Monday, April 14, 2014

We were off this morning with errands to run and a Breakfast to eat.  We decided that Hazel’s Buffet would be our choice since we probably won’t get another chance to have it again.  It was absolutely the right choice and the food was very good again.  We opted to have the $3.59 coffee this morning and it didn’t taste any better than the cheap coffee we get at Waffle House.

After Breakfast we moved on with our morning.  Our first stop was at Lowe’s to find a new bathroom faucet set.  Ours is gold and they didn’t have any of those in stock.  That was a useless trip to Lowe’s, but who knew?

Our next stop was at the Ford Dealership to pick up an Air Filter for the motorhome.  I tried to find one at Wal-Mart but was not convinced by the one that I found, that it was the right one.  The one at Ford was the same one they had at Wal-Mart but I don’t know if it was more expensive or not.

Our last stop was at the gas station to get some gas to clean our jacks on the motorhome so I can re-lubricate them to see if the 2 lazy jacks will come up as intended.

When we got home I changed the filter and disconnected the battery to see if I could re-set the engine computer.  We’ve got a “service engine soon” light that’s on and I want to see if I can get it to go out.  I won’t know that until tomorrow when I re-connect the battery.

We made plans today with Corky and Deb to go to Lambert’s Café tomorrow at lunchtime.  We all wanted to go to Lambert’s at least once more before we left the area, and since the Zimmermann’s are leaving on Saturday, tomorrow seemed like a good day to do it.

Later on this afternoon we just sat around waiting for the rain to appear.  And when it came, it really came.  It started sprinkling just before Supper and then came in like the floods of Biblical times.  It rained so hard tonight that it not only produced “rain fade” on the dish, but was so loud on the roof you couldn’t hear the TV anyway.  We just watched some taped programs tonight til it was time to give it up for good.  We went to bed around 10 when we ran out of programs.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014TAX DAY

We were both up early this morning and the wind was blowing again.  The sun was out but it wasn’t warm, and we had the electric heater going for most of the night.  Corky stopped over this morning to tell us that Terry was coming to Lambert’s Café today with us when we go this afternoon.

We figured we’d go to Lambert’s right after lunch at 1 PM and that way we would miss the busy lunch crowd.  That was a miscalculation since now-a-days Lambert’s is busy all the time and we still had to wait for about 15 minutes for a table.  But we settled in and the pass-arounds started.  We started out with “5 throwed rolls” and an order of fried okra.  Then our orders came and the rest of the pass-arounds came.  The fried potatoes, black-eyed peas, macaroni and tomatoes and cabbage.  It was all just as we remembered it, very good.

When we got back home I forgot to re-connect the battery to check on the “service engine soon” light but I didn’t forget about taking a nap with a full stomach.  We were done eating for the day except for some snacking tonight.  We’ll probably eat the Chicken Wings that we took home over the next couple of days.  We also had our sides which were chunked apples and peaches to have for dessert when we finally do have them.

The wind was still playing with the dish this afternoon and it was just a streak of luck that it died down before our evening shows started.  It’s been impossible to get to the screen that has the signal meters on it.  So we have to get on the elevation and azimuth manually.  This condition has only happened in the last couple of days.

We had our usual shows on tonight and they kept us up until 11.  We had one show taped on the DVR which we watched at 10 PM.  All in all we had a pretty good and yummy day.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

We awoke to a day that was a little cooler today but the Sun was still out and shining.

After Breakfast this morning I got myself going on a few chores that needed to be taken care of.  The first on the agenda was to re-connect the battery and see if the computer has reset itself.  I changed the air filter the day before yesterday and when I started the engine today, the light was out.  Success for the time being.

I also had to dump the holding tanks today so we’ll only have to dump one more time before we leave next Tuesday.

The directional lights on the car had to be checked because there’s a problem with them working.  They’ve been giving me trouble since we left for Florida last month.  Once we’re hooked up the lights are problematic.  I checked all the connections on the motorhome and they were up to snuff and working.  I took the car over to Corky’s and we plugged the car into his truck and the lights worked just fine.  I came back home and cleaned the connecting plugs with steel wool.  Maybe now they’ll work the way they’re supposed to.

By lunchtime we sat down to our Chicken Wings that we brought home from Lambert’s yesterday.  Sharon stuck them in the oven cause she didn’t want them nuked.  We also had their Fried Potatoes and Chunked Apples and Peaches for dessert, and even a couple of previously “Thrown Rolls.”  It was all quite good even though it was leftovers.

This evening was our day to go to the Elks for Trivia.  It would be our last hurrah and chance to win the game.  We picked up Corky and Deb at our usual time 5:45 and headed toward the club.  Terry would meet us there and we would have only 5 people on our team tonight.  But 5 people with all the right answers could kick butt.  Unfortunately we didn’t have all the right answers and missed 5 questions out of 20.  The winners answered at least 17 right.  Oh well, you can’t win em’ all, but we haven’t won any.  We had a run of bad luck right in the middle of the game.

We got back home around 9 just in time to catch a little tube before we went to bed.  I had recorded a bunch of stuff on the DVR before we left tonight, and I caught a couple of those shows before I called it a night around 11.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

We awoke to an overcast day today, but the Sun appeared shortly afterward.  We did something unusual today that we haven’t done all winter.  We cooked our own Breakfast at home this morning.  Eggs, Hash Browns, Bacon and Toast.  We had it all and it was delicious.

After Breakfast and dishes Sharon took off with the laundry and I got busy cleaning and re-lubricating our hydraulic jacks on the motorhome.  We’ve got a couple of lazy jacks that take extra time retracting.  After I got that job done I was finished with all my pre-trip tasks for the journey home on Tuesday.  I can only hope that nothing goes wrong on the trip back to the U.P.  It’s bad enough that there’s 2 feet of snow on the ground back home.

I logged on to the weather camera from the National Weather Service and there didn’t seem to be much snow at all.  So at this point we don’t really know how much snow is there, except what they tell us.  I guess we’ll just have to get updates while we’re on the way.

Today was American Legion day for Shrimp and Fish.  Corky and Deb were gone to Biloxi for a doctor’s appointment for Terry so they won’t be going with us today.  When we arrived at the Legion the place was literally empty except for a couple of barflies that are always there.  We had heard that business really dies down after the first of April but this was drastic.  When we left the club we personally thanked Steve, The

Chef, for all the wonderful food all winter.  We also found out that when he was young and living in Detroit, that his father would take him to Iron Mountain to hunt in the Fall.  The things you learn by accident are sometimes just amazing.  It’s a small world.

We were back in time to camp out in front of the TV for the night, but the programming was all screwed up.  The Big Bang Theory was on for an hour and NCIS came on at 9 PM.  We surfed and found Impractical Jokers on TruTV and recorded all of the episodes.  After Sharon went to bed at 10 I watched the recorded episodes until 11 when I got tired of listening to the rain and went south also.

Friday, April 18, 2014

It rained all last night and it certainly looks like it’s going to do the same thing all day today.  The forecast is between 40 and 50 per cent until later tonight.  I had already decided that the weather was so depressing that I was going out to eat Breakfast this morning with the Mrs.  But before we could get ready and leave, Corky called us to see if we wanted to go out for Chinese for lunch today.  It would probably be our last chance to go out with them, so we said yes.  We would pick up Terry on the way and go to the Jade Garden.

They picked us up around 12:45 and we headed over to Terry’s before we went to the restaurant.  We found the restaurant to be about half full with the lunch crowd having dispersed somewhat.  The food was excellent again and we left entirely sated for the day.

We stopped over at Terry’s on the way home so we could see her condo, and found it to be a very comfortable little house which would have been fine for a couple, and about the same square footage as our mobile home.

We came home and did inevitable.  As soon as we sat down our eyes slammed shut.  Chinese food will do that to you.  So for the next hour or so all we did was digest our food unconscious.  Life is good.

Our day was pretty much shot by the time we both got up and opened our eyes.  We were just in time for The Five on the Fox News Channel.  After that it was time for Jeopardy and An episode of Seinfeld before we settled in for the night with the tube.  We had a couple of original programs and a couple of re-runs on tonight that we didn’t remember watching before, so we were entertained for the entire night.  We both stayed up until 11 before we finally called it quits for the night.

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Today was going to be a busy day for the two of us.  We left home at 9 and we went out to Breakfast at McDonald’s.

After that we went to the ferry at Fort Morgan to take us to Fort Gaines on Dauphin Island across the mouth of Mobile Bay.  Fort Gaines is the sister fort that was involved in the Battle of Mobile Bay against Admiral Farragut

No sooner did we arrive at the fort when our camcorder battery went dead.  After having been fully charged when we left home.  With no place to get another battery, or charge the one we had, we continued to take a ton of pictures with our digital camera until the batteries went dead on that camera.  Luckily Sharon could replace the batteries in our snapshot camera from more purchased at the gift shop.   After we finished touring the fort, we drove over the connecting bridge to mainland Alabama and toward Mobile.

We stopped at Wal-Mart and they sent us to Best Buy to find a battery for the video recorder.  We found one and we were quickly on our way again.  We drove toward I-10 on a street called Airport Boulevard and it was absolutely the most beautiful street we’ve been on in a long time.  The trees on the side of the road had branches that stretched completely across the road and seemed to be growing together with the trees on the other side.  For several miles we drove through what seemed to be a green tunnel.  At the end of that we drove through a regular tunnel that appeared to go under part of the bay.

After we reached I-10 we drove to Battleship Park where the USS Alabama was docked along with the submarine USS Drum.  By the time we got there my back and leg were pretty much wasted and we decided not to tour the ships.  But the good news was that it cost us only $2 to get into the Park where we took a bunch of pictures and were well satisfied with what we had.  All the ships, planes, helicopters and memorials were all outside so we really only missed the inside of the two ships.

After Battleship Park we got back on I-10 and decided on the way home to stop in Foley at the Fish River Grill and have supper.  We got there about 4 PM and had Cajun Crawfish Pistols for Dinner.  Yumm Yumm.

Sharon wanted to stop at Wal-Mart on the way home and I was game to sit in the car and wait for her.  My stomach was full.

We camped out in front of the TV for the night but there were only re-runs on tonight.  No matter cause we switched over to MSNBC and watched Lockup for a couple of hours.  We stayed up until 11 before we finally called it a day.

Sunday, April 20, 2014EASTER SUNDAY

WE were off to church this morning after we got Showered and ready.  I say we because Sharon asked me to go with her this morning, and I just couldn’t say no.  The church was packed solid with standing room only, but we got there 30 minutes early in order to get a seat.  It was over in an hour but I suspected it was going to be a lot longer being Easter and all.

After we got home we ate a quick lunch saving our bi-annual Cornish Game Hen dinner for tonight at suppertime.

For most of the afternoon I watched TV and tried to finish up the last newsletter for the year.  When I finally got it done I had a glitch that refused to print it into a PDF.  I have to go back and re-examine the whole newsletter to see where I went wrong.  That will be a tedious task.  I’ve still got a few days to do it however.  Unfortunately we’ll be traveling the day after tomorrow toward home.

Sharon was cooking our Dinner for most of the afternoon and it started smelling really good in here because of that.  Rosemary Game Hens is a very delicious dish along with orange, red and yellow peppers and potatoes.  It just looks fabulous because of the colors of everything.  She also had a Key Lime Pie for dessert.  This was going to be an “Easter Feast to say the least.”

After Dinner we got ready to watch TV for th night and our favorite shows were coming on time tonight.  CBS usually screws around with the times on Sunday because of football, golf or basketball.  But tonight we can watch them on time.

We hung in there until 11 tonight catching everything as early as we possibly could.  Tomorrow will be pack up day.