Neither of us slept as well as we would have liked last night. The outside temperature only dropped into the upper 60’s with high humidity and the interior of the coach stayed a bit warmer than that. Linda woke up and read from 2:30 to 3:30 AM; at least that’s what she told me this morning as I was unaware of it at the time. We both got up at 8 AM and enjoyed our first cup of coffee while iPadding and listening to Christmas music CDs. We bought an apple strudel at Publix last night that appeared to be vegan and had some of it for breakfast with our second cup of coffee. It wasn’t great strudel, but it was still a treat. All-in-all it was not a bad way to start Christmas Eve day.
Williston Crossings RV Resort, and many of its residents and temporary guests, have been in the holiday spirit since we arrived here on the 1st of the month. Red and green laser “starlight” projectors are in widespread use at night and many sites have decorated their street light and/or RV with lights while some have put up more substantial decorations. Most notable, however, are the golf carts, many of which are decorated for the season. Most folks here wave as they pass whether driving their car or golf cart, riding a bike, or just walking, but based on our prior experience this is normal so I cannot say that folks are in a friendlier spirit than usual for the holiday. There is, however, a fair amount of “Merry Christmas” being passed around and I think it reflects the fact that most folks are glad to be here even with the record heat.
I had an unfinished chore list from yesterday but wasn’t really in the humor to work on those items on Christmas Eve and do not intend to work on them tomorrow either. One of the side gaskets I our entry door window came out again yesterday, however, so I will have to fix that again and do so soon, certainly before we leave for Arcadia.
Linda went for her solo morning walk at 10:15 AM and I settled in to work at my computer. I was determined to make headway with uploading blog posts but first I wanted to dispatch the article for Bus Conversion Magazine on the installation of the ITR Oasis Combi diesel-fueled hydronic heating system in Butch and Fonda Williams’ MCI MC-9 NJT.
Butch had made a number of good edits that filled in missing details so I incorporated all of them and rewrote a few sentences in my own voice. I then moved all of the photos for the print version of the article “in line” with the text and changed the format to 2-column. I even figured out how to get the text to wrap around the vertical photos to get a better idea of how many pages the article will take. I completed this work around 12:30 PM and uploaded it to the BCM proofreading folder in my Dropbox. I also updated my article status tracking spreadsheet and uploaded that to the Dropbox. I moved the files on my computer from the Out-For-Review folder to the Proofreading folder and mirrored that on the NAS. I then e-mailed BCM publisher Gary Hatt to let him know the article was there and ready for review.
Linda got back from her walk and made sandwiches for lunch with mock deli slices (vegan), Daiya non-dairy cheese slices, and lots of greens. We ate outside as the temperature in the coach was 89.something degrees F. She stayed outside in the shade and read but I went back inside to work on blog posts. I was not really uncomfortable, as I was not exerting myself physically, but knew we would have an uncomfortable night if we did not cool off the coach. When Linda came back inside we closed up the coach and turned on two of the three air-conditioners. I worked the rest of the afternoon on my blog, editing and then uploading seven posts covering September 1 through 7.
For dinner we had the leftover pizza from last night’s visit to Satchel’s. We managed to get six dinner meals out of our three visits which is 25% of our dinners for the first 24 days of December. At dinner last night we suggested to John that it might be nice to have a special campfire on Christmas Eve. He liked the idea and said he would check with Bob (the resort manager) and take care of it if he got the green light. Linda packed some wine and we walked down to the firepit at 6:30 PM.
Long before we got to the firepit we could see there was no fire. In fact, there wasn’t anyone there. We noticed golf carts at Jeff and Kathy’s site nearby, including John and Ali’s, so we walked over there. We found Ali, along with three other folks, but not John. It turned out that John was ill with some sort of gastrointestinal ailment and there was not going to be a special Christmas Eve fire. There were enough empty chairs for us to have a seat so we stuck around for a while to chat and enjoy a small glass of wine.
Kathy got a Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 Lite for her grandson Spencer and asked me if I would get it set up for him. I did this two years ago and agreed to try again. Spencer is arriving tomorrow afternoon with his family and Kathy was hoping to have the tablet set up so he can use it right away.
I got a pair of text messages from my long-time friend, J. C. Armbruster, wishing me a happy Christmas Eve and inquiring as to our whereabouts. I did not have my glasses or stylus with me so I deferred replying until we got back to our rig.
When we returned we found a large box sitting on our entry stepstool. Linda checked the label and it was definitely addressed to us. The office closed at 1 PM today and there wasn’t anything there for us when Linda checked around noon, so it must have arrived later. Someone in the office must have figured it was Christmas gifts and brought it to our site, which they do not normally do. Linda opened it enough to confirm that it was, indeed, gifts from Brendan, Shawna, and Madeline and then set it aside for tomorrow.
I replied to the text message from J. C. (which sounds a little bizarre on Christmas Eve). I then spent an hour trying to configure the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 without success. I thought the problem was Wi-Fi related as the tablet did not have any difficulty connecting to the resort Wi-Fi system and obtaining an IP address but it never opened a browser window where I could enter the username and password to get through the resort’s filter and out to the Internet.
I turned on the guest network on our WiFi Ranger without a password and tried connecting to that as the WFR was already logged in, but it still did not work. I tried creating a Samsung account but the screen just said “…processing” and the little icon just kept spinning. I also tried entering Spencer’s Gmail address and password(s) that Kathy gave me but the device could not connect to Google. It’s possible that the problem was simply an incorrect e-mail address and/or password but the error message I kept getting said the tablet could not establish a connection to the remote server. That sounded like an Internet access issue to me.
I also tried resetting the device to factory defaults but the instructions for doing that apparently assumed (required?) that the device had already been set up correctly and activated. I cleaned the screen and packed everything back into the box. I will return it to Kathy in the morning. Perhaps John will be feeling better and can get it to work.
When I picked up the screen cleaner it was wet. It was sitting on the desk under the air intake for the middle air-conditioner which is on the bottom of the cabinet. I shut that A-C off, moved the electronics and paper that were sitting there, and wiped up the small amount of water. Apparently the drain line for the drip pan is clogged so I will have to add that to my list of bus chores.
We were tired of listening to the air-conditioning but it was warm in the bedroom so I turned on the third A-C to cool it down. Before turning in for the night I turned the fan to a slower speed and tried adjusting the thermostat, as it had gotten rather chilly.