Here we are, on the road: Still in Santa Clara, California

January 5, 2013 Lorraine’s report

Hello once more from sunny, nice California, specifically the Elks Lodge in Santa Clara, CA. It has been nice here, cool, down to freezing a day or so in the nighttime, but otherwise, N I C E. So this week has been okay.

Forgot to tell Joe of Joe & Alice, “Happy Birthday” and “Happy Anniversary”. It was their anniversary last week. May they have many, many more!!!

So this week we just enjoyed the time we have had with Susy, Kaitlyn, Mark, etc. It was nice to be able to spend some quality time with Susy and Kaitlyn. This area is just so busy! Everyone here is in a hurry. It was nice just to kick back, and enjoy our time together. Thank you Susy, I enjoyed our time together.

Well, I’m still waiting on my computer. Chuck got me a couple of slot games for Christmas, and after he loaded them on my computer, it crashed. Mark worked on it, but thinks there is a hard drive issue. So it is in the shop, Geek squad, and with it being after the holiday, it is taking forever. Hopefully, they will call today.

My neck is still giving me a bit of problems, still sore, my doctor said it would take six months for it to heal, and he is right. Will be glad to have it quit hurting.

So we are still waiting for the freezer, hopefully this week, and maybe we will continue “On the Road” again. Looking forward to seeing some friends from all over the USA.

I guess I can’t think of much else, so, I hope everyone has a great week. Till next time…

Hugs,

Lorraine

1/5/13 Chuck’s report

Hope everyone had a great start to their New Year! Ours has been good, just had to make some changes to our travel plans but we are used to doing that. We had a good time this week with Susy and Katie, even got some “down” time too.

We are still here, waiting for our fridge/freezer repair. The thought now is the coils for the freezer are plugged, possibly with oil but anyway they want to remove/flush/reinstall the coils the re-fill them with Freon. Of course the guy who came by on Thursday didn’t have the ability to do this type job so we are now waiting for the next round. The parts are ordered, to be delivered on Monday afternoon and they will come by on Tuesday to do the repair. Sure hope it works out right this time, it’s getting old. At least Samsung has offered to do this repair, both parts and labor, on an extension to our one year warranty.

Susy took time off from work on Monday and Tuesday so we managed to work in some daylight time with her during weekdays, usually not able to do that when she works.

Tuesday morning we got up and couldn't get connected to the internet using our new tablet as a hot spot. Only had it for three days and already it’s acting up, shoot. Anyway, I boxed it up and we took it back to Verizon for them to look it over. Seems they had sent out a new release overnight and all it needed was to be reset, I didn’t know that. I had tried turning it off/on a couple of time, to rest this one, I needed to remove/replace the SIM card too. Anyway, back in service now and working great.

The Verizon store is in a strip mall with Costco so we headed over there to get some items for a New Years Eve party at Susy’s place. After leaving Costco, we headed over to Susy’s where Lorraine and Susy got all the snacks and such set up. We had also brought some steaks for dinner and they cooked them in broiler along with salads and baked potatoes, a good meal for our last meal of the year.

We hung around Susy’ place until the ball dropped in New York, 9:00 our time, then headed to our place. Susy was having some friends over for snacks and games and they were going to see the New Year in. After we got back, I headed to bed but Lorraine stayed up and saw the New Year in too.

Wednesday morning we watched the Rose Bowl Parade on TV. Lorraine commented a couple of time that we could have been there in person, but with the fridge issues we would have had to drive there, then back here anyway. But she enjoyed the parade.

Later we headed over to Susy’s place, we were to watch the Rose Bowl game there. Stanford was playing Wisconsin and everyone here was rooting for Stanford, of course. But the game didn’t turn out the way we all hoped, Wisconsin won the game. So all it all, we were glad we didn’t go to the game, we would have had to come right back and Stanford lost too; not counting it would have been pretty expensive to purchase the tickets.

Thursday we went by Costco to gas up the car, what a zoo that was. Then we stopped by a Safeway grocery store and Lorraine picked up the makings for a stew. She put the stew in the slow cooker where the smell made us hungry all afternoon.

The fridge repair guy called and came by earlier than they thought but like I said, he couldn’t fix it. He is sure of the repairs needed, he even had lots of parts to repair other issues but couldn’t find any other problem, guess that’s good. We still have a freezer in the basement and the fridge portion still works so at least we didn’t lose our food like we did with the Norcold fridge died last fall. So guess it could have been worse and we could have been in an area where there were no repairman around.

Friday morning I headed over to the VA, I was going to start the process of getting new hearing aids. I got my hearing checked, it’s gotten a bit worse but still have one more appointment before they will order new ones for me. We are going to be gone until April so I need to make that appointment in late February as they can’t make appointments that far in advance for some reason.

Last week I talked about Lorraine’s computer having issues. Mark has tried to get it to work, it’s lots better but still not working right. Because of the extra time here due to the fridge repair, we took it to Best Buy after my appointment at the VA to see what they can do with it.

They still have it, running some tests to see if they can repair it. We think it may be the hard drive and if that is the case, maybe we will get the hard drive replaced or maybe get a new laptop, depends on the cost of the repair. We were supposed to hear something yesterday but no word as yet.

After we dropped it off, we looked over their new ones, mostly to see what was available and what the price range would be. Because we had some time, we went by Fry’s Electronics store to check them out too. They had a small laptop, new, on sale for just about what it would cost to put a new drive in Lorraine’s old one. So we bought bought one and will not open it until we find out for sure about her old one. We can always return the new one if the old one is able to be repaired for less than expected.

The Elks lodge we are staying at has electric power and water at each site and a dump station available. I can dump our gray water tank using the hose they have here for that purpose. I usually only have to dump the gray water every other day unless Lorraine wants to do some laundry then I just leave the hose hooked up while she does laundry.

Saturday morning I hooked up the hose and drained the gray water tank. I wanted to watch the NFL playoff games, they are starting the Wild Card games this weekend. So Susy came by and picked up Lorraine and they headed out for a shopping trip. Later Mark and Katie came by and spent some time here with me until the gals got back from shopping. They did run by Best But to see if they could find out anything in person about her computer but no luck on that front either. Later we had BBQ for dinner and they played board and card games with Katie until it was time for them to leave.

The weather has been just about outstanding this week. The highs have been in the 60 – 70s with no sign of rain or even many clouds. We haven’t had any winds either, it’s just been nice. We did have two nights where the night time temps got right at freezing but as soon as the sun came up, it started warming up. No complaints about the weather, for sure.

Our travel plans have been put on hold, as I said earlier. We had reservations at 1000 Trails in Palm Springs starting on the 2nd, of course I’ve had to change them. We have reservations there until the 16th so it’s a day-to-day thing now as to when we get there. Our plans for after that is to make our annual pilgrimage to Quartzsite for a week or so. We are planning on going with a group of Tiffin owners the first few day then go over to the group we’ve been with every year we’ve gone there. We are sure looking forward to seeing some of our friends there, in both groups.

Guess I’ll add a few pictures now and get this posted.

Lorraine working in Susy’s kitchen.