RVing

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Playing Hostess

Donna, Ken, and Midnight drove down from Mossleigh this morning to spend the afternoon with me. I’m not accustomed to playing hostess, especially not in the RV, but we made it work. I served up a pasta casserole, a loaf of homemade bread, and some of Jody’s carrot cake. A camping chair worked well for additional seating and we’re all used to eating from our laps so the lack of table was no issue.

Mossleigh isn’t right next door, but it is an easy less than two hour drive, so we’re all as good as neighbours and hope to see a lot of each other this summer. It’s amazing that for all the vastness of our country we still managed to end up in nearly the same spot this summer.

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Amusing Traditions

I was puttering around the rig a few minutes ago when there was a very loud banging on my door. Jody never knocks like that, so I peered out the window and saw no one. “Great,” I thought, “I’m now a target for hooligans.”

Then something caught my eye, so I cracked open the door to find this:

Interesting…

Any other day of the year I’d be worried that was a bomb, what with it sitting on my propane tank, but I was suddenly reminded of what today is.

So, I brought the bundle inside and gingerly unwrapped it. The top layer was a package of Lindor chocolate eggs (yum!) and under that was this:

YUM! Best Easter gift ever!

The two-bite tomatoes are already all gone. 😀

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Seeking a White Elephant

As I chip away at freshening up Miranda’s exterior, I’ve come to accept that part of the job is going to be re-striping her. That’s RV parlance for removing all the decals and putting on new ones. Funny that that should sound like such a small job, but it’s a real bitch. Frankly, I don’t get why RV graphics aren’t just painted on. I’m not convinced that the hassle of apply vinyl neatly is any less than that of programming a graphic into a spray painter.

Today, I began the onerous task of de-striping the rig. Most of the teal stuff comes off easily with a high pressure spray, but the rest won’t be so easy. The goal here is to get a completely white rig that I will then buff to a smooth and hopefully uniform finish. I have a couple of ideas for how I will be re-striping, but that’s not a priority right now.

peeling stripes on the front end

part of the teal came off easily with a stream of high pressure water

bottom stripes are all gone, but notice the grey line: that’s adhesive. It’ll take a buffer to get rid of that.

While I had the hose out, I also took the time to Poli Ox the bottom half of the rig, which was the most stained and battered. This was just a light pass with a soft cloth. I will be doing a thorough going over the rig with a buffer later.

I considered these lines to be stains; no amount of elbow grease would lighten them

black lines are GONE!!! Poli Ox is awesome!

top half was scrubbed with a vehicle detergent and rinsed with high pressure water; bottom half was lightly rubbed with Poli Ox and rinsed with a gentle mist

The most onerous part of the afternoon was picking up all the bits of striping that blew into the yard. I’m sure I didn’t get it all and that I’ll be picking up pieces into the fall!

This once over with the Polix Ox helped me set some spending priorities. The first is going to be resealing all my seams. That’s going to be a job and a half since it will involve removing all the aluminum capping, scraping it and the rig clean, and then applying the Dicor.

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Impressive Turnout!

I arrived at the advanced voting location about ten minutes before the polls were set to open. There was already an impressive lineup, and it just got longer and longer and longer. It took forty minutes for me to get out of there.

One man said to me “What a wait for a real waste of time. It hardly seems worthwhile. ” I curtly replied “Sir, there are millions of women around the world who wish they could do this. I’ll stay here all day if I have to.” He actually looked ashamed and quickly turned away.

The Elections Canada staff aren’t well experienced and are only trained for specific scenarios. This gang had absolutely no idea how special ballot voting works and were not comfortable (or authorized to?) making their own decisions. The easiest thing was for me to register as a new voter and vote for a Lethbridge riding. Having no attachment to any one riding and being fairly sure that I’ll be switching to Alberta residency I was okay with that. I had no ID with a Lethbridge address, of course, but was told I’d be treated as someone who just moved here who hadn’t gotten everything changed over yet, which is actually much more fact than fiction.

Once that was all squared away I was able to cast my ballot for the local NDP candidate.

I can’t wait for the results on Monday; for the first time in history there is a chance that the NDP will sweep through Quebec. It almost makes me wish I was still voting in Pontiac. Almost. 🙂