Will We Ever Be Ready?

We're only a few days from our planned departure for the chilly south. It seems we are never done with prep until we actually pull away from 1519 Ash Dr. West. Of course there are always some unplanned and costly setbacks. For instance, yesterday I discovered pinkish fluid droppings in the snow where the truck was parked. I took the truck to our trusty mechanic to "patch the leak". Well of course it was slightly more than a patch job. Fifteen hundred dollars later I picked up the repaired truck and headed home.

It turns out it was 'steering fluid' that was leaking. This required replacing the 'rack & pinion cooler lines'. They also found a need to service the front differential. They changed the lubricant and sealer. Apparently this little maintenance is supposed to be done every 30,000 miles. It had never been done and I have 80,000 miles on the truck. Nothing like 'just in time' maintenance I always say.

I know what some of you are thinking. He's telling me far more than I ever wanted to know about auto care. Especially when it's not my truck that he's talking about. So if you're going to have that attitude, I'll stop right there!

There are some positive things to report. Mark shoveled half the street in front of our house (only a slight exageration). The snow plow only plows up to where our front lawn starts. This makes perfect sense, since plowing up our front lawn would not be appreciated. You see we don't have sidewalks. Since we'll be getting the 'Villa' (our travel trailer) out of storage tomorrow, we need somewhere to park it in front of the house while we load virtually everything we own into it. It takes up so much room on our street, we (Mark) added about five feet of width to the street.This should keep our neighbors happy; not to mention the fact they'll be able to drive past. That is if our neighbor across the street doesn't choose to park directly across from where the Villa is parked. He has been parking one of their two vans on the street, even though they could park four cars in their driveway with ease. If he parks across from our trailer, no one will be able to drive past.

The other good news is that we're getting our tongue jack installed tomorrow. I may have mentioned this before, so I won't bore you with the details. Suffice it to say it lifts and lowers the trailer onto the hitch which is mounted on the back of our truck. No more hand cranking!

I failed to mention that my 'Nook' e-book reader arrived a week ago. I love it. I think it's better than the Kindle. The Nook is Barnes & Noble's version and was $50 dollars cheaper than the Kindle with more features. It holds thousands of books, and B & N has more than 15,000 titles at the moment. Most books are $9.99 or less. I can have every book I want to read while we're in Florida ready & waiting in my Nook. The Nook is about the size of a large paperback. No more hauling a box full of books. It's quite nice, and did I say I love it?

Lastly, I am conducting a highly scientific survey of directional map drawing. I'm talking a simple map you might include on an invitation to a wedding or party. The question is do you first label the map north, south, east & west and then draw, or do you draw the map and then if you're so inclined label the map indicating north, south etc.? I would be very interested in your comments regarding this. I will publish my highly scientific results in a future blog.

I'll be blogging as we make our way south where there is no snow to shovel.

jim doyle
1/13/2010