Magnolia Beach

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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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More Electrical Woes, With a Twist

The twist being that I have solved yet another mystery. Everything is FINE. Perfect even!!!

For days now, I’ve been experiencing gigantic voltage drops in the evening. Tonight, with everything off, I was at about 12.5V. Turn on the fridge and I dropped to 11.9V. Turn on an LED light? Forget it. The voltage drop wasn’t just in the rig, I was experiencing it right at the battery. Something was very, very wrong.

So I haven’t been using any power in the evening except an LED light for just a few minutes at bedtime because I was sure my electrical system or batteries or both were on the verge of going KABOOM.

I didn’t want to put any of this on the blog because I feel that many of you have given me way too many braincells already. I had all the information any outsider could give me. It was time to do the hard work myself and until I either solved this issue or came up with a specific gravity number for my batteries, I was staying mum.

Just before dark this evening, I took some voltage readings. Could my solar array monitor be wrong? It was wildly fluctuating.

I headed outside in the waning light to take a gander at my battery bank. Or, rather, I felt around with my hands. My connections were all tight. I pulled out my flashlight and… wait a minute. Was that corrosion on the positive terminal?

And that was the missing variable, folks. We’ve all been looking at my battery issues as a textbook situation rather than in context. Where I am, context is important. I am by the ocean. I’m seeing rust form on all my exposed metal right now. So it’s obvious in hindsight that some of that salty air would end up on my batteries.

So I recleaned that terminal and then coated all my connections yet again in dielectric gel.

Now, voltage with everything off? 12.55. Fridge on? 12.48. One LED light on? 12.44. Two LED lights on? 12.4. All of the above plus the incandescent stove hood light? 12.38.

The icing on the cake is that my battery (still flashing 0.00V, mind you) is perfectly calibrated. I know I’ll have a full charge by lunch tomorrow and then I can start to plan a strategy for the couple of grey days ahead.

L has the tools and knowledge to remove my motorhome starting battery and test (and repair or replace) the solenoid, so I will try to wrangle him tomorrow afternoon to do that, and early enough to run into town to the auto parts store if we need to.

It’s been a really great day on the beach. Now, there’s a strawberry daiquiri in the freezer with my name on it!

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The Dirty RV Chore No One Talks About

One of the many things that sold me on RVing is that I would no longer have to worry about yard chores. Ha ha ha ha ha.

As part of my maintenance schedule, I like to get up on the roof fairly regularly (it averages out to about once per quarter since I don’t get up there in snowy or icy conditions).

Up there, I wash the solar panels, make a note of anything needing Dicoring (note to self, bring TONS up there next time), and… clean the gutters.

Augh! Gutters! I hated getting on the roof to clean them in my house and now I still have to do it in my RV! This wasn’t anywhere in the ‘This Is What You’re Getting Into’ manual, not even the fine print!

Thankfully they were fairly clear this time around so I was through in about 10 minutes. I spent two hours cleaning my gutters in Blaine after my fall in Osoyoos under trees!

In other news, I checked the real estate space on the roof, including where shadows are falling and, surprise, I can fit at least two 150W panels up there! Okay, now if only $400 would fall from the sky. 🙂

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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!