is between 13:00 and 17:00, but later times are okay as long as we know.  Knowing they would not arrive for a while, we opened our BdW Hosting Profile in the HH-BW app and reviewed our information.  We confirmed that our profile does state a preferred arrival window of 1 – 5 PM.  As long as we were logged in, we made some minor edits to our information.  I tend to error on the side of TMI, the error being that the more words you use the less likely most people are to actually read and retain all of them.  Still, there are things guests need to know about our site and expectations.  Linda then prepared a dinner meal of mushroom root steak, corn, baked sweet potato, and a small green salad with plant-based “blue cheese” dressing.  Yum.

After dinner, we watched an episode of Agatha Christie’s Poirot on PBS at 19:00 and then the latest episode of Martijn Doolard on Youtube at 19:50, which filled the time until 20:30 rather nicely.  That meant we missed this week’s episode of Professor T (PBS) but we can stream that sometime this coming week.  Our guests arrived on our street right at their ETA and phoned me.  Linda came out with me and after I got them parked we had a brief welcoming chat before leaving them to make camp.  We returned to our Sunday evening PBS TV programs and watched Grantchester at 21:00 and DI Ray at 22:00, both of which appeared to be the concluding episodes for this season.  That might also be true of Professor T, but we won’t know until we watch it.

 

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20240717-18_Construction_&_Deconstruction

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NOTE:  This longer post does not have any photos.

 

WEDNESDAY 17 and THURSDAY 18 July 2024 — Dental, walking, mowing, and a global IT outage

 

Wednesday 17 … Highway construction, a motorcade, and dental deconstruction

I had an appointment late morning with our dentist to deal with the right rear-most, lower tooth that had lost its partial crown about two (2) weeks ago.  In all the time we have lived in Michigan (since 1976) I have never seen so much road construction as we have at the moment, so I left early to make sure I wasn’t late.  Major highways are being widened all over SE lower Michigan, and flex-lanes are being added or extended on the highways to run through our local community area.  The amount of equipment I passed today on I-96 was epic.  At one point there were 12 gravel haulers lined up nose-to-tail waiting their turn to dump their loads.  There were two concrete forming machines in operation, several very large cranes, and all sorts of excavators, cutters, rollers, concrete mixers.  My best guess was at least 50 pieces of heavy equipment, much of it specialized to road construction.  It was fascinating to see and, fortunately, there were no major traffic backups.

Close to the clinic, I headed west on Michigan Avenue to make the U-turn (Michigan left) back to the clinic.  I noticed a LOT of flashing emergency lights, and not long after pulling into the U-turn, a motorcade went by (westbound) probably headed to the Detroit (Wayne County) Metropolitan Airport.  I later learned that the motorcade was transporting Vice-President Kamal Harris following a speaking engagement in Detroit.

At the clinic, the dentist made an adjustment to one of my night-time bight guards and then got to work on my tooth.  He decided to remove some of the existing tooth to allow the new crown to be thicker on top (that’s were the old one failed) and to come down around the tooth closer to the gum line for a more secure fitment.  With the tooth prepared, he used the photo/laser scanning system to “map” the inside of my mouth on my right side.  The scans included the upper and lower teeth (mouth open) and the outside of the teeth in the closed position.  The new crown will be ceramic (Zirconia) and should be ready in about two weeks.

The dental assistant fitted a temporary crown, which was quite a procedure in its own right.  It will protect the tooth until I get the permanent crown, but I was advised to still chew on the left side and avoid hard, crunchy, and gooey/sticky foods.  Before leaving the clinic, I made an appointment for August 8th to have the new crown fitted.  The tooth is still “sensitive” when touched in certain ways, so I suspect the temporary crown does not completely protect the lower back side.

 

Thursday 18 … Walking, mowing, and seeing what’s behind you; and a major computer outage!

Linda met up with our daughter around 9:30 AM to walk a portion or the Mike Levine Lakelands Trail.  From the Michigan History Center (Michigan.gov):  “The Trail runs 33 miles between Hamburg Township in Livingston County (US-23 and M-36) and Blackman Township in Jackson County (near Stockbridge). Opened to the public in 1994 as the Lakelands Trail State Park, it is a popular destination for people looking to enjoy the outdoors. The trail is also a component of the Great Lake to Lakes Trails Route #1, which extends 275 miles from South Haven (Lake Michigan) to Port Huron (Lake Huron). Local philanthropist, Mike Levine, contributed extensive resources to transform the corridor into an improved trail. In 2018, the DNR changed the trail’s name to the Mike Levine Lakelands Trail State Park in recognition of Mike’s efforts.”

Our property was not completely dry after the rains last night, but I wanted to get the grass cut sooner rather than later so it had time to grow before next Tuesday when Keith would once again be here.  I had the lawn tractor out of the shed and ready to go by 10 PM.  I decided to set the mowing deck at its highest setting, so the grass would be long enough by next Tuesday to make it worth having Keith show up.  I decided to cut the grass on the west half of the property on a SE-NW diagonal and the grass on the east half of the property on a SW-NE diagonal.  On the west side, that meant I was cutting across the old furrows left over from when this property was part of farm (many, many years ago).  The lawn tractor does not have a suspension, so I got beat up today.  Keith usually mows on an E-W orientation, which makes for a smoother experience.  Both he and I have to deviate from that, of course, to go around trees, stumps, buildings, the firepit, and along the edges of driveway as well as stands of trees and bushes.  But that was the general idea for today.  I worked until 1600, with a 30-minute break for lunch around 12:30.  I was tired, but it felt good to have this done.

Linda got home around 1300 and had a bite of lunch.  She took her car to Serra Honda for a 14:30 appointment to have the glass portion of the driver-side rearview mirror replaced.  The labor was more than the part, but it required some special tools and knowledge to remove the old one without breaking plastic retaining tangs or the housing.  Besides, if the technician dropped the new mirror, it would be at the dealer’s expense, not ours.

Sometime during the day, or perhaps it was overnight last night, an update of the CrowdStrike security software was pushed to their clients with a bug in it that caused a world-wide outage of computers running the Windows operating system, including Windows Server and Windows Enterprise.  The event was well-covered in the media, so I don’t need to repeat it here.  We were not doing anything at the time that might have been impacted, so for us it was just an interesting and curious news story.  But for many people, especially those traveling, and for many (most?) of the really big corporations around the world, and even governments, it was a major disruptive event.

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20240715-21_Vision_&_Hearing

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NOTE:  This shorter post contains one (1) photo with caption, taken by me (Bruce) with a Google Pixel 6 Pro.

 

MONDAY 15 and TUESDAY 16 July 2024 — Vision and Hearing

 

Monday 15 … Optical

By today, Linda was well on her way to recovery from her cold.  I was also a lot better, but definitely not fully recovered yet.  We had another fairly easy day, but I did test my new tri-focal glasses as well as my previous pair (from at least 8 years ago).  I was only interested in the distance portion of the lenses, as the reading and arm’s length prescriptions in my new glasses were fine.

My test setup consisted of a box of cat litter as a target; a white box with a solid blue panel, with white letters.  The large letters were ~ 3/4” high and the small letters were ~ 1/4” high.  I set the box on our patio table facing east so it was illuminated by the morning sun.  Beyond the box were bushes and trees at various distances, all well-illuminated.  I estimated the farthest trees to be about 130 feet beyond the target.  I secured the free end of my 100-foot tape measure at the front edge of the target and un-reeled it along the deck to the far east end, which turned out to be 70 feet.

The front panel of a box of Dr. Elsey’s Cat Litter served as the target for testing my new tri-focal glasses and comparing them to my old ones.  It was well lit with sunlight, and had both larger and smaller letters with good contrast, so it made a good target.

With Linda’s assistance, we noted how clearly I could see the letters on the target at increasing distances in 5-foot increments, starting at 5 feet from the target.  (Somewhere around 40 feet, we went to 10-foot increments up to 70 feet.)  We also noted how sharp things appeared beyond the target.  We did this first with my un-aided vision.  We then repeated this procedure with my new glasses, and then again with my old glasses.  What we found was that I could see the target fairly well without glasses out to about 45 feet, and that things farther away were less sharp, but not too blurry.  With my new glasses, everything was less sharp at every distance, getting worse with increasing distance.  With my old glasses, however, the target and everything beyond was sharper at every distance compared to my un-aided vision.

I had a return visit at 16:00 with our new optometrist at the Kellogg Eye Center (KEC) at the UofMH-BCSC.  I shared the results of my testing with the technician, and again with the optometrist.  The technician did not really seem interested in my test, re-checked my eyes, and then checked my new tri-focal glasses as well as my previous pair.  She basically told me my new glasses were fine.  Uh, no, they are not.

Fortunately, the optometrist listened carefully, took my concern seriously, and acknowledged what I needed my tri-focal glasses to do.  She re-tested my eyes and came up with a revised prescription.  She even took me to an outside window with a view of several signs in the parking lot at various and considerable distances.  She held up additional corrective lenses until I could see the signs clearly and then finalized a new prescription.  If my replacement lenses achieve the same clarity, I will be very satisfied.

Rain was in the forecast again for today and overnight, which probably meant our lawn care guy (Keith) would not be able to mow tomorrow.  Such are the vagaries of weather-dependent work.

 

Tuesday 16 … More optical, and an online Cochlear meeting

Well, it did indeed rain overnight, a lot.  We had standing water around the property and mowing the grass did not seem prudent.  Keith texted me around 8 AM to see what the situation was and we agreed that he would skip mowing our property this week.  Unfortunately for his, his makeup day is Monday, so if he cannot mow us on Tuesday (our regular day) it has to wait a week, or I have to do it.

Our Boondockers Welcome guests, Dave and Martha T., left around noon.  Their next stop was the Jellystone Family RV Resort in Frankenmuth, Michigan.  We will be there in early Fall.  When they had left, I headed to the SVS Vision Optical Center in Brighton with my new tri-focal glasses and my revised prescription.  The optician was very helpful and it did not take very long to return the glasses and get the new prescription ordered.  There will not be a charge for the replacement lenses as I was well within the 45 “no questions asked” return/adjust period.

Back home, Linda had a 4 PM online meeting with a representative from Cochlear.  There was another woman (client) in the meeting, and I sat in out of curiosity.  The meeting was conducted using Microsoft Teams, but Linda did not have to install anything on her laptop computer.  (I had to use MS Teams back in June 2022 just after we entered Canada.  I was randomly selected for a CoVID-19 test, and the test had to be monitored by someone online.  I used my iPad Pro, and had to install the MS Teams app.)  The reason for the meeting, was that Medicare covers the cost of replacing a Cochlear device every five (5) years and Linda was now eligible for a replacement.

Cochlear is always working to improve their products, and Linda was excited about getting the newest version of the external processor.  Cochlear handles the entire order and delivery process, coordinating with our BCBS Medicare Plus health insurance and with Linda’s audiologist.  The new processor will be shipped directly to our house, and will be pre-programmed with the current settings as last determined by the audiologist.  Linda had already uploaded a lot of information to Cochlear, and the purpose of the meeting was to finalize the details on what she wanted, including a choice of accessories.  Of no small importance, we learned that Linda does NOT have to return her current processor, but will retain it as a backup.

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20240713-14_HWD_BdW_SRF-HNC-RRR

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NOTE:  This is a long post, with four (4) captioned photos, all taken by me (Bruce) with Google Pixel 6 Pro.

 

SATURDAY 13 and SUNDAY 14 July 2024 — hazardous guests and grand-children, oh my

 

Saturday 13 … Hazardous waste disposal, BdW guests, and SRF at HNC and RRR

Today was one of the Hazardous Waste Collection (drop-off) days for our county and we had a 10 AM appointment time.  We had not done anything to get ready before this morning, so we made a quick survey of the garage, under-sink cabinets, and the laundry room.  All we had were four (4) T8 fluorescent tubes.  The light fixture in our bedroom walk-in closet was flickering, so I removed the white translucent plastic cover and “discovered” four T8 fluorescent tubes in use there.  One of them was burned out, one was dim, one was flickering, and one was still okay.  I still had 10 tubes left from a contractor’s pack I bought some years ago, so we replaced all four of the closet tubes and added the old ones to the four we already had waiting to be recycled.  We taped the 8 tubes in a bundle for safer transport and put them in Linda’s car.  BTW:  The new tubes were still 32W but they were 4100K, a “whiter” color temperature than the 3000K tubes they replaced.  With the whiter color temperature, and all four tubes operating a full strength, the closet was now much brighter that in had been for some time.

We planned to pick grand-daughter Sadie up from her house today around 11 AM and take her to the Howell Nature Center and then to dinner, before spending the night at our house.  We had BdW guests (Martha & Dave T.) arriving today, however, so I messaged them to get an ETA.  They were planning to arrive between 12:00 and 12:30 (PM), so I remained at home while Linda took the fluorescent tubes to the Hazardous Waste Collection drop-off site.  She then went on to Ann Arbor to retrieve Sadie, but brought her back to our house where we moved her stuff into the house.

Our guests arrived around 12:30, having encountered the traffic slowdown on northbound US-23 between Ann Arbor and Brighton.  Sadie came out to help me get them settled in their site, and Linda joined us for some initial conversation.  Sadie got to go inside their motorhome, and we all go to meet one of their two cats, Noodles.  Noodles was similar in appearance to our Cabela, but larger, being male.  By this point it was 13:00, so we had a light lunch (PB&J with strawberry jam/preserves that we were gifted by a recent BdW guest).  We filled a couple of water bottles, and headed for the Howell Nature Center (HNC).

Sadie posses by The Wishing Tree by the welcome and clinic buildings of the Howell Nature Center.

The HNC is a rescue facility, not a zoo, and primarily cares for animals that are native to Michigan.  Most of the residents were injured and cannot be released back into the wild.  Occasionally, they have an animal that was someone’s “pet” when it should not have been.  The Nature Center has a clinic, and any animals they take in are guaranteed a home for the rest of their lives.  It’s possible that they might sometimes transfer animals to other facilities, but always to someplace that can/will care for them.

Sadie and Ama (Linda) with a broader view of The Wishing Tree and surrounding planted beds at the Howell Nature Center.

There is a paved Wildlife Trail that winds through pens and shelters where the animals live.  We had not been to the HNC since the start of the CoVID-19 pandemic, and were pleased to see that quite a few new shelters/pens had been built or were currently under construction.  At least one was a BSA Eagle Scout project and another was an effort by an entire Boy Scout troop.  Local business support for the Center is strong, which is essential and appreciated.

Sadie and Ama go hand-in-hand into the start of the Wildlife Trail at the Howell Nature Center.  The Center charges a modest entrance fee, but is primarily funder by sponsorships, gifts, and donations.  It’s a wonderful resource for area.

It was a warm summer day, and we were at the Nature Center in the afternoon, so many of the animals were tucked away trying to stay cool, or just resting because then tend to be diurnal (dawn and dusk) or nocturnal (night) creatures.  Some of the animals were species we regularly see in our own backyard (Sandhill Crane, Wild Turkey, groundhog/woodchuck, Opossum) or overhead (Turkey Vulture, Red-tailed Hawk) but we saw a few that were more “exotic,” including:  a Bald Eagle, other Hawks (several kinds), Owls (Snowy, Barn, Screech), a Beaver, Ferrets, and a Bobcat (it had been someone’s “pet”).  The other part of the HNC is a children’s play area, with a giant “tree house” as it’s focal point.  Here’s a photo:

The sign for Camp Imagination at the Howell Nature Center.  Behind the sign is the massive “tree house.”  The central/enclosed area is a library and craft space, surrounded by a large deck.  There are several staircases, suspension bridges, and swings underneath, as well as other activities.

We got back to our house around 15:30 where Sadie played while I took a nap.  She let Linda know that she did not want to spend the night, so Linda checked with our son to make sure it was okay to bring her back later.  It was, of course, and he and Shawna had been able to put on their swim suits and take their inflatable boat to a nearby lake and enjoy some adult-only recreation while Sadie was with us.  Sadie gathered up all of her things and we headed to the local Red Robin Restaurant (RRR) in Brighton around 5:30 PM for dinner.  Sadie had a grilled cheese sandwich and potato chips, Linda had a lettuce-wrapped quinoa “burger” with broccoli, and I had a lettuce-wrapped “Impossible burger” with French fries.  It was an acceptable meal, with no preparation or cleanup required on our part.

From dinner, we headed to Ann Arbor.  We had Sadie home sometime before 7 PM, and visited for a short while before leaving.  I was obvious that the main reason she did not want to spend the night with us was that she had her mom and dad all to herself while her sister was away at camp.  We stopped at the Whole Foods Market near their house before returning home.  Even at this hour on a Saturday evening with relatively light traffic, the restriction of US-23 northbound to just one lane from Exit 53 on, caused traffic to slow down and bunch up.  We were back home in time to watch Midsummer Murders, one of our regular Saturday evening TV shows on our local PBS (WTVS) station.

 

Sunday 14 … Wild Turkeys, Sandhill Cranes, laundry, QCAD, travel documents, Masterpiece Mystery (PBS)

I was feeling much better by this morning.  Not 100%, but much better.  I was awake by 06:00, and got up around 06:20.  The Wild Turkeys (2 adults and 8 young) were already foraging around the base of the poles for the bird feeders, and a white-tailed deer was licking up corn nearby.  Ten (10) Canada Geese eventually showed up, as did our pair of Sandhill Cranes.

I quietly gathered up the laundry so as not to wake Linda and started a load of darks.  I then made my first cup of coffee, finished a multi-Sudoku game I started last night, and watched a few Youtube videos (vlogs).  Cabela was in and out frequently.  My morning exercise routine is repeatedly sitting down and getting up from the living room sofa to deal with the cat.

We had bagels for breakfast and then got dressed for the day.  I folded laundry before heading to my desk for the afternoon to copy and process photos from yesterday, and then work on blog posts.  But first I downloaded and installed the latest update (3.30.1) for the QCAD software.  Linda went for a walk around noon.  Upon her return, she spent some time organizing a travel binder.  With us booking cruises and tours up to 18 months in advance, and planning some RV adventures even farther out than that, it’s become essential that we (she) have (has) an organized way to keep track of the details and status information.

After dinner, we settled in to watch our Sunday evening Masterpiece Mystery shows on PBS.  The current lineup is:  Professor T, Grantchester, and DI Ray.  They are all British productions that are well done, and we enjoy them.

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20240708-12_illness-dental-optical-Xfin

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NOTE:  This is a moderately lengthy post that contains one (1) photo with caption, taken by Linda with a Google Pixel 6.

 

MONDAY 08 thru FRIDAY 12 July 2024 — A busy week in the context of illness; dental and optical visits, and a rare broadband outage

 

Monday 08 … More yard work, new glasses, and illness

I got up today not feeling 100%.  I actually started coming down with something yesterday, including a mild sore throat (never a good thing) but shrugged it off to just being tired.  Linda and I had both been working hard on the property (weeds and trees); we were both tired and needed a rest.  Linda was also just getting over what she thought was a bad cold.

Our BdW guests (Mark & Kathy) left around mid-morning for their next destination at Burt Lake.  Mark had spent time there at an earlier point in his life and was looking forward to revisiting the area.  They said they enjoyed their brief stay and had a very quiet night.

I received a text message around 10:30 (AM) letting me know my new glasses were ready.  I decided to pick them up before getting to work on the yard.  This was a pair of tri-focals that I intended to use for driving, but the distance (upper) portion of the prescription made my distance vision much worse than my un-aided eyes.  Hummm.  The reading portion was the same as my reading glasses, and the intermediate portion (intended for the dashboard) seemed to be OK.  The optician said they would remake the lenses if needed (within 45 days) for no charge, but they would need a new/different prescription which I would have to obtain from my optometrist.  Ugh.  That meant trying to get an appointment with our OD at the UofMH KEC at the BCSC within the next 40 days.  Double ugh.

Back home, we got to work in the yard, making a pile of dead tree branches in our firepit and lighting it on fire.  I continued to prune dead limbs and branches from pine, fir, and spruce trees and Linda helped cut them up into sizes that fit our burn pit.

 

Tuesday 09 … a “crowning” achievement

When I got up this morning it was obvious that I was really sick.  My sore throat had worsened, and I was coughing up quite a bit of phlegm.  When this happens, the problem for me is that I cannot tell if the phlegm is the result of nasal drainage or is being produced in my lungs.  I wasn’t having any breathing difficulties or pain, other than the coughing itself, but the origin was still undetermined.  A trip to the clinic was probably in order, but I did not go, in part because I had a dental appointment this afternoon.  I called to let the clinic know I was symptomatic.  They said to come in anyway.

Because of the myriad road construction projects in our area, I left about 90 minutes ahead of my 2 PM dental appointment.  I arrived early, but not stressed.  Dr. G confirmed that a partial crown (or cap) had failed on my right lower rear molar.  The hole in the cap, however, was not the result of it having been drilled out in order to do a root canal procedure on that tooth.  Indeed, that tooth still had an intact root.  I was surprised to hear that, as I have not had any discomfort following the loss of the cap.  I will need a new crown, and the appointment to prepare the tooth will take 90 minutes, which their schedule did not allow for today.  I made an appointment to return on the 17th in the late morning and will have another appointment approximately three (3) weeks after that to get the crown installed.  So, all told, it will be approximately five (5) weeks from when the crown came off until the new one goes on.  I know these things take what they take, but that felt like a really long time.  No doubt the 1-week delay waiting for today’s appointment added to my sense of extended time.

There was a major Security and Bug-Fixing Update from Microsoft today, so we made sure our computers were up-to-date.  Over 140 security flaws across all MS products were patched and some other “bugs” squashed.

The weather had turned very warm by now, and with my continuing illness I was not up to working in the yard.  I used various OTC products to try and ease my “suffering,” including Acetaminophen, DayQuil, NyQuil, MucinexDM (for expectorant), and Unisom (to sleep).  Not all at the same time, of course.  MucinexDM and Unisom were my main “go-to” products.  It was probably around this time that we discussed what to have for dinner, and I suggested that soup would be an excellent choice for the next few days.  Linda was willing and able to accommodate that suggestion.

 

Wednesday 10 … Starve a fever, feed a cold

The day did NOT dawn bright.  Rain and wind started overnight and continued through the day, very heavy at times, as the remnants of Hurricane Beryl swept up from Texas and into the Great Lakes region.  (We later learned that we got about 3” of rain in 36 hours, but some areas around us got over 6” of the liquid sunshine.)

I called the UofMH KEC at their BCSC and was able to get an appointment with our optometrist (Dr. T) on Monday the 15th at 4 PM.  It was a relief to be able to get an appointment that soon.

The base for the Vitamix small capacity blending container.  The Vitamix imprint and part number are on the blade pointing to the right.  We had to fiddle with the lighting, and do some post-processing, to get the information to be legible in the photo.

I helped Linda get a photo of the base of the small vessel for her Vitamix.  Vitamix recalled this part, but needed a photo as proof that we actually had one.  They rejected the first photo she sent has it did not have the company logo and product number clearly visible, and the file was larger than 3 Mb.  Both pieces of information were on one of the cutting/chopping blades, and I had to orient the unit very carefully relative the very bright LED lamp on Linda’s desk in order to get the inscribed information to standout from the rest of the blade.  (The blades on metal, and highly reflective.)  The new photo was also less than 3 Mb so she submitted it.  She got a fairly quick reply that they new photo was acceptable!  Good job team!

Other that that, I rested most of the day, even to the point of taking at least one nap, which is unusual for me.

 

Thursday 11 … Picking up sticks

On lawn care guy (Keith) texted me around 8 AM to let me know he would be mowing today, and ask if I wanted him to do our property.  In spite of the large amount of recent rain, I said “yes,” but as late in the day as possible.  Linda met Diane at KMP at 9:30 AM for their weekly walk.  In spite of still not feeling well, I got dressed and picked up all (most) of the tree limbs and branches that had come down in the last 36 hours.  As long as I was up and out, and put out corn and refilled the bird feeders.

ABIR, Linda worked at her desk a bit.  If she’s not doing accounting work for the bakery, or tax returns for family and friends (late winter and early spring), she is doing routine accounting and finance tasks for us.

At some point during the day, we got another Boondockers Welcome stay request, this one for very late July into early August, which I approved.

 

Friday 12 … A rare loss of service

I was still feeling poorly today, albeit a bit better, but it was still basically a “do nothing” day for me.  ABIR, Linda took it fairly easy too.

Apparently, we lost our Xfinity/Comcast broadband service sometime around 5:30 PM.  Linda and I were not aware of this at the time as we were both doing things on our iPads that did not require us to be online.  I got a call form our neighbor (Mike G.) around 17:45 checking on whether we had our Internet connection.  I checked, and we did not.  I called him back to let him know.  While chatting, I mentioned that we had both been sick, and described my symptoms.  He suggested that we test for COVID-19.  Apparently a new strain with milder symptoms like mine has been circulating.  We both tested and both results were negative, but it was good to know for sure.

Mike checked to see when service might be restored.  He got 10:30 PM SUNDAY NIGHT as an answer and shared that information with us.  What?!!!  Linda checked, and got 10:30 PM tomorrow (Saturday) as an estimate; better, but still a long way’s off.  I eventually got a text message from Xfinity about the outage and signed up for updates.  Not long after, I got an update indicating that service should be restored by 10:40 PM THIS EVENING.  Well, that’s more like it.  Our service was actually restored sometime prior to that.  No indication of what had happened, there rarely if ever is, but it was good to have the service back.  While it was out we watched OTA TV programs on CBS.  These are shows that we used to watch every week but haven’t in quite a while.  We don’t miss them.

 

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20240701-03_Summer-ramps-up_A-hornets-nest

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NOTE:  This post contains two (2) photos with captions, both taken by me (Bruce) with a Google Pixel 6 Pro.

 

MONDAY 01 thru WEDNESDAY 03 July 2024 — Summer ramps up and a hornet’s nest

 

Monday 01 … A sad note, and some unfortunate timing

We noticed a pair of adult Sandhill Cranes in the backyard today, without a colt.  While we couldn’t say for sure it was the same adults as before, it almost certain was, and they had lost their colt.  Very sad.  Of all the creatures that visit our property, we have a particular fascination with the Sandhill Cranes, and especially enjoy watching them raise a colt.

Linda met Diane in Ann Arbor for their annual birthday lunch and some light shopping.  I put on my work clothes and did some pruning of the pine and fir trees just west of the shed.

While eating dinner I got a “crunch” while eating something that wasn’t supposed to be crunchy.  It wasn’t Linda’s cooking; a partial crown (cap) had come loose from my right lower rear tooth.  I managed to retrieve it, along with a couple of small pieces, and put them in a plastic snack bag.  The cap had a hole in the center, but I could tell if the smaller pieces came from there.  I did not have any sensitivity, so I thought that the too might have had a root canal after the cap was installed, but that would be for our dentist to determine.  I call our dentist’s office, got their voice-mail, and left a message about my situation.

 

Tuesday 02 … Dental appointments and stinging insects

Our dentist’s office opens at 8 AM, so I waited until around 8:15 before calling.  The doctor was on vacation until Monday, and the first available appointment was Tuesday 9 July at 14:00.  I was advised to “chew carefully on the other side” until then, and avoid hard/crunchy foods.

The portion of the hornet nest that remained attached to the soffit of the garden shed.  A few hornets are still visible on and around the next.

After breakfast we got dressed to work in the yard, me pruning and Linda pulling weeds.  Before getting started on the actual work had to open up the shed and get the equipment and tools out.  I had opened the side doors, opened the overhead door (from inside), and was getting ready to put out the two ramps for the lawn tractor and trailer, when I heard the unmistakable buzzing sound.  I discovered a very large nest on the under side of the roof overhang at the end of our shed with the overhead door.  It was the sort of nest I associate with paper wasps.  (A later search of Google photos seemed to confirm this.)  Whatever they were, they noticed me too, and they did NOT like me being there.   They started to swam and one of them managed to sting me my right (face) cheek.  Ouch.

 

Part of the outer shell of the nest along with some of the inner honeycomb structure.  It appeared that the nest started with a smaller honeycomb structure, and additional/larger ones were added as the nest was enlarged.  Very impressive, but the hornets were very aggressive when disturbed, and we needed to be able to use our shed.

Clearly we were going to have to get rid of this nest.  Indeed, I eventually noticed several other small ones starting to form  in the same location.  We looked to see if we had any wasp / stinging insect spray, and found a can of Spectracide.

There was no hope of getting the lawn tractor and trailer out of the shed, but I was at least able get some of the tools out the side doors so we could work well away from this location.  With the tools out, I sprayed the next form about 15 feet away, and then quickly moved out of the area.  Not that I enjoyed killing these creatures, they just doing what paper wasps do, but they simply do NOT coexist with people.

We concentrated on the fir tree to the east of our fire pit.  I cut out enough of the lower branches that Linda could start weeding while I continued to work my way around and up the tree.  I cut quite a lot of material out of this tree, so Linda helped by using our pruners to trim off smaller branches and cut the larger ones into more manageable lengths.

 

Wednesday 03 … Happy Anniversary!

The most important thing about today is that it was the 13th (2011) wedding anniversary for our son and daughter-on-law.  I’m sure we called to congratulate them.  I don’t recall when we did that, but it was likely after dinner.

Most of our day consisted of continuing yard work.  But first, I sprayed the paper hornet nest for a 2nd time.  I then used one of our pole saws, almost fully extended, to try and knock the remaining part down from the soffit of the shed.  For being made of a  paper-like material, they are quite strong, especially in their attachment to a tree or building.  But I did manage to cut most of it off and have it fall to the ground and come apart.  Some of the wasps were still alive, so I used up the remaining spray on the pieces on the ground.  It made me sad to have to do this; these creatures are just doing what they evolved to do, and their nests are beautiful, fascinating creations.  But they are aggressive when disturbed and potentially dangerous, and we need access to our garden shed.

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NOTE:  This is a short post that includes one (1) photo with caption, taken by me (Bruce) with a Google Pixel 6 Pro.

 

MONDAY 24 thru SUNDAY 30 June 2024 — Summer is here, BW guests, and a birthday brunch

 

Monday 24 …  Property maintenance

Nothing noted on our calendar.  Linda was still in Dexter cat-sitting.  I’m not sure what I did, but I might have spent part of the day pruning trees.  I microwaved something for dinner.

 

Tuesday 25 … Wet weather, inside work

We had heavy rain this morning, so I had Keith skip the mowing today.  It was unlikely that I worked outside, so it must have been an inside day.  That usually means I worked at my desk, either cleaning up e-mails, backing up files, working on blog posts.  I microwaved something for dinner, again.

 

Wednesday 26 … Another BdW guest arrives

Boondockers Welcome (BdW) guests Elizabeth G. and spouse arrived around 1 PM for a 1-night stay.  As usual, I met them in the street and got them situated in our guest site.  We visited briefly, and then I left them alone to set up their rig and do whatever else then needed to do.  Linda was still in Dexter cat-sitting, and I have no idea what I did the rest of the day other than microwave something for dinner.  I know it sounds like “Groundhog Day” all over again, but it really wasn’t that repetitious.  I had a nice selection of vegan microwaveable meals to choose from.

 

Thursday 27 … Medical follow-up, and a return home

Our BdW guests pulled out sometime before noon.  Meghan and Chris returned home from the trip to Las Vegas and were very happy to see their kitty cats. Linda had a 4 PM phone follow-up with UofMH KEC Ophthalmology, which she might have done from her car while driving home.

 

Friday 28 … Another BdW guest arrives

ABIR, we had an easy day of it today.  Linda had been away from the house for a week, and was ready to just settle back in to our normal routine.  BdW members Wjrdmr945 arrived mid-afternoon for a 2-night stay.

 

Saturday 29 … A Mead tasting opportunity

We received an e-mail from Schramm’s Mead announcing tasting opportunities at their meadery in Ferndale, Michigan.  Various dates were available with specific time slots for each.  A reservation and pre-payment were required.  I signed us up for Friday, July 5 at 1 PM.  The tasting included six (6) different meads for $25 per person.  Tasting of their very best (and rare) meads was available for considerable added cost, but we have had those meads, and were more interested in developing a broader understanding and appreciation of their range of products.

 

Sunday 30 … Happy Birthday Linda!!!

Our daughter invited everyone (us and her brother’s family) to The Lake House for brunch to celebrate Linda’s birthday.  She’s not bashful about her age, but I will leave the specifics for those who have a need to know.

Meghan made two different kinds of really excellent vegan French Toast, one using cinnamon raisin bread.  She also cooked up a batch of vegan sausage patties along with actual bacon.  There was (real) maple syrup (of course), plant-based as well as dairy butter, and a mixed fruit salad with CocoWhip (a vegan replacement for whipped cream).  Oh, my goodness, what a nice meal.

Brendan & Shawna gave Linda a bottle of white port.  They did not bring it home from Portugal (too difficult to transport) but they tasted quite a bit of port while they were there, and discovered white port as a result.

Sadie ended up at the beach playing in the water (just her lower legs, it was a cool day) and “digging a tunnel to China” in the beach sand.  Uncle Chris helped her with the tunnel.  All-in-all, we had a nice long visit with family.

We had not planned anything else for Linda’s birthday, but it didn’t seem right for her to have to fix dinner.  I had planned on cooking, so we decided to go to the local Olive Garden restaurant for dinner.  It was just okay, but we didn’t expect it to be outstanding, so we were not disappointed.

Back home, we had some of the white port.  It was very sweet, but quite good, and we both enjoyed it.

A view of the outside of the new garage doors.  It’s placed here because this is the date when I took the photograph.

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NOTE:  There are no photos for this post.

 

THURSDAY 20 and FRIDAY 21 June 2024 — Summer Solstice, cataract surgery (part 2); baby Wild Turkeys, and a ZOOM call

 

Thursday 20 …  The Summer Solstice, and Cataract Surgery (Part 2)

As a child, up to my early teens, I was very interested in star-gazing and mythology, and I eventually in astronomy.  The winter and summer solstice and the spring and autumnal equinox have always garnered my attention when they come around each year.  While I don’t do anything out of the ordinary on those days, I do try to observe the location of the sunrise and sunset from wherever I happen to be.  I am also more aware of the balance of daylight and dark hours on each occasion.  And so it was today.

Linda had cataract surgery on her left eye scheduled for mid-afternoon, leaving the morning open to do other things.  She wasn’t allowed to eat after midnight, but was allowed to drink clear liquids (including black coffee) up until 10 AM this morning, so our morning started the same way it does most days, minus breakfast.  I eventually put on some work clothes, went to the barn, and did a more detailed reconciliation of the Rocker Rock-Steady work table components that were delivered yesterday against the shipping notifications I had received prior to that.  We have been dealing with the effects of a significant heat dome, and I wanted to get this done before mid-morning if possible.

Linda’s left eye was very near-sighted, so the doctor implanted a reading prescription lens.  She had surgery last month on her right eye, which was already far-sighted, and got a corresponding lens for that condition.  This is referred to as “mono vision,” I presume because each eye is adjusted for one (mono) thing.

We had to arrive at the UofMH Specialty Clinic in Brighton (BCSC) 90 minutes before her scheduled time.  Because there is major infrastructure construction (road and utilities) taking place between us and the clinic, we took our alternate route.  We ended up back tracking due to another construction closure we did not know about, but we still made it on time (just).  Not that it mattered; everything was running a bit late and it was 30-45 minutes before she was taken to a pre-op cubicle.  She waited there a while even after she was prepped, and I went to the small café in the building to have a quick/light lunch.

She was still in pre-op when I returned, but shortly thereafter they took her to one of the 10 operating rooms, and took me to a waiting room.  The actual operation took 10-15 minutes after which she was moved to a post-op/recovery cubicle and they fetched me to join her.  They kept her long enough to make sure there were no complications, went over her discharge instructions, and sent us on our way.  Like last time, the surgery went well, with no complications, and she could already see better, even with the perforated hard eye shield in place.

Her main restrictions for the next week were:  No bending over, no lifting anything heavier than a gallon of milk, and no rubbing her eye.  She had to wear her eye shield until her follow up visit tomorrow and  when sleeping for the next week.  I fixed dinner, with some guidance from Linda; we had a mixed greens salad, and I cooked onions and plant-based bratwurst.  It was all very tasty.

 

Friday 21 … Baby turkeys, a follow-up visit, and a ZOOM call

Linda’s follow-up appointment with Dr. V (ophthalmologist) was at 09:15, but before we left for the clinic, we spotted two wild turkeys in the back yard with 5 or 6 baby turkeys.  These were the first baby turkeys we have seen this season.

Knowing what traffic would be like, Linda scouted out yet another alternate route to the clinic and we left the house with plenty of time to spare.  After a quick check-in, she was called into the Kellogg Eye Center clinic to begin the follow-up visit.  The perforated eye shield was still in place so the technician removed it to check her vision.  Her right (distance vision) eye, which was operated on a month ago, tested 20-20.  Her left (near vision) eye, operated on yesterday, tested 20-40 uncovered, and 20-25 with the perforated shield in place.  Linda mentioned that Dr. V had implanted a near-vision lens, so the technician rechecked her vision at reading distance and said it was 20-20.  Linda has needed cataract surgery for a while just to have clearer vision, but she was also hoping that she would not need glasses after having both eyes done.  So far, it’s looking like she might get her wish, but she won’t know that until later in July when her eyes are more completely healed from the surgery.  She has worn glasses since she was 7-years-old, so “been there, done that” is how she feels about glasses.

We stopped at the local Panera after the appointment, which is very close to the clinic, for a light breakfast and some additional coffee.  We then headed to the Meijer’s store in Hartland, to pick up a few additional food items for me, as Linda will be in Ann Arbor for a week providing child supervision and entertainment for our two younger grand-daughters.  The Brighton Meijer’s is undergoing extensive renovation, with lots of large semi-trailers in the parking lot.  The Hartland location avoided that, and got us away from the major infrastructure working taking place along Grand River Avenue.

Linda set up a ZOOM call with Nancy (& Paul)for this evening at 5 PM EDT.  We each worked at our desks for part of the afternoon, had our ZOOM call (which we always enjoy), and then had dinner.

Tonight was also a “Strawberry Moon.” I had not heard of this before, so if I ever saw one, I wasn’t aware it.  It’s a rising of the full moon at its closest point of approach to the earth.  When visible (with clear weather), it is the largest it ever appears and is very red.  But it also coincides with the time of year when strawberries get harvested in the northern hemisphere.  Moonrise was late this evening, and we did have some clouds on the horizon, so we did not get to see the full effect of this phenomenon.  I am aware of, but not particularly bothered by, the fact that our opportunities to witness such things diminishes with each passing year.  It’s enough to know that these things happen with or without me as a witness.

 

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20240616-31_the_2nd_half_of_May

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NOTE:  This is a long post which includes nine (9) photo(s) with caption(s).  Photos by me (Bruce) taken with a Google Pixel 6 Pro.

 

THURSDAY 16 – FRIDAY 31 May 2024 — The 2nd Half of May

 

In addition to normal household and property chores, the second half of May saw more garage cleaning, barn/workshop organizing, and property maintaining.    It also saw a significant medical event (good), anniversaries, social time with neighbors, and an uptick in Boondockers Welcome (BdW) guests.  Highlights for various days follow:

 

Thursday 16 …

Linda sporting her eye guard on her right eye to protect it while it heals following cataract surgery.  The guard frame is flexible rubber and is taped onto her face.  The central shield is a harder plastic and is perforated, allowing for air to get to the eye and for some limited vision.  She was immediately able to see with that eye.  She’s holding an Edible Arrangements fruit bouquet sent by Nancy and Paul.

Linda had her first of two cataract surgeries today with Dr. Verkade at the Kellogg Eye Center (KEC) within the UofM Health (UofMH) Brighton Center for Specialty Care (BCSC).  First up was her right eye.  She has long been near-sighted in this eye and far-sighted in her left eye, so her brain is used to this difference.  In consultation with Dr. V, they agreed that she would get a near-vision replacement lens.  It took several hours between admission and discharge, but only about 10 – 15 minutes of that time was the actual surgery.  Other than some initial time in the waiting room, the rest of the time was taken up by pre-op and post-op procedures and personnel.

The facilities and staff at BCSC-KEI were first-rate, and the entire experience was calm and relatively stress-free.  Dr. V used eye drops rather than injections to do the final preparation for surgery.  Linda reported no pain at any time, and only minor discomfort during the procedure.  She had a perforated eye guard, but reported already being to see.  She was advised to “take it easy” for a week, but her only specific restrictions for the next seven (7) days were:  1) Not bending over, and 2) not lifting anything heavier than a gallon of water (~8.6 lbs.).  Both of those things can increase pressure in the eyes, which the doctor did not want.  She was also told of symptoms that would prompt a phone call to the clinic.  She had to keep the eye guard in place until her follow-up visit tomorrow, and wear it at night for the next week.  Obviously, she did not engage in any property maintenance for a while.  Her final follow-up visit would be approximately 30 days from today, after which she would have the same surgical procedure on her other/left (far-sighted) eye.

 

Friday 17 …

Linda had a (9:15 AM) follow-up visit with her ophthalmologist, Dr. V. at the KEI in the UofMH-BCSC.  Her eye was healing well and her vision tested well-enough for her to be able to read without glasses.  Needless to say, she was excited by this.  While the main reason for the surgery was clearer vision, Linda also hoped that it would result in better vision to the extent that she would not have to wear glasses, something that has been a part of her daily life since she was 7 years old.  Late in the afternoon Boondockers Welcome guest Connie G. arrived for a 4-night stay.

 

Saturday 18 …

Our daughter (Meghan) and her husband (Chris) celebrated their 11th wedding anniversary (2013).  Both of our children (now in their 40’s) made good life-partner matches which is a source of comfort and joy to us.

 

Sunday 19 and Monday 20 …

Nothing of note, apparently.

 

Tuesday 21 …

Today was a double-header:  Linda had brunch mid-morning with Diane and we had dinner with Kate at 6 PM.  We always dine with Kate in the Ypsilanti / Ann Arbor area.  Sometimes we meet her at the venue, but it’s become our standard practice to pick her up and return her home.  Her partner, Brian, sometimes joins us, but not this time.

 

Wednesday 22 …

Today was another property maintenance day for me.  Here are five (5) photos highlighting the work.

I just like this photo of our pink (&white) rhododendrons, framed buy nice conical evergreen tree and a stand of tall grass at the SW corner of the garage.  The grass is blocking a view of our Kohler whole-house generator, and the rhododendrons conceal the exterior compressor/condenser unit for the air-conditioning portion of our library HVAC system.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have cut our honeysuckle bush, on the right in front of the window by the chimney, down to a reasonable size.  It was over six (6) feet tall and almost as wide, and completely blocked our view from this window, which is in our living room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The evergreen bushes at the east end of our main deck on the rear of the house eventually grow up above the cap-rail and block our view in the direction.  Every few years I cut them back down to the level of the cap-rail, and this was one of those years.  I also got in behind them and cut them back away from the deck railing, and removed the lowest branches to open up the space below them and make it easy in the future to clean out the bed and the area under the deck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another view of the evergreens around the east end of our main house deck.  Also visible is a 4” corrugated drain line.  Not visible is the 10-foot section of 1-1/4” plastic pipe the I attached to the discharge pipe for our sump pump and then slid the corrugated drain line over the end far enough to stay put during a discharge cycle.  For most of the time we have lived in this house, the sump pump discharge has flowed through a 4” corrugated drain line underground down into the valley and along the  (valley floor all the way to the march.  This worked well for many years, but more recently we developed numerous puddles along the valley floor that never dried up, even after a period of no rain.  (The gutters on the house also flow through underground drain lines to and along the valley floor.)  It finally dawned on me that there was probably a problem with the sump drainage, and that re-routing it out into the yard, away from the valley, might result in the valley drying out.  At that is exactly what happened.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The east end of our main deck, showing the evergreens trimmed down to the cap-rail height.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday 23 …

Linda had her 1-week follow-up phone visit at 4 PM with Dr. V in the KEI at UofMH BCSC.  Her eye continued to heal well and her brain was adjusting to the new lens.

We have a variety of plants, bushes, and trees in front of the east façade of the front of the house.  They were all there when we bought the house, and probably had been for quite a while.  They were planted too close to the wall, and probably too close together, and had now reached a size where it was difficult to clean around their bases and impossible to get behind them.  I worked my way along behind them, removing any dead branches, as well as some live ones, to create better access.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday 24 …

BdW guest PhotoGuy1057 arrived for a 5-night stay.  He would be exhibiting/selling photographs at the juried arts fair being held at Kensington Metropark for the next few days.

 

Saturday 25 …

Our daughter and son-in-law recently closed on a house in a lakeside community—about half way between their current house—and ours and invited us over to see it.  She found that it was already wired for a portable emergency/backup generator and wanted me to look at the setup.  Here’s a photo of what is there:

The lake house emergency/backup connection panel.  I had never seen one like this.  I still need to research this in more detail, but I did quickly find references to this exact GenTran manual transfer switch panel in a Google search.

The connection point for the portable generator is lower right in the photo.  It is clearly a 4-pin twist-lock connector, so a 240/120 VAC single phase w/ ground setup (L1-L2-N-Gnd).  As such, it can power both 120VAC loads (L1-N-G and L2-N-) and 240VAC loads (L1-L2-G).  Because a 120VAC circuit requires a neutral (N) wire, it appears that each single switch also requires a neutral wire in order to return power to the generator, whereas a 240VAC load does not (but both hot wires have to routed through the GenTran box).

The labeling of the two power (Watt) meters at the lower left indicates that the three switches on the left (A, B, & C) are on one hot leg (say L1) and the three switches on the right (C, D, & E) are on the other hot leg (say L2).  These six (6) switches are, in fact, individual transfer switches.  With the switches in the DOWN position, as shown, incoming utility power is simply fed through the switch and back to the main panel and then on to the load.  Circuit protection is provided by the circuit breaker in the main panel which feeds the power to the GenTran.  With a switch in the UP position, however, the return wire to the main panel and load is connected to the portable generator.  As the circuit breaker in the main panel is no longer in the circuit, a separate push-to-reset “pop-out” circuit breaker is located above each switch and takes over the circuit protection function.  These circuit breakers are only active when the load is being powered by the portable generator.  (Obviously, sic, the wire and circuit breaker sizes have to be appropriate for the current rating of the load.)  Note also that the two middle switches (C & D) are tied together, so they are always in the same position.  This means they are powering a 240VAC load, probably the well-pump.  (There is a chart showing what each switch/breaker powers, but I did not photograph it.)  Note that the portable generator connector is NEVER connected to the utility power coming into the main panel.

What I found fascinating about this device is that each load has to be individually switched to the generator, which also means it is possible to provide power to any one or more (or all) of them from the generator even with the house still running on utility power.  Not that I think that would ever be a good idea, but the fundamental design of this box makes that possible.  If it was desired to do this, at a minimum the load would have to be OFF before switching it to the generator.

 

Sunday 26 …

We attended the Kensington Metropark art fair today, or perhaps it was tomorrow, but I did not make a note of which day it was.

 

Monday 27 … Memorial Day

We did not do anything special today.  It is not our family tradition to get-together on holidays such as this, or the 4th of July, or Labor Day.  We do gather on Thanksgiving, Christmas and Christmas Eve, but not on New Year’s Eve,  and the only “Hallmark Holidays” we celebrate are Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.

 

Tuesday 28 …

I do not have any notes about what we might have done today, but based on this photo, we apparently had some interesting weather.

I like the clouds and the lighting in this photo of the valley in our backyard as seen from our main deck.  Tuesday was also grass-mowing day, so the lawn looked it’s best.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday 29 …

Without much fanfare, we celebrated our 53rd wedding anniversary (1971) with dinner out at Ciao Amici’s in downtown Brighton.  This was our first visit to this local Italian restaurant.  We have generally heard good things about the place.  We knew that it was not particularly vegan-friendly, but decide to go anyway.  Linda selected something that was reasonably vegan-friendly, while I went a bit off-diet (vegetarian instead of vegan), but we both had meals that we rated as very good in a nice setting.  We dated for four (4) years before we got married, and were acquainted for three (3) years before that.  That means we have known each other for about 60 of our slightly more than 70 trips around the sun.

 

Thursday 30 …

Nothing of note today.

 

Friday 31 …

Linda met Diane at 9:30 AM for their weekly walk.  Boondockers Welcome (BdW) guest Wade S. arrived around 1 PM.  As always, I (Bruce) met him in the street and directed him into our guest site.  Linda prepared some food items for a gathering later in the day.  Just before 18:00, we walked down to Gary and Marta’s house for the get-together with our neighborhood friends (Gary & Marta, Mike & Gail, Rose & Jerry).  We always enjoy the company of these people.  We would welcome getting together more often but, even in retirement, we all continue to have busy lives.

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NOTE:  There are two (2) photos with captions in this post.  Photos taken by me (Bruce) with a Google Pixel 6 Pro.

 

MONDAY 22 – TUESDAY 30 April 2024 — The end of April

 

During the 4th week of April, we might have started working on pruning trees and bushes, and pulling weeds, but we tend not to record these kinds of work days on our calendar, and I did not capture that information in real time.  As of Wednesday, June 5, however, I think the burn pile had been lit at least twice, and maybe three times.  We are trying to not accumulate numerous/large piles of stuff for the burn pile, like we have in the past.  We do wait, however, until we have enough to justify lighting it, a bit more to add to, and have decided to work in the yard and create even more material to add to it.  So far, it seems to be working out for us fairly well.  Some highlights of specific days of the week were as follows:

 

Monday 22 …

Nothing of note, apparently.

 

Tuesday 23 …

I had a note on the calendar to call the University of Michigan Health (UofMH) Travel Clinic so see about getting additional vaccinations in advance of some of our planned international travel.  I was told that the clinic currently only services faculty, staff, and students and was referred to a private clinic in town.  I might have called that clinic as well, but I don’t recall specifically.  HFHS Columbus Center also has a travel clinic, so I called them.  Linda still has here primary care physician there, but I do not.  No matter, as it turned out, they will still see me.  We will need to send them our itineraries in advance of an appointment, which we have deferred until later in the summer.

 

The new cat tree, fully assembled and positioned in the library near the doorwall to the living room.  Only time will tell if Cabela deems it interesting enough to be worthy of her use.

 

Wednesday 24 …

Linda had a mid-morning appointment with her ENT, and we both had early afternoon appointments for eye examinations with an optometrist in the Kellogg Eye Institute at the UofMH Brighton Center for Specialty Care.  I got a new prescription for glasses, but Linda got a referral to an ophthalmologist at the Institute for possible cataract surgery.  We met our friend, Kate, at 17:30 for dinner.  We dined somewhere in the Ypsilanti / Ann Arbor area, but I did not record where we went.

 

Thursday 25 …

Linda met Diane at Kensington Metropark for their weekly walk.  Boondockers Welcome guest Woosch32 arrived for a 1-night stay.

 

Friday 26 …

Sometime earlier in the week I had scheduled a used furniture pickup with the local Habitat for Humanity ReStore for 9 AM this morning.  ABIR, they showed up right on time, and shortly thereafter all of the living room furniture that had been in our Rec Room was out of the garage and on its way to the ReStore.  This was the second batch of this furniture we have donated.  The first batch found a new home (or homes) very quickly (so we were told) so we hoped this batch would as well.

 

Saturday 27 …

I took a photo of the boxes for the pigment ink refills (that I needed to order) for our Epson EcoTank 16650 multi-function wide-format inkjet printer.  The photo was not worth displaying, but apparently I ordered the refills today.  This printer uses Epson’s 542 series pigment inks (CMYB) which come in reasonably large volume bottles; 70 ml for C, Y, and M, and 120 ml for B.  The special bottles are keyed to match the refill ports on the printer’s built-in ink tanks, making it essentially impossible to put the wrong in a tank.  It’s a very economical way to buy ink (thus the ecoTank branding), and the system is very easy and clean to use.

 

Sunday 28 …

Nothing of note, again.

 

Monday 29 …

After an exchange of e-mails over the last month or so, I was able to set a date to get together with Ken Schramm, founder of Schramm’s Meadery.  Ken and I both worked at Wayne RESA at the same time, and became friends as well as colleagues.  Linda and I, with Paul and Nancy, had been to his retail shop and tasting room in Ferndale, Michigan just before the CoVID-19 pandemic, but he wasn’t there that day, and they ultimately had to close the storefront due to the loss of retail business.  The meadery, however, survived the economic difficulties of the time.  It was located just around the corner, in a housing area just off the main commercial street.  I met Ken there and got a personal tour of the operation before we went to a local Thai restaurant for lunch and a prolonged, and much overdue, conversation.

Back at the meadery, I bought bottle several bottles of mead, including a “Patty Fay.”  Patrica Faye was Ken’s mother’s name, but Patricia is also my sister’s name, her last name is still “Fay,” and she has always gone by “Patty.”  She does not drink alcohol, however (to the best of my knowledge), so the bottle is for us, in her honor.  Here’s to you, Sis.

 

Tuesday 30 …

A picture of the new Hisense wine refrigerator (taken in early July 2024)..  I pulled the wine racks out, which is more obvious in the reflection in the door window.  The fabric artwork on the wall (partial view) is a hooked rug I made in the late 1970’s.  The pattern was inspired by a pseudo-colored X-ray radio telescope image of the Milky Way galaxy.  The various colors indicate portions of the galaxy that are moving towards our position or away from it, and how fast.  The complete piece is about 4’ x 6’ in size.

Sometime in the past few days I ordered a new Hisense wine refrigerator from the local Lowe’s store.  It was delivered today mid-afternoon.  They had them in stock at the store, but with delivery and take-away service, it was easier to do it this way.  In advance of its arrival, I moved the dining room table to make room, and emptied the old wine fridge, putting the bottles out of the way.

The new wine fridge looked good, although I did have to figure out how to attach handle.  I had to partially remove the door gasket to get the holes in the door frame for the handle bolts.  One of the things I really liked about this unit at the store was that the bottle racks each slide out, making it much more convenient to access the bottles.

 

 

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20240408-14_Spring-is-finally-here-2

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NOTE:  This post is mostly narrative, but there are two (2) photos with captions.  Photos were taken by me (Bruce) with a Google Pixel 6 Pro.

 

MONDAY 08 – SUNDAY 14 April 2024 — The second week of April

 

Monday 08 … A solar eclipse, oh my!

  • I called Lakeside Service Company to set up an appointment for annual service on the air-conditioner portion of the HVAC unit for our library. The temperature has to be above 45 deg. F for them to test the system, so I made an afternoon appointment for the first week of May.
  • We observed the solar eclipse from home. It was not total at our location, so not total darkness and no corona or stars, but it was still interesting to see.  We thought about driving south, perhaps as far as Bowling Green, Ohio but decided against it.  Probably for the best as it turned out, as there were reports of people taking many, many hours to get home from there.  We tried to photograph it with our phones using a neutral density filter, but were not really equipped for this and the photos did not turn out very well.

 

Our new Rec/TV room furniture, minus the cardboard and Styrofoam packaging.  (Photo from 05 April.)

 

Another view of the Rec/TV room furniture and its relationship to the location of the TV/monitor and associated equipment.  (Photo from 05 April.)

 

Tuesday 09 … I took care of a couple of errands and a major task (with Linda’s help).

  • As I headed out to take care of the errands, I performed my first turtle rescue of the season. I spotted a small turtle on our street just east of our house.  It was crossing the road from the small swampy area on the south side to the pond on the north side.  I picked it up and placed in on the north side, well away from the edge of the road.  I know that one has to exercise great care when doing this on any road, especially with heavier and/or faster traffic, but I am always dismayed by the utter disregard that most drivers seem have for these small, vulnerable creatures, who are not evolved to deal with motor vehicles and roadways.
  • My first errand was a visit to our local Tractor Supply Company store. I was looking for a tow behind lawn rake with a pin-hitch that would work with our lawn tractor/mower.  They had the one I wanted online, and I had seen one in the local store many months ago, so I was hoping they still had one in the store.  They did not, so I ordered one for delivery to our house.  Delivery was by freight truck, and would take about two weeks to get here.  Oh well; there was rain in the forecast for the later part of this week, so I would be lucky if the property is even dry enough to use it when it arrives.
  • Errand number two was a visit to our local Rural King store for some work clothes. I put on few pounds during 2023 and early 2024, mostly due to dining on cruise ships, and I needed some work trousers with a slightly larger waist size.  I ended up buying two pairs of bib overalls; built-in suspenders and no belt.  Perfect!
  • Our major task was to disassemble and clean (wash) all of the bird feeders. I handled the disassembly and brushing out (both done outdoors) and Linda handled the cleaning (inside).  When they were dry, I reassembled them and then filled them with the appropriate feed.  We did not fill the hummingbird feeder, as Linda’s research indicated that they had only just made it to southern Ohio.  We decided that the Oriole feeder needed to be replaced so Linda found one on Amazon and ordered it, along with some kitty litter.  Yup, we decided to set up a litter tray for Cabela and see how that goes.
  • Sometime during the day, I received our first Boondockers Welcome (BdW) stay request for the 2024 season; one-night on Friday 26 April. Our site is typically “blocked out” on our hosting calendar from the beginning of fall until the end of winter, plus any time we are traveling, but the exact dates vary each year.  We also block it out if we have projects with workers on site, or have social gatherings.  This year, we kept our guest site blocked out through April 15.

 

Wednesday 10 … early release, vision, streaming.

  • We received notifications that our vision examinations, set for tomorrow, needed to be rescheduled. Linda called the clinic and got us back-to-back appointments with an optometrist the last full week of the month.
  • Today was an “early release” day for the Ann Arbor Public Schools, so Linda was on-tap to drive down and retrieve the grand-daughters from their respective buildings. Because she handles child care when needed, she sees the girls more often than I do, so I decided to go along and get some grand-daughter time.
  • After dinner we were discussing what to watch on TV/streaming and decided to subscribe to Netflix. We watched Netflix a lot during the CoVID-19 pandemic, and have some favorite programs that are only available there.  Our profile was part of a friends’ account, however, and Netflix has since clamped down on that arrangement, so we needed our own account.  We set up two-factor authentication (2-FA) for the account, something we are gradually doing with most of our online accounts, along with setting up Passkeys to use in place of usernames and passwords.

 

Thursday 11 … rain, Rx’s, deliveries, and another BdW stay request.

  • Rain started overnight and continued through the day and evening, so we did not get any outside work done today.
  • My new blood pressure medication prescription arrived, but it was not exactly what I expected. My new doctor told me during my visit last week that he was raising my dosage from 10 mg per day to 20 mg per day.  I watched him type in the new prescription, but I could not see what he was typing.  When I looked at the bottle, it was for a 20 mg tablet, but the instructions said to “take 1/2 pill daily.”  Oh oh.  I checked and, sure enough, the bottle only contained 45 pills and could not be refilled for 90 days.  In other words, I had enough medication to take 10 mg per day (my original dosage) for 90 days, but only enough to take 20 mg per day for 45 days.  This was not what I expected and not what I needed based on what the doctor told me to my face.  I called the number for our mail-order pharmacy (OptumRx) to verify that they had filled the prescription as submitted.  They had, and there was nothing they could do other than suggest I contact my doctor.  Since this was not an emergency, I messaged him about the situation  via UofMH’s version of the EPIC portal.  I had still not received a reply to my earlier message from late last week, and I did not expect one right away to this new one, but it would be an understatement to say that I was a bit miffed at this point about the situation, and the lack of a timely response.  I decided to wait until next week to follow up with a phone call.
  • We had an Amazon delivery of coffee pods, Red Lentils, and other such things. Amazon Prime trucks seem to stop at our house a lot.
  • Sometime during the day, I received our second Boondockers Welcome request for the 2024 season. This one was for one-night on April 16, the first day for which a stay request could be requested.

 

Friday 12 … More rain, and a walk (but not in the rain).

  • The rain continued overnight and into today, so Linda met Diane at the mall to get their steps in. She stopped at the grocery store on the way home to re-provision fresh fruits and vegetables.  Or vegan (whole-food plant-based) diet require more frequent visits to the store for fresh items.
  • I hung out at the house and worked on our blog. An Amazon delivery showed up with our kitty litter and new Oriole feeder.  Amazon Prime trucks are on our street almost every day, sometimes more than once, and we do not have that many houses in our little subdivision.

 

Saturday 13 … Nothing of note.

  • There was nothing of note on our calendar for today. I’m sure we did something, probably many somethings, but whatever we did is lost to the sands of time.

 

Sunday 14 … A partial family get-together.

  • Our son and his family were here for brunch/visit, and to pick up a printout of their 2023 tax returns.

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20240401-07_Spring-is-finally-here

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NOTE:  There are no photos for this post, but it is quite long.

 

MONDAY 01 – SUNDAY 07 April 2024 — Transitioning into Spring

 

Although the first day of Spring in 2024 was officially March 19th, here in SE lower Michigan, April is the month when winter really transitions into spring.  During the first full week of April, we were still having overnight low temperatures below freezing along with episodes of light snow.  But we also heard the “spring peepers” (frogs) start their evening mating chorus.  Indeed, spring is heralded as much by sights, sounds, and smells as it is by hours of sunlight and seasonal weather.

Notable among the sounds, along with the spring peepers, was the cacophony of gaggles of Canada Geese, the unmistakable calls of the Sandhill Crane, other bird song, and the loud drumming of distant woodpeckers, the latter suggesting that Pileated Woodpeckers were in the area.  Robins had already appeared in late March.  Plants started erupting from the ground, trees/bushes started to flower, and the grass started to grow, all sure signs of spring.  (Our property, however, was still too wet to mow, which is one of the challenges of spring in this part of Michigan.)

While we waited for warmer/drier weather, so we could work outside comfortably, and took care of several important tasks during the first week of the month.  Although a bit mundane, we broke down a large amount of corrugated cardboard packaging and recycled it; all of it accumulated from various things we have purchased over the last many months.

We have now lived “in the country” for over a decade, some 30 miles farther out from the downtown hub of the Detroit metropolitan area than our previous house.  During that time, we have maintained core medical, dental, optical, and veterinary services with the providers we have used for a long time; 48 years in the case of the Henry Ford Health System (HFHS) and almost as long for the others.  Those providers are now anywhere from 30 to 50 miles from our house, and getting to those locations has become ever more challenging for us because of traffic, road construction, and weather.  We have talked about finding closer, more convenient, providers for a while now but, absent a compelling reason to change, it’s always been easier to stick with what we have.  The travel distance/time/difficulty has finally become compelling.  The same is true of lawyers, financial advisors, car mechanics, house and property service providers, etc., of course  We purchased our current vehicles locally and have them serviced by those dealerships, about 4 miles from our house and property maintenance providers come to us.  We need to find an attorney in our area who specializes in estates, wills, trusts, and elder law, but have not gotten around to it yet.  Although not local, we are very satisfied with our financial advisors.  We mostly interact with them via e-mail, phone, and ZOOM calls, but make in-person appointments if we are going to be in the St. Louis, Missouri area.

Top of the list was my decision to change my (Bruce’s) primary care provider.  While I wanted a more convenient location I also wanted a more specialized focus.  I turned 72 this year, and although my health is generally good and I feel fine (most of the time), I am also realistic about being in my 8th decade and part way into my 73rd trip around the sun.  It seemed an appropriate time to move my care to a clinic with a specialized focus on the health issues of the elderly.  (I would have liked a setting that was also focused on men’s health and plant-based nutrition, but that proved to be a bridge to far.)

Yes, both of us are now considered “elderly.”  Indeed, we entered that category (broadly speaking) when we turned 65.  I might not be “old” yet (in my mind), but I plan to be someday, and want to be set up in advance with appropriate medical care.  After checking what was available from the HFHS and the University of Michigan Health System (UofMH), I decided to move to the Geriatric clinic at UofMH in Ann Arbor.  As a bonus, UofMH also has clinics for some specialty services in Brighton, the city closest to our home.

Early in the first week of April, I had my first appointment with my new doctor (Dr. N), and it was very interesting.  He is Nigerian, and did his medical training in London, England.  Besides getting acquainted, checking the usual things, ordering comprehensive blood tests, and modifying my blood pressure medication dosage, he examined strength, range of motion, and gait (motion and balance), this being a specific interest of his.

While I was there, the med-tech (MT-V) removed impacted/hardened wax from my left ear using a 50/50 solution of diluted hydrogen peroxide and warm water.  I had already had a “new patient” intake ZOOM call with a social worker (SW-S) the week before, but had a second, in-person, meeting with a social worker (SW-A) as the first part of my new patient office visit.  SW-A confirmed some of the things I had self-reported or told SW-S, but her main purpose in seeing me was to administer the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA).  (She did not identify it as such at the time, but Linda found it online afterwards and I confirmed that it was the exact set of questions and tasks administered to me.)  This is one of those assessments where you are not supposed to practice in advance, which might distort the results.  That would not be in my best interest anyway; what I want from such an assessment is an accurate evaluation of cognitive status.

Starting at age 65, a Medicare Annual Wellness Visit is supposed to include a cognitive assessment, but this is the first time I have had such an evaluation, and Linda has never had one.  I was slightly apprehensive at first—no one wants to have problems with a cognitive evaluation—but it was interesting and I apparently did okay.  More to the point, however, is that I really appreciated being evaluated to establish a baseline with my new doctor, and look forward to repeating this from time-to-time.  Indeed, the fact that the UofMH-Geriatric center includes social workers as integral team members is a big deal and underscored that I had made a good choice.  Mental decline is often a major health issue as people live through their 70’s, 80’s, and into their 90’s, and this decline can impact their physical, emotional, and social health as well.  Early detection means earlier treatment, including changes in lifestyle and living arrangements, with the possibility of better outcomes.

As long as we were dealing with medical arrangements, we checked out the UofM Kellogg Eye Institute (UM-KEI), a world-class center for eye health, that came highly recommended by a neighbor of ours who is a nurse.  The main Institute is in Ann Arbor, as is the case for all things UofM Medicine, but they have a satellite clinic in the UofMH specialty clinic closest to our house.  The specialty care facility is less than an eight-mile drive with no highways.  We made appointments for both of us to have routine vision/eye examinations in the second week of April and get new prescriptions for glasses.  Linda definitely needs new spectacles, and I probably do too.  The only downside to moving our eye care here is that they do not accept our EyeMed vision insurance.  We can submit bills for services to the insurance plan and get some reimbursement, but we will likely get our glasses at one of the local optical shops that accepts our insurance.  It’s just easier that way, and I think we get slightly better insurance coverage as well.

Linda has her ENT/audiology services through the Michigan Ear Institute, which is affiliated with Ascension/Providence, located in the northwest suburban part of the Detroit metropolitan area.  Although not as convenient, she really likes her doctor and audiologist, who did her Cochlear implant surgery and maintains her Cochlear and ReSound hearing aids, respectively.  I couldn’t remember the last time I had my hearing tested and thought it was probably time to do that.  UofMH also has an audiology clinic in the nearby specialty center, so I called to make an appointment.  Unlike the vision/eye exam, however, audiology requires a referral.  I messaged my new doctor and asked for one, but did not have a reply by the end of the week.

In terms of medical providers, we are still considering what to do about dentistry.  Our dentist’s office is 50 miles from our house and getting there takes over an hour on some combination of highways and surface streets.  It’s road construction season in Michigan.  This year is a dozy, and the next year or so will be just as bad.  All of the reasonable routes into Metro Detroit have major construction projects in process, and are usually chocked with traffic, so getting there is very inconvenient and frustrating.  But we have been treated by this clinic for almost 50 years; initially by our current dentist’s father, and now the son, who is the 3rd generation to have the practice.  It’s a good clinic in every way, and it’s hard to walk away from that, but it’s just not convenient for us anymore.  Unless we have some dental issue, we won’t have to go there again until early September for our bi-annual cleanings, so we have time to figure out what to do.  My guess is we will keep the September appointments and deal with changes next year.

Along the same lines, we have used the same veterinary clinic, near our previous home, for over 40 years.  That location is now 35 miles from where we live, with the same attendant road construction projects and traffic issues.  When we lost our last cat (Juniper) we decided we would not get another pet, which would have made the issue moot.  Cabela (the cat) had different ideas, however, and has effectively adopted us.  She originally belonged to the neighbors across the street before they moved and left her behind.  We know that she had two litters of kittens and was then spayed, and we know what veterinary clinic in our area was used for these services.  We will eventually need to get her examined and inoculated, and will probably use the same local clinic since they (should) have that history in the files.

In terms of non-medical things, we took a large load of corrugated cardboard and Styrofoam to our local recycling center.  It always feels good to get this stuff out of the house without throwing it in the trash.

Other tasks during the first week of the month included:

  • Taking the cover off of the outdoor furniture set and cleaning it (the cover). I also took all of the bird feeders down from their hangars in preparation for cleaning them and putting them back in service.  We have always suspected that the many birds who come to our yard are return visitors if they have survived the winter and the journey back.  One of the challenges this year will be where to put bird feed for the Mourning Doves.  They are ground feeders, which poses a dilemma now that Cabela has claimed our house and yard as her own.  She is a very skilled and determined huntress.
  • Getting the lawn tractor/mower ready to use. We have a lawn tractor (riding lawn mower), so one of my tasks over the first week of the month was putting it back in operational condition.  This specifically involved re-installing the battery.  The tractor lives in the shed during the winter, but the shed does not have electricity (yet).  As such, I bring the battery into the garage, which is heated and stays above freezing, and where I can attach it to a maintenance charger.
  • Linda wrapped up several tax returns and mailed them to the family members and friends who are out-of-state so they could sign them and mail them to the IRS. For family and friends in Michigan, she files most of them electronically, or delivers them in person.
  • Linda also continued to work on period and year-end accounting tasks for the bakery, where she retired as the controller a little over a decade ago. Like all accounting and tax-related work, January through April tend to be the busiest time of the year, but the period accounting work is steady and evenly distributed over the calendar year.  She also works on special projects, as needed.  Those are harder to plan for, but she works closely with the controller of the bakery (who was hired when Linda retired) and lets him know when we will be traveling.  She can do much of the period accounting work remotely, but year-end work is more difficult, and special projects can be a challenge depending on what they are.

Our lawn maintenance guy (Keith) texted me last month to let me know that he was ready to start mowing for the season whenever we were, but the yard soil is still very wet, and we are at least a few weeks away from having him start mowing.  Indeed, we had snow again late in the week; not much, but it was still moisture that ended up in the ground.  The snow seems to be alternating with rain, but no surprise there.  April is typically our rainiest month, but we can have ice storms as late as early May, and we have had years where Keith could not mow the west part of the property until sometime in June.  (That was before Phil installed a French drain in that part of the property, so Keith can now usually get started sometime in May.)

We have used Keith for all but our first year in this house.  He does a great job and does not ask for a contract or pre-paid amount for the season; we just pay him each time he mows.  He doesn’t mind if we occasionally have him skip a week, and will adjust his schedule and/or make an extra visit, if we ask and he is able to do so.  We don’t do that unless we have to, and skipping weeks usually corresponds to either very wet conditions, making the lawn un-mowable, or conditions when the grass is not growing very quickly, such as an extended summer dry spell or late in the season as fall gives way to winter.  The only reason we would ask for an extra mowing is if we had an important weekend gathering, wanted the grass cut on Friday so it looked nice, and I did not have time to do it myself.  Our usual day is Tuesday.

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20231217-23_The-run-up-to-Xmas

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Note:  This post has three (3) photos, all taken by me (Bruce) taken with a Google Pixel 6 Pro.

 

SUNDAY 17 to SATURDAY 23 December 2023 — Getting ready for the holidays

Things were busy for us, as they are for many people, during the seven days leading up to Christmas Eve and the end-of-year holidays.  Our middle grand-daughter, Madeline, turned 11 years old this week, and we attended a birthday gathering for her on the 17th at her family’s house in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  She is almost as tall as Linda, and is so grown up in many ways.  We also built a gingerbread house early in this week.  It was a kit that our friend, Kate, gave us late last week when we met her for dinner.  Here are three photos of it from the 18th:

 

Gingerbread house, left oblique view.

 

Gingerbread house, front view.

 

Gingerbread house, right oblique view

 

From our calendar for this time period, it appears that Linda made a second trip to the bakery and had an appointment with her audiologist, who takes care of her Cochlear Implant and associated devices.

On the 19th, we had the core group of our neighborhood “gang” over for some pre-holiday festivities.  We really do enjoy the company of these people.  Although we are all retired, we all seem to have active, busy lives.  As a result, we don’t get to spend as much time with them as we would like.

Linda’s older/only sister, Sr. Marilyn, arrived on the 21st, having taken two days to drive here from St. Louis.  She has been a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet in St. Louis, Missouri all of her adult life, but has spent many Christmas holidays with us over those years.  Linda and I are both part of relatively small families.  I have a sister and Linda has three siblings, and none of our siblings live in Michigan, or even close by.  We appreciate and value that our children, and our two youngest grand-daughters, have had a chance to get to know Marilyn.

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2016/04/01-05 (F-T) J-P-Shuffle CCAFS Farewell Celebration

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2016/04/01 (F) The J. P. Shuffle

Linda was up before me and got to see one of the cruise ships come in at 6:20 AM.  She said it was all lit up and quite a sight.  I got out of bed at 8:20 AM and made coffee.  Linda prepared toast and jam for breakfast and gave each of us half of an orange.

I finished up my post for yesterday, worked on this one, and then noticed that an iOS 9.3.1 update was available for the Apple iOS 9.3 update that I installed Wednesday evening and Linda installed last night.  It was only 18 MB but still took a long time to download and install.

Today was April Fool’s Day and time for us to once again do “the Jetty Park shuffle.”  I have checked at least once, and often twice, each day to see if an appropriate full hookup site had become available through cancellation for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, but it had not.  Around 10 AM I walked to the office to check one last time.  Scott Ward was the JP staff person on duty and was very helpful but a site was just not available.  He was able, however, to put us on site #357 for Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday night’s.  I shortened our stay on site #3 to two nights and paid the balance for the one night.

Site #3 is a water only site, no electricity and no sewer connection, and the rules say that NO pets are allowed in that section, which is right along the channel and outside the regular fenced campground.  The staff was aware, however, that we have two cats onboard and let us have the site anyway.  We do not ever want them to escape, but especially here.

Our generator can produce more power than we can get from a “50 Amp” RV electrical connection, so not having electricity is not really a problem.  The only real downsides, other than having to move, are that we can feel, hear, and sometimes smell the generator.  We also had a problem with a circuit breaker for its cooling fan last winter.  I made a temporary fix to it but have never fixed it permanently.  We also do not like to leave the genset running when we are away from the coach, such as will be the case on Saturday morning.

I selected/processed three photos of the manatees we saw on Tuesday at Merritt Island National Wildlife a Refuge and e-mailed them to Pat and Vickie.  I then replied to a couple of e-mails from Gary at Bus Conversion Magazine.  By this time it was 11 AM so we prepared the bus, inside and out, to be moved.  With all of the Windows and roof vents closed it warmed up quickly inside even with a lot of the coach in the shade.  When I turned the ignition key the engine turned over but would not catch and my heart just sank.

I really like this bus, but I have grown weary of the uncertainty of whether things will work when needed.  I turned the ignition key off and rechecked the transmission selector and parking brake settings.  I also switched the suspension out of Level Low to drive mode although that should not have mattered.  With the ignition key turned to the ‘ON’ position the 12 V chassis battery seemed a little low and a red light flashed a few times on the transmission selector, so I turned the key off, went to the outside battery disconnect switches, and turned both the 12V and 24V disconnects off and then back on.

Back in the driver’s seat I tried again.  Normally the engine only turns over a few times before it fires.  This time I let it turn for four or five seconds and it finally started.  If I had any sense I would have driven it to the W. W. Williams Detroit Diesel service center in Orlando, but I moved it to site #3 at J. P. instead.

Our coach in Site #3 at Jetty Park & Campground, Cape Canaveral, FL. This is the “water only” camping by the shipping channel. All of these rigs are parked facing north towards the channel. It’s a great spot to watch the ships come and go.

To get from site #358 to site #3 I had to exit the fenced campground and drive around the east end of the park past the beach parking, concession building, and playground and then west along the edge of the shipping channel and around to the back row of the water only sites, all of which face the shipping channel.  As such it was a long drive to get to a site we could see from the one we just vacated.

We left the car at site #358 temporarily and Linda rode along in the bus.  I made the whole trip in 1st gear, to keep the RPMs up, and turned on the OTR A-C, both to cool the interior of the coach and to put more load on the engine and help get it up temperature.  I did not pull the tag axle up as we had walked the park/campground enough to know that I did not need to make any really tight turns.  When I was mostly into position on site #3 Linda got out and spotted the final position of the rear end.  These channel-side sites slope down towards the channel (facing north) and the back row sites get steeper the farther off the back off the site you go.  I wanted to pull forward just enough to get our tow bar clear of the access road behind the site and Linda accomplished that with an inch or two to spare.

I left the engine running and switched it to high idle to run the OTR air-conditioning.  While Linda went back to get our car I got out the step stool and awning pole and deployed all four awnings.  I then started the Genset to make sure it was going to run and produce electricity.  I also thought we might run the residential air-conditioners.  When Linda returned with our car she wanted to open up the coach so I shut off the OTR bus A-C, dropped the engine idle to low, and let it idle for a couple of minutes before shutting off the engine.  I left the genset on for the time being.

Both of our systems had been reacting to what we had eaten the last few days so we passed on lunch and just hung around our new site which was, in fact, very pleasant with a view of the water in the channel and the high ground of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on the opposite bank.

Our driver side neighbors stopped to chat on their way to the beach and let us know that they had just spotted dolphins in the channel.  I walked over and caught a glimpse of several arching repeatedly out of the water but by the time Linda got there they had submerged and not resurfaced.  Given where we are parked we should have a good chance to see dolphins and view cruise ships coming and going from the Port.

Linda made a cold garbanzo bean salad for dinner last night.  After dinner I was trying to get us connected to the park Wi-Fi system but could not maintain the connection or get us logged in.  I tried using our Verizon Mi-Fi but could not get the WiFi Ranger to work with it.  I tried to reconfigure the Amped|Wireless router to work directly with the Mi-Fi but there were problems with that as well.  At one point my ASUS notebook computer decided that it could not detect any Wi-Fi networks even thought it had two of them sitting within a couple feet of it.  I got disgusted with the whole situation, shut everything off, and we went for a walk.

Linda waves to the Disney “Magic” cruise ship as it heads out to sea from Port Canaveral, FL. There is always a crowd along the channel to wave the cruise ships in and out.

We walked over to Pat and Vickie’s coach and Vickie joined us.  We headed to the beach where we enjoyed a very brisk breeze until lightning to the southwest signaled that it was time to return to the safety of our rigs or one of the park buildings.  We headed back past the playground area towards our coach and Vickie split off for the gate in the campground fence that provided the most direct access to her site.

Back at our site we closed up the coach against the humidity and coming storm.  I then started the auxiliary powerplant (genset) and turned on the air conditioners.  Not long after that it started to rain, lightly at first, but it eventually became very heavy for a while before finally moving offshore.

With the A-C’s running I was reminded that I need to change some of the AC circuits in the main panel.  The front and middle air-conditioners are on different legs of the AC power system, front on L1 and middle on L2.  That makes sense as we would normally want to run both of them at the same time to cool the front half of the bus (living, cooking, office space) when we are awake and using the bus.  The 3rd/bedroom A-C has to go on one of the two legs and either one could create load balancing issues.  Unfortunately, the middle A-C unit is not currently producing any cooling.

To make matters worse, the charger section of our Magnum 4024 inverter/charger also draws its power from L1.  Again, it had to go somewhere, but the current configuration tends to put too much load on L1 and not enough on L2.  Even though the genset is oversized for our electrical needs an imbalance between L1 and L2 is still a problem because it is set up as a 240 VAC unit with a 240 VAC voltage regulator.  Although it has an active neutral, allowing it to supply 120 VAC to both L1 and L2 (180 degrees out of phase) the regulator is only concerned with maintaining the 240 VAC between the two legs, not the 120 VAC between each leg to neutral.

If the loads on the two legs are not reasonably balanced, the 240 VAC will “drift” off center from neutral with the voltage on the high load leg dropping and the voltage on the low load leg rising.  That, in turn, can/does cause havoc with some of the devices onboard, especially the microwave oven, APC uninterruptible power supply that powers the Amped|Wireless router, and the APC line voltage stabilizer that powers the laser printer.

We were, however, able to watch TV and found Ken Burns’ JAZZ documentary on channel 24.1.  By 11 PM we needed to get to bed as we had to be up and ready to go by 7:45 AM tomorrow morning.  I turned the genset off around 11:30 PM and let the house electrical system switch to the inverter.  I tried to watch the end of JAZZ on the TV in the bedroom but the TV and antenna controller kept losing power.  That, in turn, caused the TV to shut off and the controller to reset to position 8.  My phone and iPad chargers, both of which were plugged into AC outlets, also kept cutting in and out.

I encountered this same issue when we were boondocking at John Palmer’s place in Mayo, Florida at the end of November 2015.  At that time I turned off the SEARCH WATTS feature thinking that it was causing the problem.  Apparently that was not the problem.  My best guess is that under very low load conditions the inverter is either:  a) not inverting at all, or b) producing a voltage and/or current that is not well regulated.  In either case, it would play havoc with our entertainment and communications electronics.

Rather than screw around with this anymore tonight I gave up , turned off the TV, unplugged the antenna controller, resolved to ignore the device chargers, figuring they would work when the refrigerator or air compressor ran, and tried to fall asleep.  I could have turned on the AC lights in the living room, or our small portable fan, to draw enough AC current to keep the inverter working, but that’s really contrary to the whole notion of minimizing your energy usage to only those things that are absolutely necessary when running on batteries.

2016/04/02 (S) Cape Canaveral Lighthouse Tour

I was awake at 6 AM and we were both up and dressed by 7 AM.  I did not make coffee or have breakfast and Linda just had a piece of bread as making toast would have required me to start the genset.  The batteries were at roughly 24.6 VDC (and showing 72% SOC) with no load being drawn by the inverter so there was no need to recharge them this morning.  We were due at Pat and Vickie’s coach at 8 AM so I gathered up my camera, holster, and extra batteries.  We left at 7:40 and took our time walking over to their site.

Pat and Vickie have seating for four in their Jeep Grand Cherokee and have been providing transportation for our group outings.  We left just after 8 AM for the short drive to the Exploration Tower at the west end of Port Canaveral.  We signed up for a tour of the Cape Canaveral Lighthouse that departed from the Tower at 8:30 AM and included admission to the Tower when we returned.

There were only twelve of us on the small tour bus plus a driver (Mike) and two tour guides.  The Cape Canaveral Lighthouse is located on the grounds of the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS).  One of the tour guides (Jim) had worked at the Station and was our main guide for information about the Station and the various launch sites we visited; and we visited a number of them.  One of the things we learned was that CCAFS is a Station rather than a Base because no one lives there.  All of the Air Force personnel working at CCAFS are from Patrick Air Force Base, which is located south of Cocoa Beach.  The U. S. Navy also has a presence here with facilities that service ICBM and attack submarines.

The Cape Canaveral Lighthouse located within the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL.

The Lighthouse had its own cadre of docents, and was very interesting to see and learn about, but only accounted for a little less than an hour of a 3-1/2 hour tour.  The other tour guide was Ron and he provided most of the information about Port Canaveral.  Just after exiting CCAFS we visited a small museum devoted to the history of the Station.  It was located next to the building that now houses the launch control facility for SpaceX, the commercial spaceflight venture of Elon Musk of PayPal.  There are other private/commercial companies operating at CCAFS besides SpaceX .  One of the largest is United Launch Alliance (ULA), an independent company that was formed by merging the space operations of Boeing (which absorbed McDonnell-Douglass years ago) and Lockheed-Martin.

All that remains of one of the launch pads at CCAFS, FL.

We did not really understand ahead of time what we were going to see and we were surprised by the dilapidated condition of the old launch sites.  All that remains at most of them are concrete and brick works.  Metal superstructures that were subject to rusting were long ago removed and control centers that were once stuffed full of equipment are now “abandoned in place” or used for storage.  It was like visiting an ancient historic site, which in fact it is; the first rocket launched from this site was a German V-2 in 1950 and the Mercury missions occurred in the early 1960’s over 50 years ago.

A continuation of the previous image, this is the command bunker and tunnel. CCAFS, FL.

Back at the Exploration Tower, which is owned and operated by the Canaveral Port Authority (CPA), we got wrist bands good for admission through closing time today.  The weather had been overcast all day and a check of the radar on our smartphones showed heavy rain moving our way.  Even though we were hungry we decided to experience the Tower before the rain moved in.

This is all that is left of what was once a heavily reinforced HVAC building at the launch pad. The superstructure in the distance is in active use by SpaceX and ULA. CCAFS, FL.

The Exploration Tower has seven floors plus additional structure at the top.  We took the elevator to the top floor which features an outdoor observation platform oriented to give a commanding view of Port Canaveral, CCAFS, and the John F. Kennedy Space Center to the north, as well as the Banana River to the west and the Atlantic Ocean to the east.  There are also views to the south of the cities of Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach.  We took the stairs down to each floor in turn.  Each floor has a theme with related exhibits and we stopped at each one.  The 3rd floor is a small theater that shows a 20 minute film about Port Canaveral and the surrounding area; past, present, and future.  The film starts on the hour and half hour so we caught the 1 PM show.  The second floor is a balcony that affords a view of art hanging above the 1st floor lobby and gift shop.

The Exploration Tower at Port Canaveral, FL. The top floor includes an outdoor observation deck.

Back on the 1st floor I bought two coffees while Linda and Vickie shopped for gifts.  Linda found a stuffed toy of a manatee for our grand-daughter Madeline.  When we finally got back to Jetty Park at 2 PM Linda made sandwiches for lunch and I washed off some grapes.  I checked the house battery bank voltage and it was still OK.  The temperature had cooled off under cloudy skies with a strong southerly breeze, so I did not need to run the air-conditioners.

I took a nap for an hour.  Not long after I got up we noticed activity in the shipping channel so I took the camera and we went out to see what was going on.  We set up two chairs in front of the bus to watch the action.  The blue tug boat was hanging around the entrance to the Trident Turning Basin, which we had not seen it do before.  The Brevard County Sheriff boat came out along with one of the harbor pilot boats.  A U. S. Coast Guard boat, with a large caliper machine gun on the bow that was manned, headed out the channel towards the ocean at high speed.  We thought perhaps we were going to get to see a submarine arrival, which are always unannounced, but the reason for all this activity turned out to be the Carnival Cruise Ship “Valor” coming into port.  It was delayed from its scheduled arrival by almost 12 hours but that worked to my advantage as the cloud cover had thinned and provided nice lighting on the bow of the ship as it traveled west into the channel.

A 180 degree panorama, from west through north to east, from the observation deck of the Exploration Tower at Port Canaveral, FL.

A little while later the Norwegian Cruise Line “Spirit” left its dock and headed for the Atlantic Ocean accompanied by the police, Coast Guard, and harbor pilot boats.  About 20 minutes behind the NCL Spirit, the Disney “Fantasy” left its dock and started its slow trip down the channel.  Vickie showed up before it got to our position and had her iPad with her.  As the boat came abreast of our position, Vickie spotted dolphins swimming just in front of the bow.

I got out another chair and we sat in front of the bus and chatted for a while.  Vickie eventually returned to her coach to fix dinner and we went inside.  I transferred today’s photos to my computer and selected two to process and send to Vickie.

A dolphin swims in front of one of the Disney cruise ships as it heads down the channel from Port Canaveral, FL. towards the sea.

For dinner Linda improvised a potato and broccoli dish with onion, garlic, and couscous.  It was light and very tasty.  After we were done eating I texted Vickie.  They were also done with dinner so we met her at the office and went for a walk.  Back at our coach Linda checked online and found a news story about the Carnival Valor.  The Valor was delayed due to a medical situation that required them to return to the Turks and Cacos.  According to CruiseTimeTables.com, passengers were being advised to embark starting at 9 PM and to be onboard by 11 PM, with departure shortly thereafter.

Back at our coach we watched some TV and waited up for the Carnival Valor to leave as the nighttime departures are rather something to see with the ships all lit up.  Linda waited until midnight and then turned in for the night.  I stayed up until 1:30 AM but it was still docked at the west end of the port so I gave up and went to bed.

2016/04/03 (N) Bon Voyage

I was waiting for the Carnival Valor to leave Port Canaveral last night but by 1:30 AM it was still at its terminal.  It was all lit up but going nowhere, so I finally went to bed.    By midnight the skies had begun to clear and the wind, which had been steady all day, became stronger and started shifting around to the northwest and becoming noticeably cooler.

The cruise ships are particularly magical at night and I had hoped to capture some images of them, having set my camera to SCeNe selection mode (SCN) and selected “Night.”  In spite of being up late I did not sleep soundly and was aware of headlights around 5 AM.  Someone had apparently driven over from the campground to watch ships, or perhaps driven into the park, which opens at 5 AM, for this purpose.  I then noticed a ship in the shipping lane heading for the mouth of the channel.  Around 5:30 AM another cruise ship came in.  I got up, put on my robe, and tried to photograph it from the cockpit of the bus.

The nighttime arrival of the Carnival “Victory” cruise ship at Port Canaveral, FL.

I got up to stay a little after 8 AM and started the genset so I could make coffee and heat water.  Linda got up shortly thereafter and prepared our breakfast cereal.  We could see cruise ships docked at the west end of Port Canaveral so Linda checked the CruiseTimeTables.com website, and found that there were four cruise ships scheduled to depart today; three at 4 PM (the Carnival Sunshine and Victory, and the Royal Caribbean Freedom of the Seas) and one at 4:30 PM (the Disney Magic).

The Magnum ME-ARC indicated the house battery bank was at 24.6 VDC and 69% SOC.  I turned on the genset and the charger started in Bulk Charging mode drawing 110A at 24VDC, or just over 2,600 Watts, on L1.  I turned on the Aqua-Hot electric heating element, which is on L2, to balance the load on the genset a bit.  When the battery charger had backed off a bit and switched to Absorption mode I turned on the block heater for the main engine, which is currently on the same leg (L1) as the charger.  Balanced loads lead to balanced voltages, but it is also better for the genset mechanically to run under a somewhat heavier load than a light one.

Around 10 AM I walked over to check site #357.  It was already vacant so I went to the office to confirm that we still had it reserved for tonight through Tuesday night.  We did, so I told the office clerk that I was going to go ahead and move, if I could get the engine started, and would then come in and register.  If I couldn’t get it started I would extend our stay on site #3 until we could get the problem resolved or get it towed.  The clerk was not particularly sympathetic, but then he was the one who would have to deal with an irate customer who could not have their reserved site, and the people who camp here have very particular preferences about their sites.  Fortunately, site #3 was open so we could have stayed there until we needed to dump our holding tanks.  We could minimize water usage by using the campground bathrooms, so we could have stretched our dry camping if needed.

Back at our rig we started preparing to move it.  I moved the car over near the pedestrian gate that is very close to site #357 and walked back to the coach.  Linda had secured the inside enough for the short, slow trip.  I checked the maintenance chargers for the chassis batteries and they indicated 100% charge levels.  I opened the air supply valve for the engine accessories, engaged the 12 and 24 volt chassis battery disconnect switches, pulled the wheel chocks, and put the entry step stool away.  I put the Level Low system in Drive mode, just in case that mattered, and turned the ignition key.  The bus motor cranked quickly and fired right up!  That was a relief.

The Centurion Battalion of the United States Navy Sea Cadet Corps had arrived at the picnic area sometime before 8 AM with a large contingent of cadets and their adult leaders/chaperones.  And they had arrived in a large number of cars that filled the available parking spaces just on the other side of the road that ran behind the back row of RV sites where we were parked.  There was still plenty of room to back out, but Linda positioned herself outside to keep an eye on the back end of the rig.

The motorhome on our passenger side was also ready to leave and backed out before I did.  I don’t think he would have presented an obstacle, but having him gone was one less thing to have to keep an eye on.  I pulled up the tag axle and then pulled forward to the right to position the coach at an angle to the road behind it.  I then backed up and cut the steer tires hard left to swing the nose around to the passenger side and guide the rear end cleanly into the road well clear of any other vehicles.  Linda climbed on board and I turned on the OTR A-C, partly for comfort and partly to put more load on the engine.

We made the 5 MPH trip around the east end of the park and campground back to the campground entrance on the south side where Linda got out to open the gate.  Once I was clear of the gate she got back onboard.  We wound our way through the campground, familiar now with the road system.  When I got to the 2nd to last turn I saw that the last turn was blocked by a pickup truck pulling a 5th wheel trailer out of its site so I continued straight ahead and went clockwise around Red Knot Circle.  By the time I got back to the same intersection the pickup truck and 5th wheel were out of the way and I was able to proceed to site #357.

Linda hopped out to act as spotter.  Using what I learned two years ago from Big Bill while getting parked at Suncoast Designers in Hudson, Florida I moved to the right edge of the road as the back-in site was on that side.  As I pulled past the site and the rear wheels were by the front of the site I cut the steer tires to the left, positioning the coach at an angle to the site, all the while avoiding trees, RVs, cars, and other obstacles.  I backed straight, keeping an eye on Linda in the driver side rear view mirror, and started swinging the nose to the driver side while keeping an eye on the car parked on the other side of the road.

As soon as I was clear of that car I swung the nose hard to the driver side.  We were well clear of the Sea Grape trees on the passenger side so I straightened the steer tires and pulled forward until I had a good view of the concrete pad on one side.  I backed in following Linda’s hand signals until I could see the pad on both sides, got the rig straight and centered, and backed up until Linda gave me the stop signal (arms crossed at the wrist above her head).  We ended up parking with the front tires just off the front edge of the concrete pad as the coach was close to level and we wanted to avoid lower branches at the rear of the site.  As it was, I still had to lower the front slightly, but at least the Level Low system worked this time.  I also had to adjust the rear on one side, which worked a lot better after I lowered the tag axle.

With the coach neatly tucked in to its site and sitting level Linda walked the short distance back to where the car was parked and drove it around to our site.  Once the car was parked I walked to the office and took care of the registration.  When I got back I tried to get our network up and running but encountered all sorts of problems.  I wasted most of the rest of the afternoon trying to resolve them, to no avail.

While we were camped on site #3 I had to reconfigure the Amped|Wireless router/range-extender to work directly with our Verizon Mi-Fi.  That configuration worked OK out there, but was not working here.  The Wi-Fi ranger was seeing a number of campground Wi-Fi signals with adequate to very good signal strength, but was having a very difficult time connecting to them.  When it did, the connection would drop after a very short time.  The Amped|Wireless router/range-extender was having an equally difficult time connecting to the Wi-Fi Ranger and staying connected when it did.  I tried connecting the Wi-Ranger to our Verizon Mi-Fi but that did seem to work either.  I also noticed that the cellular signal was not as strong as usual.  Linda commented that her phone was having trouble connecting.  I finally got disgusted with the whole thing and set it aside.  Sometimes the best solution is to “just walk away.”

There were four cruise ships starting down the shipping channel roughly on time and in the order specified and Vickie joined us for the ship parade.  We were out there waiting for them, camera at the ready, and by the time the last ship was headed out to sea I had shot about 200 images.  Vickie had already eaten, and we were not ready for dinner yet, so we walked the campground and park, including the pier.

It was chilly all day yesterday with a high temperature in the low 70’s and a steady breeze from the north that resulted in a hazardous conditions warning for the beach.  As the light faded it got colder and we returned to our motorhomes.

Dinner was a nice salad and Amy’s enchiladas.  Simple, easy, tasty.  It turned colder after sunset under clear skies and a stiff northerly breeze.  It was very refreshing, initially, but eventually the coach was a bit too cool so I closed the roof vents and Linda narrowed the window openings to just an inch.  We were a little tired, not particularly captivated by what was on TV, and had to be up earlier than usual in the morning, so we were in bed before 11 PM.

2016/04/04 (M) Farewell For Now

It turned chilly after sunset last night under clear skies and a stiff northerly breeze.  It was very refreshing, actually, but eventually the coach felt chilly and we closed it up, mostly, and were in bed a bit earlier than usual.

We were up at 7 AM this morning and got dressed right away.  I made coffee, which used up our supply of Sweet Seattle Dreams beans, and we headed over to site #303 at 7:30 to see Pat and Vickie off.  They have been here since mid-February and today was departure day.  The bus motor was already running when we got there and we just watched while they got ready to pull out.  We learned long ago not to “chat” with RVers during their final departure preparations.  They drove around by the office to hook up their car and we walked over to watch.  I took a couple of pictures with my phone and used the “dawn” setting for the first time.  Soon enough they were ready to go, so we said our final “farewells for now,” and, just like that, they drove off and were gone.  Assuming no mechanical or weather issues they will be home in northern Indiana Wednesday evening.

A group of five brown pelicans coming up the channel just above the water. Jetty Park at Port Canaveral, FL.

We always find that leaving an encampment after we have been there for an extended period of time has a strange feeling and we experienced that vicariously as Pat and Vickie drove away.  The strangeness, as best I can describe it, is a combination of a sense of loss—the giving up of a familiar place and the people there—and anticipation of the journey ahead, both positive and negative.  The anticipation is positive in the sense of the possibilities of new experiences that come with the adventure of the road while the negative anticipation stems from the potential for mechanical, weather, traffic, or health problems.

With Pat and Vickie out of sight we returned to our coach and had a light breakfast of toast and jam and finished our coffee.  Linda then worked on a grocery list while I tackled out networking problems.  I gave up in disgust around 10 AM and we drove to Cocoa Beach to do some grocery shopping.  We went to the Publix supermarket first and found most of what we needed there.  A quick stop at Sunseed Food CO-OP filled in our list with blueberries, coffee, and vegan mayonnaise.  I stopped at one of the Shell stations on the way back to J. P. and topped off the fuel in the car so we would not have to deal with that tomorrow morning.

Back at our coach we got the groceries unloaded and put away.  Linda then heated some leftovers for lunch and washed some grapes.  After lunch I put in a call to Chris Yust, our National General Insurance Agent, to ask her about the letter/form we received regarding Coordination of Medical benefits.  She called back a short time later and we discussed it.  She logged into her agent support system but there was no indication of the letter/form.  Normally she can see anything the insurance company has sent to her customers.  She confirmed that we really did need to send the form in with the requested documentation.

Linda had already photographed the fronts and backs of our MPSERS/BCBS cards.  When she tried to print them the printer was “offline”.  We had this same problem at the beginning of our winter travels and it turned out to be NETWORK related.  The fix back then was to use the Advanced IP Scanner to determine what IP address was assigned to the printer and then manually reconfigure the printer to that address.  That was under Windows 8.1.  Under Windows 10 the IP Scanner didn’t work the same way and the manual reconfiguration didn’t work either.  What is particularly puzzling and annoying is that the printer does not appear to be responding correctly when set as a DHCP client.  If it was, we would not be having a problem communicating with it.

I seem to have spent a lot of time this past week dealing with network and wireless communications malfunctions, so I did what I often do and we went for a walk at 2:30 PM.  We went out on the pier and were just starting back when someone spotted a manatee between the pier and the jetty swimming towards the ocean.  The water was clear and we got a good look at it for quite a while.  It was large and presumably a full-size adult.  They really are gentle giants and it was a thrill to see it.

We walked back to the office for coffee before returning to our rig.  As soon as we went in Scott Ward handed Linda a card.  She has not been in the office that much but I have, and have often interacted with Scott while checking on, or registering for, sites.  Still, I was impressed that he remembered my last name and made the connection to the card.  The card was from our younger grand-daughter, Madeline.  It was a ‘thank you’ card for Linda for all of the custom photo postcards she has created using the PhotoPostCard app and had printed and mailed to Madeline by the PhotoPostCard service out of San Diego, California.  Linda took a picture of the card, texted it to our son, and asked him to tell Madeline “thanks” in return.  He texted back a photo of Madeline looking at the most recent postcard, which was a photo of Linda by the channel with one of the Disney cruise ships heading out to sea.

The Royal Caribbean Enchantment of the Seas was due to sail at 3:45 PM followed closely by      the Disney Dream at 4 PM.  We walked over to the shipping channel at 3:40 PM and by the time we got there the Enchantment was starting to move away from its dock.  Something did not look right and then I realized we were looking at the stern of the ship.  The cruise ships usually dock facing the ocean, so it needed to turn around to get out of Port Canaveral.

One of the amazing things about these amazing machines is their ability to maneuver in close quarters.  When in port, they can independently push the bow and stern to either side, which means they can move sideways or turn the ship around its center (or any other point).  In this case they pushed the stern out from the dock on the south side of the channel and into the opening of the middle turning basin on the north side of the channel opposite the dock.  They then backed it up slightly into the turning basin, brought the bow around into the channel, pushed the stern out into the channel, and then started moving forward down the channel towards the ocean.  It was quite a skillful maneuver and the first time we have seen this in the two weeks we have been here.

Not long after the Enchantment cleared the Jetty and turned southeast to stay in the channel, the Disney Dream started moving slowly forward and away from its dock.  The Disney terminal/dock is in an alcove (basin) on the north side of the west end of the Port so it has to turn into the straight portion of the channel.  Of all the cruise ships we have seen come and go the Disney ships appear to be in the best condition, not that any of them look bad.

We returned to our coach and I transferred photos to my computer from the camera and from my cell phone while Linda started preparing dinner.  Dinner consisted of a kale salad followed by a brown rice and kale dish with sautéed carrots, onions, and garlic.  Linda has not had any wine in a couple of weeks because of the medications she’s been taking, but I had a glass of the Arbor Mist Raspberry.  I find “flavored” wines a questionable choice, although I like Sangria and hot mulled or spiced wine.

We went for a walk after dinner that included some time on the beach.  The park and beach were a beehive of activity yesterday but things were quiet all day today and there were only a handful of people on the beach this evening.  Both conditions are nice, in their own way.  There was, however, some activity in the Trident submarine turning basin today.  The big crane was moving and a Coast Guard cutter was in and out of the basin.  An attack helicopter from Patrick AFB also made repeated passes over the area and up/down the beach.  Our friends told us that when things start getting active around the basin it usually means a submarine is coming in but that did not happen while we were watching.

Back at our coach we turned on the TV but all of the CBS programs were repeats because the NCAA Basketball final game was on cable.  I reconfigured the Amped|Wireless router to work directly with our Verizon Mi-Fi and was able to get my computer connected to the Internet and to our NAS, which is critical for backing up photos and documents.  I did not, however, mess around further with the printer.  My plan is to move it back into my office at home and leave it there.  I will find a newer one, with better networking functionality, to put in the bus.

We planned to be on the road in the morning between 8 and 8:30 AM so we went to bed before 11 PM.  Linda fell asleep before NCIS-LA ended but I watched the channel 6 news/weather before turning out the lights.  The Cleveland Indians baseball home opener was postponed because of snow on the field and the TV weatherman reported that the average last date for snow in Cleveland is April 18, and for Detroit, April 22.  In spite of a mild winter and early spring, I knew there was a reason we were not in a hurry to return home.  The low at our house was forecast to be 18 degrees F overnight.

2016/04/05 (M) Celebration

We were up at 7 AM, showered, and got dressed.  We tended to our cats and prepared the motorcoach for them to be comfortable while we were away for part of the day.  We each had a banana, and a little orange juice to wash down our vitamins, but did not have a full breakfast or our usual morning coffee.  We gathered up all of the things Linda needed for her doctor’s appointment and were in the car and on our way at 8:10 AM.

Our destination was the office of Dr. Michael Seidman in Celebration, Florida, a trip of 60 to 65 miles from Jetty Park that would take about as many minutes.  Most of the route was Toll Road (FL-528 and FL-417) and we did not have to slow down for the toll booths because we have a Florida SunPass transponder that we can move between the bus and the car.  We put the address of the clinic, which is attached to Florida Hospital, into the GPS.  It accepted Celebration as the city, but the routing showed the destination as Kissimmee.  I didn’t care what it called the place as long as it got us to the correct location.

We left earlier than needed in order to arrive earlier than required and allow for traffic and navigational contingencies.  Less than a mile from the medical center we spotted a Panera Bread Company store and stopped to have bagels and coffee.  While we were there we made use of the free Wi-Fi to update apps on our iPads and smartphones.  We left at 10:15 and finished the short trip to the Florida Hospital complex.  We found a parking spot, found the clinic building, and found the suite for the Head & Neck Surgery Center of Florida (H&NSCF).  Linda had already completed much of the required new patient paperwork so we were there with time to spare.

Sheila, one of the office assistants, got Linda checked in and wanted to know if we had brought copies of her records from Henry Ford Health System, where Dr. Seidman worked for 30 years and treated Linda for the last 20 of those.  I had e-mailed Sheila the day after she asked me to get those records to let her know that HFHS would not send them to another hospital or clinic at Linda’s request and that the H&NSCF would have to request them.  Sheila said she did not receive that e-mail, even though I replied to one she sent Linda.  Oh well, there was nothing to be done at that point.

It was a great relief to Linda to be able to get in to see Dr. Seidman.  Dr. S and his PA, Katherine, carefully went over the history of Linda’s illness and treatment of the last three weeks.  He indicated that the treatment was what he would have prescribed, which was comforting to know.  His routine ENT examination did not reveal any indication of infection or fluid in her “good” (right) ear, which was also good to know.  He really wanted to compare the recent audiological results with her last tests from HFHS so he made a call to someone at the HFHS ENT clinic and was able to get them to fax the test results.  He chaired the ENT department for much of his time at Henry Ford, and that was apparently still worth something with former colleagues.

Dr. S also inserted a scope through Linda’s right nostril and into her throat to exam the areas that cannot be seen any other way.  The scope is a thin, flexible cable with a camera and LED light source at the tip.  The image is fed to a monitor, where I got to see it in real time, but was also recorded so Linda got to see it afterwards.  Her vocal cords did not close completely and were slightly bowed, which Dr. S thought probably accounted for her weak, slightly horse, voice but there was no sign of infection or other pathology, such as tumors.  He noticed that the Eustachian tube opening was “bubbling” which he thought was a good sign.  He also examined the left nostril and did not see anything unusual there either.

All of that was good news, of course, but we were both a bit let down that there wasn’t any additional treatment he could provide at this time.  Direct injection of steroids into the middle ear was still a possibility but he wanted Linda to wait at least four weeks to see if she improved on her own before going down that path.  Equally frustrating was that her hearing, while marginal, was too good for a cochlear implant.  Not that she is eager to have one of those, of course, what she wants is the hearing in her right ear restored to what it was before she got sick a month ago.

Our friend, Mara, was moving her motorhome today from Clermont to Winter Haven and her friend, Michael, was driving to Orlando International Airport to drop off a rental car and fly back to Phoenix, Arizona.  They had hoped to do all of that by way of Celebration and have lunch, with or without us, at Ari, a Japanese sushi restaurant.  We had indicated that it was very doubtful we would make it to lunch, given the timing of Linda’s appointment, but called Mara when we got back to our car to update her.  It turned out that when she got ready to leave her motorhome slideout would not slide in.  (I think that’s why they are called slide “outs.”)  Michael returned home as planned while Mara arranged for a technician to fix her non-sliding slideout.

We needed to fax a few documents to National General Insurance Company, so we went in search of a Staples with a copy center.  Having taken care of that we wanted to have lunch before heading back to Cape Canaveral so as not to be eating dinner too late in the day.  We found another Panera near FL-417 and Orange Blossom Trail and ate there.  The kale-romaine-couscous-almond salad was excellent and the black bean soup was as good as usual.  Well fed, we got on the FL-417 Toll Road and headed back towards the FL-528 Toll Road, which we took back to Cape Canaveral.

We were back at Jetty Park before 2:30 PM and just relaxed for a while.  Around 4 PM we went outside to take care of a few things in preparation for our departure tomorrow.  I got out the waste drain hoses and connected two of them together to reach from the utility bay connection to the sewer connection, which was inconveniently located directly behind the RV pad.  We drained the waste tanks, rinsed out the hoses, and returned everything to their storage tub.  Using the 3-step stool, I retracted the two awnings on the driver side, which I had previously deployed to shade the Windows from the mid-afternoon sun.

We then emptied out the back of the car so I could add air to the temporary spare, which gave us a low pressure alarm on the drive from Webster to Cape Canaveral.  I had turned on the TireTraker TPMS earlier and most of the readings looked OK, but as long as I had the portable air compressor, hose, air chuck, and pressure gauge out I checked the front right (curb, PS) tire as a check on the TPMS. The tire gauge pressure was several pounds lower than the TPMS indicated pressure and was fairly close to where I wanted it so I left it alone.

Our destination tomorrow was Williston Crossings RV Resort in Williston, Florida, a trip of about 140 miles.  We had about a half tank of fresh water so I did not get out the softener and add any.  Somewhere in the middle of all this work we chatted with several neighbors, but eventually we got the car and bus repacked, including the patio mat and the two bag chairs.  At that point we only had the entry mat, entry stool, and power cord to deal with and the outside would be ready for travel.

Before dinner we went for a walk out by the shipping channel, the pier, and the beach.  There were people out and about but the park did not feel crowded and was quiet and calm, unlike the festive energy of the weekend with its day visitors, picnickers, and family campers with younger children.  It’s as if J. P. has moods, and one has to spend enough time here and experience them to begin to get a sense of the place.  We could understand why Pat and Vickie like to come here every year, even if that is not what we would choose to do.

I could not recall what Linda made for dinner because I am trying to finish this post a week later.  What I do recall is that the Norwegian Breakaway was scheduled to set sail at 9 PM, well after sunset.  It had been a pleasantly cool day with clear skies but turned chilly with the setting of the sun and a noticeable breeze, especially outside the campground by the water.  Linda was tired and a little chilled and chose not to walk out and watch the ship leave.  At 8:45 PM I got my camera, walked over to the channel, and positioned myself by the “Minimum Wake” sign.  I had a good view of the Port to the west and could lean on one of the posts for support if needed.  I put my camera in SCN (scene selection) mode, selected the “Night” setting, and waited.

I had not noticed that the ship was docked with its stern facing the ocean until it started to move.  Its position at the dock meant it would have to do a 180 degree turn before moving down the channel and into the ocean.  And that meant it was going to take longer to exit the port and give me more opportunity to photograph it.

The Norwegian Cruise Lines “Breakaway” doing a 180 degree maneuver in the turning basin. Port Canaveral, FL.

The cruise ships are always brightly illuminated when coming and going in the dark and are quite pretty to see as they glide almost silently by.  They are also challenging to photograph as they are often very high contrast (high dynamic range) subjects, especially at night.  Ideally I would shoot multiple bracket exposures and combine them using HDR software, but I would have to get the camera on a tripod and even then the exposures would be just long enough that the ship would change position slightly between frames.  I did the best I could with single frame, hand-held exposures braced against the sign post.  By the time the Breakaway was in open water I was getting chilled and headed back to the warmth of our bus.  I transferred the images to my computer and took a quick look at them before settling in to watch a few minutes of TV and then go to bed.

 

2016/03/27-28 (N-M) Squirrel-Nuts ENT Markets

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2016/03/27 (N) Squirrel Nuts

Jasper started trying to get my attention around 7:15 AM.  He comes up close to my head on either side to get his head “scritched” and goes eyeball-to-eyeball with me from just a few inches away.  I finally got up at 7:30 AM and Linda got up around the same time.  She took her morning medications and returned to her seat bed while I tended to the cats’ food, water, and litter tray.  Linda was hungry and wanted breakfast so I cut the grapefruit in half only to find out that she cannot have grapefruit while taking the steroids.  No problem, it needed to be eaten and I can certainly eat an entire small grapefruit all by myself.

I did not feel like getting dressed right away to walk over to the office and get a couple of cups of free, but not very tasty, coffee so I ground up some of our beans and made a pot.  I have not done that since we got to Jetty Park and it was nice to have our own, special coffee again.  Once the coffee was brewed I plugged in the toaster and heated a couple of cinnamon raisin bagels for breakfast.  Linda went back to sleep after breakfast while I lingered on the sofa, enjoying my coffee, working on my blog post drafts, and playing a few games.  I eventually got a shower, got dressed, and took the trash to the dumpster.

The long range forecast was for afternoon high temperatures in the mid-80’s, plus or minus, with high humidity and rain chances.  The TV weather people have been describing the current whether as “summer like” which simply confirms for me that Florida is not someplace I want to be in the summer.  (Overnight low temperatures at home, however, are still dropping below freezing, so we are OK with where we are.)  I am tired of listening to our air-conditioners but this was going to be a mostly stay-at-home day given the weather conditions, the fact that Linda is not up for going anywhere or doing anything, and that today is Easter Sunday and many businesses are closed, even in Cocoa Beach.  At least the air-conditioners are keeping the humidity in the coach at a comfortable level, it’s the evaporator fan noise that is irritating.

A stay-at-home day is usually a good opportunity to upload some more posts to our blog and update the BCM page on our website.  The posts for the last third of December 2015 still needed to be edited before uploading so I started working on them.  I had just finished the ones for the 21st and 22nd when Linda wanted to go for a walk.  We walked over to the dumpsters to throw away our daily bag of trash and then walked to Pat and Vickie’s site where we found them sitting outside in the shade but without any breeze.  They decided to join us on our walk and we headed to the beach.  There was a steady offshore breeze but the sun was hot so we headed back to the campground in search of shade and a breeze.

We found both on the other side of the street from our site.  We got out our four folding chairs and set them up over there along with our little plastic folding table.  Yes, we own an old Prevost, but in many other ways are RVing lives are simple.  Vickie went back to their coach and returned with a beer (Leinenkugel’s Cranberry Ginger Shandy) and a bag of pretzels.  At the same time I brought out pretzel nibblers, peanuts, and almonds along with water for Linda and a beer for me (Yuengling Traditional Lager).

The air temperature was in the lower 80’s with somewhat elevated humidity, but we sat in the shade with the cool, pleasant breeze enjoying our snacks and beverages.  The squirrels here are used to people and one approached quite close to us looking for a handout.  For whatever reason I decided to share the remaining peanuts with it, which immediately attracted a couple more squirrels.  When I ran out I went inside and got more and washed off some grapes.  When the squirrels started having a territorial dispute over the peanuts I decided to quit feeding them.  About that same time we were all feeling a bit tired (relaxed?) and decided to go take naps.  Naps are good; I like naps.

At 5 PM we walked over to the shipping channel to see if one of the Disney Cruise Line ships was departing.  We got to watch The Disney Magic come all the way down the channel, led by the harbor pilot boat and followed by the Royal Caribbean Freedom of the Seas.  As the Magic was just rounding the bend from its dock into the straight portion of the channel someone spotted a pair of dolphins swimming up the channel.  We saw their dorsal fins but I was not able to get a photo of them.  After the two cruise ships were clear of the channel we walked to the pier.  Along the way the tugboat American Champion pulled in a barge with Scow 6 stenciled on the side.  A small derrick boat then came in from the ocean and a little while later chugged back out again.

By 6:30 PM Linda was thinking about her next steroid pill, which she had to take after dinner, so we walked back to our coach.  A can of Amy’s Chili with some Soup & Oyster Crackers made for a quick, easy, tasty meal along with some black grapes.  After dinner I was able to tune in one of the PBS affiliates.  We watched a documentary on Harry Gordon Selfridge and Selfridge’s Department Store in London, England.  That was followed by an episode of Grantchester, another of the BBC Masterpiece Mystery series.  We split an apple for a late night snack.  At 10 PM we switched to CBS and watched an episode of Elementary followed by the evening news, during which Linda converted the living room captain’s chairs into her nighttime convalescence bed.

The only part of the news that interested yes was the weather as a significant front was draped from northeast to southwest and pushing east out of the Gulf of Mexico across central and northern Florida with heavy rain and lots of lightening.  The TV weatherman said it would impact Orlando between midnight and 3 AM before finally moving out into the Atlantic Ocean.  I figured that meant any impact on us wouldn’t start until at least 1 AM and peak between 3 and 4.  Once I had a sense of the weather I turned off the lights in the front of the coach and retired to the bedroom for the evening.  I did not feel like writing or playing games so I flipped channels for a while.  I could not tune in either of the PBS affiliates, and nothing else caught my interest, so I turned off the TV and the lights and went to sleep.

2016/03/28 (M) ENT Markets

I was up at 7 AM and discovered that Linda had also just gotten up to take her morning steroids.  I put on my robe, put away the clean dishes from last night, fed the cats, cleaned the litter tray, and made a pot of coffee.  Once the coffee was brewed I toasted the last two cinnamon raisin bagels and we had those for breakfast.  After breakfast Linda played word games and I finished up yesterday’s blog post draft.

After two days of steroids Linda’s voice and hearing were slightly improved, but not much, and she continues to be tired, even listless, and sleep off and on through the day.  Today, however, she got dressed and settled in to work at her computer reconciling our charge receipts and bank balances.

We had decided that we would leave Jetty Park on Friday and were discussing where we might go next.  We knew that Linda needed a follow up appointment with her ENT back home so I called to arrange that.  We were surprised to find out that Linda’s ENT, Dr. Michael Seidman, was no longer at Henry Ford.  I was able to get an appointment with a different ENT for late April, but in the course of doing that I found out that Dr. Seidman had moved his practice to Celebration, Florida.  That’s the home of Disney World and is only about 50 miles from where we are camped!

By searching online we located the practice Dr. Seidman has joined, the Head and Neck Surgery Center of Florida (HNSCF), which is affiliated with Florida Hospital, a 7th Day Adventist facility.  I called and was informed that Tuesday, April 5 was the first day he would be seeing patients, so apparently his relocation was in-process.  We got an appointment for 11 AM.  The clinic asked me to contact HFHS and request a copy of Linda’s medical records which I decided to take care of later.  For now our immediate concern was figuring out where we were going to be camped between now and then.

At about this time Vickie called to let me know they had decided to leave on Monday, April 4 and that we could have their site starting that day if we wanted.  The trick was that we needed to go to the office together so she could cancel their reservation starting that day and I could immediately pick it up.  That prompted me to meet her and Pat at the office where I signed up for site #303 for Monday and Tuesday evenings with departure on Wednesday, April 6.

We were already set to move to site #358 tomorrow at noon for three nights so I needed a site for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights.  The only sites that were big enough to accommodate our bus and available for all three nights were in the boondocking area by the shipping channel.  I preferred that to having to move one or two extra times, and trying to squeeze into sites that were marginal in size, so Pat, Vickie, and I walked out to look at the available sites.  I selected site #3 and went back in to complete the registration process.  Vickie thought we would enjoy being parked with a view of the channel and Pat noted that the lack of trees was offset by a constant breeze.  We would also be parked facing north, so we would not have the sun on our windshields.  It came up later that we might have tried Sherwood Forest RV Park near Celebration, but at this point I did not want to move the bus very far prior to Linda’s appointment and risk having a problem which I would then have to deal with.

With all of the reservations taken care of I returned to our coach and explained the arrangements to Linda and then settled in at my computer to edit the blog posts for the last nine days of December 2015.  Around 2 PM I called the Henry Ford Hospital West Bloomfield ENT clinic to request a copy of Linda’s medical records be faxed to the Head and Neck Surgery Center of Florida.  I was transferred to the medical records department, where I was informed that they could not send records to a hospital or clinic based on a patient request and that the request would have to come directly from the receiving clinic.  The medical records clerk provided me with a phone number for the clinic to use.  We had exchanged a couple of e-mails with Sylvia at HNSCF so I replied to one of them with the relevant information.

Mid-afternoon Vickie called again to see if we wanted to ride to town with them.  Linda was feeling up to it so we agreed to go.  Our first stop was at the Sunseed Food CO-OP on N. Atlantic Avenue.  We bought a few things that did not need refrigeration and Linda made note of their extensive selections of Amy’s frozen entrees and pizzas as well as the Coconut Bliss non-dairy ice cream.  Out next stop was the small Coastal Produce market in downtown Cocoa Beach where Linda and Vickie bought some fresh produce.  We stopped at Sunseed Food CO-OP again on the way back to the campground and stocked up on Amy’s frozen entrees, got a couple of pizzas, two pints of non-dairy ice cream, and some nutritional yeast.  Vickie also bought some nutritional yeast as she had seen several recipes that called for it but was not familiar with it.

On the way back to Jetty Park Pat detoured through the western end of Port Canaveral on the south side of the shipping channel to show us the various dining options (restaurants, bars, and grills) located there.  The Disney Cruise Line terminals are a bit farther west and on the other side of the channel but we did not drive over there as we had fresh and frozen food that needed to get into our refrigerators and freezers.

With the food put away I resumed editing my blog posts from late December and managed to finish the one for December 31st just as Linda was putting dinner on the table.  I pushed the wrong button on the convection microwave oven and screwed up the sequence but the pizza still came out OK.  The fact that she felt like fixing dinner at all was one of the first good signs we have had in two weeks regarding her health.  Dinner wasn’t fancy, just a nice salad and vegan pizza, but it was tasty and it was nice to sit at the table and eat it.

After dinner we met up with Vickie and went for a long, slow walk.  Linda got to see site #3 and thought it would be nice for three nights.  We also walked the entire length of the paved sidewalk that meanders through the southern edge of the park property and saw lots of the feral cats that live here.  The cats are fed by official volunteers and we spotted numerous plastic bowls at several locations with cats hanging about nearby.  (My understanding is that feral cats and not “wild” cats; they are domestic cats that have returned to the wild.)  When we eventually made it to the beach the ocean was just an hour past low tide so there was more beach exposed than we had yet seen.  There were dark clouds visible from southwest to northwest moving slowly east so we walked north along the beach and the over the dunes to the concession building.  Linda spotted the sun just setting and it was enormous and orange-red.  We scurried up to the observation deck to get a better look and tried to take a few photos with our smartphones.  They generally capture good images with proper exposure, but the correct exposure for sunsets and sunrises can be very tricky.

With the sun out of sight we walked back along the channel to the campground office where Vickie and I each got a cup of coffee.  We then headed back towards our coach and finally went our separate ways at the fork in the road.  We were back at our coach at 8 PM and turned on the TV to watch our Monday night CBS shows.  Almost all of our TV viewing this winter has been CBS and PBS and we have been fortunate to be able to receive these signals almost everywhere.  Linda decided to try sleeping in bed for the first time in a week.  I watched the beginning of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert but turned the TV off at midnight and went to sleep.

 

2016/03/24-26 (R-S) Cocoa-Beach-Historic-District ENT Dirty-Talk

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2016/03/24 (R) Cocoa Beach Historic District

I got up at 8:15 AM, put on my swim trunks that I use as a pair of casual shorts, and walked over to the campground office to get a couple of cups of coffee.  The coffee is not that good, but it’s hot and I don’t have to make it or clean it up.  While I was there I inquired about extending our stay.  Robert assisted me and found two full hookup sites in the same part of the campground where we are now that were available for three nights starting on the 29th and marked them on a campground map.

Linda was asleep when I left and still asleep when I got back so I gently woke her up to have some coffee.  She was feeling a little better.  Her sore throat was almost gone and she had regained a little of her hearing and speaking.  We checked the long-range weather forecast and it looked like next week’s weather should be good with moderate temperatures and low probability of rain.  We discussed the available sites and agreed that #358 looked like a great choice.  It is directly behind the site we are currently on (#352) and is large with good access.  It also faces northeast which is a plus.  We will have to remove the windshield covers in order to move the coach and the northeast orientation means we will not have to put them back on while we are here.

I walked back to the campground office and reserved site #358 for March 29, 30, and 31, with departure on April 1 by noon.  All things being equal (which they never are) we would rather not be driving on April 1st as there is, apparently, a mass exodus of snowbirds from Florida on that date and the northbound highways are bumper-to-bumper and very slow.  I can check with the office each day to see if there have been cancelations that would allow us to stay longer on one site.  We also discussed making a reservation for a few nights back at Williston Crossings and cooling our heels there before heading north.

I texted Vickie to let her know about our modified plan.  She and Pat were headed to the beach for a walk and Linda decided she wanted to go along.  While we waited for them I texted our children to let them know we had extended out stay at Jetty Park and that their mom was doing better.  Oops; apparently no one ever told them Linda was sick and my text message prompted a quick phone call from our daughter.

We walked along the ocean towards Cocoa Beach for 1.5 to 2 miles.  (We had three pedometers between us but each one recorded a different distance.)  Pat and I headed back while Linda and Vickie went a little farther before turning back.  The girls walk faster than we do and wanted to give us a head start.  They caught up with us just as we reached the boardwalk back into Jetty Park.

We were back at our coach at 11:45 AM and agreed to get back together mid-afternoon and drive to Cocoa Beach to see the Historic District.  None of us had eaten breakfast and Linda clearly needed a nap before doing anything else today.  I made a sandwich with mock deli slices, Daiya non-dairy cheese, raw onions, lettuce, and mustard and cut it in half for us to share.  I had a few pretzels with hummus and washed off the rest of the grapes and set them out.

I noticed yesterday that I had a critical update for Windows 10 but when I checked today it was no longer there.  My presumption is that it got downloaded and installed.  Linda had the same update still pending, along with the Visual C++ update that keeps trying to install but apparently does not do so correctly.

There was a magnificent full moon rising last night but we did not notice it until it was well above the horizon.  I tried to take a few pictures from in front of our coach but I spent most of the time messing with the camera’s controls and settings.  I suspected that I failed to capture the beauty of the moment and after I copied them to my computer to examine them my suspicion was confirmed.

Linda takes a minute to pose while watching one of the Disney cruise ships (Magic?) leave Port Canaveral and head out of the channel into the Atlantic Ocean.

We both took naps but by 4 PM had not heard from Pat and Vickie.  I called Vickie but got Pat.  Vickie had a sore neck and they had decided not to venture back out today.  Linda’s sore throat has largely abated, and her voice has improved a little, but her hearing is still very impaired.  This afternoon she got very concerned about it and had me try to contact a local ENT.  The office was closed until Monday morning and the call was routed to an answering service.  The answering service gave me the number for another ENT in Titusville.  I called them and got their answering service.  They took my name, number, and some information and said the office would call me at 8 AM when they opened.

The weather forecast from 5 PM on was for an increasing probability of thunderstorms headed towards 100% by 11 PM.  The weather was moving from southwest to northeast along a front that appeared to be drifting slowly from west to east.  As a result air temperatures were hanging in the 70’s and the humidity was very high.  Rather than sit around the coach we decided to drive down N. Atlantic Ave. (FL-A1A) to/through Cocoa Beach just to have a look.  First, however, we closed up the coach and turned on the air-conditioners.

We had a nice, leisurely drive south through Cape Canaveral and then Cocoa Beach; first through the main business section and then through a more residential part.  In spite of the high-rise residential and resort buildings that dominate the ocean shore along the eastern edge of the Cape, the main avenue still has some of the look and feel of “old” Cocoa Beach, with the Ron Jon Surf Shop as a centerpiece.  Many of the beach houses are charming without being massive and lavish, like the ones we saw on Captiva Island on the Gulf Coast.

By the time I turned around to head back dark storm clouds had moved in and it had started raining intermittently.  We stopped at the CVS Pharmacy to see if they had an OTC medication that might help Linda’s right ear.  The pharmacist said the only thing he had was a pill that would promote drainage which might help remove infection and pressure but was certainly not a substitute for a prescription medication.  We bought a pack as it seemed like a better option than doing nothing.

We got back into the northbound flow of traffic, which was bumper-to-bumper and slow because the right hand lane was closed for construction.  Heavy rain had moved in, with reduced visibility and minor road flooding, which did not improve the traffic situation.  We weren’t in a rush, and it would not have mattered if we were, so we just took our place in the parade until I got to a traffic signal where I turned left and went into the Publix parking lot.  Linda stayed in the car while I went in to buy a few grocery items.  It was raining lightly when I came out of the supermarket.  I loaded the grocery bags in the back of the car and returned the cart to the front of the store.  In that short time torrential rains fell and I had to wait for it to abate before I could return to our car.  (In spite of the forecast we left the coach without our raincoats or umbrellas.)

Back at our coach we got the groceries inside and put away.  Linda felt like fixing dinner so she heated the vegan Italian sausage with sautéed onions and peppers and served it next to an arugula salad.  I cut up some of the strawberries we just bought and served those for dessert.

Our usual Thursday evening CBS TV programs were preempted by the NCAA basketball tournament but I found an interesting series of talks about “American Generations” on PBS.  The three hours covered, in order, Boomers (us), Gen-X (both of our children), and Millennials (both of our grand-daughters).  The basic point of the lectures was an updated and expanded version of the central concept of a presentation by a sociologist that I saw in the late 1970’s titled “What you are is where you were when…”

Our TV viewing was occasionally interrupted by severe weather alerts and a tornado warning, although the warning was not for our specific location.  We spent some time with our iPads trying to understand the implications for us and our rig and decided we were not in any imminent danger.  Lightning activity increased around 11 PM accompanied by some thunder and then rain.  The rain and lightning intensified as midnight approached and the leak around the bedroom vent fan reappeared but did reach severe levels and the winds were not an issue.  At midnight the channel 9.3 radar showed one cluster of storms pushing out to sea by us but another fast moving line sweeping across the Gulf of Mexico and stretching across Florida from north of Jacksonville to north of Tampa and moving our way.  It was all too obvious by this point that we had miscalculated the intensity and duration of the storm when deciding to leave our awnings out.  I finally tried to go to sleep not knowing if they would be OK in the morning.  The ENT office was supposed to call at 8 AM and we wanted to be up, dressed, and ready to go in case they could see Linda right away.

2016/03/25 (F) Orlando ENT Visit

With the thunderstorms last night I did not get a good night’s sleep.  The cats were nervous and wanted my attention but would not settle down and sleep.  When Juniper did finally settle down she curled up on my pillow. The roof vent/fan in the bedroom leaked on the foot of the bed so I had to deal with that.  I was also concerned about the two awnings we left out.  And last, but not least, I was concerned about Linda’s hearing loss.  Nonetheless, I was up at 7:30 AM and got dressed.  Linda was up shortly after me and got dressed.  She also did not sleep well for most of the same reasons.  We each had a quick bite for breakfast in case we had to leave on short notice.

I had not heard from Dr. Patel’s office in Titusville by 8:10 so I called them.  They were the backup for Dr. Widick’s office in Cocoa Beach which was closed until Monday morning.  Dr. Patel was not available today and would not be until Monday.  Some backup.  The receptionist was not able to refer us anywhere else.  Linda’s initial annoyance at not being able to hear had become a serious concern and melted briefly into a panic.  We both got online and started searching for ENTs in the Orlando area.

There were several dozen with no meaningful way to call all of them to find one that was open with an available appointment slot.  We were starting to think about going to a hospital ER when I spotted a listing for ENT services at Florida Hospital in Orlando.  I called the number and the operator wasn’t quite sure what to do with my call but then transferred me to the hospital’s physician referral service where Tim took the call.

Tim gave me the name of Dr. Lehman at Ear, Nose, Throat Plastic Surgery Associates P.A.  http://www.ENTOrlando.com/Portal 407.644.4883.  I called them and they were not going to be able to get Linda in to see Dr. Lehman, or any other ENT, until Tuesday.  I pleaded the desperation of our situation and they finally said we could see a P.A. in their Orlando clinic office at 1 PM.  The receptionist took some basic insurance information over the phone and told us to be there by 12:30 PM to take care of paperwork.  She also gave me the address and phone number of the clinic.

Our mapping apps indicated a 52 mile trip (one-way) that would take about one hour.  We decided to leave at 10:30 AM to allow plenty of time and still arrive early.  It was only 9 AM so rather than sit around I texted Vickie to let her know our plans for the day and that we were headed over to the office to get some coffee and kill a little time.  She and Pat met us there and provided a much needed distraction for Linda.

We knew that another round of thunderstorms was forecast to move through the Cape Canaveral area sometime during the afternoon so at 10:15 we headed back to our coach and retracted the patio awning and large driver side awning.  By the time we gathered up all of our stuff, which included our SunPass transponder, and pulled out of our site it was almost 10:45.  I headed south on N. Atlantic Ave. and stopped at the Shell station to top off the fuel tank.  A half mile later I headed west on Central Blvd. and then turned onto westbound Astronaut Blvd (FL-A1A).

The clinic was located at 44 W. Michigan St. southeast of downtown Orlando, Florida.  Approximately 40 miles of the 52 mile trip were on FL-A1A and FL-528 and somewhere between 30 and 40 of those miles were toll road.  The only traffic congestion we encountered was after exiting FL-528 near Orlando International Airport onto FL-428.  We arrived at the clinic before noon.

While Linda was filling out all of the paperwork I got a call from Butch.  They were on the move traveling north on I-25 in New Mexico and hoping to make it to Amarillo, Texas before dark.  I brought him up to date on Linda’s situation and we then discussed travel plans.  He thought they would be home by the end of next week, which is when we plan to pull out of Jetty Park.  Butch is willing to help me disassemble and rebuild the driver side tag axle caliper, if that’s what is needed, and I really appreciate that.  I am inclined, however, to get Linda and the cats back to the house and then take the bus to Butch and Fonda’s place.  I also need to have him work on the three CruiseAir air-conditioners and I cannot have the cats onboard while that work is taking place.  All of this might also depend on if/when Joe is in Michigan and available/willing to work on the bus.

At 1:15 PM someone came out and called for Linda.  It was the audiologist.  She took us back to a room with an anechoic chamber and tested Linda’s hearing.  We went to an interior waiting room while she complied the test results and were then taken to an examine room by a nurse who went over the information Linda had provided and filled in some details.  A few minutes later the Physician’s Assistant, Bibi Farida Hussain, PA-C came in with a nurse.

We immediately liked her.  She was friendly and upbeat but very professional; exuding a confident competence.  She went over Linda’s history, symptoms, and audiological test results.  Linda’s test results showed that her hearing in her right ear was well below normal and that her eardrum was showing limited movement.  Farida’s examination of Linda’s right ear revealed some wax build up that was obscuring her ability to see anything else, so she cleaned it.  She was then able to clearly see the inflammation and the presence of fluid in the middle ear.  The fluid was preventing the movement of the eardrum and Bibi was fairly certain that was responsible for the greatly diminished hearing.

Farida had Linda pinch her nose and blow gently to force a little air up the eustachian tubes to help displace some of the fluid.  She recommended that Linda do this about 10 times per day.  She also suggested that Linda continue to use the OTC 12 hour nasal decongestant pills as they were helping drain the eustachian tubes and middle ear.  She prescribed a six day course of steroids and sent the prescription electronically to the CVS Pharmacy in Cocoa Beach.  She also recommended OTC Flonase nasal spray and gave us a $5 off coupon for the 120 dose size.  Finally, she gave Linda a copy of the audiological test results and suggested that she follow up with her ENT back home (Dr. Michael Sideman) in two to three weeks.  We paid the estimated co-pay and were on our way by 2:15 PM with Linda feeling relieved and reassured that her hearing should recover substantially within a week with no long-term damage.

We did not have much for breakfast and decided to get some lunch before driving back to the Cape.  A POI search using our Garmin 465T GPS unit revealed that there was a Panera just 0.3 miles east of the clinic on Michigan St.  Perfect!  It was cold inside and pleasant outside so we ate outside.  As we were finishing our lunch around 2:45 PM, very dark and foreboding clouds blew in quickly from the west and we got a few rain drops.  We made it back to the car before the skies opened up, which they did shortly thereafter.

The entire drive back to Cocoa Beach was through a hellacious rain storm with strong winds, very limited visibility, water ponding on the roads, and generally reduced speeds.  We did not have to be anywhere by any particular time so I tried to move along at whatever speeds felt comfortable to me while not going so slow as to get rear-ended.  It was about 4:30 PM by the time we made it to the CVS Pharmacy in Cocoa Beach and picked up Linda’s Rx and OTC medications.

The northbound traffic on FL-A1A (Astronaut Blvd.) was bumper-to-bumper as we drove through Cape Canaveral into Cocoa Beach so I took side streets back to Jetty Park.  I know I’ve been someplace for a while when I can start to find alternate driving routes.  The rain had moved through and out to sea by this time and we had a nice drive through yet another pleasant part of the Cape.  We were back at our coach by 5:15 PM.  I texted Vickie to let her know and we agreed to meet around 6:30 PM to go for a walk around the campground and park.  I then texted Butch and Chuck with status updates while Linda texted both of our children with the same information.  People really do care, and were concerned, and it would be thoughtless to not let them know.

Having had a late, filling lunch we were not hungry so Linda doodled on her iPad while I took a short nap.  We met Pat and Vickie and walked out to a beach access/overlook where we saw the Victory casino ship heading out to sea.  I took a few pictures because, well … I had my camera and that’s what I do.  We then walked along the shipping canal where I took a few more pictures.  We stopped at the office for coffee and then walked to the laundry room closest to our site to check it out.  Linda was tired by this point so we said “good night” and headed back to our coach.

It was 7:45 PM and we both were finally a little hungry so we each had a sandwich.  We turned on the TV and flipped channels.  There wasn’t much on that we wanted to see until Linda noticed that Foyle’s War was on one of the PBS stations.  That was an excellent show that we really enjoyed when it originally aired.  The signal was intermittent but we watched it anyway.  I then tuned in the NCAA basketball tournament for Linda on CBS 6.1 (solid, steady signal) as she made ready to sleep in the captain’s chairs again tonight.  I went to bed, put on the TV, and wrote for a while before going to sleep around 11:30 PM.

2016/03/26 (S) Let’s Talk Dirty

I woke up around 7:15 AM and was out of bed by 7:30.  Linda was still sleeping soundly, so I quietly got something to eat for breakfast and took my vitamins but did not make coffee, which involves using the coffee bean grinder and is fairly noisy.  Linda woke up around 8:30 and started taking her steroids.  After reading the package more carefully she realized she could have taken all six of the first day’s pills last night at one time.  That annoyed/frustrated her as she is anxious to get her hearing back ASAP, but there was no turning back the clock.

I needed to do laundry today and I also needed to mail two envelopes to my sister with various tax returns in them.  I searched online for laundromats in Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach and found several, but one in particular caught my attention; a full service laundry on N. Atlantic in Cocoa Beach named Let’s Talk Dirty.

The shower/laundry buildings at Jetty Park Campground only have three washers and dryers each, but their main drawback is that you cannot drive your car and park near the buildings; the only way to get your laundry there is to carry it.  We have seen quite a few people using rolling carts to get their stuff to the beach and I suspect the long-term, regular campers also use them to get their laundry to/from the building.  We do not have such a cart and since I had to drive to the Cape Canaveral Post Office anyway I decided I would treat myself and let someone else wash, dry, and fold our laundry today.  It might cost as much as going out for a moderate dinner, but it’s been a hard week for me as well as Linda and I figured I deserved a break.

I gathered up the laundry, put it in the car, and took off, leaving Linda to rest.  I found the Post Office easily enough and got the two envelopes mailed Priority Mail with tracking.  I then drove another four miles south on FL-A1A (Atlantic Ave.) to the laundry service.  It was in a little strip mall just before Atlantic Ave. splits at the beginning of Downtown Cocoa Beach.  It was around 10:30 when I got there.  I had 29 pounds of laundry at a $1.05 per pound.  I had Jill wash everything “cold” but there was an extra $5 charge for splitting it into two loads, lights and darks.  I had to pay in advance, but that was OK.  Jill said it might not be ready until after 3 PM and let me know she was closing today at 5 PM.  No problem.

I enjoyed my drive back to Jetty Park and stopped at the Dunkin Donuts for a couple of coffees to go.  The place has always been empty when we have stopped there before but it was mobbed this morning!  But then, I guess that’s not really surprising for a Saturday morning on Easter weekend on the Cape.

Vickie texted me around 1 PM to see how Linda was doing and to let us know she was headed out to do some shopping and see if we needed anything.  She did not specify groceries but I presume that what she meant.  Linda was sleeping and we really did not need anything as we/I have been to Publix two or three times since we arrived at Jetty Park.  I was working on this post when Jill called around 1:30 PM to let me know our laundry was ready for pickup.  By this time Linda had a short grocery list from the last couple of days so we brainstormed a few additional items and I took it with me.

Atlantic Ave. was busy and congested near the Merritt Island Causeway. The “cause” of the backup was a large group of protesters at the intersection. As best I could determine their “cause” was saving the Indian River Lagoon, from which I gathered something was going on that the protesters believed threatened said lagoon in some way.  Their signs directed passersby to the group’s Facebook page for more information.  Once I was clear of that intersection the next congested section was by the public park farther south on the east side of the avenue.  It was closed to public use for a special function and there were a half dozen police cars there with their lights flashing.  The police had also placed cones along the lane markings and were directing traffic.  Everyone had to slow way down, of course, and occasionally stop.  Once I was clear of that obstacle it was easy sailing the rest of the way to the laundry.

It only took a few minutes to retrieve our laundry which was folded and bagged as advertised.  There was no way to avoid the traffic congestion at the park but once I was clear of that I kept an eye on my GPS unit for the first available opportunity to get off of Atlantic Avenue and over one street to the east.  That street begins/ends south of the causeway so I used it to bypass the congestion and demonstrators at that intersection.  I have nothing against protests and demonstrations; they are a sign of the health of our democracy, but I was already aware of their cause and not in the humor to sit in traffic.  Although there is an occasional stop sign and a 25 MPH speed limit, the side street is a lightly used, pleasant road that runs through a residential area.  When I was sufficiently far from the causeway intersection I returned to Atlantic Avenue and continued north to the Publix supermarket.

It was sometime between 2:30 and 3 PM by the time I was parked and headed inside the supermarket.  There have always been shoppers (and their cars) here on previous visits, but nothing like today.  The parking lot was 75% full, the aisles were crowded, and some of the shoppers seemed frantic.  Saturdays are busy at most supermarkets and other shopping venues but I could not discern to what extent these shoppers were residents with jobs doing their weekend chores, snowbirds doing their weekly grocery runs, or vacationers just arrived on the Cape and stocking up for the week.  It was also the Saturday before Easter Sunday and I only found out later that Publix would be closed tomorrow.  It was a perfect shopping storm.

I was back in my car with the groceries by 4 PM.  There’s a side street with access to the Publix parking lot that has a traffic signal on N. Atlantic Avenue so I always use it to make the left heading northbound.  Although Atlantic Avenue is four lanes with a center turn lane the speed limit is typically 35 MPH and it is lined with businesses on both sides.  Traffic moves slowly, and is frequently interrupted by vehicles leaving/entering the traffic flow, which causes it to be bumper-to-bumper and makes left turns across lanes especially difficult.

Back at the campground I got the clean laundry and groceries into our coach.  I put the clothes bags on the bed and then unpacked the groceries and put them away.  Linda was hungry and feeling well enough to make a salad with arugula, dried cranberries, slivered almonds, and Ken’s Sweet Vidalia Onion Dressing.  Yum.  I heated a can of Amy’s Vegetable Barely Soup, washed off some black grapes, and sliced up part of the baguette that was left over from our lunch yesterday at Panera.  It seemed like it was the first meal we have sat down and eaten at home in a while.

I thought it would be good for Linda to get out of the bus and go for an easy walk.  She was still experiencing some dizziness and nausea but agreed to go.  We walked over to Pat and Vickie’s coach, which we can see from ours’, and found them at home.  They had just finished dinner and we were all going to go for an easy stroll when I noticed dark clouds moving in from the west.  Pat pulled up the radar on his phone and, sure enough, a storm cell appeared to be headed our way.  Linda was tired anyway so the stroll was called off and we walked back to our rig.

In spite of being surrounded by some 60 TV channels there are only a few that we can receive strongly enough to lock in the digital signal and they do not generally include the two PBS affiliates.  Saturday evening TV programming tends to be a bit of a wasteland anyway and we ended up watching the NCAA Basketball Tournament.  I eventually tuned it in on the bedroom TV as well just to have something on while I unpacked the clean laundry, put it away, and made the bed.  Linda set up the living room captain’s chairs for sleeping, took her evening medications, and snuggled in for the night.  Sleeping in a sitting position minimizes the amount of coughing during the night, which leads to better rest.  I turned off the lights in the front of the coach and retired to the bedroom for the evening.

 

2015/12/19 (S) A Gypsy Journal Milestone

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We were up a bit later than usual last night and did not get out of bed until 8:15 AM this morning.  The temperature outside had dropped to 36 degrees F overnight and it was cool in the coach which was one of the reasons we slept well and lingered under the covers (where I had my heater pad turned on).  I put my sweatpants and sweatshirt under the covers to warm them up before getting up and putting them on.  Linda just braved the chill and put on her sweats without warming them first.  She’s tougher than I am.

We like to keep track of the weather back home and in other places where we have friends, like Quartzsite, AZ, and the weather apps on our iPads and smartphones make that very easy to do.  At 10 AM EST it was 25 at home going up to 28 with an overnight low of 23.  Here in Williston it was 48 going up to 62 with an overnight low of 39.  Arcadia, where we will be in January and February, was presently 58 going up to 73 and dropping to 55 overnight.  Four hours farther south actually matters in Florida, which has four somewhat distinct climate zones.  Quartzsite, 2,000 miles west of us, was 38 (at 8 AM local time) going up to 67 and dropping back to 39 overnight.  All things considered Williston was a pretty nice place to be this time of year.

Once I was up I fed the cats, who always insist that their needs are met first, and then turned on the three thermostats for the Aqua-Hot hydronic heating system, set the temperature controls, and turned on the diesel burner.  I made a pot of coffee and Linda started cooking oatmeal for our breakfast.

A view of our coach looking north at Williston Crossings RV Resort.

A view of our coach looking north at Williston Crossings RV Resort.

We were done with breakfast by 9:30 and Linda had the dishes cleaned shortly thereafter.  We doodled on our iPads while we enjoyed the rest of our coffee.  Nick Russell sent out the link for the January-February 2016 issue of The Gypsy Journal yesterday.  I forwarded it on to our iPads last night and we downloaded it to our devices this morning.  It is the 100th issue that Nick has published and the last one he will produce on newsprint.  Starting with the March-April 2016 issue the Journal will only be available in digital form.  That will not be a problem for us as we switched to the digital version only several years ago, but it is sad that smaller specialty publications cannot survive in printed form.  I think it is inevitable that Bus Conversion Magazine will also go digital only, if it survives long enough to make that switch and then survives the transition.

Nick has had a small army of friends take bundles of newspapers and leave them in RV park offices on their travels and has picked up new subscribers that way, but the newspaper is well enough positioned at this point, with a large enough subscriber base, that he should continue to do very well.  Even if the number of subscribers levels off, or even shrinks slightly, his profitability should increase nicely now that he is rid of the printing and mailing costs.

Nick and Terry will also have what we called “found time” at the education agency when some task, meeting, or other commitment on our time evaporated and we suddenly, and unexpectedly, “found” time to work on other things.  As highly mobile full-timers Nick and Terry were always arranging for printers in different parts of the country, picking up the newspapers, folding and stuffing them in envelopes, printing address labels and putting them on the envelopes, and taking them to a post office, as well as carting around the extras and leaving them in campground offices or giving them to friends to distribute.  All of that took a lot of time; time they can now use for other things.

Williston Crossings RV Resort has lovely, mature landscaping including large, majestic Live Oak trees draped in Spanish moss.

Williston Crossings RV Resort has lovely, mature landscaping including large, majestic Live Oak trees draped in Spanish moss.

Yesterday Linda was looking at the website for Big Tree RV Resort in Arcadia, Florida where we will be in January, February, and early March.  She ended up looking at the AllStays Camp and RV listing for the resort and discovered a photo of OUR bus that I took two years ago in our site here at Williston Crossings RV Resort!  The information attached to the image pointed back to our website as the source and said “…the image may be copyrighted.”  I have looked at ways to add a copyright notice to all of the images on our website/blog but never implemented one.  I guess I really should.

After breakfast we opened the packet of felt chair leg caps and put four of them on the folding card table chair we use at the desk.  It looked like they would do just what we needed them to do so we removed the towel we had been using to protect the floor.  My focus today was working on our blog but first I spent a little time updating my spreadsheet for our spring/summer 2016 water bay project.  I uploaded seven blog posts a few days ago but have been concentrating on selecting and processing photos since then.  This morning I decided to resume working on posts.  My goal was to finish editing the posts for the remainder of August (2015), select the spots to insert the selected photos, clean up the writing, and start uploading them to the server.

We took a lunch break at 12:45 PM and had mock deli slice sandwiches on flatbread and split a fresh apple.  Linda started to work on her counted cross-stitch project for grand-daughter Katie but realized the larger grid base material she bought was too small.  She found something on Amazon that would work and ordered it for delivery on Tuesday.  She then searched online for someplace in the area to buy a Tofurkey vegan mock turkey roll.  It looked like Earth Origins in Gainesville sold them so she decided to drive into town and get one rather than wait until next week and risk not having any available.  I stayed behind and continued working on my blog posts.

Some of the grass on the other side of the road from our site was spectacular. Ahhh, December in north central Florida. This is why people come here in the winter.

Some of the grass on the other side of the road from our site was spectacular. Ahhh, December in north central Florida. This is why people come here in the winter.

With the outside temperature only rising into the low 60’s we kept the motorcoach closed up today.  By 2 PM the temperature in the front half of the coach was a very pleasant 76 degrees F.  It was cooler in the back as most of the window area is in the front half of the bus, including the large southwest facing windshields.

Linda returned from her trip to Gainesville with more than just a vegan mock turkey roll.  Besides the Tofurkey brand products Earth Origins also had Gardeine brand products.  We have had other Gardeine products that were very good so she decided to try their mock stuffed turkey roll.  As long as she was there she picked up a half dozen other frozen entrees to try.

I had just finished editing the posts for August when Linda suggested we go for a walk.  It was 4 PM and the late afternoon light was nice so I took the camera.  We only made it a couple of sites up the road and stopped to talk to the new arrivals from Alaska.  We had no sooner resumed our walk when Linda got a call from Diane.  John had surgery recently, and will be off work until after the holidays, but is recovering nicely.  We strolled along slowly while they talked and I took a few pictures.  I wore my sweater but the sun was already behind the trees and I was pretty quickly uncomfortably cool in the shade.

We crossed paths with John and Ali and stopped to chat for a while.  We learned last night at the campfire that Jeff and Kathy’s dog Teddy had succumbed to his lymphoma this past Sunday.  Teddy was very sweet and we know how difficult it is when a pet dies.  We also learned that Jeff had been taken to the hospital in Ocala and was scheduled to have a colonoscopy earlier today.  The report back from Kathy was that he might have colitis.

When we got back to our rig Linda made hot hibiscus tea.  I had planned to upload some blog posts today but I had spent enough time in front of my computer for one day and sat on the couch with my iPad for a while instead.  I rarely take naps but I am not opposed to the idea.  I laid down at 5:15 PM and dozed until Linda got me up at 6 for dinner.

Linda on the phone with Diane Rauch as we head into the older south section of the resort. That’s one happy girl.

Linda on the phone with Diane Rauch as we head into the older south section of the resort. That’s one happy girl.

After dinner we both changed into warmer clothes and Linda packed our wine to take to the fire circle.  We got there a little before 7 PM, later than usual, but the only people there were John, Big Mike, Jim (Sonny Fox), and Tom (from Hilton Head, SC).  Another couple, who have the site just east of John and Ali, showed up just after us but that was it for the evening and John did not get his guitar and perform.  Besides the much cooler weather there was a dinner/dance at the clubhouse this evening, so John had anticipated a smaller than usual crowd.  That was nice in a way, both for him and us, as we got to talk more than usual.

The temperature had already dropped into the lower 50’s at 7 PM.  In spite of our best efforts we were not able to get the fire really hot, and did want to build it too large, so by 9 PM it had dropped into the mid-40’s and everyone had left except for me and John.  I spread out the fire and put the implements in the shed and John locked it.  He joined Ali at Jeff at Kathy’s fifth wheel trailer, where Ali was visiting with Kathy, and I walked back to our rig.

Linda was in her sweats with her blanket over her legs reading her latest e-book with a cat on her lap.  I changed into my sweats but did not feel like doing much of anything.  I flipped through TV channels but did not find anything that caught my interest.  PBS was running a Peter, Paul, and Mary 50th anniversary special, which would normally have been very interesting to me, but it was a fund raiser made up of old clips, interviews, and pleas for money and I just was not in the humor.

The temperature in the coach had dropped to 68 but we both felt a little chilled so I turned on the front thermostat and Aqua-Hot diesel burner.  I made a cup of hot decaf chai tea, played a few games on my iPad, and worked on this post before finally going to bed at 11:30 PM and going to sleep.

 

2015/12/11 (F) Naked Grape

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We were both up at 7:45 AM but the cats were active long before that.  Besides their usual jumping on and off the bed they were unusually frisky and spent quite some time chasing each other back and forth the full length of the coach, often taking flying leaps onto the bed.  I fed them and Linda cleaned their litter tray after which I made coffee and she made oatmeal for our breakfast.  While we finished our coffee Linda played word games on her iPad and I put the finishing touches on yesterday’s post, e-mailed it to myself, and started working on today’s post.

My sister called at 9:30 AM and we talked for about 30 minutes.  When we were done I got dressed and gathered up the first load of laundry, drove it down to the laundry room, loaded the washing machine, and started it.  I then drove to the NAPA store to get the E-clips for the awning window lever pins.  This time they had them.  I ordered 12 but they came in bags of 20 and were cheaper per piece in that quantity.  There are 16 of these clips securing the lever arms for the eight awning style windows, so I bought the whole bag.  I also bought some J-B Weld that I plan to use to repair the broken weld on one of the passenger side living room window latches.

When I got back to the coach I gathered up the second load of laundry, which included the bed sheets and pillow cases, and drove it down to the laundry room.  The first load was done so I loaded it in the dryer and then put the second load in the washer.  I returned to the coach for 25 minutes and then went back to put the second load in the dryer.  It took several more trips to get all of the laundry in/out of washers and dryers, put in on hangers or fold it, and get it back to the coach.

For lunch we split a mock turkey sandwich with lots of greens, a tangerine, and a pear.  It was like a salad on a bun.  I had a text from my sister asking me to call a social worker at a different medical center and let her know that Patty would call her back later in the afternoon.  After lunch I called Amy and left a message.  Amy called me back and we chatted briefly.  Presumably she also talked to Patty later in the day.

Linda resumed work on her counted cross-stitch project and suggested that I select a bottle of wine for this evening and put it in the refrigerator.  None of the wines we had struck my fancy so I drove to the Grocery Depot and bought a 3L box of Naked Grape Moscato.  We received notifications from Amazon that two packages had been delivered so I stopped in the office on the way back and picked them up.  One was the two bath mats for the bathroom and the other one was our 8.5×14 brochure paper for our holiday letter. I put the box of wine in the fridge when I got back to the coach.

I finished the 2-column formatting of Part 1 of my 2-part BCM article titled What To Do With Your Bus:  Building with Habitat For Humanity and e-mailed it off to Gary, the publisher of Bus Conversion Magazine.  By the time I finished going through e-mails it was 3 PM and had gotten warm in the coach, even with the windows open and the roof vent fans running.  I laid down on the sofa and took a nap for a couple of hours.

When I finally got up from my nap the sun was low in the southwest sky and it had cooled off just a bit so we both sat outside with our iPads for a while.  It was a beautiful day today with clear skies and a warm sun and highs in the mid-70s.  Today is Friday, which means we gather at the fire circle at 7 PM for fellowship and music, so we had dinner at 6 PM, earlier than usual.  Linda made a nice green salad, as she does most evenings, with walnuts, raisins, and dried cranberries.  She reheated the leftover seitan stroganoff and heated some frozen broccoli.  She rarely uses frozen ingredients, but they are always handy to have around for a quicker, easier to prepare, meal.

Linda opened the box of Naked Grape Moscato wine and filled a small coffee thermos.  She put the thermos and our two plastic wine gasses in our wine tote and we walked down to the firepit.  We took the recyclables with us as the bins are just beyond the firepit.  When we got there at 6:40 PM John already had the fire going but no one else had arrived.  We like to get there early so we can sit near John and Ali.

As was the case two years ago I ended up tending the fire.  Not that I mind; I am actually pretty good at it, but the available firewood at the moment is not good.  It is very heavy for its size and I suspect it is not very dry.  I convinced John that we should leave the natural gas on under the logs.  Normally the gas is only used to start the fire but leaving it on, even on low flame, seemed to help reduce the amount of smoke.  I also used some of the scrap construction lumber which was very dry and burned hot and clean.

We stayed at the fire until 10 PM and enjoyed John’s guitar playing, singing along, and conversation.  Around 9:30 he got a call from a couple who had just arrived at the gate and he had to leave to escort them to their site.  They had been delayed by a traffic jam that resulted from an accident.  Every RVer who has been on the road for more than a few months has experienced this.  As was the case last weekend it was just the two of us with John and Ali at the end.  We would have stayed longer, as I had a small but nice fire burning, but John had to close up the resort buildings and check the gates and Ali was starting to get cold.  I turned off the gas, spread out the logs, and we headed home.

When we got back to our coach we turned on the TV and doodled on our iPads for a while before going to bed.  Linda inadvertently locked Juniper in the bathroom closet but after hearing an unusual thumping sound several times, and not seeing her anywhere, I investigated and found her.  She likes to climb in the closets and get behind things, and was actually reluctant to come out, but she finally did and ended up in bed with us and the other cat, as is the case almost every night.

 

2015/12/06 (N) Multiple Threads

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I got out of bed at 8 AM, fed the cats, refreshed their water, and cleaned their litter tray.  I made some hot soapy water for dishes and then measured out and ground our morning coffee beans.  Once I had the coffee brewing I cleaned the grinder, which I had not done in a while.

Linda got up around 8:30 and we both sat with our iPads and enjoyed our first cup of coffee.  I had a reply to the e-mail I sent our son last night and replied back.  I also sent the photo I created on Thursday to him and our daughter.  It is a 3-image panorama looking north out of our passenger side living room window of our motorcoach.

At 9:30 Linda started making pancakes, which has become something of a regular treat for our Sunday breakfast.  I got a call from my sister at 10 letting me know she was heading to the hospital where our dad is in the ICU.  We finished our coffee around 10:30 and got dressed.  Linda settled in to work on her counted cross-stitch project and I checked our fresh water tank.  The level was finally below 1/3 on the monitor so I decided to test the park water.  As I expected, based on our previous time here, the hardness was at the maximum on the test strip so I got the water softener out and connected it to the supply valve.  The quick disconnect, while a nice idea, is made of plastic.  It was finally worn to the point where it would not seal so I unthreaded it from the pressure regulator and put it back in the fresh water tub where it joined a dozen other components that I should throw away.  Someday.

I have read in multiple publications and blogs that the RV sewer hose, and especially the bayonet connectors used on RV sewer hoses, is the weakest component on an RV, both by design and manufacture.  While these components may be in contention for that status, I submit that the garden hose fittings that are universally used for the fresh water connections may actually be the worst.  My fresh water connections always leak even when I tighten them (gently) with a wrench.  My sewer connections do not generally leak.

But I have digressed once again.  When I had the softener connected I tested the output and it appeared to be fully charged so I connected it to the inlet of the coach and refilled the fresh water tank.  In Quartzsite, Arizona this past winter I kept track of the details of when I dumped and filled tanks, including the hardness was of the water coming out of the softener before and after each fill.  This data served two purposes.

One purpose was to compensate for our waste tank level monitors, which do not work.  We were trying to determine the rate at which we were filling them so we could calibrate how long we could reasonably boondock before we had to dump them.  That turned out to be about nine days, conservatively, which is how long we went before hooked up here and dumped.

 

Because the water softener can only remove a certain number of grains of hardness before it is exhausted the number of gallons it can soften before it has to be recharged depends on the hardness of the water coming in.  At 25 grains of hardness per gallon, which is what we had in Q and what we have here in Williston, the softener, which has a capacity of about 10,000 grains, can process about 400 gallons.  If the hardness is higher than 25 gpg we will not be able to process that many gallons.  400 gallons is about four refills if I refill it when the level is down to 1/6 (20 gallons).  Our usage data from Q indicated that we used about 9 gallons per person per day on average (18 gallons per day) and that I was filling the tank every 5 to 6 days and recharging it every three weeks.

While setting up the water softener I noticed an active nest of red ants.  I saw John drive by and a few minutes later saw him headed back our way and flagged him down.  He did not have the ant poison on his cart but offered to get it and come back, which he did.  He also brought a rake.  It turned out that he buys this product at his own expense and uses it to treat sites before folks check in, so I will buy a bag for ourselves and one to replenish his stock as part of my trip to Hudson tomorrow.

With the refill underway I resumed working on the photos for the BCM article on the International Thermal Research (ITR) OASIS Combi hydronic heating system in Butch and Fonda Willams’ 1987 MCI MC-9 NJT bus conversion.  The hospital tried to reach me at 12:14 PM but the call went directly to my voice mail.  After a few text messages back and forth with my sister and niece I received a phone number for the doctor and was able to get her on the phone.

Brendan texted me at 1 PM to let me know he was headed to our house.  He called when he got there and I called him back on our house phone.  He spent about half an hour searching through brief cases looking for certain papers and telling me what he was finding.  He found the case I needed and took it back to his house where he can go through it more comfortably and ship it to me if needed.

I had resumed working on the BCM article when John and Ali showed up.  We invited them into the coach to see the remodeling work we have done and they stayed long enough to chat awhile and have a small glass of wine.  I opened the bottle of Viva La Rojo from the Heart Of The Desert winery in Alamogordo, New Mexico and we all agreed it was very nice.  It is at such moments that I am left to wonder why we did not buy more than one bottle.

After they left I continued working on the article until I was too tired to concentrate.  It was well into the second half of the afternoon so we both put our projects aside and removed the fogged living room awning style window/frame, wrapped it in a blanket, and put it in the car.  I need to leave early in the morning and drive to Suncoast Designers in Hudson to have the window repaired and did not want to be messing around with it at 6 AM in the morning.

Getting the window out required the step ladder and a small screwdriver to remove two C-clips so it was a bit more involved than it sounds.  Linda put the screen back in place, covered it with a piece of the silvered bubble insulation, and taped it around the edges.  The RV resort is very safe so someone getting into our rig was not our concern.  Rather, the low temperature overnight Monday into Tuesday is forecast to be in the 40’s so we really cannot have an uninsulated opening in the side of the coach.  The chance for rain is low to zero, and we have the awning out over most of that window, so we are hopeful we will not have to seal the outside with plastic.  Our other concern was our cats.  The screens do not fit as tight as we would like and if this one fell out the cats could jump to their “freedom” with potentially dire consequences.

Linda made stuffed Poblano peppers for dinner.  The preparation took a while so I laid down on the sofa and watched Martha Bakes and Ask This Old House on the Create channel from the University of Florida, Gainesville PBS station.  What can I say?  I find TV that teaches me things entertaining, even if I can’t eat anything Martha bakes.  At home Linda would normally cook the peppers on our outdoor or indoor grill but tonight she pan-seared them.  The peppers were stuffed with a mixture of rice, black beans, tomatoes, scallions, vegan cheddar cheese, and vegan sour cream.  The peppers brought just enough heat to the dish and we finished the bottle of Viva La Rojo, which smoothed everything out.  We had a nice salad with sun-dried tomato vinaigrette as a first course.  We had sliced fresh strawberries for dessert.  It was a really good meal.

We watched President Obama’s address to the nation from the Oval Office, an interesting episode of 60 Minutes (which I have not seen in years), and the Sinatra 100 Grammy tribute.  It was an unusual evening of television for us but very enjoyable and a nice conclusion to a day that was broken up into multiple threads.

 

2015/12/05 (S) Saturday Night Fire Circle

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I was awake at 6:30 AM and finally got up at 7:15.  I fed the cats and cleaned their litter tray, both of which are chores but I don’t mind doing them.  I sat on the sofa with the heater pad on my lower right back and finished yesterday’s blog post draft.  Linda got up at 8 AM having been awake since I got up.  At 8:20 I was going to make coffee but Juniper climbed in my lap so Linda took care of that chore, which is certainly one of our more pleasurable.

Linda worked on her counted cross-stitch project and I worked on our Holiday Letter all morning.  I had a finished draft by lunch time and Linda read through it.  I have it set up for 8.5×14 inch legal size paper, but printing it that way will depend on whether we can get high quality glossy color laser paper in that size.

Linda reheated the last of the red beans and rice for lunch after which I washed some grapes.  After lunch Linda continued to work on her project and I turned my attention to another article for Bus Conversion Magazine.

I had some correspondence with the publisher, Gary, yesterday regarding my article on servicing the Webasto burner bearings and decided to finish my article on Butch Williams’ installation of an International Thermal Research OASIS Combi in their MCI MC-9 NJT bus conversion.  The work was done in October and November 2014 and the article was basically written in January 2015 but I had not selected or processed any of the photos.

I read through the article, highlighted several places with missing information, and rewrote some things.  I then selected 36 photos and started processing them.  The processing involved various adjustments such as alignment, lighting, and color followed by resizing and sharpening in two different sizes.  The larger size is typically 1900 x 1272 pixels as that will fill the screen of a 17 inch monitor and I don’t feel a larger size is needed or supported by the level of detail in the images.  The smaller size is typically 300×200 pixels.  I embed the smaller images at the end of the Word document with the image number and a caption.  I used to embed them into the article but the editor and layout person need the ability to fit them into the layout and I ultimately developed enough confidence in them to do that.  This is always subject to change, however, as is everything connected with this magazine.

We had dinner at 5 PM, earlier than usual.  Linda made a nice green salad, sautéed and lightly glazed some baby carrots, and heated some Amy’s vegan macaroni and cheese.  The reason for the early dinner was the holiday parade down Main Street in Williston at 6 PM.  We left at 5:30 and walked to the corner of NE 5th Street and Main Street.  NE 5th Street is the street that leads back to the front entrance of the resort and is towards the end of the parade route, which comes down Main Street from west to east.  There were already people there, all from the RV Resort as near as we could tell, but we were early enough to get seats on the low brick wall that borders the parking lot for the funeral home.

Main Street is also US-27 but the police closed it down at 5:45 PM.  The parade started at the west end of Main Street by the high school so the lead police motorcycles did not reach us until 6:20 and the front of the main parade did not get to us until 6:30.  There were cars with beauty queens, simple floats with seasonal themes, Girl Scout and Boy Scout troops, politicians, fire trucks, horses, and an elephant with Santa Claus riding on top.  It was a classic small town holiday parade.  It was all over by 7 PM and we walked briskly back to the firepit.

The firepit at WCRVR is about eight feet in diameter, surrounded by a concrete floor ring about six feet wide and covered by an inverted conical roof about 24 feet wide at the lower eaves.  A massive 8 foot diameter inverted conical hood is suspended over the firepit and the 12″ diameter flue pipe runs out the center top of the roof.  The outside perimeter of the floor has large wooden rocking chairs (think Cracker Barrel restaurant), a bench, and a few other chairs and there is a little bit of lighting up in the ceiling.  It’s a wonderful place to sit and enjoy the fire, visit, and listen to people play their guitars and sing.  The flue does not draft correctly so it tends to be smokey, but that is the only downside.  If not for that it would be perfect.

John was there with a couple of other people and had a nice fire going.  Even though it was in the mid-to-upper 60s there was a strong north breeze and the fire felt good.  Lots of other people eventually showed up and filled almost all of the seats so John got his guitar and started playing and singing.  Linda walked back to our rig to fetch our plastic wine glasses and opened a bottle of Egri Merlot.  It’s a good life.

I got a call from my sister and stepped away from the firepit.  She called to let me know that our dad was back in the hospital.  When I returned to the fire circle John was busy playing and singing and some folks had left so I tended the fire.  By 9 PM everyone had left except for John, Ali, and us.  I continued to tend the fire while the four of us talked.  Just before 10 PM I spread out the last embers of the fire and we all returned to our rigs for the night except John, who does the closing rounds on weekends.

Back at our motorcoach Linda put on the Michigan State vs Iowa Big 10 Championship football game.  Though not particularly interested in football I was too tired to work so after sending an e-mail to our son I laid down on the sofa; the first time I have done that since we built it into the coach.  By the time the game was over it was 11:45 PM.  We watched a few minutes of Cook’s Country on Create and went to bed.  I turned the TV on in the bedroom then turned it off.  I turned down the brightness of my iPad display and with only the dim light of the ceiling vista, and whatever light could get in around the window shades, worked on my blog post until 1 AM.

 

2015/12/04 (F) The Chores of Life

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The overnight low was forecast to be in the mid-50s so before going to bed I closed the roof vents and we only left the windows open about half an inch.  I was up at 7:12 AM this morning and put on my sweats.  I fed the cats (they insisted), took out my nighttime bite guard, washed it, and put it away.  I then sat on the sofa with the heater pad on my lower right back and Juniper on my lap while I worked on my iPad.

Linda stayed in bed until 9:15 AM.  She is having trouble shaking the congestion and cough but the nighttime medication seems to control it and allow her to get plenty of much needed sleep.  Once she was up I made a pot of coffee and she fixed bowls of granola for breakfast.

My main focus today was working on our 2015 Year-in-Review Holiday Letter but we had other things to do as well.  At the top of my list was mailing the FMCA Freethinkers Chapter certification paperwork to FMCA HQ.  I also needed to do a load of laundry, our first since we left home a week ago.  Linda planned to work on her counted cross-stitch project but also needed to make a run to the Publix grocery store on the southwest corner of Gainesville.

The word “chore” is often used pejoratively, and that is an appropriate use according to the definition, but the first meaning is “…everyday tasks of running a household or farm.”  The definition goes on to include “…. difficult or unpleasant tasks …” and some chores are certainly more (or less) pleasant than others.  Linda likes to cook and I don’t mind doing the laundry but neither of us particularly enjoy cleaning.  I don’t mind dumping our holding tanks, a chore that many RVers apparently find onerous, but I do not like adjusting the pressure in our tires.

I gathered up the soiled laundry and laundry supplies and loaded them in the car.  The north bathroom/laundry building is in plain sight of our coach, and not that far away, but I had more stuff than I could carry in one trip and it was heavier than I cared to schlep around.  If we had an appropriate wheeled cart I might have used that, but we don’t.  I got two loads started but held off on the third until I had taken a shower.  The bathhouses are in the same building as the laundry.  I added my towel to the third load and started it.

In the middle of doing the laundry I was back at the coach, got the FMCA chapter certification paperwork in an envelope, addressed it, and added stamps.  I was going to walk to the Post Office but in the interest of time I drove to the Resort office instead.  That little task had been nagging me for quite a while so I had a sense of relief, as much as accomplishment, when I put the envelope in the outgoing mailbox.  Linda walked down and used the shower facility.

As soon as I got back to the coach with the clean laundry/supplies and brought them inside I put the 2m/70cm ham radio antenna back on the roof of the car.  Linda then took the car and headed for the Publix supermarket at the southwest corner of Gainesville.  I did not want to unload the car, and had work to do at the coach, so Linda went to Publix by herself so there would be room for the groceries.  I put the laundry away and then settled in to work at my computer.

I realized this morning that I do not have SPSS installed on my ASUS laptop so I will not be able to analyze the data from the FMCA education surveys myself, at least not until I get home.  That is unfortunate as I do not know at this point if HQ has the ability or willingness to do the analysis we need done.  I sent an e-mail to the committee chair and executive director to let them know.  Mea culpa.  I replied to a few e-mails and then resumed working on our Holiday Letter.

I realized last night that some of the images which had already been post-processed had dates in the file names that were different from the dates when they were taken.  As I was trying to arrange them in chronological order I went back and found the originals and corrected the dates.  I then continued placing and captioning the photos.

When Linda returned with the groceries I helped get them into the coach while she put them away.  She finally found the Snyder sourdough pretzel nibblers we like and we finished an open container of hummus and had some fruit for a light lunch.

For dinner Linda made a salad and sautéed mushrooms, onions, and broccoli as a topping for a baked potato, which we split.  I had a little vegan sour cream on my half.  After dinner we changed into warmer clothes and packed a bottle of wine and our two plastic wine glasses and walked to the firepit.

Friday and Saturday nights during the winter folks at the Resort gather at the firepit to enjoy the warmth of the fire, have a glass of wine, talk to one another, and listen to live music provided by volunteer residents.  Our friend, John Smith, is the main entertainer, doing mostly folk/rock/country-crossover.  He is also responsible for the fire since Kevin and Sharon sold their park model and moved to The Villages.  (We are still having a hard time comprehending that move.)  John performed solo in clubs and bars for a living many years ago before he and Ali got married.  Jeff sometimes brings his guitar and performs as well, his specialty being old time country music (such as Merle Haggard).  Other musicians occasionally show up, or at least they did two years ago.

We were the first to arrive (besides John) and chatted with him for quite a while before anyone else showed up.  Other folks drifted in and John eventually fetched his guitar and played.  Ali was visiting with Jeff and Kathy and was one of the last to show up.  Jeff and Kathy’s dog, Teddy, has lymphoma so they stayed at their 5th wheel with him.  We stayed to the end, said “good night” to John and Ali, and walked back to our rig.  We watched an hour of Create TV and went to bed.

 

2015/12/02 (W) Settling In

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I was up at 7 AM, fed the cats, and settled in on the sofa with the heater pad on my lower right back to work on my iPad.  I finished my blog post for yesterday and e-mailed the last three days to myself.  I updated seven apps and then checked out the latest issue of the SKP Photographers BoF newsletter.  Linda finally got up at 9:15 AM.  I made a pot of coffee and we had toast for breakfast.

My first priority after breakfast was responding to a half-dozen e-mails from Gary at BCM, one of which required me to proofread an article he had written about a recent rally.  Next I selected four photos I took with our new Sony a99v DSLT camera and uploaded them to a Dropbox folder for Lou to see.  Somewhere in there I got a call from Joe (our mobile mechanic) about Globus cork flooring products.  As long as he was on the line I asked his opinion about the chassis battery / Vanner equalizer issue.  He reminded me, as he often does, that I already knew how to check if the Vanners were working.  When we concluded the call I went outside and did the checks.

With the Vanners connected to the batteries and working correctly the voltage at the “12V” terminal should be exactly 1/2 the voltage at the “24V” terminal.  Equivalently, the voltage from +24 to +12 should be the same as the voltage from +12 to Ground.  I unplugged the two maintenance chargers to let the surface charge bleed off and used the time to trace the wiring behind the two battery disconnect switches.  As I somewhat expected the two Vanner equalizers, which are wired in parallel, are NOT connected to the batteries when they are disconnected from the coach electrical panels.  (The one Vanner whose label I could see is a Voltmaster 60-50M rated at 50 Amps maximum so I presume the other one is the same model.)

With the battery bank connected the relative voltage measurements were as expected, indicating that the Vanners were probably working correctly while the absolute measurements of +25.6 and +12.8 (to the nearest 0.1 VDC) indicated that the batteries were fully charged.

I put the disconnect switches back in the disconnected position and plugged the maintenance chargers back in.  I checked the voltage on the upper and lower battery strands and they were close to the same but not identical.  That was reasonable given that the chargers were independent (electrically isolated) and the upper and lower strands were bridged by Vanner equalizers just minutes before.  Based on my testing it appeared that everything was OK except that I lacked a plausible explanation for why the engine alternator apparently did not fully charge the batteries yesterday on the drive down from Mayo.  I wrote all this up in an e-mail and sent it to Joe, Butch, and Chuck, all of whom have had conversations with me about this over the last few days.

Linda made a humus and onion on rye sandwich and we split it for lunch along with some grapes.  It rained hard while we were eating but the rain did not last long.  After lunch I completed the certification paperwork for our FMCA Freethinkers Associate Chapter.  It was 4:15 PM by the time I was done.  I will get copies made tomorrow and get it in the mail to the headquarters in Cincinnati, Ohio.

I logged in to the Prevost Community website to renew our AITA NAPA discount card but wasn’t sure what to do, so I called Chuck.  He and Barbara were at a wine and cheese gathering and he said he would call me back when he was free.  Linda wanted to go for a walk around the Resort so at 4:30 we headed towards the north end.  This part of the Resort has had a lot of development since we were last here and now has a lot of new park models and large pads for RVs.

We looped around to John and Ali’s 5th wheel but did not see any sign of them so we headed down the main road towards Jeff and Kathy’s site.  Sure enough, John and Ali were there enjoying a glass of wine with Jeff and Kathy.  They offered us some and we accepted and pulled up a couple of open chairs.  We sat and visited until 6:30 PM when we started to get some persistent rain drops.  John drove us back to our coach in his golf cart.

For dinner Linda made a nice green salad and pan-seared tofu with a balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, and sugar glaze with chives.  It was very good and I could easily have eaten twice as much.  After dinner I worked on an article about replacing the bearings in our Aqua-Hot Webasto burner this past winter while we were on Quartzsite.  I got the text finished and inserted/captioned the photos that had been post-processed.  There are more photos to be processed and I plan to finish the article tomorrow and upload it to the Dropbox for proofreading.

I need, and have been looking forward to, a stretch of quiet days with time to work at my computer as I have a lot to do.  I need to update our website and blog, which is almost four months behind, and get back to work on the SLAARC, FMCA Freethinkers, and FMCA GLCC websites.  I also need to finish some articles for BCM that have been “in process” for quite a while, and I need/want to write some new ones.  Along the same lines I need to clean up my BCM folders on my hard drive and in our Dropbox.  That is not all going to happen by the time we leave for Arcadia, but I will do as much as I can.  Once we get to Arcadia we will be spending more time away from the coach exploring southern Florida and visiting with friends.  That means I will be creating lots of new photos and posts but have less time to process them.  Ahhhh, retirement.

 

2015/12/01 (T) Home Again

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I got up at 7:45 AM, got dressed, and fed the cats.  The Magnum BMK was showing the house battery pack at 24.2 VDC and 47% SOC with the refrigerator and other significant loads not drawing any power.  I worked on my iPad for a while until I heard muffled voices from the compound around 8 AM and saw Pat (John’s son) working on the roof of one of the trailers.  Linda got up at 8:30 and we had granola for breakfast and had a leisurely morning.

Check-in time at Williston Crossings RV Resort WCRVR) was noon.  We only had 75 miles to travel to get there and did not need to be there right at noon.  Around 10:45 we started getting the inside of the coach ready to travel and by 11:15 we were taking care of the outside stuff.  Paul and Eugenia were already hooking up their car and obviously preparing to leave as well.  We walked around the coach and checked that the bay doors were closed and locked.  On the way around we got the tow bar off the ground and secured it.  I then switched on the chassis batteries, opened the engine accessories air valve, and returned to the cockpit.

The chassis battery gauges read lower than normal for a fully charged condition but had plenty of energy stored in them to crank the engine quickly.  With Linda spotting from outside I did a three point turn to get the bus pointed towards the exit.  John came over in his Kubota utility cart and chatted with Linda while I moved the car behind the bus and we continued to chat with John as we hooked up the car.  We thanked him for his hospitality and assured him that we would be back; both for a solar system and to just hang out for a longer time in the woods by the Suwannee River.  I started the engine and Linda checked the lights.  Everything was good and when she was back on board we started the slow roll back to the county road.

We pulled out of John Palmer’s place around 11:30 AM and slowly made our way back to CR-354.  I stopped there (to check for traffic, of course) and raised the tag axle to shorten the turning radius.  I did not have a sign post at the edge of the road on the left, as I did when turning in, but the ditch on the other side was deeper closer to the road so I did not to get the passenger side steer tire very far off the pavement.  I completed the left turn cleanly and put the tag back down before continuing.

It was closer to 11:45 by the time we passed the east boundary of the property and saw the sign for the River Rendezvous RV Park.  We took CR-354 to US-27 and headed east to US-129.  Just south of Trenton we vectored off onto SE CR-339 and then picked up NE US-27 Alternate which eventually became Main Street in Williston.  The trip took about an hour and 40 minutes and we arrived at the main entrance to Williston Crossings around 1:25 PM.

It’s usually nice to return to a place you have been to before and liked.  We enjoyed our time here during winter 2013/14 and it felt a little bit like being home again in that the place, and some of the people, were familiar to us and pleasant to be around.  One of the most familiar people was John, our next door neighbor of two years ago.  He was doing site escort duty and led us to our site after Linda got us registered.  We pulled up in front of site #233 and disconnected the car while John read the electric meter.  John then helped me back onto the concrete pad.  We were in place and level at 2 PM and visited briefly with John, giving him a quick tour of our interior remodel.  After John left we hooked up the shorepower cord and put power to the coach.

I checked the chassis battery voltage on the dashboard gauges with the engine off and they were 28+ and 14.  We went through our usual arrival routine with the addition of checking the reading on the electric meter.  We pay for our electricity here so checking the meter on arrival is prudent.  I checked the maintenance chargers and they showed the charge level on the upper and lower 12V portions of the chassis batteries as 75% each.  They should have been fully charged after almost two hours of engine operation so something was still not right.  The house batteries were down to 24.0 VDC and showing a 43% SOC.  The battery charger section of the Magnum 4024 went into Bulk charging mode, charging the house batteries at 107 Amps.

We are parked facing approximately WSW so the front of the coach gets the afternoon sun.  It was in the low 80’s, and a bit warmer in the coach, but we turned on the ceiling exhaust fans rather than run the air-conditioning, deployed the window awnings on the driver side, and lowered the day screens on the inside.  We used AntennaPoint.com to locate broadcast TV towers.  The two we cared about, CBS and PBS, were both north of us.  I rotated the front antenna to point in that direction and did a channel scan.  They both came in with solid signals so I repeated the set up with the rear antenna and bedroom TV.

Once we were set up we had vegan hot dogs for lunch and then walked to the CVS Pharmacy just outside the front entrance to the resort.  We crossed paths with John again and this time he had Ali with him so we had a quick reunion.  When we got back to the coach I was tired and with the warm conditions I dozed off.  When I woke up I set up the printer, NAS, and Amped Wireless router.

Meanwhile Linda had started preparing red beans and rice for dinner and discovered that she did not have diced tomatoes.  I drove to the Grocery Depot, which is also just outside the front entrance to the Resort, and bought a couple of cans that included green chilies.  It was 6:30 PM and the Resort gates were already closed so I had to use the code to get back in.  The dish was excellent and would not have been the same without the tomatoes.

After dinner I e-mailed Butch, Chuck, and Lou.  We are parked close to one of the Resort’s Wi-Fi towers with a strong N signal and reasonable speed, leading me to wonder if the Resort has upgraded their system and Internet connection.  Linda made a stovetop apple crisp and finished it just before our Tuesday evening TV programs began at 8 PM.  The crisp was different from an oven baked one but still very tasty.  We watched a few TV programs on PBS and CBS.  Linda has been fighting something and took some OTC Tussin nighttime medicine for her cough, congestion, and itchy throat.  She has coughed enough that it now hurts and is very tired from many nights of poor sleep.

 

2015/11/26 (R) Thanksgiving (T-1 Days)

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I got up before 7:30 AM, took some Ibuprofen, and sat on the sofa with the heater pad on my back.  Linda got up at 7:45, took a shower, and made tea for us.  She checked the weather forecasts and it looked like it would start to rain around 9 AM, and become steady by 10, so she decided to load the food bags and other things onto the bus that she had ready.  The Ibuprofen and heat were doing their job so I put on some work clothes and helped load things.

We had a lot of stuff on board by 9:30 so we took a break.  Linda cut my hair and beard after which I shaved and took a shower.  I got dressed for Thanksgiving and then gathered up the towels and last few laundry items and loaded them into the washer.  I then selected all of the clothes I wanted and Linda picked out a couple more items.  We moved them to the bus and got them put away in closets and drawers.  We then stored magazines and camera gear under the bed.  Finally we decided what coats to take.  Except for shoes, manuals, music CDs, computing equipment, and a few miscellaneous things we were done loading the bus.  It felt good to be at this point but we vowed to plan better and allow a little more time next time.

The laundry took longer than the initial 42 minutes on the display so we used the time to load the Thanksgiving stuff into the car and check e-mail.  I finally transferred the laundry to the dryer at 11:20 AM and we were on our way to our daughter and son-in-law’s house at 11:28.  We had planned to be there at noon but generally allow an hour to get there.  We pulled up to the house at 12:10 PM, so apparently it’s a 45 minute trip.

Like mother, like daughter; Shawna takes care of some work tasks on her laptop while Madeline shows equal attention to detail on the iPad.

Like mother, like daughter; Shawna takes care of some work tasks on her laptop while Madeline shows equal attention to detail on the iPad.

Our son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter showed up around 1 PM and our step-granddaughter showed up around 2 PM.  Our daughter’s house has a wonderful open floor plan with a large central island in the kitchen that allows many people to stand or sit and be part of a conversation while food is being prepared.

We ate at 4:30 PM and it was quite a meal.  Everything was vegan except for a real turkey with gravy (we had Tofurkey) and the dinner rolls, which had an egg wash.  Everything was made from scratch and all of it was good.  We had a nice long visit and everyone left at 7 PM.  We stopped to top of the tank in Linda’s car and got home around 8:15.

Thanksgiving dinner at Chris and Meghan’s house. L-to-R: Katie, Meghan, Brendan, Chris, Linda, and Madeline in Shawna’s arms.

Thanksgiving dinner at Chris and Meghan’s house. L-to-R: Katie, Meghan, Brendan, Chris, Linda, and Madeline in Shawna’s arms.

When we got home I made sure some of the (important?) files on my laptop were backed up to the old NAS unit.  Rather than take the time to transfer those files to the newer NAS unit I decided to bring the newer one with us.  I then shut down all of the computers in my office and brought the NAS device and my computer upstairs.  We put them onboard along with Linda’s computer, our iPads, and the cameras.  I selected the bus manuals I wanted to take, moved them to the bus, and put them under the bed.  We decided what music CDs we wanted to take and put those on board as well.

Our final preparation tasks were to shut off the well, close the main water valve, unplug the water softener and sanitizer, and remove the batteries.  We added potable antifreeze to all of the waste traps and opened all of the cabinets that had plumbing in them, including the sump pump closet.  I shut off the natural gas to all of the appliances except the furnace and Linda drew all of the vertical blinds and checked the light timers.

When we were finally done loading things on board and buttoning up the house we put the cats in their carriers, put them on the bus, and locked up the house.  It was 10 PM.  I tried to tune in a couple of TV stations, one from Detroit and one from Lansing, but could not hold the digital signals.  Our Wi-Fi Ranger was connected to our AT&T gateway so we used our iPads for a while and I put the finishing touches on this post.  I had to make a few quick trips back inside for last minute things we forgot.

The forecast for overnight is for a low of 51 degrees F with steady rain moving into the area by early tomorrow.  The probability of rain in Berea, Kentucky, however, is only 10%.  We hope to be on the road sometime between first light and sunrise, which is 7:39 AM, and get ahead of the rain.  We also do not expect to see freezing temperatures again this winter.

 

2015/11/25 (W) T Minus 2 Days

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We both got up at 7:45 AM.  My back felt OK when I went to sleep last night but it was not good by morning.  I don’t know if that is a result of being immobile and supine or just the Ibuprofen wearing off.  As painful as it is to get up it feels better once I do.  We both got dressed to work.  Linda prepared raisin toast and tea for breakfast while I positioned myself on the heater pad.  Linda was busy by a little after 9 AM and I was up and about by 9:30.

The first thing Linda did was take out the trash.  She called yesterday and stopped our pickups starting next week.  It took me an hour to finish organizing tools and supplies in the garage.  At that point I turned off the garage furnace and opened the overhead doors.  I started my car and turned it around with the back end facing the garage.  We moved all of the things that were going in the bus outside the larger door.  We then loaded a lot of the stuff into the car.  This is not a permanent arrangement but was merely for the convenience of getting packed for traveling.

I helped get the recycling tubs into Linda’s car.  Late morning she took them to the recycling center and stopped at two different banks to make club deposits.  I took care of some computer-based tasks while she was gone.  I finally got a reply from DataViz regarding a sync problem with Passwords Plus and sent the tech support person (Colin) a copy of the sync log from my computer.  I also managed to register the Sony flash and accessories I bought a month ago.  When Linda got back she made grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch and served them with fresh apple slices.  The cheese was Tomato Cayenne from Field Roast and it made for a tasty sandwich on rye bread from Metropolitan Baking Company.  I had a couple of Ibuprofen for dessert.

We disassembled the temporary work table in the garage and stored the sawhorses out of the way.  We shook out the floor mats (as best we could) and Linda used the ShopVac to vacuum the floor of the larger bay.  We finally had enough room to store her Honda Civic inside for the winter.  That will be the first time it has been stored inside since she bought it in 2007.

[ Photo 1 of 1 – HC – The large bay of garage ready to accept our Honda Civic for the winter.  This is the first time we have been able to put a car in the garage since we moved in to this house. ]

The large bay of garage ready to accept our Honda Civic for the winter. This is the first time we have been able to put a car in the garage since we moved in to this house.

The large bay of garage ready to accept our Honda Civic for the winter. This is the first time we have been able to put a car in the garage since we moved in to this house.

We rearranged some things in the front of the smaller garage bay to make room for the large trash container, the wheelbarrow, several 10′ lengths of 1-1/4″ plastic conduit, 10 large paver blocks, and the mower deck for the Cub Cadet lawn tractor.  With those things stowed inside the concrete driveway was now free of objects that Kerry could have hit with his snowplow.

The tractor and 18 cubic foot trailer will remain in the yard alongside the driveway where we park the bus.  The tractor won’t start and we had no interest in pushing it uphill through snow.  We found our large plastic tarp the other day so we unrolled it, covered the tractor and trailer, folded the edges under, and weighed the edges down with landscape blocks.  Hopefully it will stay put through the winter.

With sunny skies and the temperature hovering around 50 degrees F I opened the house electrical bay on the bus.  We loaded the four toolboxes onto a hand truck, two at a time, and rolled them over to the bay where Linda got them stacked and pushed in.  We then loaded the two drill cases in front of the toolboxes and I closed up the bay.

Next we opened the passenger side engine bay door and replaced the main engine air filter.  It did not look that dirty but the new one was obviously very clean by comparison.  This air filter is a bit pricey at $130 plus tax but it is so critical to good engine performance that it does not make sense to try and save a few cents by not replacing it or trying to clean a used one and reuse it.

With the air filter changed we then pulled out the chassis battery tray.  It holds four Group 31 lead acid batteries and is very heavy.  It has a very heavy duty slide out tray but the tray is worn and lets the leading edge drop a little bit as it comes out.  That means we had to lift it as well as push it to get it back in.

We applied a 14″ strip of black Gorilla Tape to the horizontal frame member at the top of the compartment opening to prevent metal tools from coming in contact with the chassis, which is tied to the battery ground.  I got this idea from Chuck when I saw that he had done this to their coach.  There was some fine rust on top of the batteries but the connections were all tight and did not show signs of corrosion.  I should probably have cleaned them anyway but we had too much else to do.  I did notice, however, that one of the batteries was from 2009 and the other three were from 2010 so they may be due to replaced.

I opened the doors on both sides of the front bus bay and climbed in.  Linda carried stuff over from the driveway and the living room (of the house) and I figured out how to fit them into the space.  We have less stuff in the front bay then the last two winters but more stuff in the car.  The problem for the bay is that we have things in open topped cardboard boxes so I could not stack things the way I have in the past.

We were done with this phase of the loading process by 3 PM.  I had turned on the main engine block heater and the Aqua-Hot engine preheat loop at 1 PM.  I started the main engine to air up the suspension, leveled the coach, and then turned on the auxiliary air compressor to maintain it at level.  I was getting ready to pull my car around behind the bus so we could hook it up when I realized I should probably move the bus a little bit first to make sure the brakes were not locked up.  I backed it up a few feet and turn pulled it forward a little farther than where it started.  Linda checked the floor and it was level so I switched the suspension back to Level Low to help minimize leaks and hold the pressure.

I continued to let the bus run on high idle while we hooked up the car.  With all of the connections made I opened the air valve that supplies air to the auxiliary braking system in the car and went to the cockpit to activate the various lights while Linda checked them.  Everything checked out as OK.

With the bus still idling we carried the HP Color LaserJet network printer from my office in the basement upstairs and into the bus.  It was heavy and awkward but we got in into the bus.  I had to remove the center cover from between the desk pedestals and we had to get it into its alcove in the left pedestal from the knee space between the pedestals.  I was pleased, however, that it fit very comfortably in that space as the space was designed to hold this particular printer.

Once the printer was in we found the replacement black toner cartridge and put it on board.  Linda also carried the smaller APC UPS up from the rec room to the bus and I put it on the connector cover shelf.  I think there will also be room on the shelf for one of the NAS units.  The newer one is physically smaller but has more storage capacity and is faster but my plan us to take the larger/older/slower one.

We were done with this phase of the loading process at 4 PM.  Our next task was to replace the screen insert from the front door of the house with the storm door insert.  Linda turned her attention to preparing food for our family gathering tomorrow and I stripped the bed, took all of the laundry to the laundry room, and started a load of whites.

My back was making me aware that I had worked it harder today than it would have liked so I took a few more Ibuprofen and settled in on the sofa with the heater pad.  Juniper found my lap almost immediately and stayed there until just before 6:30 PM when I had to get up for dinner.

Linda heated up a couple of Amy’s curry and rice frozen dinners and served them with the remaining kale/almond/raisin salad.  After dinner Linda started packing non-refrigerated food items in paper grocery bags for moving to the bus.  I brought all of my photography equipment upstairs to repack but left that for later.  I went downstairs and pulled two additional sets of BCM issues plus extra copies of some of the issues in which I have had articles.  I boxed the sets, labeled them, and brought them upstairs.

By the time I replied to a few e-mails it was after 9 PM.  We could have worked until midnight but we had both had enough for the day.  I settled in on the living room sofa with the heater pad on my back.  In spite of wearing a knee brace Linda’s right knee was bothering her all day so she took some Ibuprofen and we both went to bed.  We watched Weather Nation for a while and then went to sleep.

Tomorrow will be a long day but of a different sort.  In the morning we will finish loading the bus and I will check/adjust the pressures in all of the bus and car tires.  We are due at our daughter’s house at noon for Thanksgiving dinner and will probably stay until 7 PM. That evening, after we get home, we will winterize the plumbing in the house and spend the night on the bus in final preparation for our departure for Florida the following morning.