Been super busy since leaving Arkansas. Spent 6 hours deep in the bowels of Carlsbad Caverns and heading into the Grand Canyon areal flood watch notwithstanding.
Heading home after 52 days on the road. Got to the end of our 2 days of thunder storms and were camping outside the park on a forest service road. I told my husband, "I know this is crazy but I want a do over!" And we did it all over. We drove east back to Cameron and had a wonderful dinner of fry bread and roast beef. We got a spot at the RV park and had a relaxing evening. Got up at 5AM (Reservation time) so we got to the rim at 5AM to watch the Canyon wake up. View attachment 1958 It was a perfect day. We had breakfast on the rim and headed into Visitor Center to catch a shuttle. When we returned we were supposed to leave but I wanted to do Hermit's Rest again. We were so happy that when we headed back down we had our favorite driver from 4 years ago. (She is so funny; I can picture her being a hit on the Jungle Cruise.)
Nice pictures. I've met a few interesting tour guides in National Parks. (Also an interesting driver on the WDW-KSC run with Gator Tours) ***** All right, I'll bite: I get that The Incredible Hulk is a Marvel property, and therefore now part of the Disney family, but why is he wearing something that looks rather like Elon Musk's version of a spacesuit?
Okay, I'll say it. If it's not Lou Ferrigno in purple stretch pants and a torn shirt... ...it isn't The Hulk. That said, I must confess that my comic book/TV/movie experience has been limited to George Reeves, Bill Bixby, Adam West and the SPIDER-MAN Saturday morning cartoon.
Got our tickets and reservations for our February trip. Had enough rewards to cover it and the motel was paid a year ago so the budget isn't taking much of a hit. We even decided to go with Park Hoppers. On another note: NO RED WAVE and still hope for complete failure on their part. No matter what it seemed like; the whole nation has not lost its compass.
Q: What's the difference between the Theodore Roosevelt White House and the Donald Trump White House? A: One was a Bully Pulpit; the other was the pulpit of a bully.
The past few days have been rather unpleasant: Friday was my prostate biopsy. The procedure went well, but the aftereffects, even without any sign of infection, are not pleasant. Which shouldn't be surprising, given that 22 specimens were removed. Sunday evening, I was in Long Beach, for a screening of Buster Keaton's classic silent, The General, with live organ accompaniment, at Our Savior's Lutheran. In a part of town where the streets were certainly laid out when cars were smaller, slower, and fewer in number, and probably when they still shared the road with an occasional horse. After the show, I went back out to my car. I noticed police activity nearby. Then I discovered that the police activity involved my car: there had been a hit-and-run, and my car, whether it was the victim or just collateral damage, had been hit. The port front hubcap was smashed, the port front fender was tweaked, the port side of the front bumper was hanging loose, the hood had been knocked slightly askew, and the starboard front wheel had been slammed into the curb, hard enough to tweak the rim and ruin another hubcap. The cop was very professional, and I made sure to say so. My first words to her were a very agitated "What the HELL happened to my car!?" and she calmly explained the situation, and said she'd be getting back to me as soon as she'd finished the statements she was taking from the witnesses. Remarkably, the front tires still held pressure, and the car was still drivable, albeit not at freeway speeds. That surprised the cop. Driving home on PCH, it actually made it up to 50 MPH without shaking to pieces. That surprised me. Monday morning, I sat down with my insurance agent, and filed a claim. He gave me the contact information for the assigned adjuster, and a referral to a body shop (a local Caliber Collision). After the full inspection (which was when I first noticed the fender and the skewed hood), the estimator realized that it's a full-electric (what part of "Nissan Leaf" did those people not understand?), which that shop wasn't equipped to handle. And while some Caliber locations are, they didn't have any kind of list. Yesterday, the adjuster finally called. And she was able to find a suitable body shop in Cerritos, and arrange for towing. About an hour after it was picked up, I got a call from a body shop in Cerritos: the towing company had gotten the destination wrong. They weren't expecting it, and they were already overbooked. And even though I told them where it was, to the best of my knowledge, supposed to have been taken, the driver just abandoned it there. I took the rest of the day off (I was already leaving an hour early for a concert at Disney Hall), to drive into Cerritos and take the matter into my own hands. Thankfully, I was right about what the correct body shop was, and they were expecting the car, albeit not with me behind the wheel. And then I ran into really bad traffic, just getting to the Blue Line station, to catch my trolley into downtown L.A.
Holy Cow! Not enough time to respond to that but a dear friend of mine just went through something equally crazy with her electric car. Hope it all works out for you.
I'm now passing clots and other debris, big enough to see, but not big enough to feel. And my car is in the hands of the body shop, so the "loss-of-use" coverage has kicked in; between that and the insurance discount rate, my net rental cost is supposed to be 90 cents per day.
That sounds a bit scary. At least it's not painful. That's an awesome price for a rental car. My friend lives in Reno and did not know her Smart car could not be serviced there. The closest place is Sacramento! She recently took it down there, charging all the way. She stayed overnight at a motel so she could drive it home the next day. Again, charging all the way. Everything was fine with her little baby car. Then this week the key quit working. Everything froze up. She had to pay almost $900 to have it picked up and taken down the mountain. Seems it was a software problem. Why it waited until right after it had been serviced? A question for the ages I guess. Or just Murphy's Law.
This "seat heater" season, I've abandoned my first attempt at an in-dash control mechanism (single button, cycling between low, high, and off, with TTL J-K flip-flops for the sequencing logic), because the parts count (including the total number of mechanical relays) kept inflating beyond all reason. But still wanting something that will power-up in an "off" state, I'm going for a lower-tech solution: SCR latching. Which has the bonus that I don't need a 5-volt regulated supply. The only cost is that instead of one button, this one needs a pair of very small (to fit inside a "blankout plug" for the button panel) momentary rocker switches. And yes, there's a possibility that somebody will try to total my Leaf, instead of fixing it. The operative word is "try."
Yesterday, I got a time estimate on my car. December 6th. The feast day of St. Nicholas of Myra. I also exchanged my rental for one that doesn't smell like an ashtray.
Whoa! That's a long way off, relatively speaking. Stale cigarettes is something I cannot tolerate. We are actually hosting a Christmasolstikwanukah party on Dec6. I really popped in to say Happy Thanksgiving. Our granddaughter has to work today so we will not roast our 45.5 pound turkey until tomorrow. Since we are alone today; we opted for a Planet of the Apes marathon. Starting with Charleston Heston. We borrowed the set from our daughter. I thought they were on DVD but lo, they are VHS! Luckily we do still have an operational VCR.
Like "fresh" is any better? Either way, it's a burning poisonous plant. At any rate, I can live with a car that burns hydrocarbons for another week and a half, so long as it doesn't smell like an ashtray. And of course, for the duration, my dad gets exclusive access to my Grizzl-E. Last night: Turkey breast (a Jennie-O freezer-to-oven), dressing (my own recipe based on Mrs. Cubbison's "traditional" crumbs), corn, carrots, mashed potatoes(reconstituted, with leftover boiled cauliflower mashed in for texture, fiber, and vitamins), and some leftover green beans. And a pecan pie from Polly's, for dessert.
Okay, clarification. Fresh cigarette (or any form of tobacco) smoke makes me want to get away fast. Stale smoke and butts make me want to throw up. Nice Turkey day menu. We had a crazy amount of food. I tried a made up recipe for dressing with fresh bread crumbs. It turned out great. My daughter brought mac+cheese, ham, veggie casserole and Martinelli's ciders. My granddaughter brought 2 different cheesecakes and banana/vanilla wafer pudding. I made a pineapple upside-down carrot cake. I too like to add cauliflower to my mashed potatoes. Tonight we will have sliced turkey, dressing with gravy and some sort of vegetables for dinner. In fact, we will be eating turkey for a long time. Monday I will be canning 16 pints of it. Our big guy took up the entire oven. Had to remove door to get him in.
We had leftover turkey and dressing for dinner through Saturday. And I had it for lunch (so far) Saturday and Sunday, with a turkey sandwich for today, and probably leftover turkey and dressing tomorrow. And there's still a bit of turkey breast in the freezer. This weekend being Advent I, the first installment of Christmas lights went up, including the debut of my Advent wreath. The lights on the eaves are mostly hidden in the bushes, and the arch over the garage door is out of the picture to the left. The Advent wreath is totally solar powered (to avoid having to run power across the front yard!), and designed to show the liturgically correct number of flames.
