Day Night Shade Repair and Work Camper Appreciation Dinner

Linda was lucky enough to be messing with the day/night shade that sits behind my chair when one of the strings broke. I usually leave it closed because the sunlight shining on my laptop screen makes it impossible to read the screen. Consequently I am always giving her a hard time about messing with my window shade. So I had to give her a bad time about breaking my shade and now what was I going to do since I couldn't even read my laptop! The real issue here is now it's my responsibility to get the repair parts, take the blind down, restring it and get it re-installed. As you may be able to guess I have been teasing her about breaking it since it happened.

We found a fair about of information on the restringing process on the internet (what would we do without the internet!). I ordered a repair kit from the Dirty Blind Man, which arrived while I was working last go round. The kits are quite complete, including replacement string guides, tension springs, replacement string, string anchors for the bottom of the blind and a CD with pictures showing the restringing process. The only problem is our shades didn't exactly match up with the blinds shown on the CD.

I carefully disassembled the blind making a diagram of the string routing. I even took a couple of pictures of the end caps and how the tension springs connected to the end caps. The only place I had to work that was large enough to handle the 4 foot blind was on the floor. Bud was very curious as to what I was doing and how each and every part of the shade smelled. I guess everything was OK because he was finally able to get back up on the couch and watch my progress from there.

Reassembly went fairly smoothly, although it included putting the center rail on backwards. The other little problem I had was with the strings tangling when assembling the upper and lower shades to the center rail. By the time I was done I didn't feel like trying to get the shade re-hung with the valance and all so that waited until today. Re-hanging went smoother than anticipated and everything is back up and working. I left the extra string hanging below the anchors just in case I need to do some more adjustment. The excess string will be easy to trim off once we are confident things are working properly.

Last night we had a work camper appreciation dinner at the club house. The caterer brought in a rolling smoker/grill affair that turned out some really good beef, chicken and polish sausage. Along with the meat they served Spanish rice, beans and pico de gallo and of course tortillas. Excellent food and plenty of beer, wine and soft drinks to wash it all down. As usual when good food is involved I ate way too much!

An Evening with Friends and Morning Departures.

03/25/08 - Last night Linda, I and six friends went out to Red Lobster for dinner. It's not one of my favorite places to eat but sharing a meal with good friends made it even better than I had hoped. Dinner ended with a little story from Mary Ann about a dinner adventure they had when she, Don, Reynoud and Gratia went to San Antonio to see the sites and lights of the city during last years Christmas season. Before Mary Ann got started Don, her husband, noted that she had never let the truth get in the way of a good story. I have to admit after that story I have to agree with him.

It all started when they decided to go out to dinner at the Spaghetti Warehouse restaurant. Since it was close by where they were staying, they decided to walk. Reynoud had been there previously so he led the way. According to Mary Ann they walked at least 50 miles through the alleys and under the expressway all the while being followed by a bunch of menacing cats! Apparently when they had come to a Y in the road Reynoud chose the scenic route, when if he had taken the other route it would have been less than a mile to the restaurant. When she was done with the story my stomach muscle's hurt from laughing!

On a sad note Don, Mary Ann, Reynoud and Gratia pulled out this morning headed towards home. There were lots of hugs and well wishes. The really sad part is that of the four couples from last night's dinner Linda and I are the only ones that will be returning to Bentsen Palm Village next season. Two of the couples will be returning to the Valley but will be staying at a park in Alamo Texas. Lou and Sandy are not planning to return to the Valley next season. So the good-byes were especially emotional for all of us.

On a side note, the little gray cat has taken over Bud's water dish. This fact makes it extremely hard for the boy to pay attention to the job at hand when he is taken out to go potty. Bud has to be on alert to make sure that sinister cat doesn't sneak up and attack us.

Holding Tank Fun, Concrete Pads and Kitties.

03/24/08 - We have finally noticed a gray cat that appears to be living under the porch of the front office. I say we meaning Linda and I because I believe Bud noticed a couple of weeks ago. Every once in a while when I took him out for his last evening potty break he would show a lot of interest in something behind the coach or once in a while under the coach. When our next door neighbors pulled out the other day I noticed the cat sitting on their patio and have since seen it a number of times around the first 3 or 4 sites in our row. I figure it will move on once most of the people have left.

The last couple of nights there has been a small RoadTrek parked next to us, piloted by an older lady and her two dogs. She was heading out this morning and was trying to get close enough to the sewer connection so she would not have to get her hose extension out. Only problem is these sites have about a six inch drop off at the back of the pad. Well guess what? She backed up just a little too far and dropped off the pad. Linda happened to see it occur and told me about it, so being a good neighbor I am dug through my boxes of stuff to find a couple of wood blocks left over from our 5th wheel and headed over to help.

She ended up being close enough to the drain as long as someone held onto the drain hose. I volunteered and let her run the drain controls. Once we had the tanks empty we started trying to get her back up on the pad so she was in a position to leave. It took a couple of tries but we were able to get her back up on the pad using our wooden blocks as a ramp.

I had left the door to the lower storage open while helping the lady next door and when I went to put my blocks away guess who I found checking out our basement? Yep, it was the cat. As soon as I showed up she decided to make a leisurely getaway. I will have to be a bit more careful about keeping the storage doors closed or we have one very upset kitty.

By the way I uploaded recipes again today, just check the dates for the latest additions.

Wildfires, Friends heading home and New Internet Options

03/21/08 - We have added a number of new recipes to our site. Follow this link to the index page, I have tried to identify the latest additions with the date they were added. If you have a recipe you would like to see published here please send it to contact@westmorelandadventures.com and we will get it up with your name as contributor.

I was lucky enough to have high winds almost every day during my last shift. First they were out of the East South East shifting to the South East, then on the third day they stopped. That only lasted about an hour and they started back up only this time out of the North returning with a vengeance. I cleaned up a couple of branches that blew down and just pulled a few out of the way so the grounds people could take care of them the next morning. The winds were bad enough that a power line was blown down north of Edinburgh, which started a brush fire. The blaze managed to burn more than 50,000 acres and closed highway 281 which is one of the major north/south access roads for the Valley.

Our next door neighbors headed home to Illinois, on Wednesday. They consider all us young people their kids. Ernie is 86 and Lucile is 85 and both have a few health problems. They have been married 66 years! Most of the people around them try to help them out. We made sure we took their trash with us each day when we went and when I saw them trying to do maintenance around the trailer I would offer to help. They are very nice people and we hope to see them again next season.

We are hoping to make another one of our road trips this weekend, so should have something to write about in the next couple of days.

I am starting to look into using a Cellular Data Modem for our internet connection. We are hoping Linda can use this for work allowing us more freedom to travel. Currently she must use vacation time to travel between our summer and winter locations. What we would like to do is take our time going home so we can see more of this beautiful country of ours, which requires a reliable internet connection. We have not found reliable connections at most of the campgrounds we stop at so need to supply our own. We were looking at a tripod mounted satellite dish but have been holding off due to costs and the time and effort required to setup the equipment. The cellular modem would pretty much be just a plug and play solution after the initial setup process.

We are currently looking at a Verizon USB727 Modem tied to a CradlePoint MBR-1000 router, amplifier and external antenna. All available from the 3GStore.com. I know we wouldn't need the amp and external antenna all the time but it could make the difference in Linda being happy with her connection to work and all of us being unhappy. I will try to keep you informed of my progress.

Friday night was our last dinner & a movie night for the season with our friends from Quebec. A new Macaroni Grill opened up in McAllen so we tried it out. They just opened so were out of lasagna and Caesar salad. We had popcorn, Bud loved Gratia and we watched Employee of the Month. The movie is about employee competiveness at a warehouse super club. Now we need visit a Sam's Club or Costco to check things out.