A Slow, Slow Two Weeks

So what have we been doing for the last two weeks, well, honestly a whole lot of nothing.  It's been cold here, I know, haha, but true, one of the coldest winters in Florida.  Highs some days don't even get into the 60's and nights in the low 40's, that's welcome sleeping temps, but the days are cool.  

With the Covid, we have cut out almost all our social interactions, no bocce, no mah jong, no get togethers with our friends who live in the area, almost no outside dining, it's like being in purgatory I imagine.  There is another school of folks here in the park that don't seem to be affected in any way, they continue socializing, getting together, go to gatherings, the pool, play games, etc.  But each person according to their own personal situation has to make that decision for themselves.  At least here in Florida businesses are open, most have instituted their own mask policy which is their prerogative.  And vaccines are being given.  Jan and I are trying hard to get one, but the various counties have all instituted different ways to determine who gets an appointment.  After the frontline health providers and first responders it is open to age 65+ folks and those with compromised immune systems.  But getting the appointment is an online free for all, several counties have been using a concert ticket company to disburse the coveted slots, so at the stroke of whatever time, thousands of people all press enter on their computers and wait on the spinning globe of death until after sometimes a couple seconds all the way up to an hour a screen pops up and says all appointments full!  Frustrating to say the least, but some folks are getting through, we know of at least a dozen here in the park that have gotten their first shot.

We did get our new water hose and reel installed, pretty straightforward once we removed it completely from the coach.

Where the reel lives

Out

Back in

Jan has been cooking though, with the cool weather her delicious chicken corn chowder was welcome!

Then good friend Ray who lives nearby always lets us borrow some Liberty puzzles to do, Jan mostly, but I do help a bit.  If you're not familiar, Liberty puzzles are incredible, intricate, high quality wood, have a ton of whimsy's, and are very challenging.

This is the back, you can see some of the whimsy's,
and the figures you can't see on the front

I have done some fly tying for the upcoming season, much more to come.

We have a gap above our windshield on the coach between the windshield gasket and a rain gutter that I filled before we left last year.  I used a black silicone, and although it looked great when we left it doesn't look so great now.  I have contacted several motorhome windshield companies and it seems I didn't do anything wrong, and used the proper product, perhaps my prep wan't so good or the black silicone was old, but it is an upcoming project.

Pretty sad

So not too much to report, we have ordered some items for some other projects which I will fill you in on soon.  Meanwhile we are marking time, thankful to be well and in a warmer, as compared to many other spots, place for the winter, but like everyone we sure wish this Covid thing was over and life could go back to normal.

So Wow, Goodbye 2020! Hello 2021, I Sure Hope You're Better!

We have all kicked 2020 to the curb and wishing 2021 turns out so much better.  These posts are few and far between now that we are stationary here in Florida.  Things here are fairly quiet and especially this year.  We aren't gathering or even playing any bocce or Mah Jong because of the virus.  It seems to be about a 50/50 split here of people who are holed up and people that try to get together.  With the pleasant weather we can get out and walk and move freely.  At least there is a modicum of normal here in Florida, most businesses are open first of all, at least those that survived the initial closings.  Most all require masks to be worn inside their premises, restaurants are open and doing inside dining as well as take out and delivery.  There is a big advantage in Florida in that there is plenty of outside dining available, we've been out three times now, and have been doing quite a bit of take out.  Vaccines are rolling out but with the small amounts distributed so far it is extremely hard to get one.  Individual counties are distributing them as they see fit, and most are using a "ticketmaster" type site to do it.  They open up a window of appointments and everyone tries to hit the enter button on your computer at exactly the right time, we've tried 4 times now with no results.  They estimate 150,000 people are vying for maybe 800 openings at a time.  One nearby county is going to a random lottery tonight and we'll see if that is any better.

Enough of that.  Since we couldn't get together for the holidays this year, our son and I had a little distanced competition cooking prime rib for Christmas dinner:-)  I think we both won!

Of course on our end, it started with a little bit of the good stuff

Ours, out of the oven

Oh yeah

Jason's off the grill

His looks wonderful too, it's a tie!

Since we are still on food, Jan and I made homemade pizzas on the grill, they really turned out well.

Although we have a whole list of projects for the winter, we just haven't gotten the gumption to do any of them.  Oh we do some little things here and there but we have been putting off the bigger ones.  We are going through our second delightful cool spell here weatherize, and decided we needed to take advantage of the temps to get some things done without sweating our butts off.

Our first project I am not proud of, we replaced our electric power cord last year, and after it was too late, we had already cut off the end of it, found it was too short.  I had underestimated the amount of cord hidden inside the coach up through the mechanism, the can that holds the wire and the length going up to the transfer switch by it turned out 10'!!!  I made a couple of 50 amp extension cords in case we needed them and hoped we would be able to get by with the shortened cable.  It turned out we had to use the extension cord 5 times this year, too many.  And in a couple of instances it was really hot outside, so we had all 3 AC's running and the extension really got too hot.  So we planned to bite the bullet, buy yet another expensive replacement cord the correct length and try to sell the shorter one.  We'll see how that works out.  Regardless we got the new longer cord installed.

We also plan to replace our water hose with reel, but access is a challenge, tomorrow:-)

You can see the hose reel in this picture

It is more cost effective to replace the entire reel along with the hose in one package, believe it or not.  Since we full time our water hose is out in the sun virtually 24/7 every day, and after time it gets very brittle, we have cut off about 15' of it to date to get to pliable hose, and not surprising it is now too short, seems almost a theme doesn't it?  We looked it up and this hose had lasted almost 7 years, pretty good when you think about it.

So a quick check in to what we are up to, hopefully we will get a little more ambitious and do some more chores while we while away the time here holed up in Florida.

We do have good friend Harvey to entertain us

And we do have beautiful sunsets for Happy Hour!