Another Interruption

Everything started out as planned yesterday morning until we got to 9:30 AM. At that time, Josie got a call from her shop asking her to come in - for a couple hours - to help get caught up. Well, she went in, of course, and didn't get home until almost 5:30PM. That sure put a damper on the schedule to get the RV loaded. I did as best I could with "to-do" items, like begin arranging the outdoor furniture for covering, loading as much of the office items as I could with one day left, and loading some clothing.

My appointment with the Audiologist went about as I expected. My one hearing aid is, in fact, dead. She made the comment "Didn't this happen the last time?" She was right-on! Every time we need to take long trips I develop a problem with at least one of my hearing aids. What's the deal? I can almost predict that I will have this problem every time. She sent off the bad one to the factory for repairs and re-programmed one of my old aids to work temporarily. The problem now is to make sure I get delivery of the new one at the PO Box we have in Moose, WY. The package should be small enough that it should be no problem. Of course, they are only 7 months old and under full warranty.

This morning, we have to deal - once again - with Josie going into the shop for a "planned" four hour stint. They really appreciate her accommodating their schedule to the detriment of causing delays in our schedule. We will be rushing around at the end of today making sure everything is loaded. We still have clothes, food and toiletries to load. Our neighbor, Jim, will be coming over to the house sometime today to go over things for him to be able to "watch" our home for us. We will park the car in the garage (yeah!) and hope that we can get everything done in time. I will get the truck gassed-up and we can get one last good night's sleep in our house...

Full Day Loading

We started loading right after some breakfast yesterday morning. We got a lot done - Josie handled the kitchen stuff, including wiping down the cabinets and loading pots, pans, dishes, etc. I handled the outside storage by placing items such as chairs, tools, boxes of required items and got some things done in the living room and bedroom - mainly in my closet. It was getting warmer outside and we didn't turn on the A/C so it was getting to the point where we had to slow down and take more frequent breaks. The job is not done, by any means, but it was a good first day.

It is very difficult to draw the line on loading some items. I would like to use the theory that if we haven't used it in the last 6 months, leave it home. That doesn't always apply as there are items - like hiking stuff, cool weather gear and some items that we may need while taking side trips. There are two more days left to get it right, so we are not panicking.

After working most of the day in the RV, we decided to return to a neat place we discovered a couple weeks ago - Tokyo Joe's - in Surprise to get some dinner to bring home. I had done some research to try to find a place that would have a good teriyaki chicken and rice bowl like we used to get at an Asian restaurant we had near our flower shop in Washington. We found it:

They have a menu item where you create your own custom bowl containing anything you want. We got two regular size bowls with white chicken, white rice and teriyaki sauce. Josie added their top 5 veggies to hers and the total was only $18. Terrific meal!

I head to the car dealership this morning to get tips on storing our car for the summer. The battery is so hard to get to that I thought the dealer might have some suggestions. Then, at 12 noon, I go to my Audiologist to try and resolve the issue I have with my one hearing aid. I hope that goes well...

Mixed Good and Bad Day

Yesterday did not start out the way it was planned. When I arrived at the RV storage facility I discovered that our batteries were, once again, nearly dead. I was not going to mess around with any recharging so I went to Home Depot and rented a generator for $36 for 4 hours to do the job of raising the jacks so I could hitch-up and take the unit to the house. Once I got it home, I could connect to the power and not have to worry about the batteries. I did make it home OK and connected to my new outlet on the side of the house:

The first order of business (after returning the generator) was to take out the air compressor and inflate the tires to the proper pressure. That was a physical activity that resulted in a lot of sweating and resulted in one of my hearing aids "beeping" and quitting. That has happened before, so there was no concern as I just removed it to allow it to dry. Usually, after a while, the hearing aid is OK again after it dries. This time it was totally dead. Wonderful. Here we are just three days away from leaving and I now have to deal with a totally dead hearing aid. Fortunately, I had made an appointment a couple days ago with my Audiologist for Monday at noon to do a last check and cleaning before leaving on Wednesday. I'm sure they will have to send it away for repairs and I will have to be without it for at least a week. At this point, I don't have any "physical" address where they can send it unless I use the Visitor Center address which I have done previously. We'll see.

Josie got home yesterday almost an hour early. She would normally be finished for the summer but she volunteered to come in Monday morning to help with Mother's Day follow-up and to catch up on orders. I hope that is all she spends there is the morning as we have lots to do to load up the RV.

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there...

Stretch Run

It is a marathon week for Josie at the flower shop. She worked full days on Mon-Wed and on Thursday she worked 11 hours and yesterday she worked 13 hours. Needles to say, she will be dragging by the end of today which is her final scheduled work day. She may have to go in briefly on Monday, but otherwise she will be done for the summer.

I keep putting things together that need to be done for our trip. I did get a haircut yesterday in between gathering things that we don't want to forget to take. Yesterday was a good opportunity for me to go through our food closet and take out all the food that is expired or will expire during the summer and place them in bags for pickup by our mailman. It was for the National Association of Letter Carriers Food Drive to "Stamp out Hunger" which was timed just right. This morning, I will go to the RV storage unit and bring the RV to the house to do final loading and prep.

There was another nice surprise that Josie brought home last night. Her owners gave her a $150 gift card for her efforts this week. I'm hoping that she may be able to get away a little early today so she can have some down time before we begin final loading tomorrow. As it is Mother's Day, we will probably not push very hard but save the bulk of our RV loading for Monday and Tuesday...

One Year Anniversary

Today is the first anniversary for us in our Sun City home. It doesn't seem like one year ago that we closed on this house. It can't be, we just moved into the garage with the car! A lot has been done in that one year and we have lots more left to do. One thing we agree on, and that is that we are very happy here. The house suits us fine and the location is convenient to everything. Not to mention the nice views we are enjoying in our back yard. We have great neighbors and it is quiet - except for occasional jets from Luke Air Force Base and the "cooing" from the pigeons in the area at this time of the year.

This year we return to Wyoming after taking off the last year as a result of our move. That will be a new experience for us as we have never left a house empty for such a long period. I believe we have the coverage we will need to keep a watch on things while we are gone. Our next door neighbor will have a key and will check on things occasionally and another neighbor across the street will keep an eye on things. We also signed up for the Vacation Watch program with the Sun City Posse. They will check out the house occasionally and report any unusual findings to us.

The major concern, actually, is the performance of our RV which hasn't been used at all during the last year. Our fingers are crossed that we have made all the proper changes and fixes to the unit and we are expecting a problem-free summer...

Crunch Time Ahead

Even though there has been a lot done already to prepare for our summer trip, there remains a lot of tasks that have to be completed. Much of those cannot be done until we bring the RV to the house which will leave only a few days to finalize preparations. I believe that we will be OK as far as remembering all the important stuff, and anything we forget, hopefully, can either be replaced on our trip or can remain home without being missed. Once Josie finishes up at the flower shop we should make some good time loading everything.

I have some concern about the repairs made recently to our RV. First of all, I haven't had the opportunity yet to test the repairs. Mainly, the new suspension installed where a new air bag and pressure gauge was installed. From what I see so far, the new gauge has indicated that the air bag does not hold air. The right side looks good, but the left side gauge is registering no air pressure at all. I hope I'm wrong. The other situation is the leak we had in the water line going from our sink to the ice maker in the refrigerator. I cannot see where it has been tested, so I hope that fix works OK once we run water to the refrigerator. I also need to make sure the tires are properly inflated before heading out. I should have a better feel for things after this weekend...

Major Task Completed

They said it couldn't be done. Well, we said that it would be difficult to get done. It is done. At least for the summer. The garage is organized enough to get the car inside and to provide the protection from the hot summer heat that is needed. This is the way it looks now:

Josie came home from work and was super surprised to be able to pull into the garage for the first time since we moved in almost exactly one year ago. Catch this:

There is lots of room on both sides and it is ready to serve its purpose - finally.

I made another trip to the Salvation Army to drop off a couple things that were taking up some room in the garage and were items that we had no need to keep any longer. When we return in October, we can do a more thorough job of sorting and eliminating items that we may no longer need to keep.

We are getting near crunch time to get our things lined up that will be making the trip to Jackson. Josie will be working long days through Saturday, so she will not be doing much to get ready before Sunday. I plan to move the RV over to the house on Saturday or Sunday...