My Hummingbird net comes to the rescue AGAIN!

Saturday September 2nd 2006 Temperature 57*

Man, this net has caught more stuff in the last month! Tonight while updating the blog Deanna comes in and says, "I hear something out there. We knew we had some type of critter in the building as the dog smelled it the other night but could not find it. Then last night we heard something fall outside. Then this morning footprints on a table and a popcan knocked over. HMMM must be a raccoon and a baby one probably considering the size of the foot prints. Well I grab the flashlight and put on my shoes and go out and start looking under the truck, under the bench, under the tool box.....nothing, so I say to Deanna "what did it sound like? Paper or plastic rattling? " "no sounded like it was on your tool box", BINGO !!! there it is sitting on an open drawer!














SO! I grab my trusty, Hummingbird slash OPossum net and go to work. It climbed behind my toolbox and under the plastic covering the insulation. AHHH HAAAA, now your trapped. So while Deanna had it trapped I got behind it with the net and it climbed right into it. I whipped it out and got it trapped and took it outside. Of course now it is doing its namesake by playing possum as you can see. I took some pictures and took it across the tracks and let it go. The problem will be they are notorious for coming right back as soon as they can. It most likely slipped in while the door was open after dark. Oh well it is getting to cool for than now anyway.

Man, I need to get me a job trapping animals! :) Another case closed!

Ken Ain't Skeerd either Andy!

For my buddy Mickey, SEE even KEN ain't Skeerd to drill holes on a whim! :)

Ken and Kathy arrived on Thursday and are now parked outside at Camp Pulltab! We have missed spending time with them since we last saw them in January. So we cooked them burgers and had corn on the cob with Funi Salad and our other friends Janice and Dean came over to join us. Janice brought some chips and pepper slaw to add to the pickins. We had not seen Janice and Dean since last September and it was just to see them again. They are passing thru and spending a couple of weeks at the Famcamp area at Wright Patterson AFB.














Saturday we took Ken and Kathy to the Air Force Museum and met Janice and Dean there. We spent a few hours walking the huge complex of airplanes and history of the military world. There is just so much to see here that it seems like you will never see it all. Jan and Dean are going to go back next week and try again and also take a trip over to the Annex to see the Presidential tour of aircraft.














The above picture I stole from Janice's site as it is the only one with everyone in it. Left is Dean then Janice, Ken, Kathy, Me and Deanna.
Janice kept trying to peak under the fig leaf of the statue behind us! BAD Janice! :~)

After the sightseeing we were all famished so we went to Melody Resturant for dinner to celebrate Jan and Deans upcoming Anniversary. 35 years for them I believe she said. "IN" the resturant is a whole different story, it started with Janice wanting to set at a different table. I told the waitress she was being difficult :) . Either way we got moved and I continued to remind the servers that Janice was the difficult one and to let the cook know that the REST of us were quite happy to be here.......WELL then there is Ken who also has to be difficult and order his drink as half iced tea and half lemonade! WHAT! So now I have to make sure the servers know that KEN is the difficult one. Soon Ken's drink runs dry and the drink girl comes by and says "refill" Ken says I got half...............to late it is filled with unsweetened tea as she remarks "your drink is dry, you wanna RETHINK that decision! :) Rolling on the floor laughing our ass off, Ken says OK, that'll be fine! Kathy was about to pee her pants!
Anyway we got our food without any foreign substances in it :) and we finished it and enjoyed our visit with our good friends and parted for home.

So the plan is tomorrow (sunday) we will go to the lake (Kiser Lake) and see if it has thinned out any. If so we will travel down there to spend the week. The week is suppose to be cool but possibly a little rainy off and on. No problem for us as we really aren't camping being we live in our RV. All part of the deal. Some other friends of ours who live in Vandalia hopefully will come down and spend some time with us. John and Doni spent the month of December in Huachucha City Arizona last year with us and then met us again in Quartzsite. Will be great to see them again too.

Last weekend we went for Jordans birthday party. Jordan just turned 14 and in a couple of years will be old enough to drive! WOW where did the time go.
Below is Jordans birthday cake, below that is Bill on Jordans bike and Jessica getting ready to race each other. Next is Tabby enjoying her cake and last is Grandma holding Tabby and Molly's Dad (Fred) in the background.

I ain't Skeerd Andy!

August 19th 2006, Saturday Temp 82* and HUMID!

Well last weekend we were able to make it camping at Kiser lake one of our favorite spots. Weather cooperated nicely and the campground was fairly empty so we had a lot of space to ourselves right on the lake. We were going to go back this weekend but we trusted the weatherman that it would rain and hard at times. Well it's 2pm and so far NO RAIN! Nice sunny day but humid no doubt.

So I took the opportunity to work on the furnace project even though we are not EVEN needing heating. Needed to add a couple of ducts to the furnace but to do so I needed to pull the water heater to get to it. Then after removing it I had to cut (2) 4" holes to adapter the ducts. Whole project only took about 2 hours to complete but learned something interesting about water heaters. When they say you should flush or drain your heater every so often, I HIGHLY SUGGEST IT! See pictures below. I probably got at least a 12 ounce cup full of crap out of the heater. SOME OF IT LOOKED NASTY! Some clear jello looking crap! For the fulltimers out there take heed of this suggestion. It has been 15 months since we have been living in the RV and never once did I take the time to flush our tank. Gonna do it montly now I guarantee!











These first couple of pictures are for
my buddy Mickey, who is always stunned
at my fearless drilling of holes in the RV.

























This mess came out of the water heater!


















Well tonight I think I will cook some Catfish out on the grill. Have some baked potatoes and salad.

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...................