The Humming Bird

I don’t know how I forgot this, I meant to post about it on Monday but got caught up in the Holiday and being grumpy about ignorant young people. 0_o

Anyway, while looking out the windshield last weekend on Saturday we noticed a floating bird staring back at us. I couldn’t get my camera fast enough to capture it but it floated from the passenger side to the driver side looking in at us. It just looked like a birds body floating there slowly from one side to the other and his/her head would turn just enough to keep staring at us then it would fly off.

It happened again Sunday so we will be keeping the cameras ready next weekend when we go back up there. We are staying home this weekend to get some projects done.

Have a safe and fun weekend everybody!

Shiloh

She’s cute, cuddly and has decided I’m to be tolerated but not when Ronda isn’t around. Tonight Ronda wasn’t feeling too well so she asked me to walk the dog, sure why not? She handed me the leash and walked upstairs to be sick and I turned around and opened the door and Shiloh, decided now was the perfect time to explain to me that I don’t walk her, so flopped all over the floor trying to shake herself out of the collar and started screeching and screaming and I’m standing at the door dumbfounded and trying to get her to go outside with me.

She would have none of that so I tried to calm her down and she escalates so I have to hold onto her collar so I can disconnect her leash and she starts peeing everywhere and adds a nice poop to the mix.  

Once disconnected after taking a chunk of fingernail off of my right index finger she races upstairs and huddles against the door waiting for Ronda. What I have just experienced is the most insane separation anxiety that can be imagined. We knew getting a dog from a shelter might bring issues but this dog must have had a man that abused her or she just can’t be away from Ronda, either way the dog has issues that I have to decide I can get through.

The neighbors I’m sure after that screaming and screeching think I beat the hell out of her and I’m sitting here writing this knowing Ronda cares about that dog a great deal and also knowing that the dog decides if she is going to let me in or not. I can be nice to her forever, if she doesn’t like me I can’t force her to… this is easy with cats, ignore them and everything is fine but dogs are another matter altogether.

Ronda has signed the dog up for obedience training but that won’t make the dog accept me. It will just make her be more obedient.

I don’t know what to do, Shiloh is great with me as long as Ronda is around…. we’ll see what happens I guess.

They Fought For Us

I asked a few young folks what Memorial Day meant to them. What were they taught in school about Memorial Day, NONE of them had an answer and it upset me. None were interested in learning about it either, we’re only talking about 8 kids but this seems to be close to the norm.

What the heck are they teaching? I would love to play this for all American youth so that they understand that freedom isn’t free, it was paid for by American blood, American Men and Women gave either some or all, for us to remain free.

In our rush to be ignorant we are raising a generation of people who have no clue, they need to see this video and video’s like it because forgetting History means we will repeat it.

My Grandparents fought the Nazis in Norway when Hitler broke his promise not to invade. Hitler forced Norway's sons to fight for the Nazis or die, they forced almost everyone to work in factories or mines. I grew up proud of them, my Father and my Uncles for being Merchant Marines. As an American I continue to be proud of my Father, Uncles (Army and Marines), Wife (Army), Brother (Marine), Brother-In-Law (Army), Sister-In-Law (Navy) and Nephews (Navy, Army & Marines) for their service knowing that they would give everything (some gave ALL) to keep us free.

Teach your kids about our History, it seems schools focus on the bad, teach them about the good as well because this country does A LOT of GOOD and I’m damn sick to my bones of only hearing about the bad.

Here is the video, it’s worth watching and remembering, they DID fight for all of us. The greatest generation is dying off leaving our schools to teach our kids and they are failing in this, horribly.

Happy Memorial Day

I posted this early this morning but it didn’t show up.

Happy Memorial Day and thank you to all who served.

 

Memorial Day Weekend

Family came over to cook hotdogs over the fire and to enjoy the fire pit last night. There is Jared the new Jarhead, kinda like an anagram idn’t it? As I tell Ronda, that’s my big word fer da day.

The Nokia Lumia 928 takes very good low light shots, here is the flag light showing very clearly with no shake or blur, kinda cool ‘eh? My Canon T3i can do this, just not with me taking the picture.

We had a great time considering it tried to rain most of the day. The sky cleared up to reveal a full moon. The campground is almost full but what was strange is our old site, number 86 is empty, doesn’t make sense to us considering how nice it is.

That’s all for today, I hope everybody is having a great Memorial Day weekend!

Nokia Lumia 928 With Windows Phone 8 – This Phone Is Awesome!!

I have owned a lot of phones since 1986, in that time not one of them could hold a candle to this phone. I was skeptical at first since I have owned Windows phones in the past and all were disappointing. Windows 8 in it’s default form, is disappointing but Windows Phone 8 does exactly what it’s supposed to do, VERY quickly. Windows 8, when tweaked to have a Start Menu using a utility like “Classic Shell” where you can create an environment like Windows 7 but get the enhancements that Windows 8 brings to the table so you’ll have the best of both. Windows 8 without a Start Menu, doesn’t belong on a standard PC, period and Microsoft knows it, hopefully Windows 8 Blue coming out later this year addresses it, they haven’t finalized what will be included (they hint at a start button, but not the menu) but they have said it will be free to those who have Windows 8, we’ll see.

I digress, this isn’t a tech blog so I’ll get back to the phone. For business use this phone is unreal, we use Office365 and the two were meant to work together so everything works as it should. Shared spreadsheets and documents from our SharePoint site load instantly and Outlook is fantastic.

The only thing lacking are the hundreds of thousands of apps that Android and iOS have but then I don’t install a lot of junk and every app I have needed I have found. Since Windows Phone 8 is getting better phones like the Lumia 928, more apps are coming out.

I’ll find out quickly enough how well this works for personal use but for now I’ll call it a home run.

Nephew Graduation, RV Update, Site Update - Busy Weekend!!

Congratulations on graduating Jared! Here he is with Ronda after the ceremony completed. He joined the Marines and joins a long line of Devil Dogs, we’re very proud of him!

RV Updates…

Last year the passenger side sun visor locked up and one side ripped out of it’s mount. I put it into the closet until I could find the time to repair it or replace it. I decided to try and repair it and see if I could mount it back in the same place using longer screws. I took it apart, used 3in1 household oil and then put it back together and mounted it, works perfectly, smooth as glass and hold it’s position. 

 

Next on the agenda was replacing the cheap junk wipers the dealer installed. The wipers were barely adequate but did the job. This Spring they started falling apart so we replaced the 14 inch wipers with 24 inch Michelin wipers which are awesome. Unfortunately while removing the passenger side wiper the solvent sprayer broke off (cheap plastic!!). So while I was cleaning the windshields Ronda bought superglue and I patiently glued the sprayer back together and it seems to be holding, we’ll see.

Next up is the sewer pipe area. There is almost no grass growing in this area and the previous camper built a very long pipe that was way too long to use for our rig. At first I just used a very long length of sewer hose but it makes more sense to use a pipe for that length.

 

I bought PVC fittings, primer and glue, used my hacksaw to adjust the length and then I tried to clean the area up a bit. We had a section of fence saved so we could hide that area, if it were up to me I would find a way to handle sewage differently, haven’t figured out how but I like it neat and tidy and rarely get it to look like I want it to look but this is ok for now.

I have a few other fittings to bring the pipe closer to the rig in the back. I’m bringing patio stones, large ones soon and covering this area so if it’s raining I can handle things without getting muddy.

There hasn’t been a Class A on this side of the campground in 10 years, we know why it’s impossible to level them on this kind of slope! The owners are going to work with me on trying to make the site more level.

We bought ramps, 15,000lbs of holding power, worst case we figure we could stack them and use the hydraulics' to place the front tires onto a stack of two, the RV responded by crushing them…

For now we decided to use the boards we bought and the orange jack pads and lifted the rig 9 inches into the air and then Ronda stacked the boards and in the end we are pretty close so we’re leaving it like this until after Memorial Day weekend.

  

The grass see we planted has started to grow. I put down 2 4x4 boards between the trees and the piled up the wood there, I like how it turned out.

 

     Our flag pole light, also lights up the trees above.              The shed is all cleaned out.

                                 

The site is coming along nicely, grass is starting to grow and the plants are growing like crazy. We are having family over for Memorial Day which will be a blast, Jared is leaving for the Marines on July 15th so we’ll have this Holiday and July 4th and then he’s off to boot camp so we’re going to get as much time with him as we can before he leaves.

Till next time have a great week everybody! 

Progressive Comes Through

We submitted the tow to Progressive and they sent us a full refund, whew!

Tomorrow we will be working on the driveway and leveling the coach and seeing how much help we can get from the owners of the campground, wish us luck!

New Site Update

We spent Saturday getting supplies and working on figuring out how to level a Class A on such a steep slope (there are no Class A’s on this side of the campground, now we know why). During the week the back of the rig had sunk about 3 inches into the driveway even while sitting on gravel. Aside from hiring a company to come and compact the driveway which we can’t afford we decided to use 2x6 boards and I would angle cut them so the tires could ride up easier.

I drove the rig to the end of the driveway and parked it and we worked on filling the grooves where the rear tires had sunk in. We then lined up the boards and I backed up annnnnnnnnnnd nothing…. it refused to go over the boards, it simply lacked the power to get out of the rut it sank into.

I mean, SERIOUSLY?!?!? It seems all the tires would do is push themselves down into the driveway, not by spinning oh no, they…just…sank….   We didn’t take pictures, I fear the phone would be somewhere in the woods had I had it in my hand at the time. The previous rains has left the ground too moist, last July would have been perfect since we had a drought and the ground was like concrete.

What to do… well, we ran out of time Sunday morning as we had plans for Mothers day. Our plan for this coming Saturday is to get more gravel put down and level it out to include the sewer area. Since this will allow us to back the RV almost all the way to the shed we can put the boards in front of the rear tires and the ramps we bought in front of the rear tires and then we’ll pray it’s close enough so the jacks will even things out.

We also put in path lights, a flag light for the flag pole and I got the lawn mower the previous owner said was “dead” running, that was a great money saver right there! Wait till you see the wood stack, it’s huge!

For now the RV is on the tires with chocks in front of the tires and the emergency brake locked in and waiting for us to try and get it right. Have a great week everybody and for you Mom’s I hope you had a great Mothers Day! 

Google’s Broken, The World Must Have Stopped Spinning

The world has ended…..   It started spinning again a few minutes later…   I don’t know why I don’t stick with Bing, maybe because of the name, who knows.. I’m off to Google something for what I’m working on…

 

Oh, here is a new picture of Shiloh, she is getting over her kennel cough and contrary to this picture she is a bundle of high energy!

Moving Weekend 5/5/13

The previous owner cleared out, did some clean-up and I tried to make the newly laid gravel level, unfortunately the slope is too great but at least it’s smooth.

I put the flag up on the flagpole and also put one in the back area. We don’t have a light for the flag so it comes down at dusk, not sure if I’ll get a light or not and I don’t mind the duty of raising and lowering the flag.

The RV didn’t line up with the deck either, the slope is too great and the drag wheels dig into the area behind the RV.

We had to lift the RV with the jacks high enough for Ronda to place these cement blocks under the tires. I am going to be making ramps or buying ramps to raise the front 6 to 8 inches and the back 2 inches.

Launching of the space shuttle Endeavor!

The site is coming along nicely…

Inside the shed, I need to clean it up and organize.

A shot from the back, its much bigger than the picture conveys, the tree to the right blocks the view a bit.

The more disgusting side of RV’ing, the length of sewer pipe is too long to mate up with our rig so I am bringing a hack saw and 3” adaptors from Menards next weekend and it will look like it was built for our rig. There is a wooden fence against the deck that will be used to hide this stuff as well.

So, we have a bit of work to do, we want to put patio stones along this side so if grass doesn’t grow I won’t get dirty working there.

That’s it for this weekend, more to come!