Day 45

It's cold (mid 40's) and rainy today. That's way too cold when you've been used to significantly warmer weather. It's a big change from yesterday. That's one of the interesting things about San Antonio. Basically the weather in the winter is pleasant until something nasty blows down from the north. Then you remember that there's nothing higher than a freeway overpass between here and the Arctic Circle.

In honor of the weather I officially declared it a "don't do anything day". Actually I did do one thing. I called up our dog trainer and got some instructions on how to teach Lucy to do blind retrieves. It's going to be time consuming, but what else do I have to do? I need to get him started on the preliminaries to breeding her. Unfortunately, he doesn't have the pedigree info that I thought he had.

He said to give the OFA at least a month to look at her X-rays. I'm going to call them at exactly one month.

Day 44

Back to the grindstone. I spent the day driving around the Wimberly/San Marcos area looking at prospective houses. The result wasn't bad. Of the seven houses I drove by, two of them looked worth touring. It would have been three, except the third had high tension lines running over the back yard. Too bad, I liked it the best of all from the outside.

I'm kind of sorry that I spent the whole day in the truck. It was a little over 70 degrees today. Cloudy, but really nice for the end of November.

That little adventure took most of the day. The dog went with me. I think she almost died of boredom. I finished up by doing some grocery shopping. The freezer was getting bare.

I ran across something interesting while plying the web in the evening. It's a pretty good explanation of how someone as ill suited as Obama got elected president:


http://www.wftv.com/slideshow/mostpopular/21509794/detail.html

Days 42/43

I'm upset. Yesterday I wrote a long post describing my experiences on Black Friday. Somehow it didn't get posted. I'll recreate it in this entry.

I got up at 4 AM to travel 20 miles to a store named HEB Plus. This store is sort of like a Super Target except it comes from the opposite direction. HEB Plus is a grocery store that added variety merchandise. Super Target is a variety store that added groceries. The quest was for an 8 GB iPod for $99. That's $50 less than the fair trade price that Apple forces their retailers to adhere to. The store had many Black Friday deals including some really low prices on TV's, video games, and big ticket toys.

The store opened at 5 AM. I got there about 4:45. There were at least 1,000 people in line. I'm not exaggerating. The line was set up in a serpentine fashion, like many amusement parks. That made it easy to estimate the length by counting 100 people, observing how much space they took, and then applying it to the rest of the line. In the 20 minutes or so that it took me to get into the store, several hundred more people showed up. A store employee told me that there were 100 people in line at 1 AM. The temperature that night got down to 38 degrees.

I knew as soon as I got to the store that there was no way that I was going to get an iPod. I decided to stay and watch the show. I didn't see any stampede. Then again, I couldn't see the first people in line entering the building. The store is big, probably at least 75,000 square feet. What surprised me was that it didn't seem crowded even though there were probably 1,500 people in the store.

I decided to do a little grocery shopping. The store did a good job at the checkout stations. Even with the Black Friday rush I didn't have to wait long.

I left the store about a little before 6 AM. The question was what to do with the rest of the day. I stopped at Home Depot to buy sandpaper for one of my projects and then went home. I was there by 6:30, an hour and a half before I usually get up. My life has changed from the many years when I got up at 6:15 every morning.

Having accomplished all that I set out to do before I usually get out of bed I faced a choice. I could do something useful, or I could read and watch TV. It was relatively cold outside (low 50's), so I decided to read and watch football games. I actually didn't watch the games. I cared less about the teams that were playing. Instead I surfed the web while the TV was on.

As a consolation prize for not getting the iPod, I ordered a couple of $3.99 DVD's from a website that was having a Black Friday sale. That's a much more civilized way of doing things. Unfortunately I also tried to order a present for one of our friends. That site had sold out of the item that I wanted to buy.



Today (Day 43) started out with a pancake breakfast put on by the park every other week. I try to attend whenever possible. The rest of the day was a routine maintenance day. I cleaned the trailer, watered the plants, and drained the tanks. I also completed one of my projects and did a little more work on the other.

I decided not to leave the park. My experience yesterday caused me to just want to sit around. Besides, it was sunny and warm today. Why spend the day in stores?

Day 41

I celebrated Thanksgiving in the traditional way. I watched football for most of the day. Actually, I read newspaper ads and surfed the web while the games played on the TV. I really didn't have any interest in any of the teams that were playing. I had to run the dog (40 retrieves) after breakfast. She would have driven me crazy if I hadn't.

Ellen called while the Green Bay Detroit game was on. Green Bay was killing Detroit. Of course the nephews are rooting for Detroit. I could hear them making disappointed noises in the background whenever Detroit did something stupid. I called Hooch and Mom to wish them a happy Thanksgiving.

I've just about convinced myself that I'm going to get up tomorrow morning and try to snap up one of those Black Friday bargains. One of the local stores is selling 8GB nanos for $99. That's $50 off list. The catch is that I'll have to get up at 4 AM to get there. I'll probably set the alarm and decide tomorrow when it goes off.

For the record Thanksgiving dinner was frozen spring rolls, brown and serve rolls, and toaster strudel. The best part was the eggnog with Jack Daniels.

Day 40

OK, so I got back to looking for houses. I checked out the houses that the wife had sent me. I eliminated one based on the online description. I'm not ready to deal with a house where every wall in every room has been painted robin's egg blue. One of the other prospects has a pink master bedroom (both walls and carpet). There wasn't a picture of the bathroom, but I wonder. I left it on the list.

I've expanded my list of drive by candidates in the Wimberly area to the point that it justifies another trip up there. I'll probably go on Monday or Tuesday.

I went back to Home Depot and exchanged the wrong part that I bought yesterday. Then I did some work on the two projects I have going - the sewer hose holder and adding gas openers to a couple of compartment doors. I quit before either was finished because I just didn't feel like working on them anymore.

I won one game at bingo. That meant I broke even for the night. The turnout was light, only 10 people like last week. Hopefully it will increase after Thanksgiving.

Day 39

Today was almost too boring to write about. I did the wash. I avoided doing anything else useful by spend hours reading another volume of the "projects for your RV" books.

I saw an idea I liked, so I went over to Home Depot to get materials. I should learn. When I go to a hardware store to get parts that are stored in bins, I usually just reach in to the bin and grab one. I don't look at it to see if it is the right part. Often it turns out I get the wrong thing because someone took out another part and put it back in the wrong bin. This happened today. You think I'd learn.

I started the new project, but I could only finish it up to the point where I needed the other part.

I ended the day watching a grade Z movie, Death Race. I watched it because it had Jason Stratham in it. This wasn't one of his more entertaining movies. What do you expect from a movie based on a video game?

I'm feeling guilty so tomorrow I'll probably go back to looking at houses. The wife sent me a bunch of prospects.

Day 38

I decided to do some debugging today. Last spring I rewired the TV cables in the trailer. I added a secondary amplifier to the outside antenna and used an RF switch to route the cable TV input to the bedroom. I did it in Tucson where we didn't have any broadcast channels available. So there was no way for me to test that part of the new configuration.

When we left last month I discovered that the antenna signal worked in the living room, but not in the bedroom (at least I thought it did - see below). I didn't take time to debug it until today. I ended up taking most of the install apart, switch, amplifier, and cables. Everything worked when hooked up to the living room TV. Finally I unbolted the bedroom TV from the wall and hooked it up in the living room. It still didn't work. This took two hours because the cables and components aren't readily accessible.

Finally it dawned on me. The TV has an "auto program" feature that searches for channels on the antenna input. The stupid thing only recognizes digital channels that have been discovered via this operation. If you simply choose a channel, and the channel is digital, the TV doesn't see it. This is an idiotic design. Once the TV programmed itself everything worked fine. A lot of needless effort.

I did accomplish one thing. I think that I've figured out a way to get the satellite TV signal to the bedroom TV. You won't be able to change the channel, but you would be able to view whatever has been selected. I'll probably check it out tomorrow. After what I'd done, I was sick of fooling with the TV stuff today.

I also finished another of those little improvement projects and got a good start on another. I'll need to got to Home Depot before I can finish it.

I finished the day by taking the dog to do some retrieves and making a trip to the grocery store.

Day 37

Today was another day dedicated to house hunting. I went through the latest list of possibles from the realtor. After eliminating some based on the online information I had a list of 7 candidates that were in the general area. I drove to all 7. I eliminated 6 based on looking at them. As before there are just some things that don't show up in online descriptions like crummy lot, noisy streets, no place for an RV, etc. One house is a "maybe". Nice lot, but at the end of a 3 mile dead end road.

After that it was time to take the dog swimming. She hasn't had much exercise in the last couple of days and she's getting a little too hyper. The river was about 18" higher than I've ever seen it. It also had a much faster current than I've ever seen. It was muddy, not the crystal clear that I am used to. Lucy didn't mind. She did water retrieves for over an hour. She would have gone longer, but I was afraid that she might get too tired to buck the current.

After swimming I took her on a little hike. I ran across an info center that I didn't know existed. There were two bored volunteers there and I talked to them for about half an hour. Then I took Lucy on a nature trail that started at the center. After about a quarter mile of winding through the trees we came to a rather large clearing. She was getting frisky and there was no one around. So I let her off lead and did some land retrieves. After about a dozen (not many for her), she decided that that was enough. We walked back to the truck. As soon as she got in the truck, she laid down and went to sleep.

When we got home she ate dinner and then went to sleep. She's been that way all evening. That's a lot different than the last two evenings when she's been jumping up to go out anytime I made a move.

Day 36

The dog and I went to the craft fair in Gruene this morning. It's a small town next to New Braunfels. They don't have any industry there except tourists. There are a few tourist oriented shops (antiques, trinkets, t-shirts, etc.). There are also a couple of large (seating over 200) restaurant/bar establishments. They do a big business in the summer catering to the people going down the river in inner tubes. In the winter they hold once a month craft fairs.

At 10 AM there weren't a lot of people there. By noon, the place was packed. There are a couple of large public parking lots (think large grocery store) plus a big field for overflow parking. All of them were full and people were driving around looking for places to park.

I scored a few things. One was a Mother's day present. It's a pendant made from a butterfly's wing. The thing is cool. One side is iridescent blue. The other is non-descript brown. I thought they were from two different insects. However, the vendor showed me a complete butterfly. The tops of the wings are blue and the bottoms brown. So with the wings closed the butterfly blends into the background. With the wings open it puts on a colorful display.

I also got a couple of t-shirts. One has one of my favorite sayings on it: "I'm retired, go around me". I got one for the wife at her request that has a picture of an armadillo with the label "Texas speedbump". Finally, I got an antique bar mirror advertising Lone Star beer. Lone Star is one of my favorite things about Texas.

After that I went up to Cabella's to use a discount coupon that I got in the mail. I couldn't find anything that I wanted. Damn. It's bad when you can't find anything to buy at Cabella's.

This evening was the park's Thanksgiving potluck. As with all such occasions there was more food than people could eat. I was probably the youngest attendee there. There was lots of talk about children, grand children, and how Obama is driving the country to ruin.

Day 35

It started raining hard last night and didn't stop until about 1:00 this afternoon. It was raining hard enough last night to cause the satellite TV to fail (rain attenuates the signal). There's standing water all over the park. The north side of our trailer spot is a large puddle 4 or 5 inches deep.

Needless to say I didn't go out this morning. In fact, I didn't go out much in the afternoon either. Only a short walk through the nature area adjacent to the park to give the dog a little exercise. She needed it, she was driving me crazy.

I looked over a few houses that the realtor sent us. Three or four looked like they were worth a drive by. One of the others provided some comic relief. It was an OK house, but it was priced $50K over the assessed value. I bet someone is underwater on the house, probably because they took out a second. I wrote it off on the basis that it would be too much of a hassle trying to do a deal with someone who is so clueless that they are asking $50K over assessed value in this market.

That's about all that occurred that is of interest today (as long as you use a loose criteria for "of interest"). I spent most of the rest of the day cataloging some music that I ripped from CD's that I bought.

Day 34

Today was a different kind of dog day. I went with 4 of the men from the park to the local animal shelter. It's a large facility with three or so acres of fenced area for exercising the dogs. We each took a dog from the kennels for a walk around the facility. The idea is to give the dog a little exercise and some human contact. After about 15 minutes, you put that dog back and get another.

The shelter is a no kill shelter. It was nice to see that they didn't really have a lot of dogs. There were maybe 20 at most. They also have a separate area for cats. They had three black kittens about 10 weeks old. One was exceptionally friendly when I played with it. Wife and I used to have a black cat. It died about 15 years ago. I've always wanted another one. Unfortunately a call to the wife produced a negative response. I'll wait until she comes back and then take her to the shelter.

The dog walking took up the morning (who says retirement isn't exciting?). I spent the afternoon completing some of the projects that I bought supplies for yesterday. I've got one left to finish and another to start. That's probably a good thing since it started raining hard about 8:00 tonight. The rain knocked out the satellite TV. It's supposed to rain all day tomorrow. I'll need something to do.

Day 33

Today was back to the grindstone. I spent half the day looking for houses online. I found one solid possibility and half a dozen "maybes". I also sent an e-mail to the realtor asking some questions about some properties that we saw last week. This stuff gets old after awhile. It doesn't help any that I'm not sure I want to buy a house. It seems like the cost and recurring expenses of buying a house outweigh the benefits. At the same time there isn't likely to be a better time to buy a house than now.

In the afternoon I took the dog to do some retrieves. She drove me nuts all morning when I was on the computer. She kept pushing her head under my elbow when I was trying to type. I ran her until she was tired, walked her for awhile, and then ran her some more. When we got back, she decided it was time to sleep.

The wife called. Apparently my nephew broke his arm in a wrestling practice. She told him that when he gets to be our age it was going to haunt him. Of course he doesn't believe her.

I did some grocery shopping. Then I stopped at Home Depot and got some supplies for some of those projects I read about yesterday. I started on one. I would have finished it today except the damn drill battery ran down. It's on the charger so I'll finish the project tomorrow.

Today was bingo night. I didn't win anything. In fact, I only came close once. The turnout was very slim. Tomorrow is a dog walking day. Of course I signed up.

Day 32

Did the laundry today. The nearest public laundromat is over 20 miles away (literally). That means that it's important to choose a time to do the laundry that isn't when everyone else in the park wants to do laundry. Monday morning isn't it. For some reason it seems that half the park considers Monday morning the optimal time to do laundry. Apparently Tuesday morning isn't as desirable.

It costs $5 - $6 to do our weekly laundry at the park. I went to an appliance store the other day and happened to pass the washer and dryer department. It seems that a good quality washer/dryer pair costs about $1500. A top line one will run $2000. That's 5 to 6.5 years of doing the wash at a laundromat before you break even. It's actually longer when you count the cost of the water and electricity. When we buy a house I may not bother to get a washer and dryer.

I spent most of the rest of the day making work for myself. When we bought the trailer I purchased a series of books entitled "10 Minute tech". They are collections of small projects that you can do to improve living in a trailer. I went through one of the books and picked out several to do. The next step is to go to Home Depot and buy some supplies.

A box of our mail came today. A lot of financial statements, some magazines, and half a dozen bills. I paid the bills and ignored the financial statements. There was a letter from the IRS. It's always a thrill to get one of those. It turns out that when we settled the last disagreement with them we miscalculated the interest due by $2. They sent us a four page letter telling us that we'll receive a bill later for the $2. Hell, it cost the $2 to send this letter. Besides, they're lending the banks money right now at 0%. Why should we have to pay them any interest?

I've been ignoring the house search for the last couple of days. I'll have to start that up again tomorrow.

Day 31

A month on the road. I'm beginning to settle into the routine.

I set out this morning to get the oil changed in the truck. I bought the oil and filter separately so that I'm sure that they are the right ones. I was going to stop at the local oil change place, but Monday morning seems to be when everyone wants their oil changed. The place was packed.

So I went to New Braunfels, 25 miles away. I was planning on going there anyway to get some trailer supplies. The first place I stopped at there was only going to give me $4 off the full price. I said no thanks and went to another. They were going to give me $10 off (still a rippoff) so I said yes. After they did it, they told me they had to charge an extra $2 because the truck was 4wd. WTF. Their cost, plus the cost of the supplies, is as much as I would pay at the dealer.

As long as I was there I hit the pawn shops looking for CD's and a ratchet wrench. The shops had few tools and fewer CD's. I did pick up one CD - country drinking songs. I also picked up some barbecue at Rudy's - one of the area's best barbecue places.

I finished up the day exercising the dog. The city has a park with two spring fed rivers running through it. The water is warm year round. Lucy loves swimming in the river. She did over 30 water retrieves followed by 20 land retrieves. She wanted to do more, but I thought that that was enough. It seemed so later because when we got home she just sacked out on the couch for the rest of the day.

The truck turned 25,000 miles on the way home. We've owned the truck for 20 months, so that averages out to about 40 miles for every day we've owned it. That's on a vehicle that has spent several of those months unused.

Day 30

The first day sans wifey. So of course I went to the gun show. Gun shows in Texas are a family event. Guys bring their wives and kids. Many of the times the wife/kids are carrying firearms for sale or that have been purchased. That's what I like to see - full participation. There weren't as many buyers there as last year. I don't know if that was because I was there on Sunday morning or if it was because of the economy.

Firearm prices seemed to be down a little bit from last year. Ammunition was available, but very expensive. I'd say at least twice the price it was before Obamanation. I actually found a firearm that I was interested in purchasing. It's a Colt pistol that went out of production 10 or 15 years ago. Unfortunately the seller thought it was worth a lot more than I did. (I looked on the internet later , the price was not out of line - just more than I want to pay). It would have been a pain to buy anyway. The seller would have had to ship the pistol to Oregon.

After the show I stopped to do a little grocery shopping and then went home. That meant traveling Hwy 281. It's a four lane divided highway with stoplights. This is incredibly stupid. I was stuck in a traffic jam caused by the first northbound stoplight for about half an hour (it was almost a mile long). Apparently there's a whole controversy going on on how to fix this. The simplest approach would be to replace the lights with overpasses. Of course the local government wants to do something different. They want to replace it with 20 (that's right, 20) lanes of asphalt and make it a toll road. Somebody's brother in law must own the local asphalt plant.

Day 29

For once I'm going to post on the same day rather than the next day.

Nothing much happened. I took Ellen to the airport. She'll be in Michigan with her father and sister for three weeks. At least we didn't have to get up early, the plane left at noon.

I was planning on going to the gun show afterward. Unfortunately I brought the dog with us. This seemed like a good idea at the time because the weather in Bulverde was cloudy and cool. However, the weather 25 miles south in San Antonio was sunny and warm. Too warm to leave the dog locked up in the truck while I went to the show. So back home it was.

I stopped at NAPA on the way home and got an oil filter and some oil for the truck. I'll stop by a place on Monday to see if they will install it for me at a reasonable cost. The NAPA store had a store cat that was a dead ringer for our first cat, a tabby. It lays in a box on the counter and collects petting from everyone who makes a purchase. I also stopped at the library and bought some used paperbacks at their book sale. Fifty cents apiece isn't a bad price.

The rest of the day was spent reading, drinking beer, and napping in the sun.

Day 28

Today was a doggy day. We drove about 10 miles to the Guadalupe River State Park. It's a large park with several camping and picnic areas. There are also hiking and biking trails. We were interested in the picnic area that borders the Guadalupe river. The parking lot is about 110 yards from the river and 50 feet above it. The picnic area covers the sloping area down from the parking lot to the river. There's a small beach on the park side of the river. The other side of the river is a sheer rock cliff that's about 60 or 70 feet high. The cliff has benches and shallow caves eroded in it by the river.

Dogs aren't allowed off leash in the park. That's OK because there is a semi-paved path that goes downstream along the river. After 200 or 300 yards the path goes past the park boundary. It ends about 100 yards after that. That's where the dog gets to swim.

The river is about 6 feet deep at this point. There's some current, but not much. It's only about 30 yards across. By the time we got to the end of the path Lucy was beside herself. She hadn't been swimming since we left Oregon. I didn't count the number of retrieves that she did. It had to be over 30 though. By the time we were finished my shoes were covered in mud and I had mud splashed on me up to my waist. She was one excited dog. Ellen got some great shots of Lucy doing retrieves with the video camera. She also took some video of the park.

After the swimming we ate lunch and spent a few hours reading by the river. It's a peaceful, quiet place. There aren't many people there on a Friday. We ended with a short hike. I was disappointed that we didn't see any armadillos. Last year there were lots of them. It could be that the foliage hid them. Last year everything was burnt and brown. This year the rain has turned everything green and leafy.

After the park we felt a little guilty so we went to look at a couple of houses. Neither were as desirable as the ones we have already seen.

When we got home it was time to give the dog a bath. Even with all the swimming she was greasy and smelled a little doggy. The trailer has an outside shower. We put her under it and gave her the works - both shampoo and creme rinse. The result was a soft, good smelling doggy.

Day 27

Another day of looking at houses. First we spent hours looking at houses online that the realtor had sent us. Then we put 175 miles on the truck looking at houses in the Dripping Springs and Wimberly areas. We saw a couple of "maybes" in Dripping Springs. Not much progress after driving over 60 miles. Things looked up when we got to Wimberly. We found a neighborhood that had three houses in it that were ones we'd like to look at. One has the option to buy the adjacent lot, which would make it a 10 acre property.

I'd still like to but that 4,000 sq ft house we saw yesterday. I just can't bring myself to pay that much in property taxes every year.

Tomorrow is going to be a doggy day. We are both tired of looking at houses. We'll take her over to the state park so that she can swim in the Guadalupe river. Then she'll get a bath because she's smelling rather doggy. If we get a chance, we'll look at a couple of houses that are in that direction. I'd also like to get some oil and an oil filter for the truck. It's time to do an oil change.

Day 26

This was the first day we went out with the realtor. We visited 5 properties close to the RV park. All had homes that we liked. However we eliminated three for various reasons. The first was at the top of our price range and had a pool. I looked at the large wooden deck (in need of painting) and decided I'd had enough of deck maintenance in my life. The second was a nice house, but they had been raising horses on it for years. There was a nice barn, two corrals, an exercise ring, and a pasture. Leave that place for someone who can tolerate horses. The third was a house we wouldn't mind living in. Unfortunately, it's 6 miles to the nearest services of any kind and over 10 miles to the nearest grocery store.

Now for the good ones. The first was a house on 10 acres relatively close in. It has a small fish pond, a three pen dog run (with air conditioned dog kennel), a loafing shed (they used to raise alpacas), a bird coop, and excellent perimeter fencing. The house is not so good. Vinyl floors and vinyl counter tops. We figure it would take about $8K to replace the floors with wood. We'd also need to invest $1K or so in an automatic gate. There's also a little road noise even though the house is set back from the road. This house is probably a finalist, but only if they come down in price.

The other house was an amazing bargain. Four years old and 4,000 square feet with a separate partially finished guest house on 4 acres of land for $385K. It was a builder's house and everything in it is first class. We met the owners and talked with them for literally hours. He's 81 and looks to be in his early 60's. He's selling the house because he's about to become the oldest kidney transplant patient in history. The process requires him to go to the San Antonio medical center daily for 1 to 2 years. The drive is about 40 miles each way, fighting traffic both ways. So he's selling the house and moving close to the center. They even want to sell some of the beautiful furniture with the house. I felt like buying it on the spot except for two things. The unfenced lot is long and narrow. For pratical purposes most of the land might as well not exist. The killer though is the property tax. It's over $7K. Damn.

Of course Wednesday is bingo night. We came out good again. Ellen won twice and I won once. Our two session winnings are now up to a whopping $7.

Day 25

Another day looking at possible houses. Several hours online followed by more time traveling to possibilities. One of the popular neighborhood features in Texas is the locked entrance gate. Some of the houses we wanted to see were in such neighborhoods. It's frustrating to drive miles to a house site only to find that we can't enter the neighborhood to view the house.

We did manage to see several on our list. One was a definate "we want to tour this house". The house is at the top of our price range and has a pool. However, the location and the lot are just what we are looking for. We'll just have to find out how much it would cost to fill in the pool.

There were a couple of other houses that made the "maybe" list. The rest were eliminated for one reason or another.

We now have enough "we need to look at" properties to contact the real estate agent that we used last year. Assuming that she is interested, we'll have her set up some tours. In the meantime there are some other properties up towards Austin that we will look at tomorrow.

Day 24

One of the nice things about being retired is that it isn't necessary to go do something if you're not feeling well. I woke up this morning with a headache and a general lousy feeling. So instead of working on getting a house, I did nothing. This beats the old days working when if it were physically possible I'd go to work no matter how I felt. This is definitely a better way.

That means there isn't much to describe about the day. I spent the morning on the couch. That wasn't working all that well so I went into the bedroom and spent most of the afternoon asleep.

Day 23

It rained hard the whole day. It did in Salem, too. The difference was that the temperature here was 74 degrees and the temperature in Salem was 48.

Today was to be a repeat of yesterday except that we would be going farther afield, all the way to Austin. Unfortunately there was a huge traffic jam on a highway near Austin the prevented us from seeing a couple of places that we really wanted to see. The other places we saw ranged from "no way" to "maybe, but I'm not really thrilled".

There was a silver lining. We ended up near Buda. There's a Cabela's there.

Day 22

On the trail of a new domicile. We spent the day driving around the area between here and New Braunfels (about 25 miles to the northeast). We drove to 14 different properties and covered about 150 miles. The idea was to get an idea of where they actually were and their surroundings. We've found that this gives info that you just can't get online. For example, one house that looked good online turned out to have high tension transmission lines running over the property. Somehow the realtor had neglected to take a picture of them when making up the online property description.

Other places were just too far away from civilization. Because we are pretty unfamiliar with the area we don't know this until we drive to a place. A property might have other problems like too much noise, a badly positioned house, or a lot that doesn't appeal to us. We saw a couple that had access problems. One was at the end of a mile long dirt road. Another was a half mile in on a one lane road with no turnouts. The road serviced several properties. Still another had a "driveway" that we would never be able to get a trailer down. None of these things can be determined by looking at the online description.

All of this driving serves another purpose. It allows us to zero in on properties that we actually might be interested enough in to spend a realtor's time to view the property.

The good news is that we found three or four "we want to look at these" properties. We also found some "maybe if nothing else works out" candidates. Not a bad day's work.

Tomorrow we'll do it again. This time we'll go a little closer to Austin. Might stop at Cabela's if we get a chance.

Saw an advertisement today for a property that looked really nice. A newer four bedroom house on 5 acres. It even had a pool (a negative for us). The price was $319K. We could probably get it for less. The catch is that the property taxes were over $9K. Unbelievable.

It's interesting to note that we've been gone from Oregon for three weeks now. It seems like it's been a lot longer than that.

Days 20 & 21

Spent hours the last two days online looking for houses. I thought I retired so I didn't have to spend hours setting in front of a computer. Prices are definitely lower than they were last year. I'd say about 10% in the price range that we are looking in. There's a good selection of properties available, too. That's the good news. The bad news is the property taxes. They are outrageous. Taxes on the $350K home can range up to $9K in some of the areas that we are looking. They are at least $5,500 anywhere that we look. It's frustrating to find what looks like the perfect property at an affordable price and then have to rule it out because the taxes are too high. I guess that's the downside of not having an income tax.

It looks like the property tax issue will prevent us from living where we want to. We'll have to live farther from a gun club than I would like. It could be as much as 50 to 60 miles from the club in Austin and 40 miles from the National Shooting Center. We are making up a list of properties to go drive by Saturday.

We also got the dog X-rayed on Thursday. This is the last step before breeding her. The vet said that he thought that her hips looked OK. Not perfect, but acceptable. Now we have to mail in the images and see what the certification people said. The timing for this was good. Lucy had been suffering from diarrhea for the last couple of days. She had a bout of it while at the vet. The vet said that it looked like something that should be treated. Now she's getting two pills a day. She won't eat them unless they are wrapped in brisket.

We are getting back into life at the trailer park. On Thursday I went to breakfast with a group of men from the park. I knew about half of them from last year. It's something that they do once a month. The conversation revolves around where are you from, where are you going, adventures in towing, and what kinds of things make living on the road easier. Saturday we'll be going to the pancake breakfast that is held every other Saturday at the park.

Day 20

Today we moved to a park in Bulverde, about 20 miles north of San Antonio. We stayed here for about 3 months last year in the space next to the one we are in now. This park is not exactly where we wanted to stay, but it isn't terrible. One of the up sides is that we know several people here. We spent part of the afternoon talking to other snow birds that we met last year. Most of them had arrived in the last few days and are planning to stay for the whole winter. I'm going out to breakfast with some of them tomorrow.

One of the things that I like about this park is the weekly Bingo nights. Tonight was one of those nights. I had my best Bingo night ever. There were 12 games played and I won three of them. My big take for the evening was $3.

Setting up here took a little longer than usual because we are going to be here for at least 5 weeks and maybe longer. I connected the sewer and put out the string lights. These are lights on a timer that add a bit of bling to the RV site at night. We had a bit of trouble with the satellite antenna. The site has a lot of trees and we had to be careful about where the antenna was placed. We tried three different places before we got a workable place.

There was some more searching online for places to live. Hopefully we'll be going out looking at places tomorrow. We also need to look after the dog. She's a little sick right now. We also need to get her hips X-rayed so that she will qualify for breeding.

Day 19

We drove up to Austin today to look at a couple of RV parks and some homes. The whole thing was a 300 mile trip. We learned that we don't want to live east of I35. The land is flat and boring. Much of it is treeless.

We visited two RV parks. One was out in the middle of nowhere and not much more than a parking lot. The other was nice. It was treed and quiet. Unfortunately it's a little expensive and a long way from where we would like to look for homes. We called the park in San Marcos that we stayed at last year. They are booked. Then we called the park in Bulverde that we also stayed in last year. They may have a spot tomorrow.

The homes we looked at were OK but nothing special. None of them were especially close to services. One was at least 10 miles from anything. Another was on 6 acres of land, but they placed the house right on a busy road. Go figure.

We saw something unusual on the way to Austin. It was a funeral procession with at least 100 cars in it. I'm not exaggerating. The procession stretched for almost a mile. I don't know who died, but he must have had a lot of friends. Fortunately we were driving in the opposite direction.

Day 18

Now that the shoot is over I should be able to keep up with an entry every day. Today is the first day that it seems we are really on the road. We no longer have any place we have to be.

The day was devoted to administration. We washed clothes. I drained the gray water tank and added some water to the water tank. We washed the dog (she smelled at 10 feet). I reenrolled for the health care. I hadn't got a notice because Intel had screwed up our address change. Luckily Ellen got a notice or I might have let it lapse.

The dental plan sucks. It costs me $100/mo. They quit paying benefits on me this year because I exceeded their max payment. They paid less than $1,200, so why have the insurance? I didn't re up for it. I'm going to need to work on getting some follow on insurance. COBRA runs out in March.

We also spent some time looking online at real estate. Unfortunately the country near Austin isn't as nice as that near San Antonio. The property taxes up there are enormous. In some cases over $8,000 for a property that lists for $300,000.

While I was working outside today a man, his wife, and son came by to look at Lucy. They also wanted to warn us that the camper who had been next to us had told them that his dog had Parvo. Luckily Lucy has been vaccinated. They had seen Lucy at the shoot. The son (Sean McLelland) is a member of the US Olympic team. He shoots International skeet. That's a difficult game. He's a very nice young man. We talked for quite awhile about his experiences and the travel he'll make next year competing around the world. They were very interested in buying a Pudelpointer.

Finally, we tried to decide on where we are going. We couldn't make a decision based on online info so we are going to stay here another day. We'll drive up to Austin and take a look at a couple of places tomorrow. This is a worthwhile activity because we'll be parked there for a month while Ellen goes back to Michigan. There's also a chance that we will go to Houston next week. We won't know until we talk to a friend on Thursday.

Days 16 & 17

The weather for the last two days of the tournament was much improved over the first two days. Sunny, high 70's, and little or no wind. I shot OK (not well) both days. Saturday evening was an Octoberfest party sponsered by a German shotgun manufacturer. They had bratwurst, sauerkraut, potato salad, and roast pork. They also had a lot of German beer to wash it down with. That was the second night of free food.

Sunday afternoon was a little depressing. We said goodbye to all of our friends who had made the trip to shoot the nationals. We won't be seeing any of them for 6 or 7 months. We were sure glad that they came. It's a lot nicer to shoot with people you know.

Some words about the dog. She was a hit. People were coming up to us all shoot and telling us how good she looked. On Sunday were were walking down vendor's row and it seemed everyone was giving her a dog treat. I've lost track of how many times we've answered the question "What kind of dog is that?". There were a lot of people who were suffering from dog withdrawal. Of course she was lapping up all the attention she was getting. By Friday she was pretty tired. She crawled up on my lap while we were sitting at the pavilion and went to sleep. People were coming by to look at the 57 lb lap dog.