2011 November 22

Potato Soup

Pecan Silk Supreme Pie

We made one additional stop yesterday.  We went to Village Inn for supper and Ella’s free pie for her birthday.  You’ll find this hard to believe, but I did NOT have pie.  If they would have had sour cream raisin I would have had pie.  But they were out, so I didn’t.

            I got up this morning and Weatherbug said that it was still above freezing so I re-hooked the water hose and refilled my ‘back up’ water supply.  I have a three gallon water bottle with a dispenser that we use for drinking and cooking water when we are running off of the holding tank.  I try to keep that 80 gallon tank for cleaning and flushing.

            The Weatherbug also said that it was drizzling and it was, sort of.  It was really more like a heavy mist than a drizzle.  I think I’d rather it rained.  Rain seems so much ‘cleaner’ than this drizzle.

            I’ve been working on all my blogs this morning.  It isn’t that I’ve been posting on all of them.  However, I have been working ‘under the hood’ tweaking some of the settings etc.  I had to repair a link that was posted on the Home Is Where The 5^th Wheel Is blog.  I had a link that was supposed to go the Retirement Dreams blog but I had entered the hyperlink incorrectly.  It now goes where it is supposed to go.

            I will be going over material for a Bible study that I’ve agreed to conduct.  It is titled, “The Purpose of Christmas” byRick Warren.  The synopsis sounds like it will be a good short-term study for Advent.  I've provided a link to his website out of courtesy.  Since I have not yet reviewed the material, this is not an endorsement.  I'll keep you posted.

            Oh, here is a funny thing that happened to us.  Ella and I use the swipe method to input text on our Droids.  That means that instead of touching each letter on the keyboard, you slide your finger from letter to letter.  Most of the time the software understands what you are doing and posts the correct word.  Sometimes, however, funny things happen.  Several days ago I was trying to write “wife” and it kept printing “erotic”.  I thought that was hilarious.  Yesterday, being Ella’s sixty-fifth birthday, she was sending a text and was trying to write, “I’m officially a senior citizen.”  Instead it printed, “I’m officially a senior vixen.”   When you put the two together … well … I’m a lucky man!

            

2011 November 21 Ella's Birthday

  

       Today was Ella's payday so picked up her check around 8:30 or so then we went on the over to church and had a meeting with Lee about the service for this coming weekend with the Hanging of the Greens.  Once we had that sorted out we got the paraments out of storage.  However, I completely forgot to help put them up.  Opps!
       We also picked up a frozen ham and two large cans of yams while we were church.  One of the members had donated turkeys, hams and canned yams to those who needed them.  We took one to John, Ella's son, at his work and that way he could we wish his mother a happy birthday at the same time. 

      Ella received a birthday coupon from Old Country Buffet.  It was a buy one get one free deal.  On the coupon it said, buy one dinner and get one free.  I was n't sure if they would honor it for lunch or if it had to be dinner which starts at 3:30.  Since we were already on that side of town, I wanted to be able to use it for lunch.  I called the number on coupon and asked my question.  I was told that we could use it for lunch also.   "You can use it all day, we don't care," is the exact quote.

      When we went to the buffet, we were told that "No, it is for dinner only.  There is not a key for the coupon at lunch."   I told her that I had called earlier and ask about that.  She said, "Well, he doesn't know.  He doesn't work up here (the register)".   I said well then just ring in one meal and two drinks.  That is what she did.  

         Ella went to the dollar store to purchase goodies for all the grand kids' Christmas bags.  I also bought three bread loaf pans.  The pans I had were scarred and looked rusty.  Usually I just bake the loaves on a cookie sheet instead of a loaf pan.  However, Kathy had requested that I make potato bread for Thanksgiving dinner, so I thought I'd make actual loaves for the event.

            When we left the southside, we took the Purple Heart Highway by-pass.  We stopped at Walnut Woods State Park on the way home.  When we were tent camping, this was our favorite park. Walnut Woods and Brown Woods combined is the largest black walnut forest in the world.  Back then it was totally primitive.  Only about 6 of the 20 sites had electricity.  There was no water and no sewer.  There was no dump station and only a couple of pit toilets.  What we liked about it was that not many RVers used the park.  It really wasn’t really that RV friendly.  They started updating things.  First they put in ‘modern’ toilets with stools and and sinks – but no showers.  At the same time they put in a dump and water station.  Of course these changes started bringing in RVs.  They did a survey a few years back and found that their main traffic was RVs coming in off of the interstate.  So they’ve poured concrete pads and added quite a few full hookup sites.  Any way as I was saying, we stopped to see what was going on.  Nothing!  Not a single camper.  Hmm, makes you wonder if they’ve improved themselves out of business.

            We made it back home about 3:00.  I had forgotten that I had prescriptions to pick up at Walgreens.  We also need to talk to them because they filled a prescription for Ella that they weren't supposed to fill.  We had switched all of Ella’s prescriptions over to Walmart and told Walgreen to take her off of the automatic refill.  We shouldn't be surprised because this particular Walgreen has screwed up so many things in the last three years.  Let’s be clear, I'm not dissatisfied with Walgreen in general but with this particular Walgreen specifically I certainly am upset.  Come January when I turn 65 and go on medicare I am moving all my prescriptions to Walmart also.  The only reason we haven't done it this point is that we purchased on of Walgreen’s W cards that is good until January anyway.  I went back and picked up the prescriptions and told them AGAIN that they were supposed to cancel Ella’s auto-refills.  I also emphasized that they are NOT to cancel MY auto-refills.  We’ll see how that works out.  I don’t hold out a lot of hope.

            On the way home the second On the way home the second time, I stopped at our storage unit and brought back some more Christmas items.  I also brought a small cabinet door from the old fifth-wheel.  The cabinets in the two fifth-wheels are identical right down to the hardware.  Handy!  I then used it to make a shelf in the new fifth-wheel.  Right now, I'm using a piece of twin to hold it.  I will be shopping for a hinged support.

2011 November 20

Looking out my door November 20. 2011 So much nicer than yesterday.

     The sun came out today.  After yesterday’s bleak overcast day, it is nice to see the sun.  It is too bad that the cold came along with the sun.   It is 2:15 p.m. as I write this and it has just gotten above freezing to 33 degrees.

     Sunday school was very good today. (Not that it isn't usually good) We had some nice discussion about the Lord's prayer, corporate prayer and private prayer.  Then that was followed by Pastor Lee's sermon on remembering.  What do we choose to focus on when we are remembering?  The good?  Or the bad?  

      The choir presented "Psalm of Celebration" by Mark Hayes.  It was very uplifting.  They received applause for the singing.  I almost never clap for the choir although I may give an "Amen" or "Praise God".  When I was in the choir I felt uncomfortable with applause because the singing was done to honor God and not win approval from the poeple.

    How do you feel about applauding in church?

Here is a video of my silly great granddaughters and their silly gran'pa.

The video isn't great but the giggles are wonderful.