Well, here it is the 1st day of July, the beginning of another month, and things are just not getting checked off of the “to do” list as fast as I would like.  It finally felt like summer yesterday, and the heat and humidity erupted into severe thunderstorms overnight.  We had the house partially opened up when we went to bed with a couple of fans going in the bedroom, but I still heard the sirens when they were activated around 2:15 AM and I woke up enough to see the first flashes of lightning.  I got up and closed all of the open windows and then checked the weather on my iPad.

A storm front, which ran the most of the length of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, was pushing east producing severe thunderstorms with up to 70 MPH winds and 1 inch diameter hail.  The storms pushed through our location between 2:45 and 3:15 AM.  There was plenty of lightning and thunder, and the trees whipped around quite a bit, but the rain was only moderate and I did not hear any hail.  By 3:30 AM the front had moved east of us and I was able to go back to sleep.

I would have liked to sleep in this morning, but I got up around 7:00 AM to make sure I was ready for the landscapers when they arrived between 8:00 and 8:30 AM.  They didn’t, and with the rain last night it’s anybody’s guess if/when they will arrive.  We moved the bus yesterday evening in anticipation of the landscapers being here early.  It was also very warm yesterday, which was easier on the engine when starting it.  I had not started the bus since we got back from the GLAMARAMA rally and with the humid conditions of the last couple weeks the auxiliary air tank had a LOT of water in it.  After I backed it up, with Linda acting as spotter, I lowered the suspension all the way down and turned off the auxiliary air compressor.  I will leave it off until I get the aux air water separator/filter replaced.  That’s one of the projects that is not getting checked off of my list as I am waiting for the landscaping to be done first.  Why?  Because once I open the air lines the bus cannot be moved until I get everything put back together.  No air, no brakes and no suspension.

I uploaded the blog posts for the last three days including a gallery post of the photos from Saturday.  I then spent some time researching alternative ways to display photos in a WordPress website/blog.  The native Gallery feature of WordPress is very easy to use, but is not very sophisticated when it comes to viewing the images.  The WordPress Jetpack includes a Carousel feature that sounded like it might be what I need.  The Jetpack makes a large collection of features available to self-hosted WordPress sites that were previously only available to sites hosted on WordPress.com.  My hesitation with the Jetpack is that I don’t need, and do not plan to use, most of its features so it potentially complicates my control panels without corresponding benefit.

Linda went to the local Salvation Army resale store in search of a highchair to keep at the house for Madeline.  They did not have any, so she tried Walmart and Target and found one she liked at Target.  She stopped at 5th/3rd Bank to make a deposit for our FMCA Great Lakes Converted Coaches chapter (GLCC) and while she was there she set up the account so she can get online statements.  Our chapter has done its banking with 5th/3rd for a while and does not pay any fees for the account.  She inquired as to the requirements for a free account and was told that the organization had to have 501(c)3 status (IRS non-profit entity).  We were looking at the IRS 501(c)7 status for the SKP Photographers BOF, which is for “social clubs,” but we will have to set it up as a 501(c)3 if we want free checking.

The landscaping crew arrived just after lunch, followed by a truck that dumped a load of very large boulders in the yard just west of the driveway.  A little while later another truck showed up and unloaded the nine pre-cast concrete steps for the front stairs.  They are 46″ W x 19″ D x 7″ thick and very heavy.  Steve showed up a little while later with his excavator, a Kobelco sk35sr-3.  He unloaded it and drove it around back to do some excavating.  He then used it to select some of the largest boulders and place them on the trailer so he could haul them to the back.  He used the excavator to unload them and roll them down the hill to where he needed them.  Steve needed the excavator on another job so he loaded it back on the trailer and left.  He came back at 9:20 PM, unloaded the excavator and used it to place a few very large boulders onto the lower shelves on either side of the walkout.  He quit at 11 PM and left the machine here so he could get an early start tomorrow morning and continue placing boulders so his crew would have work they could do when they showed up.

Pre-cast concrete steps for front porch.

Boulders for the retaining walls behind the house.