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Catch-up & Prep-upFeb 21, 2007
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| This was to be a day of rest, relaxation, catch-up on a few chores, & get ready to travel tomorrow. Vicki had decided to further test the washer/dryer combo machine that we have in the bus. Its design & capacity are very different from anything that she had dealt with in the past. We had never needed to use it on our weekend & week-long trips. Since we were paying metered electricity at Port Aransas, we reasoned that it would probably be cheaper to use the coin laundries. I'm not sure what the explanation was the other times that we needed to do laundry, other than we had allowed too much to pile-up to consider doing it one load at a time. Bottom line, we had not had the right circumstances, or taken the opportunity, to learn how/what it would do. The one machine goes automatically from washing to drying. You throw a load of dirty laundry in, push all of the right buttons, & magically an hour or so later the clothes & linens are ready to be folded for future use.....no, it doesn't fold them for you, you still have to do that the old-fashioned way just like Grandmom used to do. The machine worked very well, convincing us that there would be lots of opportunities as we travel the highways & by-ways to save our quarters & do the laundry in-house. Speaking of laundry, we are learning some interesting facets about the clothes & linens that we brought along. Certainly seeing different people virtually every day enables us to not be as concerned about wearing the same few favorite garments so frequently. That then enables us to live for weeks & months with relatively few sets of clothes. In spite of the fact that I brought only half of the clothes that I had at home, I have still only worn about half of what I brought. Before you become repulsed, I will add that certain garments have been in the laundry every time that we have washed. It is almost like a countdown. After every wash, I wear my most favorite items, then my next most favorite, etc, etc, so that if I don't wear something by the time that we do laundry, then it is probably not going to get worn for a long time. Now try wearing a certain shirt that frequently when you are seeing the same co-workers, friends, neighbors, family, etc everyday. Why is it that we (myself included) have that hang-up? Oh no, I can't wear THIS again yet, even though it has been washed since I last wore it....Bob or Jane or Ken might think that I have only a limited supply of clothes & that would be DREADFUL for them to think that of me. Oh yea, you remember back somewhere in early December that I mentioned that I had made what I thought would be my last-ever pick-up of laundered, starched & pressed dress work-shirts. I'll bet that you can guess what our budget-hit has been since January 1 for such....I'll give you a hint....it is the amount just below $.01. I did extend myself to ride the bike out to Panther Junction, a 40-mile round trip, to see if our cell phones held any messages for us. We had a situation over the past weekend that we thought might develop into a back-up offer on our house, but apparently no offer has been forthcoming. Dave, our realtor, knows that we are beyond the reach of the electronic world, so we have agreed that he will leave us a message only if there is substantive information to share with us (as in an actual contract offer). We'll catch-up with him tomorrow or Friday when we are more accessible to see what has developed with that potential situation. Tomorrow, we depart from here to make our last stop in Texas. Today, we do the few things that we can to facilitate getting ourselves rolling tomorrow morning. We have something close to 229 miles to make to get ourselves to the Balmorhea State Park, just south of I-10, approximately 200 miles east of El Paso. We'll stay there until Monday, when we will leave to begin four consecutive days of traveling to get ourselves the thousand miles or so out to Los Angeles to spend a few days with our son Kevin & his family. Today, at the moment that I am writing this, at mid-afternoon, we are both sitting outside, under the canopy, enjoying the ample warmth & blue skies that are blessed upon us. This is certainly like no other February 21 that we have ever spent.......... stated in reference to the weather, but now that I think about it, in so many respects. The day is not yet over.......I will return to this if there is any other commentary worthy of adding later. Joe & Dana dropped-by to chat awhile & bid farewell. We'll look forward to seeing them wherever our paths cross next. We have no idea of where that might be, as they are heading south & east; we are heading west & north. |
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