Joan on the Road...of Life

Happy Birthday to Jim, aka Dad, Grandpa and Great Grandpa. Is this what 71 looks like? That's right, not 17 :) We had a great celebration at Renee and Tom's (thanks again) for the Big Daddy. Everyone but Jimbo was there and we managed to catch him before work. Laura called and Mom and Harry sent Birthday wishes. A good time was had by all. We supplied dinner for 12 courtesy of Sam's Club and Von's including 4 roasted chickens, 2 pies and lots of chips and dips. Son Jim brought his famous cabbage salad with Thai dressing. We managed to devour most of it :)

Jim was very happy to get DVDs of his favorite shows...Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Morse. It's great to be able to replace the space consuming VHS tapes with DVDs. Naomi and Brad gave Grandpa a gift certificate to Best Buy that's burning a hole in his pocket. I gave him my first effort at a DVD slide show. I had great plans to unveil it for the family and get everybody teary eyed...but when we got to Renee's I couldn't find the DVD in the car :(

I couldn't believe it. Thought I left it at home by mistake. Then when we got home it wasn't there....so I searched the car again and found it slipped down behind the seat. Damn! I had such a production planned.

Anyway, he really likes it. I included his baby picture, our wedding picture and lots of shots of us and the family. All this to the song "This Is Us" recorded by Emmylou Harris and Mark Knopfler on All the Road Running. I mentioned buying this DVD (which I've come to really enjoy) and as soon as I heard this song I knew what I wanted to do for Jim's birthday. But did I have a time pulling it off. I don't have a really good program to create the DVDs like the kids do. Finally I got Photoshop Elements 3 to work and put it all together right under Jim's nose. Everytime he'd leave or take a shower I would play it and edit some more.

All in all...another relaxing, comfortable, fun family day added to our memory bank.

Note:
Those who were there will notice that the picture above has been altered. I made a classic photo booboo and had a lampshade growing out of Jim's head....so I took it out. The pixels aren't perfect but I'm still a novice at this. :)

Posted by Joan at 05:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here's our Hemet home at Golden Village Palms. Even when all the space around us is filled it is still a spacious park. Right now we have an acre of empty spots surrounding us giving a great view of clouds, mountains and sunset. The "pole" beside Mr. Blue is a 40' palm tree where Sir Mockingbird likes to serenade us.

The planning for our trip to Illinois via Montana began in earnest yesterday. It's a total of 2800 miles. The only concern I had was where to be over July 4th weekend. After plotting it out we decided to stay in Missoula, MT at Jim and Mary's Resort, about 20 miles from our daughter Laura. We've been there before and love the open spaces and the unique floral landscaping. It is also satellite friendly and convenient to town and Montana scenery for day trips.

Planning for a long trip requires a lot of resources. I have the Trailer Life CD which shows campgrounds on a good mapping program. I also have DeLorme street mapping software which has good GPS mapping. In addition I use half a dozen campground books, some of which are memberships like Passport America, Camp Club, and Coast to Coast. But the best quick and dirty planner is to use the Good Sam website Trip Planning tool. I think you need to be a member but it's only about $20, well worth it for all the discounts and info. The trip planner includes references to the Mountain Directory for steep grades and curves, rest stops, Good Sam campgrounds and mileage out and back which is very helpful in estimating how to break up the travel days.

To estimate these long trips I start by allowing 100 miles a day. So this trip will take 28 days. In reality we drive 200-300 miles a day on a cross country trip, then stop for a day or two. Or drive 300 miles a couple of days in a row, then stay for a week. My first estimate gives us plenty of time and flexibility.

We'll take a week to get to MT, stay a week and then two weeks to get to Illinois. We've been stopped here so long that I'm a little nervous about getting our "breakdown" routine working again. We've accumulated a lot of stuff! We might have to pack stuff in our new storage unit :). I'm thinking the biggest change will be having to plan meals for a few days out. Right now we have restaurants and stores across the street so we have too many "spur of the moment" meals. But we're ready for a change of pace :) Actually, it's "time to get out of Dodge" because it's heating up here in Hemet.

Posted by Joan at 08:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We've been stopped here in Hemet for a few months and have been enjoying a reallly relaxed life. We've had lots of family time and found many ways to spend money. Our 30,000 mile RV maintenance is done; 60,000 on the car. There's a good Ford dealer across the street so it's very handy to have the work done here. They did find some warranty work that they recommended we do, replace some whatchmacallit on the front wheel/axle. So Tuesday we'll get that done in hopefully one day. Pricey work this vehicle maintenance :)

We found a good personal storage unit in Norco, close to the kids, so on Saturday we moved most of our remaining stuff to the new unit. It is better than what we had in Irvine and $30 per month cheaper. Every dollar helps. Grandson Bryan will help Jim finish the move next week. I don't see how we'll ever get rid of a storage unit because it's going to take me years to capture all the pictures and movies on the computer. Only solution would be a larger motorhome. Hmmmm.....

Speaking of computers...Jim's new HP desktop unit is working well. All programs are now loaded including another Mahjong game :) Only downside is that it's one more thing to pack away so we've got to get that routine determined before we hit the road in June. The goal is to get it built in under the table.

Saturday was grandson Ryan's 17th birthday so we had a family day at Renee and Tom's with most everyone there. Ryan was happy with a new Zen, some electronic games and a subscription to Bon Appetit. HIs current career goal is to be a nutritionist/chef so I thought he'd enjoying this "dreaming" magazine.

As usual, everyone spent a lot of time playing with Evan. What a lucky kid he is. There's always someone to hold and entertain him. At one point he had five guys sitting on the floor with him :)

Here's Uncle Jimbo giving Evan "plane rides."

Evan is deep in conversation with Grandpa. I think the topic was getting enough to eat.

Renee was cooking up chili and cornbread for the crowd so we did a mini chili cookoff. Of course, since I'm the eledest, the grandkids said mine was better. They do that to humor me. Actually I got carried away with the spices so I think Renee's was better. In any event, both pots were emptied and everyone was happy.
We ended the evening with birthday cake and a glass of wine around their firepit outside.

Sunday started out sunny and warm so we did a bike ride, showered and had a beer for lunch. Well, it tasted so good we had another, turned on the music, danced a little, made some popcorn, watched some old videos, finished off the homemade minestrone, and by that time the sun was down, the wind was blowing and the rains came. Another relaxing day with not much happening :)

Posted by Joan at 09:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In a past life I used to plot and plan how to overcome management obstacles and achieve freedom and success. Now I find myself plotting and planning how to help slay dragons and repair moats in order to reach the Temple. I'm hooked on Mah Jong, currently on step 10 of 60 to help Kweiza reach the Temple.

Jim's new computer came with a Mah Jong game that he put on my computer as a Mother's Day gift. He'd gotten into it and knew I'd enjoy it. So last night after a great day with family we started playing again. I quit at 1 AM but Jim stayed up and downloaded another game from Yahoo that looks really devilish. Funny...my Mom and Dad really enjoy the game they have on the computer, playing it at night to relax. I'd never tried it but now I understand. Our two games have hundreds of permutations so lord knows how much time we'll spend in this pursuit. Notice I didn't say waste. Anytime spent in deep mental activity is worthwhile. Click here for a simple introduction to the game.

So for now Sudoku is relagated to my purse to fill waiting time in doctor's offices. Mah Jong becomes the game of choice, even over Freecell and Spider Solitaire. In between all these games I'm trying new recipes and rereading novels by Kenneth Roberts. I made a great batch of minestrone on Saturday (maybe we could go on a soup diet) and today made Laura's Ceasar Salad with homemade dressing (maybe soup and salad would be better). Also cleaned lots of the wood cabinets with Muryphy's Oil soap. They sure didn't look as dirty as the black water indicated :). So there's always something to do here in Mr. Blue.

Posted by Joan at 02:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been pretty lazy since coming home from Illinois, sleeping in, reading, watching Angels baseball. Lazy life. We did enjoy seeing our daughter Renee and her family on Sunday. With four teenagers they lead a very hectic life so it was great to have them here and then enjoy dinner at Appleby's.

On Monday we had to do house maintenance, that is take the motorhome to the Ford dealer for regular stuff like oil change, lube the chassis, check the tires ....a 12 point inspection. It's pricey but we consider it insurance. As you know, this means we have to find something to do all day long because we are "homeless". Our plan was to have Krispy Kremes and Starbucks but we were amazed to see the donut store closed :(. After a coffee and pastry breakfast we decided what better way to spend the day than at the mall. First stop was a haircut for me. I'm trying to let my hair grow out a bit so that I don't need trims so often. The gal I got at Regis Salon really tuned in to what I wanted so I was pleased with the result.

Then we cruised the stores and I found a new CD by Emmylou Harris and Mark Knopfler (Dire Straits). I'd read about it and thought what a strange combo. At Circuit City I was able to listen to a snippet of all the cuts and decided it sounded pretty good. After a couple of plays I really like it. Two great muscisians, nearing "senior" status, singing mellow songs with lyrics we can relate to. So now it's copied to my hard drive, bringing me up to 4800 tracks. A long lunch at Macaroni Grill with a couple of glasses of Chianti capped off the day and our house was done early :)

Today we planned to check out lounge chairs at Camping World thinking that I'd get a new one for Mother's Day. But I reached the same conclusion as before...the lounge chairs are really dumb. They don't adjust so that you can sit up and read with your legs stretched out. So no chair....bummer. We did however get a new little table for eating outside and new step covers.

We lunched at Olive Garden getting the all-you-can-eat soup and salad. Jim had a record four bowls of minestrone...a great value meal for $15 for two. Then we stopped at CompUSA....big mistake. We came home with a new desktop computer. Jim has been thinking about this for a long time and found an HP computer that has all he wanted and more. So after a light dinner outside at our new little table Jim began the process of setting up the new computer and we watched the Angels win against the White Sox, 12 to 5 :)

Lesson learned: Never go shopping without a list...it could be expensive..

Posted by Joan at 08:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I was ready to be back home with Jim after two weeks in Illinois visiting my parents and friends. I had good flights both ways with minimal security waiting. I think that's because I flew Saturday. I hadn't flown for 3 years so there were procedures new to me. Going through security is a "leveling" experience. Everyone removes shoes and jackets to go through the security arch. All carryon bags and clothing go in trays through security xrays. Several people had to step aside to remove belts, jewelry, etc. Hint: wear slip on shoes and pack all metal.

Also, take your own food. The "snack" box offered for $4 is a joke. Actually I liked taking my own food and eating it as and when I wanted, taking advantage of all the free liquid refreshments on board. If you take your own headphones you can plug into the movie or music for free.

Springtime in Illinois is really lovely with all the flowers and trees blooming. The weather was pretty good, no severe storms, so I got in a few walks and enjoyed the scenery. Mom and Dad have peach and cherry trees in full bloom so we'll enjoy the harvest later this year.

My friend Pat graciously invited "the girls" over for brunch on Sunday to sample some new strata breakfast bakes and show off her newly remodeled house. We truly enjoyed the wonderful brunch and admired all the hard work she'd put into refinishing, painting, and decorating. Best of all we didn't feel guilty sitting around the table chatting for hours. It was a long brunch...11 - 8 pm. For dinner we had huge slices of carrot cake. Delightfully sinful.

I enjoyed the relaxed time with my parents, cousins and friends but I was glad to get home. In three years I think Jim and I have only been apart for our overnight hospital stays. We are joined at the hip. I do also love my little house with my minimal stuff. While I admire and appreciate the collections and decorations in the homes I visited I don't miss having my own stuff. I don't think I was ever very good at "decorating" so it's nice not to stress out about being like Martha...I'm really more Maxine :)

Posted by Joan at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)