Nick’s Pizza Restaurant In Trouble

If you live in the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago you know about Nick’s Pizza. They have the best around bar none and we have been going there since they opened back in 1995. They have two locations, one in Crystal Lake and another in Elgin. The Elgin location is suffering because Wal-Mart is building a new supercenter next door to them plus Elgin & South Elgin decided to re-pave Randal Road in front of them so all of this has ruined access to the restaurant for the past going on 2 years.

People get sick of waiting for the traffic to clear so don’t bother going. I received an email from them basically asking for people to go to their restaurant. Hopefully they do, if Nick’s can’t make it that’s nearly 100 people that will lose their job. Granted Wal-Mart is opening next door but I could give a crap about Wal-Mart, it’s going to kill Meijer and Butera just like they have done in several other towns. Why else would they build right across the street? 

Anyway, if you live in the area of Crystal Lake, IL or Elgin, IL stop by if you can, you won’t regret it.

Here is the email. I reformatted it for the blog but the wording is left unchanged.

As a valued frequent guest of our restaurant, I feel it is necessary to share the following with you.

An Uncertain Future

I have never understood why owners or management of a failing company usually don't give others close to the company--especially customers--fair warning about what is going on. In many instances, the team, the core family that built the business, has showed up to work and found the doors locked. I have always said I would never do that to the people I truly care about and owe my life to.

I realize that sending an e-mail like this is risky and unorthodox, but I don't care because I don't have anything to fear or hide. We run our business with totally open books, and the core team that shows up to our weekly fiscal huddles will not be surprised by what I'm writing. I truly care about our team and each guest who has blessed us by choosing to eat at Nick's instead of any of the many other places available to them.

As of the beginning of this week, the hard reality facing us has become glaringly apparent to me. We overbuilt and overspent, and then we didn't cut fast enough or hard enough when sales started to go downhill. The issue is primarily with our Elgin restaurant, but because we are one company, the failure of Elgin will likely impact Crystal Lake as well, depending on the choices our bank makes. This failure is not the fault of our team members; on the contrary, I am extremely grateful to them for their incredible contributions, including accepting salary cuts, taking on more responsibilities, and volunteering to market us on their own time. The whole responsibility for our troubles is mine for making the bad decisions that got us into this mess.

I realize that many of you out there see a busy restaurant and don't understand how we cannot be profitable, or as many of you have expressed, how we could not be "rolling in cash." We do bring in a lot of revenue, but unfortunately that is not enough to cover our mortgage and the other expenses that accrue from having such large facilities. In 2008, sales at our Elgin location began to drop, causing that location to lose money. Fortunately, Crystal Lake was profitable enough to cover both restaurants most of the time. As of this year, that's no longer true. The sales drop in Elgin alone has been 30% since last year and close to 40% since 2007, thanks largely to the bad economy and our location next to the road construction.

We thought that the opening of a new Walmart across the street from Elgin on October 26th would bring enough new traffic to save that location and our company. Unfortunately, the bills that we have been pushing back this year are catching up with us now, about four weeks short of the finish line. Barring some sort of miracle, we are going to run out of cash to pay our vendors and team members over the next couple of weeks and will have to close. Believe me, I have already tried everything possible and would not be writing this if the amount we needed was not many thousands of dollars more than I personally could come up with. I really did believe we were going to make it to the finish line and pull through this, but I have nothing left that I can sell, pawn, or promise--just my business, which now is on the table.

I do have one last hope for me and the 200 team members of Nick's. If within these next four weeks we could see a large increase in sales at either of our restaurants, we could still pull through. So my final request is for each of you to come dine at Nick's Pizza & Pub and tell all your family, friends, co-workers, and neighbors to come now, too. We want to continue on as a part of your community and aren't ready to tell you goodbye yet. If you wish to contact me with investor ideas or any ideas or questions at all, you can email me at office@nickspizzapub.com, call me at 815.356.5557, or simply stop by and talk in person. Thank you for reading.

Sincerely,

Nick Sarillo

Founder and owner of Nick's Pizza & Pub

Nick's Pizza & Pub

856 Pyott Rd., Crystal Lake, 815.356.5550

990 S. Randall Rd., Elgin, 847.531.5550

www.nickspizzapub.com

Back To Blogging About RV’ing…. :)~

I met with the tech and we went to the RV to check out our options. We discovered we could not remove the ceramic tile in the bathroom because the shower and cabinets unfortunately reside on top of the tiles. I decided to go with Allure flooring for both the toilet room and the bathroom. It’s a floating near 100% water proof flooring that we are going to put directly over the ceramic tiles.

Because the Allure is thin enough it won’t raise the level of the floor very much, we also picked up fake wood cord around. We are going to silicone the cord around so in the event of water spills it won’t easily get under the flooring. I picked an oak color to try and make it blend in with the honey oak cabinets and I think it will turn out nicely.

The more expensive option would be to have him dremel the tiles away or remove the cabinets and shower etc.. but our budget just can’t handle that right now.

I bought 2 boxes of matched lot #’s Allure oak flooring (feels like some kind of vinyl). It’s called Traffic Master and it has a 25 year warranty. The color here looks much lighter than the actual product. 

For the toilet room I bought a riser box that will raise the toilet almost 3 inches higher making it a little easier to get off the thing. We are going to leave the ceramic tile on the floor in the toilet room as well. The ceramic tiles I have pulled up are the loose ones so I’m going to cut hardibacker to fill in since it’s the same thickness and we bought a product that we will use to fill in the grout lines so the Allure lays flat. Also we are going to use a product that will fill in the low spot in the floor so the hardibacker will sit flat.

Our target date for doing the project is 2 weeks, October 8th. I’ll take a ton of pictures and of course post them here.

Have a great Sunday everybody!

Attack Watch Comment Response

 

Anonymous – Please show me where the racism is in my post? I had many issues with Bush (VERY long list by the way!), who if you noticed is white. President Obama is black, really, that’s the very last thing that matters to me (it's not even on the list actually) but to people like you it’s the very first thing you think about and you play it for everything you can’t defend. I suppose I was racist against Bush as well then?

I lost you as a follower? So long then! If race is your only tool to debate with then good riddance, you can go back to Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson who make a living playing the race card, so long.

Merikay – I respect the heck out of you, I welcome disagreement because when two people can disagree and discuss things, answers can be found. If we ever meet I’m going to give you a great big hug.

I disagree with Obama’s philosophy in general, if you go back to his interviews prior to 2008 (and many after) he openly talks about forcing coal companies out of business, he openly says the people will have to endure much higher costs under his administration, if that’s his agenda he has succeeded and then some. I respectfully believe that the party of NO is both the Democrats AND the Republicans, if they weren’t we wouldn’t be in this mess. They both play the “NO” game.

My problem is with BOTH parties. Yes the entire world is in trouble but trying to make everybody happy is what got us and them there. Time to stop giving away the house via entitlements me thinks and creating more is not the answer either. Taking from one group to give to another is not what this country is founded on but it’s what Obama bases his Presidency on, which scares the hell out of me.

It’s not the job of the American President to fix anything but what’s going on in the US. I believe we need to stop sending BILLIONS to places like Pakistan, North Korea (end the armistice already!!) and others that just use the money to make the dictators wealthy and the people in their countries poorer. This isn’t Obama’s fault, it’s a problem that we have had since the end of WWII with all administrations so I’m not sure what will ever be done here, if anything.

I agree with you, banks over qualified people for home loans, however Barney Frank is one of the guys who wrote the very legislation forcing the banks to do so. So there is blame to go around, the guys who wrote the legislation aren’t taking responsibility but they sure are forcing the banks to. I don’t support the banks or the bankers but I do hold everybody involved accountable and our representatives are the key to that mess. Wouldn’t it be nice if they apologized for screwing up instead of passing the blame to others, for once?

People want to pay their fair share, President Obama said wouldn’t it be great if a rich guy paid the same taxes as a plumber? What Obama forgets is he pays MORE. For example somebody making 60k a year pays 15% effective Federal tax, the rich guy (not really rich by the way, 200k isn’t rich) pays 28% effective Federal tax so I can lay odds that he wishes he could pay 15%, President Obama is openly lying to the public by playing to the false assumption that the rich don’t pay their fair share, statistics from the Government shows him to be wrong.

As for local taxes, we are going through much of the same thing, I also notice that not one single thing is being done to lower costs, they only seek ways to inflate their budgets, people are screaming because they don’t seek out ways to live within their means, costs go up because of the way the budgets work, they are forced to spend every nickel or lose the difference the next year so every year the budgets go up. We can’t continue to live that way so its time for both local and federal to start looking at the books and doing something about the bloat instead of looking to us every time they over spend because I for one am sick of bailing them out.

President Kennedy inherited what turned into the Bay of Pigs, he could have blamed the previous administration for leaving him a mess to clean up instead he stood in front of the American people and took responsibility. Now, historians can debate who was at fault but my point is made I think. I believe Obama should man up for once and take responsibility for something, anything.

I would love to discuss these things with you Merikay, you’re level headed and I bet a good sight smarter than me so I would need to bone up before it, but I bet it would be fun! Thanks for your response.

Sue and Doug – Nope, you didn’t miss anything, I love Canada. I used to play in hockey tournaments every winter. A beautiful country! I hope to visit again some day.

Jamie – I don’t feel attacked, some people have nothing to fall back on so they use what they’re comfortable with because it’s what they know. It’s sad really and quite pathetic.

Alan and Marilyn – You guys were the smart ones! I could have sold our house for a $120,000.00 profit had we sold back in ‘08! If I get reported I welcome whatever happens and I’ll post about it some how some way.

Ronda -  You know me so well!  

Jammin’ Along – Agreed, unfortunately the “tolerant” among us are only tolerant of people who agree with their views. Those who don’t must be racist. I have friends I don’t agree with politically, we agree to disagree and have interesting debates about it. Which is how it should be, people only tolerant of views similar to their own can stick with Jessie Jackson, he loves people like that and makes a living off of it.

Margie and Roger – Agreed, progress would be nice and keeping a promise would be great as well but agendas are more important it seems party be damned.

I listen to the debates and all I hear is more promises of what they think we want to hear because saying anything else will kill their electability so I understand why they do it. Just once though I wish they would stand up for what they believe and set a precedent that others have to step up to. Maybe then we’ll elect somebody who will do what’s right for our country which may not be exactly what we want to hear.

I brought up Illinois issues because Obama is partly to blame for what mess was left behind here to clean up after, voting “present” instead of yay or nay is not the way to build up experience for being President, it shows no stance on any issue and it makes it impossible to figure out where he stands on anything. 

Thanks for the responses everybody, healthy discussion can only help us move forward. Have a great weekend!

Attack Watch – Just….. WOW…… Political Rant

When was the last time you saw a President set up something to report people “attacking him”. We have a sitting President so scared of people saying something negative about him you can actually report people who do! I mean, really, just wow. You can even report a blogger! This means that at some point this very blog can be reported to Attack Watch! I wonder what would happen then, maybe I get a call from the Secret Service telling me to cease and desist? How funny would that be? If this blog goes silent, you now know how it might happen.  

I have been waiting for 2.5 years for President Obama to take responsibility for one single thing. Instead he leads with “I inherited” or “the previous administration”. My father brought me up to be an honest man, a man takes responsibility for his actions, he doesn’t blame others or continue to blame others for his actions so I have no respect for a President that can’t man up and say hey, this is what I have done and I stand by it, right or wrong. You can respect somebody who does that, somebody who doesn’t, deserves being so scared of descent he gets a website created to report people who say bad things about him.

I have kept politics off of my blog for awhile now and I may lose followers because of this but for me to sit here and see a President so whiny about people saying something negative about him that he has to have a site built so people can report it, really says something about how much this man loves himself… disgusting.

President Obama says the negative rhetoric needs to cease yet he uses it in every speech, what does he expect in return when he can’t take his own advice?? Answer, he posts a website to report people, is this China or something? Good Grief man this is pathetic.

2008 gas = $1.68 a gallon, 2011 gas goes over $4.00, we did get change and by 2013 it could easily top $5.00, thanks for the hope and change!

Illinois in 2011 has 60% higher taxes than in did in 2008, Metra in Chicago is so broke they are raising rates 30%, doing business in Chicago is getting so expensive companies are leaving in droves. My house is worth about what it was worth in 1999 because the Government decided to force banking institutions to give loans to people who can’t afford them and then went after those same banks when millions of people defaulted and are acting shocked that Fanny and Freddy are corrupt beyond comprehension but they are still giving them bailouts!

My head is going to explode from the incompetence that is Washington DC and what really stinks, the problem is BOTH parties and we’re stuck with them because Independents will never get elected because the rules make it nearly impossible. What happens when an honest person runs?? We ignore them because they don’t say what WE want to hear! Ironic isn’t it?

I digress, lets face it, I’ll be working until I’m 75 because the Government robbed Peter to pay Paul and we have to pay for it because Government NEVER takes responsibility, it never balances its checkbook and it always passes the responsibility to pay for their stupidity to us. Bastards.

That’s the end of my political rant, if you’re offended by me expressing my view then ok, we agree to disagree. I’m not one of the openly “tolerant” who are only tolerant of their own views, I am not politically correct, I call it like I see it plain and simple and my view point is that of an immigrant who lives the American dream, LEGALLY.

Nuff said, I’m going back to bed to cough my head off…

Bronchitis & Flu & Mold?

Since last Tuesday (9/13/11) I have been down with a dual power packed combo of fun, Bronchitis and the Flu. I haven’t been this sick in decades but thankfully it’s not pneumonia! I’ve been taking amoxicillin, NyQuil, Mucinex and my Diabetes medications so it’s been an interesting 9 days. Only been to work for 2 of them which for me is not easy.

Thankfully I can do almost all of my work from home but on a few days I was too out of it to do anything so I unplugged completely. I NEVER unplug so imagine my wife’s surprise when I didn’t log onto my computer last Wednesday.

Thankfully this morning I made it more than 10 minutes without a coughing spasm, mark the event! I do have to wonder if the fungus or mold or whatever it was somehow made me sick. My doctor wasn’t in and the very young doctor who was there still had braces on, barely out of school so when I explained to him what I found in the RV he looked back at me like a deer caught in headlights, he was clueless but stated no, it wasn’t possible. I don’t believe him, he looked too confused to believe.

Today I am working a bit and trying to listen to my wife and take it easy and recoup. I fully plan on being at work tomorrow, I need sleep before then but I’m going to work on that today.

This Saturday I have to be well enough to go pick up the RV tech in Harvard, IL and drive him to Cherry Valley where the RV is. He may attempt the repair on Saturday so the rig can be ready for next weekend. We plan on using the RV near my wife’s parents house so we can be near when her father has his chest opened to repair an aneurysm near his heart.

I believe the rig is mold free, at least on exposed surfaces so even if we don’t repair the floor this weekend I am going to cover the floor well enough so nobody touches the wood floor in the toilet room. I am hoping however that Mike (the RV tech) can repair the toilet room floor by Sunday.

I’ll post an update when I know more this weekend.

Note to Diana at “Welcome to my world”, get better soon!

Comment Responses

I haven’t been back up to the RV, have Bronchitis so I have no idea what it looks like up there but I’m praying the anti-mold spray I applied did it’s job and the spores haven’t found a new place to take hold.

Sue & Doug – If I’m right this was slime mold, most likely from under the tiles after years of moisture so when I pulled the tiles spores were released into the bathroom.

Judy & Emma – Either have I and I pray I never do again!

Michael Ultra – Puffball fungus, you know what, it sure does! But does it start out as a greenish yellow slime? I’m doing some research on it now, doesn’t make sense it growing in a clean bathroom.

Merikay – I found an RV tech that is going up there with me Saturday, right now he’s recommending I rip out the sub floor which is a very expensive undertaking and I don’t like what RV companies do to connect the sub floors together. It doesn’t give me warm fuzzies so I’m thinking of having the entire ceramic tiles removed and the bathroom and toilet room floors sanded, a 1/2 in plywood board screwed and glued to the toilet room which will raise the floor but that’s ok since both the bathroom and toilet rooms will be getting a new allure floor so the transition between the two rooms will be easy to do. Question is cost, we’ll see what happens.

Nan – Thanks, who ever thought something like this was possible inside of an RV??

JoJo – It’s the floor and wall and the toilet is in it’s own little room so I think this is coming from under the ceramic tiles.

Diana – I think Blogger did that, it affects only pictures but not all of them from what I’ve seen. I am going to bring bleach with me and clean anything not porous with it and then spray the exposed flooring as well.

Thanks for the comments folks, I’ll report what I find after I go up there hopefully tomorrow night.

This Is Gross Part 2…

Well, clearly I didn’t get it all when I wiped up the goop that had formed while in storage for a week. You can see what I missed grew into a golf ball sized “growth” of disgusting ick in less than 7 days.

This is what it looked like when I broke it off the wall. Along the line where the grout meets the tile and the wall to the right you can see a black line. This isn’t visible when you look but the flash brought it out for sure. If you try to spray cleaner it literally blows more black powder around so I am lucky I had mold control spray with me so I sprayed the areas around it and delicately cleaned it all up.

I then scrubbed the entire floor and wiped everything down and like an idgit forgot to take an after picture. Trust me, it looks much better but I still want to take some real strong stuff and go over it again on Sunday.

I really wish I knew where this came from, I’m thinking when I removed the tiles, spores were released and there may have been water from the sprayer in the affected area where conditions were right for it to grow like crazy into that slimy mess and then into that golf ball sized bag of yuck in less than a week.

Whatever the cause, I have cleaned that bathroom and plan on doing so again Sunday. No way this is going to happen again.

Next project is going to be replacing the bathroom floor, that should be interesting. Finding the time to do it will be as well, maybe while I’m there Sunday I’ll rip up the rest of the floor and see what there is to see.

Until next time have a great weekend everybody!

This Is Gross

We stopped at the RV yesterday to pick up my gym shoes and I always inspect the rig while I’m there. I open the bathroom door to see if the floor has somehow magically fixed itself and I see a mysterious greenish-yellow mush where the tiles meet the wall and it’s in the grout.

Being the Einstein that I am I leaned over and stuck my finger in it, oh yeah that was smart. The stench that was on my finger was unbelievably disgusting!! It was slimy & disgusting, did I mention slimy and disgusting?  

I honestly have no clue what it was or where it came from, everything looked fine in the rig, no evidence of a rodent or some insanely large bug, just this blob of a mess that stunk worse than a stink bug after it has been squashed. In fact it reminded me of a squashed stink bug but there was no bugs anywhere!

I cleaned it up as best I could without throwing up but there is gunk between the tiles and the wall that I will need to clean up this weekend. So if somebody has an idea of what could mysteriously make that mess I’d love to hear it. I didn’t have my phone with so I didn’t take a picture.

Aren’t ya glad ya stopped by?

Remembering 9/11

My wife watched the Bears dominate today and we are also watching all sorts of programs about 9/11.

Seeing it all again and remembering where we were at the time it really brought home how horrible that tragedy was to our country. We watch programs every 9/11 but this is the 10 year anniversary and since we have a new administration on the 10th anniversary I think a lot of people were/are fearful there could be another massive attack.

We pray the politicians in Washington can get beyond politics to do whats right for Americans but I fear they are beyond hope in this regard.

I hope everybody had a very good weekend..

Erik

Superman Filming In Chicago

On the way to work this morning I saw some old cars and miscellaneous travel trailers and movie trucks. Here are some pictures that will bring back memories for those of you old enough to remember them when they were on the streets instead of cars shows, movies and museums. 

                              Remember when even Buicks had wings?

                                    Suicide door Lincolns, I love them!

                    These Checker cabs ran clear into the early 90’s!

     These delivery trucks came in all flavors, my favorite was the milk trucks!

                                          Chicago public works truck

Flxible Clipper, I love them, no matter what decade they are from! My brother and I used to ride these beasts back in the day.

     The directors office, there are a bunch of travel trailers all over the place.

The sheer amount of gear movie companies move around is amazing. I hope to see more old cars tomorrow, the heck with the actors, show me the old cars!

A Year Goes By So Fast

It has been a year since we discovered the RV had a leak up front on the passenger side.

Since we bought the rig on 6/29/10 we have had the following done by both the dealer (almost everything the original dealer worked on, had to be fixed, again) a new dealer plus a body shop. Leak(s) repaired using SealTech ($1,800.00), the entire rig re-caulked (for lack of a better word), the hydraulic jacks repaired, 2 new front tires installed, the trim around the interior slide walls replaced, slide stop bolts installed, the generator tuned up, the generator exhaust replaced, the engine hood hinges re-welded, the V10 engine belt replaced, the engine battery replaced, the gasket around the entrance door replaced 3 times, third brake light replaced twice, both windshields and the entire gasket replaced (installed again by body shop), the windshield wiper arms repainted, the front of the rig repainted, the left and right fenders repainted, both exterior mirrors repainted, the side door handle repainted, the rear bumper repainted, the kitchen ceramic tile replaced with a wood floor, the slide topper replaced (twice, once by the original dealer, a brand new one by Collier RV), both tank vents replaced (one of them twice).

Work that I have done, repaired leaking AC unit (1st night in the coach!) re-wired front headlights, marker lights and turn signals (how could the dealer screw this up so bad?) re-wired the digital converter box, installed a new LCD TV, installed a DVD/VCR combo , installed a new Blu-Ray player, 3 hours total removing the Shabbona Creek RV letters from 3 locations on the rig and removing the almost permanent gunk they imbedded into the side walls, repaired broken water lines from last winter, repaired leaks in sewer compartment, installed new shower head and line, re-wired ACME tow dolly after company shipped it with faulty lighting.

There may be more but here is what’s left, replace water pump that Scott’s RV burnt out last winter and repair soft floor in the toilet room and if possible replace all ceramic tile with allure flooring so the toilet room and bathroom match. Possibly replace house batteries since I managed to squeeze another season out of them after Scott’s RV claimed they were bad last winter.

Whew, what a list, tell me folks, how do you feel about YOUR rig now?

What Happens When You Get Lazy?

While breaking down camp today I went to back flush the black tank and for the life of me couldn’t get the hose unscrewed so I hooked up a small hose from the sewer compartment water spigot to the black tank flush connection and let it run for awhile. I could hardly hear anything because the pressure from the spigot was so low so I closed the black tank valve so the tank could fill up and found out why the motor home user guide says “DO NOT CLOSE VALVE WHILE BACK FLUSHING”, the check valve does something to the studor valve in the bathroom sink cabinet (I think).

Water started flowing out the bottom of the RV, I’m standing there having a heart attack because I realize I’m filling something up in the RV and it’s flowing through the floor and then outside the bottom of the rig! I turn off the water and run like a mad man into the RV to see where the water is coming from and can’t find it! Finally I get to the bathroom sink cabinet and it’s soaked everywhere! I think the studor valve is inline with the back flush as a check valve, I could be wrong but if not I have no idea where the water came from! (side note, I should have turned it back on and had my wife see where it came from, but I didn’t).

I decided now would probably be the time to get the fresh water hose disconnected so I could hook up the water hose I use for flushing. It took awhile but now I know how my wife feels when I close things (jars) in the kitchen, she says everything is too tight for a normal human being. I don’t know how I got this thing so tight but it took a lot to get it loose! Finally I get it loose and get the flushing hose hooked up and everything is working fine.

I believe the water pressure from the spigot was so low when I closed the black tank valve it caused the check valve to kick and water flowed out the valve. I’ll have to locate the diagram I found to back this up. Anyway, I have always closed almost the whole way (about 95%) the black tank valve so the tank could fill up a bit and never had a problem, that I know of anyway,and probably because the pressure was great enough to keep water flowing.

Anyway, from now on, that valve stays open during back flushing! I am going to install a hose hook up inside so I can help the power flush because I really like to insure that tank is as clean as possible after each outing. I put about 10 gallons of fresh water into the black tank plus a concentrated tank cleaner for the drive back to storage. For the next outing I’ll back flush before we use the rig to get it really clean.

The good news is there has been no foul odors since they replaced the cyclone vent and the drive home was uneventful.

 

Whew…

Elusive Alpha’s Spotted!!

I have spotted two of the rare “Alpha’s” in the wild that I captured on digital cam. One was last year at Sugar Shores and one this year at Geneseo. These elusive beasts aren’t spotted as often as say a Holiday Rambler so when you see one you take notice! Merikay and Craig bought a very rare beast indeed!

                  Alpha spotted 8/26/10 at Sugar Shores RV Resort

 

Alpha from California spotted coming into the Geneseo campground on 9/4/11. This elusive monster wasn’t found again, maybe it was an apparition? Who knows but we’ll be keeping an eye out for the elusive “Alpha” in future travels and will report them as we find them.

Labor Day

I spent the better part of the day inside the rig watching a Jerry Lewis movie marathon and working, had a fever and wasn’t feeling too good. By 5pm though I felt a bit better so I got out the grill and cleaned it up and the wife gave me these two enormous sirloin steaks she got in town. I prepared them and also grilled asparagus and brussel sprouts in tin foil and we sat down to a fantastic dinner. Neither one of us was able to eat more than half the steak though, they were just too big and of course I forgot to take a picture!

After dinner I started the fire-pit and we sat down to a relaxing 5 hour long fire. This time of the year the crickets aren’t near as loud as they were in June, last time we were here they were so loud we could hardly hear anything else. Tonight they are pleasant back ground noise and because it’s so cool there are only brief breaks in the silence by the occasional AC unit. The mosquitoes took the night off as well, I only got bit a few times with no bug spray, not bad at all!

I hope everybody had a great holiday weekend! Until next time.  

Anniversary Dinner At “The Cellar”

We went to “The Cellar” in downtown Geneseo last night, we both had fillet mignon and a few drinks. The Cellar opened in 1960 and survives to this day. Considering how good the food is we can see why. Today I have to work but who can complain when you can work from the comfort of your RV! The wife is out for a walk with the dog enjoying the awesome weather we are having today.

After I’m done working we’re going to go for a walk along the canal and then tonight we light up the fire pit and relax.

Have a great Sunday everybody!

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY :)~

Hey, wait for me!! It’s our anniversary, you think she is telling me something? Actually, she dropped me off so I could pay for the site.

                                HAPPY ANNIVERSARY Wifey!

I promised the owners we wouldn’t bring rain with us, we lied! We are getting some doozers! We love thunder storms so it worked out great for us!