No More Leaks

We’ve had a busy week! No time for sketching practice. No time for the treadmill. Lots of time for eating bad food…

Monday night we went to the racetrack with our neighbours Trudy & Leo for the $9.99 buffet. We’ve never been so thought we would check it out before the weather turns snowy (perish the thought). It was a pretty decent deal – the food was standard buffet fare with a roast beef and roast pork as well as a few fish and chicken dishes.

When we “joined” a few weeks ago for the $1.99 breakfast (remember the RV Sale) they included a $10.00 certificate for the Casino so after supper we headed into the labyrinth of noisy slot machines. It felt like entering another world – glitzy, but somehow seedy as well. People were tethered to the slot machines with little green, blue or yellow umbilical's feeding them dollar bills and pressing a little button. Aside from the bing and ring of the machines it was eerily quiet – people weren’t laughing and joking and generally having fun – it was very serious stuff. I just didn’t get it. Maybe if we had not lost all of our $10.00 we would have been hooked, but luckily we did so we were out of there with no money lost.

We picked up the camper from BGM Auto body the other day – three leaks found and all fixed. It just goes to show that having this test done on a regular basis is a good thing. They found one leak around the door, one around the propane compartment and a third around the water cover. They were all small leaks that had done no damage, but if we had let them go, who knows what damage they may have done?

We got the camper winterized. Hopefully we got all the spots but I think we did. We even learned a new spot from Brian at BGM. Did you know that behind the screen of the freshwater hook-up there is a little valve that needs to be winterized? Neither did we, but it’s done for this year. 

We went into town Wednesday for some appointments and also to check out the smart phones. After much research and reading of reviews I had it narrowed down to 2 phones only one of which had a working demo phone at the Rogers store. And as it turns out both are only 3.5G, not true 4G for the LTE network. Since LTE is being rolled out in our area we’ve decided to wait. Speaking of reviews though, many of them don’t even mention the call quality! They go on about whether it’s dual core, blah de blah blah, but don’t even say if it makes a decent phone call. I did come across one site that mentioned it, but unfortunately the phone I was most interested in got a poor grade. I went through so many reviews it got confusing one would review the Samsung with glowing marks, while the next one found all sorts of flaws…

Meanwhile, I’m collecting information about which apps I might like – that’s going to be the fun part for me. Hopefully I can get really good at typing on the thing cause I’d like it to make notes of stuff I think about that I want to write about later. Today we had friends (Bruce and Tina) over for lunch – other retirees ;-)  We can do things like lunch entertaining on a weekday – what a concept!

I liked the quote below – it’s what I try to do everyday, and while I may forget at times, it helps me to have an appreciation for the little moments in life. So my pleasures for the last few days: getting the trailer backed into the laneway almost perfectly ; every time I walk into the camper I get a wave of pleasure – it’s just so homey and ours ; seeing beautiful white mushrooms all nestled into their package ; visiting with friends ; eating the crisp side of a biscuit (they turned out really well today) ; not a pleasure at all – emptying the camper of all the food and other stuff that can freeze – it’s all ready for freezing weather now, tomorrow or Saturday we’ll take out the clothes and linens – mousetraps are also installed…

 

My uncle Alex Vonnegut, a Harvard-educated life insurance salesman who lived at 5033 North Pennsylvania Street, taught me something very important.
He said that when things were really going well we should be sure to NOTICE it. He was talking about simple occasions, not great victories: maybe drinking lemonade on a hot afternoon in the shade, or smelling the aroma of a nearby bakery; or fishing, and not caring if we catch anything or not, or hearing somebody all alone playing a piano really well in the house next door.
Uncle Alex urged me to say this out loud during such epiphanies: "If this isn't nice, what is?"

Kurt Vonnegut    American Author