Homemaking

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License to Kilz

I awoke to bright blue skies, a gentle sea breeze, and no pressing projects ahead of me for a few days. It was time to start work on repainting the front room!!!

Unfortunately, I had a lot less Kilz left than I thought I did, barely enough for the new wall and one side of the pocket door. I am going to need more, which sucks since I’m going to end up with leftovers.

The primer dried almost immediately, so I was able to put the first coat of yellow on the new wall. I’ll do a second coat this afternoon, then let the two cure for a day or two. That will give me time to wash down the other walls with TSP and then I’ll do two more coats over the entire room.

My boos are not happy about being locked in the rear part of the rig, which has the best view, with only food, water, the litter box, and several soft lounging spots for comfort. Must be tough being a cat.

L came over a moment ago to ask me if I wanted to work on the solenoid this afternoon. YES! So this is going to be a day for projects.

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Winter Bounty

It would take thousands of words to explain just why Texas is such a good place for me to be this winter. All I can say is that this is easy living in a good climate and my stress levels are lower than they have been in a very, very long time.

I’m getting plenty of sun and exercise and the abundance of delicious fresh non-wintery tasting fruits and veggies means that I am eating very well. With all of that comes mostly good sleep, the kind I thought I would never again be able to have. I am very well and refusing to even think about the impending return to Canada. This is a now I want to savour fully.

Lunch today was yummy. For someone who until a couple of days ago had no use for avocados, I sure had nooooo trouble figuring out what to do with the one I bought yesterday:

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I just mooshed it up with coarse sea salt, some minced garlic, and the juice of half of a small lime. OMG, avocado, where have you been all my life?

After I had devoured half of the contents of the bowl, I decided to grill a small tortilla so I’d have something with which to mop the bowl:

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With this, I had a whole orange pepper (sliced, no dip) and a whole mango for dessert. Winter bounty at its best!

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Shrimp Boil

As promised, L showed me how to boil shrimp southern style tonight. He does it simply, just shrimp and Zatarain Crab Boil, but you can add potatoes, andouille sausage, and other seafood. His secret is that he breaks open the bags of crab boil so that you occasionally get a shrimp with a spice seed on it for an extra burst of flavour. I really liked the Zatarain, which is good because he offered me the other half of the box. I have enough to boil 12lbs of shrimp… or 36 crabs! 😀

The fresh shrimp were beyond delicious. He dumped them onto a plate and we all helped ourselves, peeling the plump pink goodness until our fingers were sticky. He makes his own shrimp cocktail-type dipping sauce, which was delicious! There was also potato salad and coleslaw, crackers and hot sauce, and… raw oysters. Ah ah! I finally got a chance to try the dang things. Can you believe I have never had raw oysters before? Verdict? Meh. Slimy and briny. L said these were okay, but not great and that I need to try them again. Maybe. 🙂

His friends provided cupcakes for dessert, which were pretty dang tasty with the beer. 😀 We then gabbed for a few hours until the cold sent us home. It’s amazing how quickly the beach went from warm and comfortable to cold and nasty once the sun went down.

Our dinner reminded me of one of my favourite pre-Miranda travel days, and I have to say that peeling shrimp is tons easier when you have fingernails!

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A Bump On the Head

I think we all have projects on our lists that we tend to forget about until it would have been great to have them done, but it’s now not the right time to do them.

One such project for me was to get the hand cream and soap off of the vanity counter. It’s been four and a half years and at every departure I put the damn bottles in the sink and bemoan my not having taken the time to come up with a better storage system for them. Four and a half years! I know, I’m a moron!

I opened an overhead cabinet in the study this morning that I apparently haven’t opened in a while because the contents had shifted. I was promptly hit over the head with a wire door organizer. Gah, why do I even still have that thing?! It’s always falling on my head! I had bought a three-pack, but ended up only using two in the kitchen.

Waitaminute… I really am a moron. How many times have I moved that organizer and kicked myself for not just donating it already? Not nearly as many times as I have kicked myself for not securing the stuff on the vanity, but a lot. And the solution was to merge the two annoyances, like so:

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As for the bowl and cup on the counter, I’m just about out of water on the on board tank, so I keep the bowl filled from a large jug I replenish in the beach’s public bathroom and then use the cup as a dipper.

Yes, I could probably pull out and find water somewhere, but why bother? The only reason to have running water in my opinion is to have hot running water. I have a 10-gallon water heater and am not taking showers, so heating that much water would be stupid. Ergo the bowl. For doing the dishes, I have a large pot that I can fill with water and heat on the stove.

It’s no hardship and it actually makes it easier for me to be conservative with my water use as I know exactly how much I’m using in a day, which is about a gallon (4L). I could surely reduce that more, but I like to have really clean dishes, so no just washing them in a cup of water when I can haul all the water I want.

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Sunday Miscellanea

I had quite the adventure at the laundromat this afternoon, as far as laundromat adventures go.

First off, I got there and I realised that I forgot my detergent!!!! There was no attendant to sell the little one-use boxes of the stuff, but, thankfully, a nice lady took pity on me and let me use some of hers (¡Muchas gracias, señora!).

I also needed change and the change machine took some convincing to convert my $20 into a mountain of quarters.

I loaded up two machines, put in money, and one of the machines refused to turn on. $1.50 down the drain, literally.

I managed to tap out a whole rough chapter while my loads ran. I’m getting quite good and productive with the iPad!

Then, it was time to try the dryers. One of my loads did not spin properly so I had to wring it out by hand since there was no setting on the washers for just spin and I correctly guessed that rerunning the load would be most costly and take more time than just drying it as is. Fun. I could have done this at home on the beach with a view. 🙂

For the dryers, I had to put in a quarter, turn a knob, then press a button. I knew that the machine was working if giant flames started shooting out of the top of the dryer. I am not kidding.

My loads, even the sopping wet one, dried reasonably quickly and laundry ended up costing me $6.25, a fair price.

At one point, I noticed a guy holding a screwdriver had come in and begun to work on a washer. When he was done, I asked him if he could rescue my six quarters from the bad machine. He did not object and he was still trying to fix the dang thing by the time I left!

All the machines in the laundromat were very old, but the place was quite clean. The whole experience reminded me of carting my laundry to the Wilbrod Laundromat in Ottawa’s Sandy Hill in the late ’90s. 🙂

I was up working on a project by 6:15 this morning (no hardship, I was just up and at ’em by that time!), so I was pretty zonked when I came in at about 3:00. I wanted to get more work done, but was rescued by my French-Canadian neighbour who needed some help with her iPad. I got her mostly sorted out and then it was time for a beer!

Ugly weather is incoming. 🙁 The temperature has dropped and the wind has picked up. The truck is going to get quite a workout charging my computer in the next few days and I think I will go investigate the Port Lavaca library to see if it has any power outlets. If so, I could easily spend a couple of grey afternoons there.

I still don’t have a really full charge and tomorrow I might bite the bullet and ask the French-Canadian neighbours if I could rent their genset for a few hours so that I can start this grey stretch with a charged battery bank and properly calibrated battery monitor.

Finally, a humourous note. I watched the movie About Schmidt last night, in which the main character sets off on an RV journey in his brand new Winnebago Adventurer. Guess the make and model of the latest addition to our little beach community? What a funny coincidence! I can’t believe that movie is 10 years old! I definitely appreciate it more now that I’m an RVer. I could watch that guy park his rig and get parking tickets all day. There’s just something about someone nonchalantly driving a 35′ class A motorhome like it was a subcompact that is hilarious!