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Monday Morning Calm

Saturday was very busy here at the beach, what with the weather being as lovely as it was. It was a bit calmer yesterday what with the storm that threatened to materialize, but there were still quite a few people milling about. This morning, however, the beach is practically deserted. There are a few fishermen and I have only one neighbour, quite a ways down the beach.

I took a long walk between coffee and breakfast, walking a couple of klicks down the beach and looping back by the access road. There isn’t much to see, but I’ll try to remember to bring my camera next time because there is a really odd building for which I need some explanation.

My schedule continues to be odd, with bedtime between 9:00PM and 10:PM and my being fast asleep by 10:30PM, then being awake between 5:30AM and 6:30AM and getting up between 6:00AM and 7:00AM. I am savoring every minute of daylight! What a treat for the winter when I usually hibernate and slip back into a true night owl routine! I remember going to bed at 4:00AM and getting up at noon in Campbell River! Here, it just makes good sense to live in the sun as that’s when I can best power my computer.

I’ll be heading into Port Lavaca shortly as I need to mail a few things and get some fruit. I think that mangos have less far to travel to get to Texas because I haven’t had a bad one since I got here! And the tomatoes! I didn’t know you could get good tomatoes in winter! And that’s another thing about enjoying a sunny warm to hot winter. I am eating my summer diet, full of fresh salad and fruit and very light meals. So combined with the sun and good sleep, it’s no wonder I feel the best that I have since the end of my first Klondike summer.

I’ll check my travel guide to see if I can make an afternoon of my trip to Port Lavaca. It’s cloudy again, so I’d be best to turn as much off as I can so that my batteries can get at least a little top up. I’ve got about 3A coming in which is just a bit more than what is going out with just the fridge running.

And speaking of the fridge, I had no idea it had been working poorly for months. I am going to get a thermometer for it. I’ve had the fridge cranked to super cold since I left Hampton Roads and it has been fine, everything that was supposed to be frozen was frozen and everything that was supposed to be cold was cold, although I couldn’t tell you the temperature in the compartments. But then I did some maintenance on it (just cleaning the exterior compartment and burner assembly) and the next morning I woke up to frozen lettuce! Now, when I open the freezer door I get hit with a wave of cold air and stuff freezes solid in a few hours, not overnight and I had to turn down the temperature on it! I have no idea why it wasn’t as cold as it could have been and I don’t want to know. 🙂 I’m just glad that my 16 year old fridge is going strong!

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The Days Are Getting Longer

It’s lovely to be sitting here just past 6PM and for the sky to still be light. It gets dark very fast, but at least I don’t eat dinner in the dark any more! It also gets light earlier; the solar charge controller clicked on just before 7:00 this morning! And what a beautiful sound that is, might I add. The click off in the evening isn’t so nice. 🙂

The rain promised for today never came and I had a moderate charge coming in all day. I used my computer a lot, so my batteries are sitting at about 88% right now. Not great, but it’ll be sunny again tomorrow and I need to run errands, so the batteries will have a chance to get a good soak while I charge the computer in the truck.

One thing today made me realise is that buying a keyboard for my iPad wouldn’t be a frivolous idea. Most of today’s computer power consumption was spent on the writing of what might end up being my next ebook. I could have typed for twice as long on my iPad and still had plenty of juice left on it.

I’ll be heading out for a walk soon even though it’s windy and chilly out there. I didn’t get out much today, but an after dinner stroll to the trash bins is always pleasant. 🙂

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More Paint Touch Ups

Today, I decided to push ahead with the paint touch up project. The green in the office was the most pressing as there was a lot of damage to the walls from the installation of the new desk. I gently sanded the worst of the marks, then applied a couple of coats to the bad spots. There is still visible damage, but at least the colour is uniform.

Then, I pulled out the pink paint for the dressing room. Incidentally, that’s the pink that made me fall in love with pink. Until I fell upon that colour, I loathed pink. You’d never guess that now! I would love to repaint the dressing room in a shinier finish paint, but I’ll never be able to match the current colour exactly, so I prefer to do touch ups, most of which involved painting some of the new trim my mother installed. Most of the trim in the rig is brown, but if it’s on a coloured wall, then I paint it to match the wall.

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Muuuuuuuch better.

The next colour I’m pulling out is the golden brown. That will be a rig-wide job that will warrant taking out a roller. And then priming the new wall. And then, the biggie, which is the yellow. I want to completely empty the front room, wash the walls really well, and do two coats over what’s already there and four coats over the new wall. I’m not touching the loft, however!

It’s only 1:30PM, so you’d think I could take the brown out today, but it’s just too dark in here to do a good job. The rain hasn’t come and I doubt it will, but the sky is very overcast. It’s windy out and quite cool. My after lunch beach walk was short!

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The clouds were very dark this morning, but have lightened up.

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I don’t think I’ll ever find anything more random washed up on a beach anywhere.

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More Dreams RVers Have

I’m still having trouble with my battery monitor and I’ve isolated the problem. What finally solved the mystery were the readings I got when I came in yesterday afternoon. I had left nothing on but the fridge when I left for Port Lavaca and there was full sun. When I came in, my solar monitor was flashing that my batteries were full while the battery monitor claimed that not only was my battery completely depleted, it was drawing over 100 amps!

Looking at the wiring diagram, I was able to figure out where I have a bad connection so I don’t have to remove all of my electrical tape and start over. The plan is to disconnect the monitor, fix the bad connection, and then reconnect it. I don’t think that will happen today as they’re calling for rain and big black clouds are rolling in, but I might have time…

So last night, I dreamt that I did the rewiring. And all the while I was contorting myself into a pretzel trying to get all the wiring done correctly, I was thinking, “You moron, you’re dreaming. Wake up. You don’t want to do this twice.”

Instead, I got up (in the dream) and went to check on my windshield. It was covered in a giant spiderweb of cracks. Again, I thought, “Wake up, stupid!”

So dream me headed back to bed, idly noticing a faint, “Beach parking limited to 12 hours sign” placed in front of the rig. I snuggled back down to sleep and was just dozing off when I felt my RV move as it was getting towed.

And that’s all it took to wake me up. Sheesh! 😀

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Generator, Augh!

My Colorado neighbours seem to be gone for good 🙁 and have been replaced with tent campers who have been running a very loud and smelly generator for several hours! It’s going to drive me to drink!

The class A on the other side of me also runs a generator for several hours a night, but it is a small portable Honda model that you only hear when you’re right next to the rig. I really should get rid of mine and get one of those little portable models as a backup. This is not the first time I’ve seen them in action and they could change the reputation of generators as obnoxious peace destroyers.