Catchin' Up.....

It's only been 20 days since we left Rahway, NJ and our previous assignment but the days have sure flown by. We've been busy squeezing in things that we've wanted to see and do, visit with our friends in the area and get some things done on the rig before returning to work.

On Monday we went to Fort Myers to go to a women's resort there that I had visited many years ago, when it was just being developed. My...how it has changed since I last saw it ! When I last visited, there were a couple of houses there.....a clubhouse and lots of streets. Now 13 years after it was started, it is almost full. There are just a handful of lots that are still empty. The neat thing is that out of 278 total lots, about 70 them are RV lots. Some lots have RV ports on them or are just the concrete drive and pad. If someone buys an RV lot, they can choose at some point to have a small house built on it. The facilities are gorgeous and we had a great time looking around. It looks like a great place to retire to :)

Our friend, Jan has had a really bad cold for the last week and a half so we have been helping her with errands and took her to the doctor on Tuesday. She is now on an antibiotic so we're hoping that she will be on the mend very shortly.

Yesterday we hung out here, around the campground, and waited for the RV tech to arrive. He came mid afternoon. The good news is that he resolved two of our issues in pretty short order....The bad news is the other two issues are things he couldn't tackle here so we need to take the rig elsewhere to get them fixed. When he was diagnosing the grey valve, he discovered that there are still problems with the black tank. If you recall we spent a fortune, in July, having a new tank put in by Settle's RV in Virginia. Total botch job from the beginning.....don't know why this dealership even has a service dept. They had to call in a plumber to help them with the piping to the tank and based on what the RV tech found, there is a leak around the top of the tank....probably in the area that had difficulty. Gives us a warm fuzzy feeling to revisit this same issue AGAIN ! This time it needs to be resolved cause when you're a full-timer, your RV is your house and there can't be major problems with it while traveling. We went to an RV repair shop today that a friend of ours recommended. She takes her rig there and wouldn't trust it to anyone else. They seemed very knowledgeable and accommodating. We can stay on-site while the repair is being done. We'll take it in next Wednesday to "Git R Done"....

Today we got together with our Amazon buddies, Carolyn and Roy. They are staying nearby, in Crystal River, and it was great to sit and chat about work at Amazon, family and future plans. We want to get together again with them before we leave the area. I hope we'll make it our "January tradition"....go south for some W & R (warmth and relaxation), see our RV'ing friends and rejevenate before returning to work. Sounds like a wonderful prescription to me and just what the doctor ordered !

Warming Up.....

We arrived at the campground around 2:45 yesterday (Tuesday). They assigned a site to us but after looking/attempting to back in we decided on another site just down a few that we could easily pull in to. Got set up and had a relaxing evening. The setting sun was warm on our open door and Boomer was having a ball watching out the screen door until it came time to close it. It did get cold overnight....woke up to a light frost on the ground.

Today we headed out to the flea market....for some reason we thought it was on Wednesdays and couldn't figure out why there wasn't the usual stream of traffic going to/from the site until we got there and realized that it clearly must not be on Wednesdays. It's on Mondays and as luck would have it we don't have any plans on Monday.

From there we headed out to see our friend Jan, in Inverness. Was so great to see her ! We took her to an appointment, to Wal-Mart for some groceries and then had a great lunch. It was a wonderful day with our friend. On our way back to the campground we stopped at Par-Gas and got our propane tank filled. $17 to fill our tank....compare that to the $33 we've been paying the last four months in New Jersey. The guy told me the price had been $15 up until last week and then they needed to raise the price. Thank goodness we got reimbursed for the fill-ups the last four months by our employer. We didn't realize how exorbitant the price was, even though it was really convenient being that it was only a couple blocks away.

Temps have been slowly warming up each day. Today it got to 60 degrees. Tomorrow it's forecasted to be upper 60's....70's on Friday. Possible thunderstorms this weekend. Tomorrow we are going to the Tampa RV show....we're excited to check that out.

Oh yeah, we called the RV doctor this morning to schedule the work on the rig. Seems the cold snap has bombarded them with furnace problems so they are really backed up right now. Won't be able to get to us for a week to week and a half. Hmmmm...good thing we're not in any hurry.

Hellish Gates...

Well our gates have been giving us fits lately. We have two front gates and one at the rear of the property and seems we've had nothing but problems since we arrived here in September. We're friends with the tech who comes to work on them....having met Steven when we were in training at the Whippany property. Anyway, Steven came yesterday at 1:30 to work on them and worked till 6:30 but at the end of the day two of them were still on the fritz. When Steven opened up the side panel, out popped momma and poppa mouse from this nest. A big ole fluffy nest was sitting on top of the battery that provides power to the system. As he stepped back and was pondering what he had before him, the mice ran back and jumped back in the nest, popping their heads out to look at him. I was only able to get a picture of the nest, minus its residents but Steven got one with them sitting there looking at him. How cute they were but they were not helping matters and had to be evicted from their home. Steven finally figured out that the circuit boards must be defective so he's ordered new ones and we are having to manually close them at the end of the day. Hopefully this next fix will do the trick to keep them in good shape for the new managers.

Tomorrow one of the Vice President's arrives to conduct our auction. We started out with 56 on our list, going to auction...we are down to around 23, which is excellent. Linda has worked really hard with these late tenants to get them to pay so their items don't get sold off. It is alot of work getting ready for these auctions. We will be really glad when it is over !

Saturday...

Our work week is done so now we can relax for two days. My daughter, Becky, came last night...arriving at the Rahway train station about 7:30 p.m. Downtown Rahway, near the train station is quite pretty.From the drop-off area, outside of the train station I could see Becky's train arrive and it was only two minutes overdue from its schedule. Outside the train station was an exhibit called the "Mom Memorial". There were upright cut-outs of soldiers and on each one were broken hearts with the word Mom written across them. The memorial displays the impact that the death of every soldier from the Afghan/Iran conflict has on the soldier's family. The family's heart is broken and the mother is the central figure in the family. There was a broken heart for every soldier killed in the current war. Was really something to see...

Raining tonight off and on....much cooler today and it was very windy. The area around our building seems to have its own vortex going on. One of the assistant managers was telling me about the time that they had the sandwich board(that displays our current move-in special) out in front of the building, the wind picked it up and over the six lane highway and sent it through the windshield of a brand new car at the dealership on the other side of the highway. Holy cow ! That must have been some wind !! I can imagine that was an interesting conversation with our corporate headquarters when we got THAT call from the dealership..."Hi, this is Sansone Motors and we have your sign over here...Ah, actually it came sailing across the highway and went through the windshield of one of our cars." I've been a little reluctant to put it outside if there is any wind and there ALWAYS seems to be wind here.

I feel like I've accomplished alot this week here at work. Today I worked in the apartment and replaced the door knobs and some of the hardware on the bedroom bi-fold doors. On Wednesday the carpets will get cleaned. The other day I got some oven cleaner and tackled the oven and broiler pan....it was really nasty. We hung a new light fixture in the dining room, cleaned the light fixture in the kitchen and I took measurements so we can replace the vertical blinds in the living and dining room. The apartment is just about ready to go ! Now we just need to find the right applicants to work here and we will be all set.

Oh Me, Oh My

We finished work tonight right at 6:00..headed home and was hoping for a quiet, uneventful night. About three blocks from the campground, an alarm on the truck started sounding and there were two lights lit up on the dashboard that usually aren't there. I was hoping we could make it to the campground but just as I approached the right hand turn onto Marin Blvd. the engine quit and the steering froze. I pulled hard on the steering wheel, hoping I wouldn't clip the car that was sitting at the light in the opposite lane on the corner. I cleared him OK but about had a heart attack in the process. Came around the corner and got off on the side of the road as best I could. Luckily once you turn that corner there isn't much traffic that goes down towards the campground. I shut off the switch...we dug out the book to identify the warning light symbols...I thought I'd see if it would start or turn over. It started right up...no lights....no alarms. So put it in drive and headed for the campground. Coasted into our parking spot just as the engine died again.

I smelled an odd smell and asked Linda to open the hood...She did and found that all the bumps and jarring had unhooked the hose from the coolant overflow tank AND there were no nuts holding the tank down anymore....Everything had jiggled loose and all the extra coolant spewed all over the engine those last couple of blocks.

Linda walked up and asked a guy that had camped near us last week if we could pay him to drive me to an auto parts store. Luckily less than a mile from us there is a Pep Boys...off I went. Bought some coolant, some hose clamps and some washers and wing nuts for the tank but the threads on the bolts holding the tanks are odd. Seem to be kind of tapered from top on down and the wing nuts I bought didn't quite fit. I rigged it up by using some teflon pipe tape. Want to get to a GMC dealer tomorrow to get the right nuts to go on there and have them look at it. Filled the tank with coolant, after reattaching the hose. Ran the truck for a few minutes and no bells or lights so keep your fingers crossed that this is what the problem is. I think when all the coolant ran all over things it may have hit a sensor and caused one of the alarms. We will start the truck and let it run for a while in the morning before we head out. No way we can risk stalling out in some of the crazy intersections that we drive through. Everyone keep us in your prayers tonight that we get to work safe tomorrow...it's always somethin' !!

Third Time's The Charm...

Well my prediction of them finishing up at 2:00 was wishful thinking. The problem area seemed to be the flange that goes into the top of the black tank from the toilet. First time they glued it, as soon as water (weight) was added to the tank the flange pulled away from the tank on the one side. After some fussing and fuming, they called in a plumber friend. Ka Ching ! Could hear the dollar signs flying through the air as he was there all afternoon. Second try....glue it again..fill with water...leaked ! As is usually the case for me with projects, must be it's a familiar formula cause the plumber cleaned it all up...applied cement for the third time..add water...and 'voila...It didn't leak ! Twas 5:00 and would have been the last attempt if it hadn't worked. Plumber says the black tank flange is a very poor design. Should be a pre-assembled set-up, possibly with a gasket on top and a threaded piece on top that when they receive it in the field they just need to screw another piece down tight and you've got it. Instead they sent a tank...no holes cut at all and all the holes had to be cut on site. Between everyone's chunk of labor, this has to be the costliest black tank replacement in Excel history. I just pray to God that the service contract covers it ! We shall see once I get all the info from Settle's. Even though I told them I need the authorization number on the bill, do you think they put it on there? Of course not. And we still have the issue of not getting the hot water heater fixed. They said they can order the part and have it shipped to me. Great ! I feel better already....can you tell it has been a trying day ?

Got the bike loaded and pulled out at 5:45. We are on the road....81 north to be exact and we have broadband signal AND cell phone reception. Things are looking up already. Will not try to drive the whole way tonight but go till we are 1) hungry or 2) tired or a combination of both.

Waiting....

It's noon on Saturday and we're waiting while the technicians get our new black tank installed. Wasn't going real well last I went outside....thrown pipe wrench and alot of fussing and fuming. Costing us time and a half for the labor but I figure it's better to get out of here so we can make money than it is to sit here till Monday and lose more work time. Turns out that they didn't order any parts to fix the hot water tank (not heating on electric setting). Guess me stressing that every time I talked to someone about what they were to be fixing didn't register with anyone. So that problem won't be resolved. Met the owner's son....nice guy...police officer by trade but works part time with his dad in the dealership. Turns out he doesn't know anything about water heaters so he wasn't any help on that problem. They thought we'd be out of here by noon but from the looks of things, my bet is on 2:00 which means we won't arrive at the Jersey City campground till close to dark. Makes me weary just thinking about it....

Making Good Use of Our Time...

We're still in Amissville (a.k.a Abyss-ville).I call it this because our broadband card won't work on our computer and no TV reception. Wow, talk about a dead zone. We are trying to make good use of our down time though. Currently we are sitting in the parking lot waiting for a new back tire to be installed on our motorcycle. After a couple of calls we found a bike place in Culpeper that had the correct tire. Cute name...Culpeper. Makes me think of Barney Fife, Opie and the gang. Figure while we are here in Virginia that it would be cheaper to get a tire put on than it will be just outside of New York city. ya think ? So that is our current task.

I gave up on trying to install the converter box. Without any reception it was hard to tell if I had anything connected correctly or not. I usually leave the tinkering of electronic gadgets to my son. Thank God we don't have a VCR to set or anything too complicated. I just don't understand all those "Video In", "Aux out", plugs and do dads. Must be a guy thing that he knows and better yet, understands what he is doing. I figure since our next stop is a park right outside of New York City, we should be able to pick up all kinds of stations. If we don't I'll take a crack at it again. I have it strapped in and ready to go in the tuner compartment for when I try it again.

Still waiting for the parts for our rig to arrive. Should be here today or tomorrow. When we came back to the rig, we discovered that they have water and 50 amp service available next to us so we are hooked up to power and very comfortable. Just not using the water since we don't want any weight in the grey tank for when they need to strap it up. They haven't strapped it yet but we've cut the vinyl tubing for the guys to use to "soften" where the straps will intersect with the plastic of the tank and eliminate rubbing.

We're in downtown Culpeper now and going to a place called Frost Cafe for lunch. Looks like an old nostalgic place from the outside. We'll see if that is how it really is once we go in. More later....

Chambersburg

On Saturday we went to a festival in downtown Chambersburg. There were many booths with lots of neat arts and crafts. A live band was playing in the town square. Linda, Boomer and I walked around, checking out all the vendors. It was a beautiful day for the event, with a nice breeze and comfortable temperatures.

This fountain stands in the town square and the street splits around it.

We've done some work on Bertha while we've been here. We washed and waxed her, then today we touched up the paint on the upright just behind the cab. It gets nicked up from items leaning against it so we bought some spray paint and now it looks much better. Since our style of camping is changing somewhat (due to moving from one job location to another quite frequently), we have sorted through some of the things we normally take with us and will leave them behind. We may be able to pare down even more but we'll see how the next couple of months go and what items we actually need to live on the road.

We will leave here either tomorrow or Tuesday and start back down to Virginia, where the rig is. We bought some soft tubing today so we can give it to the repair guys for use on the wire straps that will hold the grey and black tanks in place. It will cushion the area on the corners where the metal strap meets the plastic and keep it from rubbing. Our friend Tom gave us this idea, as he had to do repairs on his grey water tank recently. If the guys have already re-attached the straps on the grey tank I can unscrew them one by one and add this cushion to the strap and then re-attach it.

We are anxious to get to our first job assignment, in Union, NJ. We won't be able to stay at that property but think that we should be able to stay at another one that is 9 miles away. We've got to work out all the details for our arrival in the coming days.

Repairs Underway....

This morning we loaded up and hit the road for Settle's RV and Truck in Amissville, VA so they could start the repair on our RV. It was just a little over an hour to get there from the campground. Linda, Boomer and I settled in out front while they checked things out.
Didn't take long to find the source of the leak. There are two leaks....one is around the outlet pipe where it connects to the tank itself. If you enlarge this picture, look at the yellow adhesive and you'll see the crack.The other leak is in the corner of the tank. It's not a hairline crack but a pretty good sized tear in the corner. You can see it really well in this picture. The big surprise when the guys removed the underbelly was that the straps, that should be holding the grey water tank, had both broken. There were only two of them, which doesn't sound like enough for the amount of weight these tanks carry. The guys said the only thing holding the grey tank in place was the lip on the metal support bracket. Scary, huh ? They plan on putting more straps on both tanks to make sure they are firmly in place. They have ordered a new black tank and the related parts but it doesn't sound like it will arrive till end of next week. In the meantime, Linda and I drove up to Chambersburg, PA and are staying at her family homestead. Her niece, who rents the house, is currently in Florida on vacation and won't be back till next week.

We are on hold for new assignments till our rig gets fixed. We purchased a service contract for our rig a short while ago so now we'll get to see how good it is. We have a $50 deductible and the rest of the repair should be covered by the contract. All of our training is done now so our next assignment will let us put all of this training to work. Guess we'll have to wait a week before that can happen so we'll just hang out here, in Chambersburg, till the repairs are done.

Dumfries, VA

After checking out the Mini U site in Woodbridge, Linda and I decided it was just too tight to park their for our two days of training. The manager there had given us the name of a nearby campground....Travel Trailer Village. Based on that name I was expecting a mobile home park but it is a really cute campground, tucked away about 2.5 miles from 95. We got a 39' pull through spot on the end of a row and I certainly wouldn't want a spot any smaller. I put orange cones out at the back corner of our motorcycle lift and the front corner of our bedroom slideout so folks driving down the roads, on either side of us, don't clip us....little tight. It's a beautiful area...all wooded and the pool is smack dab in the middle of the campground (about 6 sites down from us). If someone needs a place close to DC or the nearby attractions, this would be a cute option. Also cheap...$30 for a full hook-up pull through site.

We are relaxing today....were extremely pooped yesterday from driving all day. We barely crawled the last 20 miles getting here due to the traffic on 95 below DC. Took us over an hour to cover that last leg of the trip...UGH !! Is nice to have FULL hook-ups again. This is the first time, since leaving Baton Rouge in May that we're plugged in, cooled down, hooked up to sewer, can take a full length shower (yeehaa !)don't have to be miserly, etc. I feel like we've died and gone to camper heaven !

Tomorrow we learn about Penske rentals at the local Mini U here then we need to get back to the campground and "check in" so we can move our rig to another site, due to someone coming in on Wednesday to the space we now occupy. We will not have sewer at that site so lots of long,hot showers until then :) We'll work at this Woodbridge location Tuesday and Wednesday and then Thursday morning we'll drive to an Excel dealer ninety minutes from here to get our black tank checked out. Hoping it's nothing too serious so we 1) don't have to stay in a motel while repairs are being done and 2) we can get back on the road for our next assignment. Talked to Bubby today, from the Excel dealer and he's ready for us. Can honestly say that I've never know someone named Bubby before....known a fair amount of Bubbas but no Bubby's. Hoping this Bubby knows his stuff.

Training Underway...

We have had two days of training so far in Whippany, NJ at the Mini U location here. Boomer made friends with Duke and Lobo right off the bat. They are the black labs of Peggy and Roger, the managers who are training us. We are having a great time and couldn't ask for better training. Very thorough....great personalities and fun to be around. We are loving it ! I find the reports to be very similar to ones I worked with at Penn College and the end of day reconciliation comes very easily to both Linda and I since we've dealt with end of day balancing before at other jobs. It was super easy to get "into" our site as we just pulled down along the fence and set up there...directly across from where the electrical room and the 50 amp receptacle is. Our cord wasn't long enough and the only bad thing, our first night here, was that we had to drive to Lakewood to the Camping World to buy a 50 amp extension cord. But now we have it and should be OK at any future sites and we'll get reimbursed for it from Mini U. There is alot to learn but the more we do the work the more it gels in our heads. Tomorrow we learn more about renting the one truck that we have at this location. Our training next week, in Virginia, will be on Penske trucks and one way and local rentals and what is involved with renting them. All of the customers are super nice...you can tell that Peggy and Roger have a great relationship with their customers. I have been working in the office with Linda, to learn that side of things. On Friday I will work with Roger on the outside stuff....maintenance issues and building systems like sprinklers, elevators, etc. The day flies right by and before you know it, it's time to go home for the night.

On Monday when we were getting ready to leave Linda's brothers house, we noticed that we had a leak under the rig. It appears to be something to do with the black water tank, as it is not holding any liquids. There wasn't hardly anything in the tank since we just dumped it on Saturday morning. After doing some research and talking to the Excel factory, we have decided to go to the Excel dealer in Virginia the day after we complete our training next week and get it taken care of. We are hoping that they don't need to order a new black tank as it will mean that we'll have to sit and wait 3 days for it to arrive. We're hoping it's something simpler than that so we don't have to stay off the road for too many days. This will be the first time that we've had to use the service contract that we purchased so we'll see if that covers the repairs as I think it is supposed to. We should only have to pay a $50 deductible....we'll see how it goes.

Just three more days here...will keep you posted on how our training goes.

Today's Project...

Up until now we've used our laptop as our GPS. We have Co-Pilot software on our laptop.It has a lot of features that are RV specific (propane tunnel avoidance, height restrictions, etc.)that we have liked but when we were in Baton Rouge we bought a Garmin GPS to use. Linda needed the GPS to find nursing home locations in the middle of the night or to find her way home after a long shift in a strange town. This is the laptop holder that I had installed in Bertha...bought it on e-bay. On the trip home from Baton Rouge to Pennsylvania we tested the Garmin against Co-Pilot and couldn't see any noticeable difference in the route. Since the Garmin is much smaller we've decided to use that and I wanted to convert the laptop holder into an arm rest/cup holder since there isn't anyplace for us to rest our right arm while we are driving. I started out by taking the plexi laptop holder off and removed a couple of pieces of the black iron. Went to Lowes and bought 3 floor flanges, a 12" section and 8" section of pipe and created this base. The front floor flange was already screwed into the floor to support the laptop holder. By putting a floor flange on the 12" section of pipe, it fit nicely into one of the cup holders to provide the rear support.

I cut out the arm rest/cup holder (used our favorite cups as templates for the holes),sanded, primed and painted it with enamel.


Then attached it to the flanges with screws...


The view from Boomer's seat in the back....

We're ready to roll....got a place to rest our arm...iced tea and coffee in our mugs...and open highway as far as the eye can see....

Busy Weekend...

We left on Saturday to drive from Chambersburg down to Virginia Beach so Linda could spend some time with her kids and grandson before her doctor's appt. on Monday morning. We stopped in Williamsburg, VA and got to see our friends, Mike, Cindy and Biscuit. They are staying at the campground where we stayed last summer and Mike is also working there. We got to chat with them for a while and then had a wonderful supper that Cindy prepared. We also got to tour their new coach....what a beauty !!

We continued on from Williamsburg to Virginia Beach. At a Sheetz in Warrenton, VA we stopped to stretch and saw this trike, which is an Ecstacy trike, like the one I had. This one is a roadster model, whereas mine had a roof. This is a 2002 model, as the owner told me, but the styling is almost identical to the one I had. It was fun to see it as you don't come across them too often.

On Sunday, Linda, Boomer and I went to a Pride Festival with her daughter and her partner. There were many booths set up and a stage for live performances. Boomer was so well behaved...we couldn't believe it. We could never have taken both Schroeder and Boomer out to something like this before because they didn't interact well with other dogs and they wouldn't walk well in crowds. Boomer was a little shy...he would take in the events of the day, peeking out from between my legs. He walked well on a leash.....interacted well with other dogs and was such a joy to have with us. He didn't quite know what to make of Linda's daughters' chihuahuas...two of them. He kind of cozied up to the one but was scared of the male that kept growling at him. Still seems odd to not have Schroeder here. He would always greet us in the morning with a "Woo Woo Woo" kind of bark and do his little "happy dance". I missed him putting his head on my shoulder while I drove and there was only one pooch to make a waffle for at breakfast. A big adjustment from what I've know over the last nine years of having him in my life.

Sunday we spent time at Linda's oldest daughter's house, playing with Linda's grandson...Teagan. We had a great time with them and Linda got to do one of her favorite things...give Teagan his bath and put him to bed. In this picture you can see Teagan holding his "daddy doll"....a picture of his dad with a recorded message that he takes to bed with him everynight. Since Teagan's dad is often out to sea (he's in the Navy), this is a neat way to maintain that father/son connection. Teagan must have had an especially fun time bathing Sunday night cause I could hear him squealing, with delight, in the upstairs bathroom while I was downstairs. Boomer also took notice and sat at the bottom of the steps and whimpered. I think he thought they were having WAY too much fun without him !

This morning we had to get up early to get on the road for Linda's doctor appt. After that was over, we headed north for PA, stopping at Sam's Club to pick up a few things and then stopping at a "big truck" repair center to pick up a fuel filter for Bertha. I couldn't believe how much cheaper their filter was than the one I had found on-line...only $24 as compared to $41 ($32 plus shipping). Will definitely keep them in mind as the place to get my filters should we come through this area again.

We had been home for less than two hours and Linda got a call to work the overnight shift at a nursing home. She is now sleeping...in preparation for working that 11-7 shift. Boomer and I will have to watch the Law and Order shows without her :( doink doink

Awaiting Instructions....

We are waiting for our company to finalize the details of where we will train. It looks like we may spend some time in New Jersey training and some time in Virginia. We are supposed to get more details tomorrow.

We got some errands done today after I finished applying the last of the sealant to the slide outs and storage bay areas. The syringe system that comes with the sealant is really nifty. I removed every other screw from the trim pieces on the slideouts and the 1.5" needle goes in the screw hole slick as a whistle so the sealant can be injected into the wood. The sealant follows the grain of the wood and if there is the presence of fungi (rot), it follows that path so the sealant will fill the channel created by the fungi. I must have slept through science class the day that they told us that wood rot/decay is caused by a fungi. Hmmm....I guess I just thought if you have a problem with wood getting wet on a consistent basis, you get rot....not that it's actually caused by fungi.Cool, huh ?

So anyway, for a couple of areas under the slideout that appear to be spongy to the touch and weren't near a screw hole, I took a small drill bit and angled off of the screw hole to "aim" towards these spots. Like I said the syringe is really awesome....just point and shoot the sealant (kind of looks and has the consistency of diesel fuel) into any hole where the wood needs hardening. I also brushed some sealant on the area under the shower where there had been a leak and it made that wood really strong. Total cure is 1-3 days so we'll let you know how things are in a couple of days. The tests they've done on this sealant show the penetration area as much as 16-20" from where initially injected....pretty amazing ! Other products that were tested against it only had a few inches.

We got the oil changed in the car today....went to visit Linda's 16 yr old niece who just had her gallbladder out and got some papers notarized. Took Boomer to Petsmart to get his nails trimmed and that was a lost cause....took two employees and they still couldn't get him still enough to do it. That boy is a hand full !! Guess it will take knock out drops to get his nails cut without any bloodshed....his or ours. After doing those errands, we came back home and are now relaxing for the remainder of the evening. Linda's brother and sister-in-law gave us some fresh Chinese pea pods the other day...fresh from their friend's garden...and we had the last of them for supper. Wow, were they outstanding ! So crispy and bursting with flavor. Can't wait to visit farmer markets along the road on our upcoming travels to taste regional culinary delights from all over this great country. Don't think Mini U has any locations in Maine cause I have a hankering for lobster about now....darn !

Just Lock Me in The House...

Waiting to take Jake into vet's office..

I told Linda the other day that it seems every time we wander out of the house and go to Wal-Mart or elsewhere, we end up spending at least $40 or $50. We had scheduled Bertha for a front end alignment today since she is pulling to the right. Two hundred bucks later the front end is aligned but they said the drag link is bad on the front end. They located one at a truck center in Hagerstown...just down the road...so we picked that up on our way back from taking Jake (Linda's sister's dog) to the vet. $165 for the part and now we need to go back to the garage to get it installed for another blow of $50 or so dollars. Holy Mackerel ! And to make matters worse, I thought for sure that the part we needed would certainly be under warranty but of course it isn't...So after what will be a $400 dollar repair on the truck, just lock me in the house !!