From KC

I didn't disappear, it was just instant domestic duties as I arrived home on Saturday afternoon.....

I hung around the Wichita RV park cleaning inside the Rig and washing out the sewers and things.....   But by 11, I was gone....  

In my chincy ways, I back tracked a mile or so as I had seen a Kwik Shoppe that had $3.69 fuel....    I bought over 40 gallons....   That helped fund more of my problems with the hitch debako ..

Once home I found the battery tender on the Ford car had errored out and ran the battery flat....    That took a couple of hours to get the car jumped and running...  The Ford has the trailer hitch to tow the utility trailer to storage...  

Then on Sunday my older son Chris and his daughter Claire came over and helped carry trip after trip of stuff back into the house...   Eventually we drove the Rig over to the storage as well...

Its the same storage place as the utility trailer, but you can't use the RV to park the trailer...   Its almost too tight to park the little trailer with a car...

It is to get to almost freezing tonight, so I think I will hang this up and go drain some water....  Maybe not using the pink stuff yet, but if it gets colder here that will have to come too....

If your waiting to leave the warmer climates, it might pay to watch the weather at your destination, as weather here is still dicey...

Retired Rod

Easier Day

More of a relaxing day today as I have now made it to Wichita, Ks for the night....   That is only 415 miles from Tucumcari where I was this morning....  A much easier day....  Often times if I am driving the car, I will just drive on into KC from Tucumcari. But the motorhome tires me out more so I gave up around 5:30..

But remember that when I drove into Texas I instantly lost another hour...  Central daylight time .. Now I am 2 hours behind Phoenix...  But that wasn't my worst worry as I crossed the Texas state line...

I usually go fill up the diesel tank every morning, but the price this morning was $4.. So being the scrooge that I am, I thought I can do better than that...  So I headed up Hwy 54... And in about 15 miles I hit a $3.89...   Well that's better....  So I winged it into the station....

That's when the trailer hitch decided to drag in the roadway....  There was an overly deep rain wash along the highway, which when the back wheels dropped, the trailer dug right into the berm...  Instantly I hit the gas to drag it on thru, but it was so deep I was almost  stuck....  That would have been tow truck time.....

Someone had stolen my older drop hitch, so last fall I went over and bought a new one...  A full 5 and 1/2 inch drop....  But that must have been more than I had before, because it seemed to drag almost everywhere...  Way more this morning.!

Once parked as I was filling the tank, I noticed that the really beefy new hitch had taken quite the hit...  It was folded upwards almost to the point that the trailer wouldn't go on the ball....  And to make things all that much more agonizing,  the guy in the power company truck at the next pump began telling me how bad this all was.....  According to him, the trailer would pop off at the slightest bump due to the tilt in the draw bar...  Now keep in mind we are miles from now where...  What was I going to do about it?

And he had me going for a while too, until I jacked the jack up under the hitch and it didn't come apart....  But even after seeing this,  Mr Helpful didn't leave... he kept on stressing that I had only minutes to live....  Finally my tank was full and the credit card went thru...  So I just walked off and left him standing there...

I drove around to a side street and then back out onto the highway...  It was bent upward far enough that it didn't drag anymore...  Of course his warning ran in my head all the way to Dalhart, as I expected the trailer to come off of the hitch at any moment...  See why the Texas time change wasn't on my mind...

But even thru the bumpy part of the Texas highway 54 it seemed to hold... It was tipped forward at a precarious angle but it held...

See how the ball is tilted about 30 degrees toward the draw bar...  And the actual bar under the blue sticker is bent right in the middle... All of the metal is stretched..  The welds didn't break, but everything is bent... Even the threads on the ball are messed up...

The farther I went without mayhem, the more confident I became... driving the rest of the day without stopping.   But as I arrived in West Wichita tonight, I came upon a Wal Mart and stopped and bought a replacement...  One with only 3 inches of drop...

The neighbor fellow here in the campground and I managed to get the old one out and the new one hooked back up...  We couldn't see anything else that was broken...  The actual hitch might be bent a tad, but not enough to cause any problems...  We'll have to wait and see if the tow bar still goes in correctly, but that will be another time...

Tonight I am camped at a KOA that is no longer affiliated...  They  have withdrawn from the system...  It's called All Seasons and it is West of Wichita...  I saw their signs when I came into town and followed them on a curiosity...  When I checked in they gave me a 15% discount for my Escapee card...  And I only took 30 amp electric, as I am not running any air conditioners....   Its supposed to freeze over night....  LOL  But then I added on cable TV for $2 more...  Total $29....  More like it...  

If I run both electric heaters tonight it might pop the fuse at the pedestal...  We will see..... 

So I saved a couple of bucks on fuel prices, only to spend $30 for a new hitch....  Just how my day usually goes......

Retired Rod

Yep Judy guessed it......

I'm  sitting here laughing my tail off.... Judy Bell has my number....  "Considering how fast I make the trip North... I had better sit tight for a while....But then she thought her advice wasn't worth much...."

Well as usual, her advice is worth a lot, but that wouldn't mean I would follow it now does it....?  Man when I get the itch to get along with it............Zoooom I'm all over it...  And so it was....

Tuesday I drove over to storage with the Jeep and the tow bar and had the Jeep on the back of the motorhome in about 15 minutes.... I had never pulled the Jeep before but its tow bar connections are the same and putting it in Neutral is done with the transfer case lever and you put the transmission in Park...  There is no steering wheel lock either so the key may as well be in your pants pocket...  So much easier...

But remember, I have a motorcycle and trailer to pull to Kansas,  so the poor Jeep had to be left behind..  In Kansas, you have to have a CDL to double tow....  So I only pulled the Jeep for the 5 miles back to the house..

Once the motorhome was home, then I started in getting things packed up and out to the coach... It took me two days to get thru it all...  I'm without my helper, or my leader is closer to the truth...  So not only does it take twice as long, I don't do about half of it right either....

Wednesday afternoon I took off thinking I had it all in hand, only to realize that I hadn't set the AC to 90, or turned off the water heater....  So back home again... Thankfully I was only about three miles away...  Had to fight with the security a second time to get it all set and by now it was almost 5 PM....

But the house was clean and the beds were made without sheets, so what the heck lets go, again....  I drove up to Payson, and then over the rim at 7800 feet...  I was in shorts and a thin t shirt and it was 42 outside....

It was dark and a little after 8 PM when I was checking into the KOA at Holbrook, and the wind was blowing like crazy....  But I was busy putting stuff away once I had the rig opened up with its slides out....  I had changed my watch to daylight saving time, so it was late at night by then....

Now that means that I should have slept in an hour, but no, my eyes were wide open at 7 AM New Mexico time....   I was on the road by 10 and drove all the way across New Mexico by 5:30..  I did stop for about an hour at our favorite parking area next to the Route 66 Casino in Albuquerque...  Lots of folks use that one for boondocking....

So tonight I am in Tucumcari, Nm...  Again at the KOA....  Haven't had any experience with the other park here, but this one isn't anything special.... Just gravel parking with hookups...  For $42....   And that was with the discount...  KOA is really pricey..... but they are convenient...

I think it is like McDonalds, not the best in the world, but uniform....  Not many surprises...  Reliably gets the job done......

I'm really not in any rush to get to Kansas, but my lawyer is bugging me to come back for Loyce's estate, and then  there is that pesky tax return.....   So maybe I'm just nervous to get back.....

Or then again, maybe its the long haul trucker in me that thinks a normal day has to be 500 miles....  Like Judy suggests, I usually don't go anywhere moseying along..... LOL

Retired Rod

Thinking of my summer home....

Getting short time in one location kind of limits what you can do....  Its too late to order anything that will be sent to the Arizona address because hopefully I won't be here....  But then sitting here checking the weather in Kansas says I won't be going there either....

My son and his family came back from Florida yesterday where they had been spending spring break....  They had nice weather in the high 60s and low 70s...  Spent time on the beach and everything....  But then came the dreaded trip back to Kansas....

As he arrived last night it was in the low 40s and was projected to go below freezing before morning...  He pulled in at 7 PM and was immediately out putting pink stuff into his fifthwheel's water system...  And it did make it below freezing last night too....

They were forecasting snow....  again?  

So while it was 87 here this afternoon, and usually reaching 90 is the trigger to head on out, perhaps not right away........  I loaded up a lot of the winter clothes that are no longer needed here and some of the once and a while stuff and took it over to the storage lot today....

After putting things into the closets and drawers, I pulled the coach out and hooked onto the utility trailer with the Jeep....  I brought that home with me, only to find that my neighbors were taking all of the parking spaces out in the street...  Had to leave it across the driveway....

The family across from us has several workers that show up in the morning before work...  They must go in one vehicle to the job site, so we end up as a parking lot...  But later tonight I will hook back onto the trailer and push it backwards into a parking spot that isn't in front of my drive...  They will just have to deal with it tomorrow morning...

With the new batteries, the coach started right up and ran like a top...  Biscuit went with me and was checking out the inside of the rig with her smeller.....  You know everything has to be sniffed to make sure there aren't any new dog smells...  I think she is just smelling the messes that she has made before.. (even though I cleaned and cleaned)..

But when it came time to leave the coach in storage and come back home she didn't want to come out....  She's my little RVer dog alright...

I spent the weekend doing house chores and watching the many basketball games...  Seems like everyone I would have been rooting for lost....  Well except Iowa State that got kind of a gift at the end when the clock operator messed up starting the clock after a made shot... But then the North Carolina kid didn't call time out quick enough either...  Its hard to do these things perfect.... and you know that NC thinks they were robbed.....

I keep telling myself that in all these tournaments, there can only be one team that doesn't loose...  So there are 67 loosers.....  And we teach our kids that winning is everything and the only thing...... Yea right....

Its almost 5 PM, and I wonder if that fellow has moved his truck yet....

Retired Rod

Bloggers Boogie

Generally I wait until one of my fellow bloggers posts a blog about the activities I have attended, because I can include a picture or two that they took....  I do that because I am lazy..... well, also because that way I am usually in the picture which makes it seem like I actually was there...

But, none of my associate bloggers have seen fit to tell you we were out slummin last Wednesday night... You know the bar and grill crowd...  We went to Superstition Skies over in the East end of Apache Junction...  In the foot hills of the mountain..


Yah, its a bunch of ram shackle buildings hooked together on a common cement slab...  It has the ordinary desert parking lot.....  By ordinary, I mean that you really don't have to haul in gravel to make a parking lot in the desert....  But they do have those concrete parking bolsters at the head of your space which gives it some order however...

At least there is a sign on the door requesting no guns..... LOL!

Wednesday night is All you can eat Chicken Wings.....  with beans and coleslaw..  They must have a broaster back in the kitchen, as they were bringing out drummies and wings as fast as they could carry them...

And for entertainment, they have Brant and Kerry...

 These fellows are country rock and the 60's genre...  Which hits us old timers rather square....    They start their set at 5:30 and play straight thru for two hours....   That happens on most Wednesdays in the winter...

I was the first one of our blogger group to arrive and as I was seated, the waitress asked me if I had reservations..... Uh, no............. do I need to have....?  So I grabbed a table for 8 back along the chicken buffet....  They have a big dance floor in front of the stage, and this table was on the second row away from the stage...

It wasn't long and Sandie and Jim Dixion arrived to help me hold the table...  And within the hour, we had all the chairs filled.....  I was sitting next to Jimbo, of  Jimbo's Journey's...  He travels with his dog Chica... in a Lazydaze class C...  He said he was from Southern California, but emphasized Was.....

On the other end of the table was a gal named Diane and two more fellows that arrived with her...  She also has a blog, but I haven't found it yet...  I wasn't able to hear that end of the table's conversation, once the music started, so I didn't get to know them too well...

The wings were tasty and we were too close to the pan...  I tried medium sauce on the first plate of wings, but quickly determined that I was too sissy for that...  Had to eat coleslaw in almost every bite..

Luckily the lady brought new plates so I was able to start over on mild sauce for the next go around...

I would have a picture, if some of the one's taken had surfaced on the web here, but alas...

Anyway a big thanks to Sandie for arranging this get together of bloggers.. And perhaps that will be the end of social activities for this year....

Retired Rod

There we go Jim posted the picture he took, so I will include it below...

Stolen without shame from Jimbo's Blog.... LOL

More info on Sam's vs Costco

Just to clarify things a bit, I understand that Costco is all wonderful and so much better than Sam's Club in everyone's opinion and I have a Costco card in my pocket too... BUT!

Costco did not have any Group 31c batteries... They didn't even know what they were...  They fit almost all semi tractor trailer trucks....  And also happen to be what Freightliner used on my motorhome chassis as starting batteries...   

Sam's Club in Kansas doesn't carry the truck batteries either...  But for some reason the Sam's in the San Tan shopping mall does have them...  I don't think the auto repair bays out there will accept semi tractors, so I do not know why they happen to carry them...  Perhaps the manager had them requested by a customer so he began to carry them and they seem to sell...

I went all around three years ago, and tried to get the batteries back then...  They were available only if they were ordered and then it took a couple of days for them to come in...  Prices were upwards of $200 each...  This time I did find that Auto Zone had one battery, but would have to order the second one...  That would have meant that the two batteries were miss matched in age, which is quite bad for tandem applications...  Prices were $140 each...   Sam's were priced at $112.50..   So the $55 difference for 2 made Sam's the place of choice...

I now shop for one person, so these warehouse clubs do not carry half dozen cartons of eggs or single quarts of milk, like I now need.  I had no idea that my card didn't work in the store....  I only used it for gas, and it was working for that....  I haven't been in Costco for years either...

Costco is actually much closer to my house here in Arizona, but in Kansas the  Sam's is only about a mile away, so that is what gets renewed..  Well, unless they suddenly make me renew every six months..  LOL

Retired Rod

Batteries from Sam's Club

Commenter "Rolling Earthquake" asks about being signed in and not getting the dashboard....  We as blogger dashboard users,often suffer problems where the blogs that we are following do not show up under our dashboard.....

I find from use, that if my connection is slow and blogger is somewhat overwhelmed with users, the combination will return a dashboard that is obviously a default.  This seems to be where it has lost the information my computer uploaded about which blogs I have on the dashboard...

I'm fairly sure that the blogs we want are stored on our own computers, or in our cloud account with Google...  Either way, there seems to be a disconnect if it takes too long to get a return from the mother ship...  That is when it gives me a default dashboard without my blogs I want...

I also look at my own blog page in the upper Right hand corner to see if it says sign in or sign out....  Unless it says sign out, you can't get the update blog screen...  Or the pencil as you suggested..  If it says Sign Out, then you are signed in, and  there should be a New Post button to the left which will bring up the editor...  Of course most of these problems are eliminated if you use the Live Writer Editor by Microsoft...

With Live Writer, you are editing a file on your own computer and it is uploaded all at once when you publish.... This works fairly well, until you get that bad connection....  Then it will error out when you publish... This happens when your post is longer than you can keep a solid connection...

Enough of that techie junk........  I went over to the motorhome today and hit the key to warm up the engine....  Raarrrr,  Raaaaaaaarrrr....  Click, Click, click...  It has been starting harder this fall, and it didn't want to go back in February when I ran it then....

Checking the house batteries proved them to be totally flat...  There is no where to plug in at the storage lot...  Even the guy that runs the place has solar..  But I never have put that in...  We were never boon dockers...

So all the batteries were toast....  Two truck batteries and Two golf cart batteries.....  Well let's see if we can get the engine running first..........

They sell all of these batteries for good prices down at Sam's Club  so off I went...  That turned into a big fight, as they wouldn't honor my Sam's card...  It works at the pumps, but otherwise I hardly ever use Sam's as a store...

That turned into an all day fight, but the lady sold me the two truck batteries without a valid card just to get rid of me...

I went back to the coach and managed to hook up one of the batteries with jumper cables long enough to move the big driver slide...  This had to be open because the truck batteries are in trays along the frame..  So in the gravel and the 85 degree sun, I changed out the truck batteries...  They are heavier than I can do by myself, but I struggled thru somehow...

I know how they are wired, because this isn't the first time I have done this...  Batteries in my world seem to last three years almost to the day..  Yep February 8, 2011 on the blog.....  Three years and one month.....  I noticed that I spent $179 back then  today the same batteries were over $250...

The engine started easily with the new batteries, and even the generator fired up...  I hurried back to Sam's Club, but again they wouldn't refund my core charge without first paying for a new $45 membership...  We fought over the payment I had made last summer on the membership...  They had no record and insisted that I wasn't a member..  Wanted the receipt for my membership last August in Kansas... Yea right...

Finally a manager overrode the computer and gave me back the money....   So just to be ornery I went with a cart and loaded up two new golf cart batteries and came back to the membership desk...  I asked politely for them to sell me the batteries...  Nope.. Not without a membership card... I gave him the one I had and again insisted that I had paid the membership...  Then I showed him a receipt from the gas pump where I had just pumped gas in the Jeep.....  See the pump thinks I'm a member.....!!

This got me another manager higher up on the ladder...   I asked him to sell me the batteries, or if he was going to chase away a customer that wanted to do $250 worth of business..  Again he insisted that I wasn't a member regardless of the gas purchases..  "Are you going to sell me the batteries...?"

So we worked out a compromise...  He asked if I was ever in the Military....  Well yea, forty years ago....  Fine!   Your short 5 months on your membership so pay the $45 for a new year and I'll give you a $15 refund for being a military person...  I was tired of fighting so it was close enough...

So now I am a completely new member in my own single name with a new year starting in March..  The lady that I had been working with seemed quite perturbed that he gave me the credit...  But I have a new card and it will be good for another year...  Oh, and two more golf cart batteries to put under the step in the motorhome...  Hey, and I'm only out $530...

I'm beginning to think something is wrong with me.. I seem to attract confrontation over bank accounts and memberships....  Or perhaps I am just strong willed enough to stand up for my side of the story...  Do other folks just cave in and let these people take advantage of them because they don't want the confrontation...?   I was reassured with myself today though, as I never got mad at them.  Never lost it with them or used any threatening language...   I just wouldn't go away....

Retired Rod

Planting Biking and Basketball

My week here has been about the same day after day....  I have been out in the cool of the morning digging in the yard to replace some of the bushes that died last summer....  I thought about replacing them last fall, but a year ago last winter it froze solid in January, so I thought it best to wait...

And as you probably know, we have had outstanding weather here this winter and it would have been fine to replant things last fall...  I don't go after this job with much exuberance as after all I am retired...

I just replant a couple of bushes each day and then go inside for a shower...  After cleaning up, it is time to go for an extended motor cycle ride....  Usually with a list of groceries or something to make a nice stop at a distant Wal Mart...  Our wally world here on Signal Butte is the most overwhelmed store....  You can't find a parking spot and it takes forever to get thru the checkouts...

So riding off to a store 8 or 10 miles away becomes a destination and a nicer ride... One day I went to the city offices and changed the name on the water bill... It was in Loyce's name since she had signed us up for that service...

That turned out to not be too big of a deal..  I was armed for bear with copies of my gas and electric bill in my name, since I had already changed those....  But as it turned out, none of that was needed...  Just a copy of my Kansas drivers license, and an oral statement confirming her passing...

Otherwise I have been into college basketball this weekend...  Watching Iowa get their butts kicked by Northwestern....  who were seeded 11th..  Let's see, broken hearted, dismayed, mad....  Some of the adjectives that come to mind...

Then Kansas gets beat by Iowa State...  I didn't know how to root for that match up...  I live in Kansas about 30 miles from Lawrence....   But I do root for any Iowa team, as long as they aren't playing the Hawkeyes...  I was a little miffed that Kansas didn't have their big inside center player as he was out with back spasms...

But then tonight, Iowa State beat Baylor for the conference tournament title....  So perhaps Ks couldn't have done that anyway...  It made for really good basketball...

So everything is fine here...

Retired Rod

New Roomba Arrives....

I"m not certain why, but the Roomba gods at iRobot have come thru and awarded me a new Roomba Pet model robot....  It arrived here around noon today......  I was skeptical... Because....

First of all, the company can't be responsible for everything that might happen to one of their devices...  Like running over dog doo doo....  It is a robot after all and doesn't have a detection system built in to identify hazards of that kind.....

But for marketing and public image they have taken care of me....  Perhaps with this blog, I can give them a big ATA BOY!!!!!

Well anyway the new machine is on charge....

Yep, no Poo on this one .....  Yet.........!

There seems to be two ways to charge this device...  It comes with a really big power brick that will plug directly into the side of the vacuum....  But also there is a charging station...  To use this, you plug the brick into the side of the station and the Roomba finds the station with its infra red sensors and then comes over and parks directly on top mating up electrical connections with the base...

Reading on the internet, some folks believe that the charging base limits the charge to three hours, while using the power brick without the base gives you the as long as it takes charge...  Meaning once the battery is completely charged up it will turn itself off of the brick....

All I know is that once I had taken the bottom off of the machine with 4 phillips screws and installed the old battery, the machine came to life and beeped its noise maker....   Its on charge directly from the power brick without the docking base with the correct orange lights winking...

So Thank You Roomba!!!!

Retired Rod

Bar Be Cue for one......

Of course one of the questions that I always get as a single guy, is how are you eating?????  You know, Bologna sandwiches and Kraft macaroni and cheese.....

Well its Sunday afternoon, so let's cook out!!

Um, fresh out of Bologna, maybe these butterfly center cut pork steaks will do.....

And on the inside flat top grill, lets do a few tatters....

My goodness, do ya think I can chow all that down??  Quit snickering....

Just what a fellow should do after a long ride on the motorcycle for most of the afternoon.....  Now maybe I should go for a long walk.....  After while, I'm still too full.....

I have much to do this coming week, as I still haven't corrected the credit card thing...  And I am going to look into the free Identity theft coverage that Target is offering for the next year...  Since they are the primary cause of this fun....

I also have a bunch of dead bushes that have to be dug out of the ground....  And the drip watering system needs to be reprogrammed...  Each drip head needs to be removed and un clogged....

As you can see, I am now aware that its only about three weeks until I have to leave Arizona...

I also understand that it is time change weekend...  Well not for us here in Arizona..... See, it gets hot....  Hotter than the face of the Sun some say here....  And pushing our day farther into the hot part just makes it more unbearable.   So folks get up with the dawn and go to work as quick as they can...   6AM is an arrival time for those that work outside...

That way they are done by 2 or 2:30...  By then, its darned hot...   But if we had sprung forward with daylight saving..... Well you see what the deal is...

Anyway, do you need to change your clock..........?

Retired Rod

A History Lesson or perhaps refreshing your memory....

From the History Place.Com.....

"Nineteen months would elapse from the day Hitler grabbed control of the German Army until the actual start of World War II. During those months, Hitler engaged in a kind of gangster diplomacy in which he bluffed, bullied, threatened, and lied to various European leaders in order to expand the borders of his Reich.

His very first victim was Dr. Kurt von Schuschnigg, Chancellor of Austria, a country being torn apart from within by Nazi agitators and also feeling threatened from the outside by Germany's newfound military strength. Hoping for some sort of peaceful settlement with Hitler, Schuschnigg agreed to a face-to-face meeting at Berchtesgaden. The meeting was arraigned by Franz von Papen, the former ambassador to Austria.

On the chilly winter morning of February 12, 1938, Schuschnigg's car was met at the German-Austrian border by Papen, who joined him for the ride up to Hitler's spectacular mountaintop retreat. Papen informed Schuschnigg that Hitler was in a very good mood this morning. But, Papen added, Hitler hoped that Schuschnigg wouldn't mind if three of Germany's top generals were also present during the day's discussion.

Schuschnigg was somewhat taken aback by this, but it was too late to change anything now. He arrived at the steps of Hitler's villa and was greeted by the Führer himself. Standing behind Hitler were the three generals; Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the High Command, Walter von Reichenau, Commander of Army troops along the German-Austrian border, and Air Force General Hugo Sperrle.

Hitler led Schuschnigg into his villa and up to the great hall on the second floor, a big room featuring a huge plate glass window with sweeping views of the Alps, and in the far distance, Austria itself. Schuschnigg, taking it all in, broke the ice with a little small talk about the view. But Hitler cut him right off. "We did not gather here to speak of the fine view or the weather!"

Thus began two hours of hell in which the quiet-spoken Austrian Chancellor was lambasted without mercy by the Führer. "You have done everything to avoid a friendly policy!" Hitler yelled. "The whole history of Austria is just one uninterrupted act of high treason...And I can tell you right now, Herr Schuschnigg, that I am absolutely determined to make an end of this. The German Reich is one of the great powers, and nobody will raise his voice if it settles its border problems."

Read the rest of this history lesson Here

Does this sound like the current news about Russia.....?  This isn't a political Blog, so I am not offering any opinions about what is wrong or right...  I am just reminding what happened once before....

Retired Rod

John and Brenda's place..... Maricopa, Az

Wednesday I was the guest of John and Brenda Brown at their ranch West of Maricopa, Arizona....

I was a little unsure if I actually remembered how to get out to their place, but just like typing... you don't forget once you've done it before....    Still, I was glad for the GPS in the Jeep...

I should have taken some pictures, and had the camera in the Jeep, but we were talking about everything under the sun, and I never got it done....  Brenda took a few, but I don't know what she did with them....  I know they're on Facebook....










There we go swiped without shame.......  LOL   Biscuit was working her crowd using her charm to get free hugs and bits of food...   Aww come on gimme some ribs....

Of course Brenda did her best to make everything so scrumptious...  Baked Golden Potatoes and wonderful slabs of ribs in tangy Bar Be Cue sauce....  Salad and garlic bread.....    Oh did I mention the fresh hot apple pie with ice cream melting all over the plate......   My cheeks are bulging.......  Well all of me bulges.....  But forget that part...

Anyway it was a wonderfully warm day and the sun and weather was delightful..
As were John and Brenda...  I had wished that I could have been out there a week earlier to meet Mike and Janna from Montana, but just couldn't make the schedule work out....  Maybe next year...

Anyway, there is no way I can ever pay back such a meal and hospitality that the Brown's have always extended us....  But next year this is on me.................!!

We did have a few laughs over the Roomba experience..... but I'm not certain that Brenda will ever come to visit me in Mesa again.. Unless she brings a bucket and some spic and span.... LOL

Retired Rod

Roomba Update

I received an email from Roomba...  They can't have the old machine back yet as I mailed it from Arizona ground...  UPS said it should be there the 11th....

In the email, Roomba sent a tracking number for a package that is supposed to contain another replacement Roomba 650...  So perhaps they are not even waiting to see my old Roomba...

This seems incomprehensible to me, but if they have decided, they have decided.....

I'll check out the tracking number and let you know what's in the package..  I didn't threaten these folks in any way with blogging about this experience...    What ever they are doing for me is of their own decision...   Maybe they are sitting in Pennsylvania laughing their butts off at me as well.....

Ya think..?

Retired Rod

Roomba !!!!!

So we did get that rain all weekend....  Over an inch and it was mighty welcome...!!  On the cool side too with highs in the 60s but we just went back to long pants and muddled on...

And muddle on it was as every time I tried my temporary credit card over the weekend it was declined..... See it doesn't have my name on it...  It just says "Preferred Customer."  The lady at Wal Mart thought it was a dummy card mailed out as a promotion.... She wanted to throw it away....

It seems like all of this is just me complaining....  And I don't want to just write blogs about what isn't going right...  But I have to explain this next story in the light of reporting the facts rather than whining...

You do remember the Roomba vacuum that the kids got me for Christmas... And that Biscuit didn't like it and charged at it barking...??   I had set it to do scheduled cleanings....  At noon, but its clock was set in the Central time zone...

I had another dental consultation on Monday at 11 AM... Which was noon in the Central time zone...  I had forgotten Roomba all together...

It must have backed itself off of its docking station and began to clean... This must have alarmed Biscuit...   Of course I don't know the order of what happened, but I do know that Biscuit hasn't had any bad accidents in the house since we came here last October...

So did Roomba scare the Poo out of her...?  Or did she fail to take care of her business an hour before when she was outside....  She was out there for more than a half hour....  Who knows?  But she left a big pile of doo doo on the carpet in the living room right in front of the patio door....

Well Roomba sees this steaming excrement knowing that it shouldn't be there............  And it has to get this cleaned up!!!!!   So it runs over the gooey mess... over and over... winding the stuff up into its brushes and cleaning bin and all over its rubber tires...  It did pirouettes over the pile smearing the mess on all sides of itself...

Its blue light must have been blazing that it had found cleaning heaven....  So once completely covered, it marched off to continue to clean elsewhere.........  Remember it was now covered like it had rolled in the mess like the very pet model it is supposed to be.....

Needless to say it went on to cover the entire room  with this stinking mess...   Well more than one room.......  All I could think of was if Loyce was still with me, and how utterly mortified she would have been....  So now you know how I spent yesterday, with soap and bucket.... Rags, mops, and the like.....

Biscuit was hiding behind my chair in the den and wouldn't come out.....  I told her she was a bad dog, but she already knew instinctively how bad this was.... So I wasn't at all hard on her...

Roomba was showing a charger error and as I tried to clean the outside of her with a damp cloth, making sure not to get her wet....  She exclaimed a big OH,OH... noise and died right before my eyes...    I could not get her restarted....  She was completely dark....

I called the Roomba gods in Pennsylvania...........  They claimed her as killed, and told me I was on my own....  I would just have to go buy another one....  I told them not in a million years...

Well they had my phone number by then as they had made me register the device before they would talk to me....  And after about 10 minutes they called me back...

Seems they do want her back.....   So I cleaned her up a bit more so she didn't have poo hanging all over and boxed her up..

Sent her off this afternoon, UPS..... The package smelled bad in the back seat of the car...  They said that I might get another one, If I hadn't killed it myself....  What ever that might mean....

Are you Rolling on the Floor Laughing your A off by now????   The UPS kid quickly hiked  the package back to the shipping area once it was posted....  Ewwww.. I was glad to get it out of the car too....

Retired Rod

As an addendum, Roomba came thru with an entirely new unit arriving on March 11th....  See blog for that day....  Here!!!!

Biscuit quit hiding!!

Biscuit..... get out from under that bed!!

 Well, you see she is mad at me because yesterday she had to go to the dog shop and get all of her winter hair cut off...   I was too ashamed to take a before picture...

But the dog shop was overwhelmed before Valentine's day, and they weren't even taking appointments they were so far behind...  But on the 15th, I went over and told them they had to take her...  Well OK, the first date was the 27th of Feb...  Fine!

So by then Biscuit had another two weeks on her already too long coat.  I guess this shop and its ladies are really liked by everyone, and they are located across from Leisure World which gives them a big audience of people and dogs....

I found them when Biscuit was still a puppy and they gave her the very first hair cut...

Well now she is all squirrelly because her hair is all gone.... She slept under the covers last night, and she never does that...

She would run under the bed anytime I tried to take her picture....  But she messed up and got on my lap tonight...  I grabbed the phone and got a quick shot...  The flash lit up, and she scowled at me like she often does....

They put those cute little green bows on her ears for St Patrick's day, but she hates those... She has rolled on the floor trying to scrape them off..  But she hasn't been successful yet..  For a while she can forget them, but then something bumps them and reminds her that they are there...  That causes the rolling to start all over again....

This morning Wal Mart declined my US Bank credit card again...  Remember last fall on the way out here I was denied after pumping over a hundred bucks of diesel...  I came burning home on the motorcycle with fire in my eyes....  Now Rod.........!  Remember its not the CSR's fault....!!

So after a call to the bank, I learned that I have been compromised with the Target scandal...  They are even now still finding out that more folks are on the list..  So they cancelled my card....  Well the short story here is the replacement card was mailed to my home in Kansas...

They have very few branch banks out here, and most of them are in Safeway grocery stores...  The guy on the phone told me I had to go to the local store in person because I wasn't in Kansas.. So I did.... to three different groceries and the last one dressed me down because I was told to go there...  By golly they had no intentions of issuing me a temporary card.......

Finally I ended up at the San Tan Mall where they actually had a branch bank...  It took the lady over an hour on the phone to the very same people that I had been calling on the phone to get a workable solution to my problem...  I had to ask them for a cashiers check for the entire bank balance before they got the point...

The temporary card they issued me will not last long enough to get me home to Kansas, and they had to void the card they already sent there, so having my son go try and find it in the pile of mail won't work either...  It was 5:30 and the branch closed before they got me handled...

So I spent all day from before noon...

Some days are like that..........   Its supposed to rain here tomorrow.....  We haven't had rain here for months...  everyone is looking forward to a good long rain storm....

In the desert, that is kind of rare...  Overcast and a few sprinkles is a storm around here.....  LOL

Retired Rod