North America

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Great Clothes Drying Rack For an RV

Even with access to a washing machine, I prefer to do a good part of my laundry by hand.

The problem with doing hand laundry in an RV is where to hang the clothes after. I have a big drying rack, but there’s no good place to put it now that the dinette is gone (I’d set up the rack between the seats).

I sometimes put my Swiffer across the top of my shower (a standard broom is too long) to hold hangers, but most of the stuff I wash by hand is underwear and socks and draping everything over hangers doesn’t work that well.

This week, I found the solution to my drying needs, a 24 clip drying rack that I can hang from the Swiffer in the shower:

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What I like about it is that it holds 24 items, which is about a week’s worth of hand laundry for me, and that the items are spaced apart to dry quickly. The clips are built in, so when my clothes are dry, I can just fold the rack and tuck it out of the way. A clothesline would not have given me as much space to hang things in such a small footprint.

If I want to use the shower, I can just grab the rack by the hook and place it in the sink in one step rather than wrestling with a bunch of hangers or taking down a clothesline.

If I have overflow, I can hang a few extra items from the Swiffer itself and I still have room to hang about 10 tops on hangers from the door frame. It’s so nice to finally have found a way to contain my drying laundry. I’m less tempted now to let it pile it up!

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It’s A Wonderful Fish

This afternoon, my friend and I went to see a screening of the terrific James Stewart movie ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’ What a treat to see it on the big screen!

Then, I took her out to dinner to celebrate the end of my insurance nightmare (even though the cheque still hasn’t landed yet, boo). I wanted to try something new a bit more upscale than our usual haunts, so she suggested Outback Steakhouse, which was next to the cinema.

I was a little surprised by the suggestion since neither one of us eats beef, but it turns out they have lots of other yummy things on the menu.

Since I wasn’t driving, I decided to have a cocktail. I found one that had rum, coconut rum, strawberries, and mango (I think those are the four basic food groups) and it did not disappoint!

My friend had her favourite, which was chicken with bacon and honey mustard sauce. I wanted to try something new, so I had the ‘mixed seafood grill’ with shrimp, scallops, and mahi, a fish I had never tasted before. I cannot believe how tasty this dish was! It came with a nice rice pilaf and lots of green veggies, plus the perfectly cooked seafood and the flaky grilled fish that I will definitely be going back to eat again. Every mouthful of that fish was a delight. Yum! Dessert was cheesecake. 🙂

I can’t believe we’re past the middle of December and except for the occasional drizzle, it’s still tee-shirt weather here.

Oh, and gas prices have gone below $3/gallon! It’s a wonderful life indeed! 😀

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Colonial Williamsburg, Part Eight: The Museums

This is the final part about my tour of Colonial Williamsburg.

From the weaver, I returned to the 21st century and headed across busy streets to visit the museums.

The museums are housed in two buildings and are perhaps a bit of a misnomer. Each ‘museum’ is a gallery of themed artifacts contained within one main building. It’s really well done, with which museum having its own look and feel, avoiding that hodge podge, we threw together whatever we had, type of feel.

You could easily spend half a day or even more at the museums. I was exhausted and famished by the time I got to them, so I did not spend a lot of time in exhibits that did not interest me.

I had thought to grab a period dinner at one of the taverns, but you need to reserve and by the time I learned this, I could not have had dinner before 8PM. Moreover, the choices were unappealing and quite expensive. I’ve had much more authentic period meals before (I’m still traumatized by the 13th-century lettuce soup I ate 15 years ago) so I didn’t mind missing this step. I had also considered going on a ghost walk, but it was $12 extra and my day had been plenty full.

It was dusk when I came out of the museums. On the way to the bus stop I hesitated between heading home or checking out the shopping district, but it was getting to be so cold and dark that that option wasn’t appealing in the least. The bus arrived quickly and that settled it for me. I got back to my truck at about 6PM, a full nine hours after I had parked!

I had a wonderful day in Colonial Williamsburg. The town is worth a visit!

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Colonial Williamsburg, Part Seven: The Wig Maker, Armory, Blacksmith, Magazine, Shoemaker, Nursery, and Weaver

It was getting close to quitting time as I left the Capitol and meandered my day down the other side of the main street to catch a few more exhibits before heading to the museums. The light was already starting to fade and it was getting quite (and surprisingly) cold out.

I still had lots to see, though, and I didn’t hurry my way through the next exhibits, taking the time to ask questions and look at demonstrations. None of these were tours, hence why it was possible to get in and out fairly quickly and see so much in a short amount of time.

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Colonial Williamsburg, Part Six: The Capitol

The Capitol was my favourite part of my day in Colonial Williamsburg. I was the only person on the tour, so the interpreter and I had a discussion rather than a canned talk since I had more than enough knowledge about that part of history to do so.

It was here that American history finally came into a North American context for me. Until 1776, the U.S. and Canada had a shared history through their shared governance. The capitol feels like any legislative building in Canada because it was like a mini parliament.

It’s fascinating to see how the U.S. broke away from that British governance while Canada has stuck with it. Who our respective peoples are today and why we are the way we are makes so much more sense to me. I really don’t get people who do not find history relevant. We cannot understand our present selves without understanding how our histories shaped us.

The interpreter was refreshing. Rather than spewing a lot of American propaganda that you hear over and over in schools, she told history like it was, that Virginia was the original colony and the crucible of an independent United States, not Massachusetts and all that Plymouth Rock nonsense.

She even brought up the Quebec Act and asked for a Canadian perspective on it (which is pretty much the American perspective). I did one better and gave her the French-Canadian perspective, and that launched yet more discussion about oppression in all its manifestations at the time our continent’s political future was borne and how the echoes resonate today.

I won’t bore you with all that we discussed, but we kept being kicked out of whatever room we were in until we reluctantly had to part ways when she was told she had to take another tour. I wish I had gotten her name. She really made my day.