Tag Archives: Linda’s Birthday

2015/06/30 (T) Three Score and Five

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Today was a milestone birthday for Linda.  We had our usual leisurely early morning with coffee, fresh fruit, and cinnamon raisin toast (from Metropolitan Baking) for breakfast.  We talked some more about our long-term ham radio plans and decided we would order one (1) of the new Yaesu FTM-400DR/DE dual band mobile radios and a slightly more powerful VHF/UHF base station antenna.  Our daughter called around 9 AM to wish her many happy returns of the day.  My Michigan Public School Employee Retirement System (MPSERS) health insurance shifted her to secondary, with Medicare as primary on June 1st, the first day of the month in which she turned 65.

The temperature was in the low 60’s when we got up at 6:30 AM.  The weather forecast for the afternoon had an increasing chance of rain and the possibility of isolated thunderstorms so Linda went for a mid-morning walk.  I headed to my office to order the radio and a Diamond X-300NA 2m/70cm antenna.  All of the online distributors are selling the radio for the same price.  I decided to buy both products plus the RTSystems programming software, from Amateur Electronic Supply (AES).  Their UPS Ground shipping is “free” and since they are based in Ohio the shipment will be here in 1-2 days rather than 4-5 days.

I took a break and spread three more bags of brick pieces around the base of the tower and in front of the cable entry box.  Back in my office I dealt with some personal e-mail.  I sent an e-mail to Scott (KE9FOX) at QTH.com with additional information he needed to transfer the SLAARC website and domain name registration from GoDaddy to QTH.com.  I then gathered up a load of laundry and put it in the washer.

By the time that was all done it was getting close to lunch time.  Lunch was a big spinach and lettuce salad, baby carrots, a few sourdough pretzel nibblers with roasted red pepper hummus, fresh sweet cherries, and the blueberries/strawberries/raspberries that were left from breakfast.

After lunch I transferred the laundry to the clothes dryer and then got cleaned up.  We left around 3 PM for the U.S. Bar and Grill in Wayne and stopped on the way to get a card.  Today was John Smallwood’s last day at Wayne RESA and there was a gathering from 3-to-6 PM to see him off.  John was the VP of the Wayne County Salaried Staff Federation (WCSSF) and succeeded me as President of the local when I retired.  Now it was John’s turn to enjoy a well-earned and well-deserved retirement.  This was the second gathering for a colleague in the span of just over a month.  Besides wishing John well it was an opportunity to reconnect with other former colleagues.

After a suitable amount of time visiting at John’s party Linda and I drove to the Mongolian Barbecue in Novi for a celebratory birthday dinner.  It is a very noisy restaurant but was not as bad on a Tuesday evening as it was the last time we were here on a Saturday.  I would have preferred a quieter and more relaxing atmosphere, but the Mongolian Barbecues have a lot of ingredients that we can eat and we find the method of preparation very much to our liking.  By the time we had a small bowl of soup, a moderate sized salad, and a good size bowl of ingredients we were full.

I had a brief QSO with Chris (K8VJ) on the drive home.  I stopped at the Shell station and topped off the gas tank in my car so we would be ready to go in the morning.  We finally got home at 8:30 PM.  Linda made some hot tea and we each had a piece of Prickly Pear Cactus Jellied Candy.  I restarted the dryer on Touch Up and checked my e-mail.  We were tucked in by 10 PM as we needed to be on the road by 7:30 AM tomorrow.

 

2014/06/30 (M) Happy Birthday L

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Today was Linda’s “Medicare minus one” birthday and she started it off by Facetiming on her iPad with our son and grand-daughter.  I put the coffee on to brew and joined the Facetime session.  Madeline was initially engaged in consuming a great quantity of blueberries and getting most of them in her mouth.  She was obviously feeling much better than the last time we saw her.  Breakfast was followed by a good face washing and then active exploration of the house and the wearing of adult size flip flops, which is one of the most fun things to do at the moment.  Their plans for the day included her first visit to the local water park, which has hours reserved for very small children.

Linda called the dentist’s office and got a call back just after 9 AM.  They said they could see her at 1:30 PM and she accepted the appointment.  A little while later I went outside to get the mail and discovered a fawn curled up on the door mat in front of our front library doorwall.  Its eyes were open and it was clearly alive as it watched me carefully but did not otherwise move.  I searched online and found a list of wildlife rehabilitators on the Michigan DNR website.  It was arranged by county which made it easy to locate Diane Solecki in Pinckney.  She was listed as specializing in fawns so I called her and she talked me through what to do and what to look for and directed me to her website where she had all of that information, and a lot more, for our reference.

Linda and I went out to examine the fawn according to the directions Diane gave us.  To our surprise, as soon as we started to handle it, it got to its feet, ran away to the east, and disappeared into thick cover.  That was probably unfortunate for its survival, but its odds were not very good where it was, lying exposed and very visible in the hot sun all day.  Per Diane’s instructions Linda mashed some strawberries with bread and put it over by the woods along with a bowl of water in the hope it would find it and eat and drink.  There was plenty of evidence of deer in that area so there was also some small hope that the mother might wander through there on her regular circuit and find her baby.  I checked the bowl and paper plate several times but there was no sign of it having been visited by any animals.

I got a call from Steve at Village Landscape Development letting me know they had to attend to another job first thing this morning and would be at our house around noon.  He called back around 3 PM to let me know it would be tomorrow morning between 8:00 and 8:30 AM.  It was hot and humid today, and by 3 PM the workers were drained.

Since today was Linda’s birthday, and she was still sore and tired from not sleeping well, we went out for dinner.  There is a salad shop in Brighton named Toma’s.  I had been there once and based on Trip Advisor reviews she wanted to try it.  As we were pulling out of the driveway we noticed an adult deer go into the woods to the west of our neighbor’s yard across the street.  There is a lot of evidence of deer in and around our yard and neighborhood but we only see them occasionally.  We wondered if it might be the fawn’s mother but there was no way to tell.

At Toma’s we each had a “create your own” salad with a piece of grilled pita bread.  The cook reversed our greens, but we didn’t realize it until we had each eaten half our salads. Our waitress was delightful but a bit math challenged.  I gave her $16.50 to cover a $16.29 bill and had to help her make the change.

We stopped at Staples on the way home to get a pad of large graph paper.  I am drawing plans for an alternative design for the bus barn that might make it easier for me to build myself.  Back at the house I spotted an adult deer lying down by the marsh at the NE corner of our yard near NW corner of the pond to our east.  I spent the rest of the evening editing photos from Saturday to post on our blog.  We had vegan ice cream to celebrate Linda’s birthday.

 

2013_06_30 (Sun) Happy Birthday

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Sunrise over Boxelder RV Park, CAM-PLEX, Gillette, WY

Sunrise over Boxelder RV Park, Gillette WY CAM-PLEX

Linda was up early this morning and went for a sunrise walk.  Perhaps she was too excited to sleep because it was her birthday, but this is the 53rd Escapade and the 35th anniversary of the founding of the Escapees RV Club, so it could have been that.  When she got back I brewed up some Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee (from Irene’s Beans in Milford, MI) and she opened her birthday present.  Linda now has her first “cowgirl” shirt!  She liked it so much that she made blueberry pancakes for breakfast with real, fresh blueberries and real Michigan maple syrup.  (If you are thinking that I should have prepared breakfast for her, let me state that in the past I would have, and could have, done this but she is the resident WFPB culinary expert, and I have basically stayed out of the kitchen, and out of her way, since we started down this path two years ago.)

We got a call from our son who was checking on our house.  Linda had asked him the day before to check our answering machine because it wouldn’t pick up when we called.  It turned out that we didn’t have a dial tone, but our Internet connection appeared to be OK.  He said there had been a lot of rain this past week, so that may be the reason.  Our phone and data service come over the same wire, so I’m not sure that is the problem.  We decided to wait a few days and see if it clears up.  If not we will have to contact AT&T.

We had more coffee at 9 AM at the WiFi Cafe and more conversation with Charles Martin.  We returned the defective Camco hose and got a replacement.  Their analysis was that the metal sleeve had not been swaged properly which is why the barbed fitting did not stay in.  While we were there we looked at the Camco Genturi genset exhaust stack.  This is an auxiliary exhaust stack that fits on the end of the generator tailpipe and carries the generator exhaust up past the roof line of the RV.  It’s made of 3” PVC in 4 foot sections, so it can be taken apart and stored.  A tailpipe extension curves up into the base of the 3” pipe with room to draw in cooler air around it and creating a Venturi effect, thus the name of the product.  This is a fairly easily duplicated design; the main reason to buy it is that you don’t have to source all the materials and make it yourself.  The vertical pipe has to be supported somehow, and suction cups are one of the options.  The vendor suggested getting large ones from Harbor Freight that are normally used for handling windshields and other large pieces of glass.  If/when I build one of these, I would like to be able to hook it onto the gutter rail where the roof starts, but the large suction cups are an interesting idea, although I am not too keen on that idea with the new paint on the coach.  Our Aqua-Hot exhaust exits out under the driver side of the coach right next to the generator exhaust, and I have considered building a double stack that hooks to both of these.  In both cases, however, I have to be careful not to restrict the exhaust flow and create back pressure.

We walked through the vendor area again and talked to Sean at WiFi Ranger about the factory default reset we got when we turned the power off and back on.  I also bought a roof mounting bracket for our WiFi Ranger Mobile.  Linda bought a silicone cooking sheet for use in the microwave from RV SpaceSavers.  We stopped and talked briefly to Nick & Terry Russell of The Gypsy Journal and gave Nick a copy of the February 2013 issue of Bus Conversion Magazine.  Until a few years ago, Nick and Terry lived in an MCI bus that Terry had converted.  (Nick is famous for not knowing how to use tools.)  We talked to a vendor who provides mobile black/grey tank cleaning service, but deferred signing up.  We also chatted with a satellite TV vendor who felt strongly that Direct TV was a far superior choice to Dish Network, especially if we were also going to use it at home.  She confirmed that Moto-Sat had gone out of business and that RF Mogul was started by former Moto-Sat employees.  We discussed the possibility of using a fully-automatic open style multiple-satellite dish on a tripod or other mount rather than having it attached to the roof.  She seemed skeptical, but did not see any fundamental reason that it wouldn’t work.  (In fact we have seen a lot of open style satellite TV dishes mounted on tripods or sitting on the ground, although most of them are manual dishes, not automatic.)

After our jaunt through the vendor area, we visited “The Row” to get our “bingo” sheet filled in but ended up talking to many of the chapter and C-BOF representatives.  We finally met Steven Gullette from the HFH BOF, with whom we had exchanged many e-mails in the last few months.  He will be one of the co-leaders on the build in Sheridan in a couple of weeks.  We chatted with Lou Petkus, K9LU, and signed up for the newly formed SKP Photographers BOF (no charge).  We also talked to the Elks BOF and found out that we can join the Gillette lodge while attending Escapade, so we took some information and an application form.  The initiation is Friday evening.

We got back to the coach around 12:45 PM and grabbed a quick lunch before running some errands.  We went back to the Boot Barn to exchange Linda’s new shirt for a different size, and had to join their “loyalty program” in order to do the exchange.  The manager had to approve the exchange and was a bit surly.  We will not be shopping there ever again.  We also mailed an anniversary card to our son & daughter-in-law.  Linda received a birthday call from her sister and a video birthday greeting from our son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter.  In many respects, RV life is just like regular life.

We attended the opening / welcome ceremony at 3 PM and were delighted to see and hear from Kay Peterson, SKP #1.  Dinner was leftover risotto with the rest of the Lawrence Elk black currant wine from Prairie Berry Winery, and both were excellent.  I was sorry that they were both gone, but there’s more where they came from.

We went over to the Wyoming Center at 7 PM for the Door prize drawings followed by the Rivoli Review for the evening entertainment.  They do a good show, with lots of energy and humor, although the patriotism was laid on fairly thick, and there were moments that were just plain jingoistic and inappropriate.  Although many of the attendees were enthusiastic about their show, there were plenty of folks sitting on their hands who were clearly not so pleased.