Visitor....Part Duex!

Thursday, August 10, 2006


Well, what are the chances that another Hummingbird would fly into the building and get stuck? QUITE WELL, I'd say! This afternoon sure enough another Hummingbird came into the building and went straight for the same light that the other one was attracted to. After it pounding it's head on the ceiling and light fixture, I once again grabbed my fishing (hummingbird) net and captured visitor number 2! Took him outside and the Jessica the grand daughter held it while I took a picture. Obvioulsy by the color this is not the same one as the other night. Wish I knew what was attracting them. I figured I was lucky to been lucky enough to hold ONE Hummingbird in my lifetime and now I have held TWO in less than a week!












































We took a trip over to thne Fairgounds today for the county fair and got our fix of fair food. Elephant ears, Funnel cakes and Pizza. Seems the fair is more of a food court than anything else it seems. We walked thru the Sheep barn and Rabbit areas. Sure are some neat looking rabbits. We also went over and looked at the Alpaca's and Llahma's. None spit on us so we must have been ok. :) Ran into some old friends and just killed a little time.

The insulation project on the trailer is nearing completion. I have the majority insulated and the bottom covered now. This will make a big difference this winter with our heat. What is left is trinket items to insulate.

We are going to try to make it down to Kiser lake this weekend but that will all depend on the rain. If it rains too much then we can't get into our favorite spot on the lake. So depending on if it rains anymore tonight maybe we wil

A little visitor

August 6th, 2006 9:30 pm


I was walking in from outside and saw something fly across the ceiling. So I waited to see what it was as I thought it was just a dragon fly. Well it turns out it was a Humming Bird! We seldom ever see one around here let alone have one trapped in the building. Poor little guy just keep bounching off the ceiling trying to get out. After 30 minutes of watching him try to raise the roof I decided I had to try to catch him before he ended up killing himself. So I got my fishing net and climbed up on the forklift and waalaa I got him. I got down and took the first picture then took him outside to let him go and he had no interest in taking off. He just set there, don't know if he was scared or so tired and relieved but after 5 minutes of so he finally took flight! Soo long little birdy thanks for the visit! :)

Some Pictures I neglected to post.

August 6th, 2006 Sunday. Temperature 84 degrees


This is at our favorite State Park, Kiser Lake. We stayed here the first couple of nights when we got back here and this is the view out the window the first morning we got up. Look closely and there are several deer wandering around the campground.









This was a couple weeks ago at sunset we went back down to spend the weekend.






























And this was not to long ago after a rain storm. May be Ohio but there are still some beautiful things to see that we all take for granted sometimes.
















This is my Niece that lives in Indiana with her little girl Emma.















This is our Granddaughter Jessica with ballons she made and our Grandson Jordan holding the newest addition Tabby.

SHESHHHH! Finally some relief!

August 3rd, 2006

After a very long hot streak we finally got some rain to relieve the heat. With humidity figured in the temperature has been over 100 degrees. A storm front came thru today with about an hour of rain that really brought the temperature down about 15 degrees. Guess everyone is suffering though so "SUCK IT UP" and live with it. :) But to give you an idea how much the air conditioning is working, every day I have to empty a 5 gallon bucket we use to catch the runoff from the roof!

Our friend Terry and Dale came to visit a week ago for a couple of days. We always enjoy when they come over and it is always great to spend time with them. We took them to Young's Jersey Dairy for a sandwich and Ice cream which is the best around. Then we rode thru Yellow Springs to show them the 60's stuck town and a tour of Antioch College. We didn't do much but just spent some time with them. They are staying in the Indiana area till mid October before they head south for the winter. Lucky dogs!

While here we hooked up an EMS unit to their coach to protect the electronics from spikes and low voltage lines. High or low voltage is a killer for RV's. That was a pretty quick job and ended up being a nice install. Terry brought me a slide out battery tray that I can hopefully put under our coach to get the batteries out of the basement.

Still trying to upgrade the Rv, am working on insulating the bottom of the Rv to try to keep what little heat our furnace produces inside the coach. Found out the furnace plenum as basically exposed to the cold with only being covered by a piece of plastic. So now I have the material to cover the bottom which will be covered with the Reflectix which is a bubble wrap that is covered on each side with aluminum foil to reflect heat. I already covered the plenum with that . Next I will use fiberglass insulation batts to put on top of the undercover. This will hopefully be a big benefit this winter and is probably going to help with the Air Conditioning also. Can't believe this is not standard practice with manufacturers but of course they want to sell it as an option. I think I almost have the furnace figured out as to what I need to do to make it work better. Need to add a couple more ducts to it to get the burner temperature down to quite tripping the over heat sensor. Can't believe I have been trying to get this to work properly since last January. I am optomistic that I will have it fixed this time.

We are planning on making our way over to Goshen this month to camp with Terry and Dale while they are around. Our other friends Ken and Kathy will be here the end of the month and will spend about a week with us. Then they are scheduled to vend at a car show in Springfield. After that we will try to make it over to Celina Fair Grounds to meet up with several of our friends we spent time with in Quartzsite as they will be attending the Fall Escapade in Van Wert Ohio. We will spend the weekend with them and they will leave on Sunday morning heading to the rally and we will come back home.

Gotta say I am not to upset about traveling from the standpoint of fuel costs. Fuel shot up to $3.15 today. Probably gonna get a lot worse before the end of the summer. This agravates me to no end as there is not a reasonable excuse for it.

The grandkids spent the night last night, it's great to have them stay once in a while. They won't be small forever, that's for sure. I grilled us hot dogs and hamburgers and we all enjoyed that. Jordon is hoping his dad will take him camping in the tent here soon. He has been so excited about doing that. I think they are doing a dry run in the backyard this weekend. :) They had a good time making ballon animals with stuff we got at a seminar last year at the Escapade.

Work is steady and it's always nice to have an income. We got some relief from medical as we are on company policy now and only have to pay 25%. Our personal insurance was due to go up 30% again in October. As we all hope we never need insurance it never works out that way. Deanna hit her head here a while back and that generated almost an $8500 bill from the hospital and doctors! Hate to think what would have happened if we did not have medical. Fortunately she is fine but sure was a scare. Hate to see my lovely bride injured. :)

Well, got to get going. Report more later. Stay cool...................

HOT!

Wednesday July 19th, Current temperature 81 degrees

Well last night we went and picked up Goofy (the shop dog I had) to dog sit him while a friends mom goes to see him graduate Boot camp in Georgia. We will keep Goof till sunday. He is such a changed dog now that he has been spoiled and that makes him a much better dog than before. He is having a little adjustment problem being here at the shop since he does not have his mom and her bed to sleep in! :) Overall he is being good.

We went the other night and bought a custom made mattress for the RV, the one that is in it is sooooo pathetic. We put a 3" memory foam topper on it and that improved it but it is still terrible. So we found a place that would make a special size to fit our bed. Will be done in about a week. Hopefully it will help Deanna's back and mine too. I normally can sleep anywhere but the last 2 weeks I have been waking up with a pinched nerve in teh center of my back. Hopefully that all goes away.

Temperatures got to mid 90's today with some incredible humidity. Inside the building it is like taking a shower! Tommorow is suppose to be the last really hot day for a while but some strong storms are forcast. It has been so dang hot that doing anything outside is almost out of the question.

Talked to our friends Mickey and Patti today and they are spending a week in Iowa before continuing on to South Dakota. Patti sent us a thank you card for showing them around this past weekend and the card came as a "Million Thankyous" It has been running all day and is currently at about 380,000 thankyou's :) waiting till tomorrow to see if it stops at 1 million!

Well, almost bed time. See ya!

July Update

Monday 17th, 82 Degrees

Well here it is middle of July and the 4th is well behind us. Not much to report since we are stationary and don't get to travel much. The latest is our good friends Mickey and Patti stopped by to visit with us on their way to South Dakota. They really could not have picked a hotter time to visit I don't think. 90 degree heat and plenty of humidity but fortunately no rain. We all went into Urbana and stopped in to visit the Johnny Appleseed Museum at Urbana University. We have never been there in all the years we have lived in the area. Actually it was only a one room display but was interesting to see yet the same. John Chapman was his real name and he planted trees in several states including Indiana, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Probably some others but my memory stopped there! :) While in Urbana there was an Art on the Square Affair going on and we spent a little time looking there. They had some live music and art of different types displayed for sale. Next stop was the Air Force Museum, hard to describe what we all saw there as there is so much and it constantly changes every time we are there. It is a must see for anyone in the area and it is free!
Mickey and I worked on some MAN projects while he was here, measuring his height of their 5th wheel RV and I made him an adapter to use in his drill to run the rear jacks up and down. He helped me work on our oven which never has worked well. You would have to wait 40 minutes to get it to 400 degrees. Unacceptable. So after much debate and search we decided that what was needed was a resizing of the feed orifice of propane. A couple of quick adjustments and waa-laa 375 degrees in 10 minutes. Now THAT'S What I'm Talkin bout, mmmm hmmmm! We also had to work on Mickey's hitch which would not close properly, a little slide juice and it was all new!
We did a lot of eating while they were here and ended their visit by cooking out Sunday night with Bill, Molly and Tabitha visiting. Everyone ate well and Patti and Deanna suprised us with Brownee sundaes for dessert! MMMMM that was delicious. Cooked way more than we needed so I had hamburgers for lunch today.
Monday morning our friends continued their trek towards South Dakota and it was almost painful to watch them drive away while we stayed here, :( They will hopefully be back in September when our other friends Ken and Kathy are here for a visit. One nice thing is we have made so many friends that someone is always stopping by and we really enjoy that. More update later

March

March 25th, 2006

Well plans have changed for us, we will still live fulltime in our RV but our location will not change much. I have been made an offer to work for my brothers company running the machine shop. Good news for us is that our building will be rented for the purpose. It is a great opportunity with the freedom to do some traveling as long as the shop is taken care of and running un interupted. The building is what originally made us decide to return to work for a period of time as it was due to be refinanced next year. The then current situation did not look good as I did not expect to have a renter for the building and without a job the bank looks at you a little funny when you ask to borrow money. This will solve both issues for now.

The last year was probably the best year ever that Deanna and I have been able to enjoy. We got to do a lot of traveling and see things we had never seen before and do things we had never done before. The friends we have made in the last year are lifelong and we anxiously await when we can meet up with them again. One thing is for sure, in the last year we did not have to look at snow and was always somewhere that it was warm during SOME part of the day. The desert is very comfortable during the day but chills down at night. The California coast was fantastic being 100 yards from the Ocean and listening to the waves crash on shore at night (a sound never to be forgotten) plus our good friends Tony and Charlotte who were hosts there at the park and spent so much time showing us around. Minnesota in the summer was beautiful with cool days and nights and lots of colorful scenery from the forests to the Headwaters of the Mississippi to the bogs. The other end of the Country which we visited was Tampa Florida, the Gulf of Mexico is very nice but no way compares to the California Coast in our opinion (especially beings we got to see the Elephant seals) but was very scenic. All in all Florida would not be a choice of destinations with the exception of visiting our son Mike. We found Florida to be WAY to busy, traffic congested and lots of rude people. Lousiana gets our WORST road trophy and in-humane placing of rest areas on I-10 of 1 rest area per 240 miles! Arizona was great and getting the chance to visit Tombstone was wonderful and memorable. The feeling of what it would have been like back in the old west was inspiring. Oklahoma was always a pleasure to visit plus we got to see Deanna's sister Mae and her husband Terry. They always treat us great even ME! Texas is such a huge state and we really only got to do overnight stays mostly on our travels so it is a good candidate to go back to. So much history there. Tennessee was also just a stop over on the way home but staying at the Escappees park in Knoxville where we met some great people like Gibby and Bette who were great fun to talk to and also new fulltimers! Our best friend and classmate supporter Malia Lane helped make a huge difference. Her inspiration in being a fulltiming single woman was always a inspiring for me. She has become such a great friend to Deanna and I in so many ways! Our best travel buddies Mickey and Patti were SO much fun to travel with and Mickey is such a card! They will come thru Ohio this summer we hope and we can visit again with them. Our other good friends who are just as much fun to travel with are Terry and Dale Pace, we will see them next month when we go to their rally in Elkhart Indiana. The graduation rally we had in Quartzsite Arizona was such great fun after planning that for a year that it will be hard to forget anyone there. With over 55 rigs showing up at one time or another it was good to put faces to names after such a long time. The Painted Desert and Petrified Forest was another fantastic place to stop and visit and deserves a week long visit to take it all in! So as you can see so many things we got to do and people to meet that in no way can any of this be considered a setback. Yes it was unplanned but that is due to the fact I was so engulfed with fulltiming I did not foresee the possible issues ahead of me.

Regrets on the past year you ask? The only one that even comes close to being mentioned is perhaps not having enough cash to continue our past habits like being able to eat out as often as we would like with our friends and of course the unexpected rise of fuel costs. Everything else was right on schedule and budget except for those unexpected gotta haves for the RV. So we will bank that extra cash to solve that issue and in the future we will go back at it. We absolutely love the fulltime lifestyle but at the current moment this is a necessary adjustment to our plans. My best advise to upcoming fulltimers is, plan to have more than you think you will need and make sure all your issues are taken care of. We anxiously look forward to our return to the road and roaming of America. To all of our friends we have made, be sure to let us know when you are going to be near! Enjoy the sun!