Magnolia Beach

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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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Warm In the Truck

BLECH. The day’s weather just keeps getting worse. It is so damp and chilly. I put the computers in the truck to charge them and then realised that I might as well join them so that I can enjoy the HEAT.

This was an afternoon for curling up with a good movie, so I put on the mini-series True Women, which I mentioned after my trip to Goliad.

The mini-series starts just before the Goliad Massacre and ends after the Civil War. It is the story of strong, brave Texan women pioneers and is very honest about the harsh reality of life on the frontier. The Dana Delaney character in particular is remarkable. I really do have to read the book on which the series is based.

My new favourite line from the series is, “I’m glad I came to Texas.”

Indeed.

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A Local Guide At Last

L and I drove into town this afternoon to buy fresh shrimp so he could show me how to do a shrimp broil. Surprise, surprise, the shrimp people decided not to open today! Dang! Our shrimp boil plans are postponed to Wednesday or Thursday.

We both had to go to Walmart anyway, so the trip into town wasn’t for naught (and it was really, really, really nice to have someone to carry the heavy jugs of water for me!).

L has been wintering down here on and off for 20 years, so he was able to point out a bunch of useful locations, including where to get my 30lb propane tank filled. I always forget how much propane the fridge needs, so my on board tank is just about empty. We’ll take my 30lber into town on shrimp day so I can hook it up.

Coming back into the beach, he pointed out something on the road into the village that made me groan: a laundromat! Dang! I didn’t have to drive to the laundromat in Port Lavaca!

He invited me to go to Galveston tomorrow for the Mardi Gras celebrations, but five hours in a vehicle with someone I just met doesn’t feel right, plus I have a big project due Wednesday morning. So I passed on that even though I was really tempted. And before anybody starts to get any ideas, he’s a much older widower with kids older than me! 😀

We both use a 150W panel to keep our rigs charged and he has the same problem as me keeping his laptop charged after so many grey days. His solution? The same as mine: charge the laptop in the truck (also a Ford Ranger) for a few hours a day. He says that he runs the engine for part of the time and then shuts it off, claiming that the draw from the computer battery is too small to drain the truck battery. I’m a little nervous to try that, but I just might… after moving the truck to the rig in such a way to make a boost possible if I need one! It takes two hours of truck running to full charge both my computer batteries. I did that this morning and will do that this evening.

We are beyond due for sun, but that won’t happen till Wednesday. *sighs* I’m sitting at about 70% battery capacity, so I am only running the fridge. L was an engineer for Boeing, so I’m going to ask him if he knows anything about solenoids and such. If so, I will wrangle his help to pull the RV battery, fix the solenoid, and get charging capacity back from my RV alternator. According to Harold Barre, that’s a very good method of getting the batteries to about 80%, and then you let the solar finish the charge gently so I know the effort and possible expense will be worthwhile.

Anyone know a good sun dance?

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Hey, Look At What I Have!

Can you see that box protruding from the left side of the fridge vent cap where the wire is going in?

I’ve been thinking about adding a solar panel and trying to figure out how to daisy chain it into my existing system. Research brought me across ‘combiner boxes’, which take the connections from solar panels, combine the current, and send it all to the charge controller. So once the original panel is installed with the controller and wiring, adding future panels is just a matter of plugging them into the controller box.

Damn, why didn’t AM Solar sell me one of those? 🙁 Or maybe they did? I should go up on the roof and check! Oh, wait, I took pictures of my installation. Ah ha! Oh, wait. That’s the vent cover. Hmm… I’m not sure. I need to get on the roof after all. No, stupid. They gave you a detailed invoice! Check the invoice and sure enough, I was billed for a ‘refer C-box.’

So adding a new solar panel will just be a matter of screwing and Dicoring it to the roof and plugging it into the combiner box! The job doesn’t seem as scary now! And I’m further motivated to buy from AM Solar, even if I won’t get the lowest price, since I’ll know for sure I have the right connections.

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Dancing On the Pier

Last night, social director S rounded up just about everybody on the beach plus some friends from Port Lavaca and got us all down to the Indianola Fishing Marina for an evening of live music on the pier to sort of celebrate Mardi Gras (I spent two weeks in New Orleans and I got Mardi Gras beads in Indianola, go figure!).

The marina is a tiny building that serves a small menu where you can grab beer ($1.50 a can!) from the cooler. It costs $5 to fish all day (and night) from the pier. I really want to go back there one afternoon. S and I can’t decide which place is cooler, the bar in Chicken or the marina in Indianola. It’s awesome to meet fellow travelers who have been to the same places you have!

Even though it had been kind of wet and gross all day, the temperature on the pier was very comfortable. Our food came quickly and then the music started.

We were being entertained by a local band, Highway 316, and they were good! They had people dancing almost immediately. S got me to join her, then a new neighbour, L, asked me to share a few dances with him. We must have looked like quite the pair, him who hadn’t danced in 20 years and me who has the rhythm of a stick! It was a lot of fun!

Another member of our group were a couple from Germany who had their RV shipped to North America and have been traveling for the past 10 months. They are heading home in March. They said their night in Indianola will make the top of the list of most memorable moments of their trip.

We didn’t stay too late, leaving around 9:30. I somehow got lost on the way home (how you can do that when the marina is literally at the end of the street from which one accesses the beach is beyond me), so by the time my GPS got me turned around and home, it was 10:00.