Day 119

Today is the worst day in quite a long time.  We took Lucy to the vet today to have her leg looked at.  She has bone cancer.  We're going to take her to a doggy oncologist, but of course there's a limited amount that they can do.  The vet immediately talked about amputation.  I'm not going to do that.  She's a hunting dog.  It would kill her to only have three legs.

We did a couple of other things today, but they were only normal errands.  We did get some stuff for Lola's party tomorrow.

I'm going to start writing down what Lucy does each day.  My memory sucks and in awhile this is all I'll have of her.

After the vet today we went to Circle C.  The temp was in the 70's.  I didn't let Lucy run retrieves as we went to the creek.  That bugged her a little, but she still did some running around.  When we got to the creek she was pumped to do water retrieves.  I let her do 5 to 10.  She was beginning to get a little fatigued, so I called a stop.  Of course she wanted to keep going.  She couldn't understand why I didn't throw retrieves as we walked back.  It took awhile to convince her it wasn't going to happen.

On the way back was walked slow so she could explore all of the area.  At one place we stopped while she rooted around in the grass for 10 minutes or so after mice.  She did a beautiful point.  We stopped again later for her to search some more grass.  She kept trying to root around the base of a prickly pear.  We finally had to call her off.

Of course she didn't want to stop, but she was clearly tired by the time we got back to the car.

Later on I took her to get the mail.  The pain meds are clearly working.  She was walking without favoring the leg.  She's a little stoned though.  At one point she tried to sneek up on a blowing weed.

I'm really going to miss her.  She's the best dog in the world.

Day 118

I'm not sure how it happened, but we spent most of the day surfing.  I blame the dog.  She is really lame and I don't think we should even walk with her.

About three o'clock I'd had enough.  So we went to the post office and the grocery store.  I actually needed milk, so that was the excuse.

The post office had the fleece shirt that I got from Duck's Unlimited for joining.  It looks really nice, but did it stink.  I'm not sure what Chinese chemicals it was dipped in.  It went into the wash immediately - by itself.

I looked up some estate sales for tomorrow. 

And that's all that happened today.

Day 117

Lucy was really funny.  She woke me up at 4 this morning demanding that she come up on the bed.  She jumped up on the bed and wouldn't get off.  We gave up and let her stay.  Of course the cats took off, but they came back later.

It was a lot warmer today.  Unfortunately Lucy came up lame again today.  She's really limping around.  I don't know what she did because yesterday she just laid around.  That meant we wouldn't be going to the part.

We went to the Post Office and then to Target.  We needed three things there and they had them all.  I used a credit card.  I like to live dangerously.

There was really nothing else we needed to do.  We went to Best Buy anyway and just looked around.

After we got home I decided to work on the train model.  I did gluing today.  I put together about 25% of the model.  It's a nice model, but parts of it are challenging.

I hope the dog is better tomorrow.

Day 116

It was cold, just like they said it was going to be.  Some freezing rain fell during the night.  It was so slick that it was slick to walk on the gravel to take the garbage out.  Of course we didn't go anywhere today.  Also of course the idiots in Austin filled the streets with wrecks.

One not so nice thing.  I left my phone unplugged last night and it was dead this morning.  I think the tower went down last night and the phone ran out of battery calling the mothership.  I put it on the charger and it's all right tonight.

I decided to build up the latest train model today.  I spent hours painting parts.  I got almost all of the parts painted.  I'm going to do some assembly before painting the rest.

In the afternoon we noticed that there were two stray cats on the back porch.  One was a gray mutt cat.  The other was a nice looking Siamese.  Who'd a thought.

Nothing else happened except that the wash got done.  Whoopie.

Day 115

Today was an errand day.  We picked up the mail.  There was a whole small box of it.  We spent a little time at the Post Office sorting out the junk and throwing it away.  The rest had to wait until we got home.

I have been getting furry for the last couple of weeks.  So the next stop was to the haircut place.  Ellen went to Best Buy.  The lady gave me a pretty good haircut.

Next stop was Spec's.  I'd forgotten to get any whiskey in Las Vegas.  So we got a bottle at Spec's.  I was going to get a bottle of Jack Daniels, but one of the sales guys got me to by another brand which he said was better.  I'm a sucker for that kind of thing.

Then it was over to Wally World for drugs.  I looked for a paper towel holder there, but they only had one design and it sucked.

Then we stopped at Academy to buy a water bottle for Lola's birthday.  We got her this cool bottle with a built in filter.

The next stop was Centex.  We talked to Michael.  His feet hurt as much as ours at Shot.  The transfer only cost $7.50.

Then it was time for lunch.  We went to the Italian place next to Tomlinson's.  The food and service was great.  Lucy was really disappointed that we hadn't stopped at Tomlinson's, so we went over there and bought her a treat.  She's not spoiled.

Last stop was HEB.  We didn't go to Circle C because it was getting cold and windy.

When we got home we spent a lot of time going through the mail.  Ellen decided to go to Salem for the meeting.  Apparently the business owner is going to try to play the "poor female" card.

Day 114

It's great to be home.  We woke up at 8 this morning, but surfed in bed until almost 11.  Lucy was cute.  She got up twice and stood up for an invite onto the bed.  We didn't invite her because of the cats.  On the third time she just jumped up on the bed.  We let her.

We ate breakfast and then went out to clean up the trailer.  The cleanup took less time and effort than I thought.  We were done in about an hour.  Then it was back to surfing.

Today was a nice warm day, almost 80.  It's supposed to get cold later in the week, so we decided to go to Circle C.  The dog was very happy.  We parked at the fields and walked around to the creek.  There were a lot of people at the park.  Bicyclists, parents with their kids and dogs.  When we got to the creek there were people there with 4 dogs.

Lucy jumped in, but the water was really cold.  She did a fair number of retrieves, but then she started getting out at the other side.  She does that when she's tired.  This time I think she was cold.  She did retrieves all the way back.  We stopped to watch some soccer, but after a little bit she started barking to do more retrieves.  So I took her over and threw at lest 15 or 20 more.  Finally she was tired.

We went to Fireman's for a really late (4 o'clock) lunch.  We went there so we could set outside with Lucy.  She got some potato chips and some meat from a sandwich.  Afterwards we went to the pet store and got her a treat.

In the evening we gave the dog a bath.  That way she can be on the bed.

Day 113

We're home.  It was another 450 mile, 8 hour, drive.  About an hour into the drive we were passed by a truck that honked at us and gestured at us.  We were a mile from an exit, so I pulled off.  The cable on the satellite dish had come loose and was trailing behind us.  It's toast.  I'm just glad it wasn't something more serious.  With no wind the mileage was good.  Above 12 all the time, and on one leg above 13.

The only other thing of note happened as we were travelling on I10 through the hill country.  We saw three wrecked trucks in the median.  The first had a big hole punched in it's trailer.  The second was a flatbed with a small trailer on it.  The trailer had slid half off and been dragged.  It was destroyed.  The third looked like the cab had hit a wall.  Ellen finally figured it out.  It was very icy Friday morning.  We bet they crashed then.

It took quite awhile when we got home to park the trailer.  I set up wrong.  We had to move a lot of rocks to give the truck room.  Once we were parked it took over 1.5 hours to move all of the stuff out of the trailer.  Everything is out now, but it still needs to be cleaned.

We put the bedding in the washer.  Before we left I noticed that the washer was leaking a little.  It still is.  That's a damn expensive washer to be broken after only two years.

Tomorrow we'll clean up the trailer and close up the slides.  On Monday we'll be able to get the mail.

Day 112

Another driving day.  This one was 440 miles.  The first half of the trip was a pain in the ass.  We were bucking a really strong headwind.  It was a direct headwind.  We got such bad mileage (8.9 and 9.6) that we had to make an extra fuel stop.  Luckily the wind died down for the second half of the trip.  I got around 13 for that part.

That was absolutely the only thing of interest today.  The drive through El Paso was uneventful.  I only had to slow down a little for about half a mile.  I was surprised since we were going through a little after 1:00.

It was good that we delayed ad day in Tucson.  It snowed last night in Austin and traffic there today was a real mess.

Tomorrow is another 400+ mile day.  I haven't decided yet if I'll stop in Fredericksburg.

Day 111

I decided that we should do something interesting and unique to Tucson today.  So we went to the Pima Air Museum.  We also took the boneyard tour.  We had a good time looking at the old planes - SR-71, A10, B29, and a lot of other cool planes.

I was disappointed to see so many A10's at the boneyard.  They were bringing more in, also.  It's a great plane.  Of coiurse it was cool to watch them fly over from the airbase.

They had a B17G there.  They had a B17 pilot there who had flown 28 missions in Europe.  He was 91 years old.  I would have said he was in his 70's.  He gave a really good talk.  Afterwards I got to ask him a few questions about the plane and their operations.  He had written a book.  We bought a copy and had him sign it.

We were gone for at least 7 hours.  When we got home we took the dog over to the park.  She did a whole lot of retrieves.  There was a little fuzzy dog there.  It was hilarious to watch it chasing Lucy around while she was doing retrieves.

Day 110

It was a travel day, so nothing much happened.  We got up at 7 and were on the road by 8.  We got great  gas mileage the entire trip.  On the leg from Kingman to Phoenix we got 13.8.  Wow.

We had good luck at the gas stations.  There wasn't anyone fueling at Kingman, so that was easy.  At Phoenix there were two cars at the pumps as we were waiting at the light.  They both left before the light turned green.  Perfect.

There were a couple of slow spots going through Phoenix, but nothing serious.

The weather report for Austin on Friday keeps getting worse.  So we'll be staying here for tomorrow.

Day 109

We started out today by doing the wash.  I was going to go shooting, but I forgot to call Sandy and Duane.  Also I would have had to rent a cart and that would have made for an expensive round.

I was having fun surfing by the time the wash was done, so we did that for awhile.  Ellen fixed some really good sandwiches for lunch and then we took the dog to the lake.  She was really avid to go.  When we got there she did 25 water retrieves and 10 land retrieves.  She may have done more water retrieves, I sort of lost count.

While we were there we watched a black helicopter messing around at the other side of the lake.  It would hover above the water and then fly around in a big circle.  It did that several times.  I got out the binoculars and saw it was military.  It finally flew off.

We took the dog home and surfed some more.  I also took the tripod down and put it away.

For dinner we went to the hamburger joint.  Then we stopped at the grocery and filled up the truck.  After we got home I backed up the truck so that it would be easy to hook up tomorrow.  Then we put a bunch of stuff in the trailer away.  We should be able to get a good start tomorrow.

The weather report says that the weather in Austin on Friday is going to suck.  Like possible sleet and snow.  So we're going to delay a day in Tucson.  The weather is supposed to clear up by Saturday.

Day 108

We went to Bass Pro Shops today.  It was quite entertaining.  We spent about 2 hours walking around looking at stuff, watching fish, and looking at mounts.  We bought a little fishing stuff and I got a pair of shoes. 

There was a casino attached to the store.  We went there and ate at a hamburger.  We remembered the place from before, and it was as good as we remembered.

After that we played some machines.  They had both the cows and Iron Man.  They had a whole lot of cow games.  We played several.  They all sucked.  We ran through five dollars on each without them doing anything interesting at all.  So we walked out and we won't be back.

When we got home we took Lucy to the lake.  She did 25 water retrieves and then 10 land retrieves.  She would have done more, but I didn't want her to over do it.

When we got back we just read, surfed, and watched TV for the rest of the evening.

Day 107

We went to Clark county today with Duane and Sandy from Salem.  The place is clear north of Las Vegas.  It took about an hour to get there.  It must have been close to 50 miles away.

The place is huge.  I saw a large pistol range, rifle range, skeet, and trap.  There might have been more that I didn't see. There was also a big RV area with covered spaces.  We didn't have time to see anything but the sporting clays range. 

The place is built on a flat, sloping area.  There's absolutely no terrain at all.  The stands are permanent.  Each is made of metal and has three shooting positions.  Some are small and some have the positions spaced a few feet apart.  They are covered an pretty nice.

The machines are anchored to concrete slabs.  They are not movable without a heavy all terrain fork lift.  Fixed machines and stands are a recipe for long term boredom.

There are two 15 station courses.  We shot the hard one.  It wasn't super hard, but there were some challenging targets.  Overall the place was nice, but I don't see driving there again. 

They asked us to dinner after shooting.  So we drove back and put the stuff away.  They live at the lake, so we drove there and had dinner and watched football.  The dinner was great, barbequed salmon.  The Seahawks won.  All in all it was a successful day.

Day 106

We didn't sleep in much today.  The dog wouldn't let us.  She had to go out before 8.  I figured after that we might as well get up.

We had some breakfast and then took the dog to Lake Mead.  She was ecstatic.  She did 25 water retrieves before I called it quits.  She would have done more, but I didn't want her to over do it.  I had her do a couple of land retrieves and he was clearly favoring her leg.  So we dried her the rest of the way with a towel.

We stopped at the grocery store for a few things and went home for lunch.  After lunch we tied up the dog (she was disappointed) and went to a casino.  It was in east Las Vegas and one that we had never been to.  It was pretty nice.  It had a lot of the games that we like and a couple of new ones that we liked, too.  One of the nicest things was that we won almost $50.  That's the most we've ever won in a casino.  We won $30 on Iron Man.

We went to dinner at the casino buffet.  It was only $10 and had really good food.  They even had red jello.  After that we were pretty gambled out, so we left to rescue the dog.

On the way home I remembered that we needed cat food and a highlighter for Ellen.  So we stopped a a pet store we saw.  It had live animals, lots of pet accessories, lots of dog food, and no canned cat food.  So we drove about half a mile to a Petco.  Next door was a 99 cent store where Ellen got the highlighter.

When we got home I put away all of the stuff from the show.  I have four bags - swag, magazines, catalogs, and stuff for the club.

Day 105

I set the alarm for 15 minutes earlier this morning.  We took the dog for her morning walk and then we went to the show.  We ate breakfast in the truck and I drove a little over the speed limit.  We averaged over 60 mph from the time we left the park until the time we pulled into the parking lot.

Dave wasn't available when we got there, so we went over to Fiocchi to talk to Dee and Jackie.  We got some info about the trials and tribulations of manufacturing and selling ammunition.  We also talked to some guys who partner with Fiocchi to market a flying airplane that you shoot at.  I'd like to get them to the Boy Scout shoot.

Then we met up with Dave.  We spent the day taking him around to the vendors that we'd come up with.  There were credit card places, POS places, and some people who produced stuff that would be good for the pro shop. 

We met up with Dorie and went to lunch.  We had a good lunch, but it was a little expensive.  After that we went back and covered a couple of final places. 

By 3:00 the vendors were beginning to pack up.  Dave wanted to get to the airport in plenty of time, so we left.  It was good that we did.  Traffic was heavier then than it was an hour later yesterday.  We got him there in plenty of time though.

We stopped for a root beer float on the way home and then took the dog for her evening walk.  Afterwards we just vegetated.  We are both tired and a little sore.

It will be a doggy day tomorrow.  At least for part of the day.

Day 104

We had some time this morning to look at some stuff that we wanted to look at.  I wanted to look at some tactical stuff.  That lasted about half an hour before Ellen's bitching reached an intolerable level and we left.

We went to LongRange and talked to them.  They told us that they used different buttons than the Promatic version and had had no problems with them.  Their POS interface is in the design stage.  We pointed them to the top POS vender that we had talked to.

At noon we went to see the shooting range.  It was very impressive.  It's quiet outside and the inside sound is very comfortable, too.  Air quality is first rate.  It's better than Red's.

When we got back we met up with Dave.  We had a late lunch with him and then went to the POS vendor.  He liked the system a lot.  We also found out that LongRange had already gone over and talked to them.  Apparently the interfacing won't be difficult.

Tomorrow we'll take Dave to the other POS vendor and the two credit card vendors.  If time allows I'll take him to the accessories dealer we found.

Day 103

It helps to know where you are going.  We took a more direct route to the parking lot today.  We also took a more direct route to the convention center.  That saved us a lot of time and effort.

Today was a lot less strenuous than yesterday.  We went Dorie in the morning and went around with her to the vendors that we had found.  We also stopped at a couple of other places that she needed to go to.  All that added up to a lot more standing and talking than walking.

We ate lunch in a place in the Venetian.  Every restaurant had a 45 min or longer wait.  We walked all over the place and finally gave up and waited at one of them.  When we got in we paid about as much as we did yesterday and the food was great.  No more floor food.

We did get to go to a couple of vendors that were just for us.  We concentrated on picking up shopping bags with logos that will piss off liberals.  However, most of the day was with Dorie.  All in all I think that all but two of the meetings were successful.  That's a pretty good average.

I have blisters on both little toes.  I drained them last night and again tonight.  They really hurt tonight.  I hope it will be better tomorrow.

Day 102

This was the first day of the show.  We got there at a little after 9, which is when I wanted to.  I decided to park at Treasure Island because it's easier.  That went well except that Las Vegas Blvd had construction that cut it down to 1 lane.  So we waited in a traffic jam that we could have easily avoided had we known about it.  Then Treasure Island had sidewalk construction that prevented us fro crossing the street.  We had to go back in, go back up stairs, walk across a skybridge, go down, walk half a block to another skybridge, cross it, go back down again, walk back another half block, go across another sky bridge, and finally into the Palazzio.  Then we walked through the Palazzio and Venetian to the show.  It took at least half an hour and we were tired by the time we got there.

The show was it's normal huge self.  We walked 6.25 miles today going through it.  We didn't go in a structured manner.  Instead we walked around looking at all of the places that Dave and Dorie were interested in.  That wasn't as efficient as it could be as we ended up backtracking several times.

By the time we got hungry for a late lunch we were too tired to walk away from the show to eat.  So we had some pretty crappy Chinese food at the show.  It cost $38 for two noodle and chicken lunches with Cokes.  We learned our lesson.  Tomorrow we'll pace ourselves and go upstairs to eat.  It may not be cheaper, but it will be better food.

We managed to see all of the places that we wanted to and left about 4:15.  Traffic was light.  That was good because Lucy was sure glad to see us.  We took her for a walk at the vacant lot even thought it was getting pretty dark.  Then we went to dinner at a hamburger joint that we'd been thinking of going to for years.  It was pretty good.  While we were there we used the show app to find some more places that we will want to go to.

A word about the app.  I wish it worked.  The notes function doesn't work.  Neither does the mapping function.  We ended up using paper maps because trying to view the maps on a small screen wasn't workable.  The thing has a lot of good features.  They just need to be refined.

Day 101

I needed this day to rest up some.  We got up early.  It's easy to do when you're really on time from two time zones ahead.  We kind of had an easy morning.  We couldn't wash the clothes because there was a problem with the water at the laundry. 

We took the dog over to the vacant lot and walked around while she explored the area.  I just wanted her to go at her own speed.  She found a couple of bugger holes that she was really interested in.  She stuck her nose in one and every time she breathed dust would come out from around her nose. 

I wanted to go to Camping World to get a new spare tire cover.  There's a nice casino near it, so we planned to go there.  We'd been there before and liked it.

I got the cover and a couple of things at Camping world.  Then we went to the casino.  We had fun playing cows (lost $10) and Ironman (won $8.25).  So for 2 bucks we had about an hour of fun.  We wanted to eat lunch at a restaurant there that we'd eaten out before.  Unfortunately it didn't open until 4.  So we ate at there deli.  It was very expensive and not very good.  Oh well.

When we got home Ellen did the wash.  I hurt my back hauling the clothes.  I hope it feels better tomorrow.

To end up the day we took the dog back over to the vacant lot.  She was favoring the leg quite a bit when we were done.  I hope she didn't over do it. 

It's odd to have it dark at 5:00.

Day 100

We made it to Las Vegas today.  The trip was uneventful.  We got really good mileage.  The leg from Phoenix to Kingman starts at 1200 feet, goes up to 3200, back down to 2200, then up to 4200.  Plus, we were bucking a headwind for the last 30 miles.  We still got 10 mpg.

I saw some new candidates for gas station pieces of shit of the year.  There was a man and woman in separate vehicles, but apparently traveling together.  They blocked both of the diesel pumps, went into the building, and must have found a nice place to fuck.  I had to wait, because we really needed the fuel.

It took 6 hours to get there.  When we got here we set up and then went to the grocery store.  We were going to get only a couple of things, but we ended up with about 8 bags of stuff.  Then we took the dog over to the vacant lot by the park.  I just let her run around on her own.  Her leg is working better, but she still favors it.

Ellen had a craving for tacos, so we ate dinner at Taco Bell.  Then it was just sit and watch TV.  I'm really tired.

Day 99

Part of yesterday's mileage mystery is solved.  I'd put the truck in 4wd to get out of the driveway.  I forgot to take it out.  I drove all yesterday in 4wd.  Oh well.

Today's mileage was much better.  No 4wd and no headwind.  Because we gained an hour right after leaving, we went through El Paso at about 9:30 on a Saturday morning.  For the most part traffic was light.

The only other notable thing was that I had some difficulty getting out of a gas station due to a piece of shit who couldn't drive his car.  I ended up going over a curb with the trailer.  It scuffed up one of the tires pretty bad.  I'm hoping it's not fatal to the tire.

I also lost the spare tire cover.  People told me they fly off.  I thought ours was OK since it survived the trip down.  I was wrong.

We cover a little over 500 miles today.  It took about 8 hours and 45 minutes.  I don't want to do that again for awhile.

Day 98

This was just a standard West Texas drive.  Long and boring.  The only thing of note was it was raining when we left.  That lasted less than 50 miles.

I did bat 1000 on gas station assholes.  At every fuel stop I had to wait for some jerk who was dicking around inside to come out before I could pull up to the pump.  At one place I finally drove off to another station.

The wind blew hard all day.  At first it was from the south, but after 100 miles it moved around to the west.  Of course gas mileage sucked.  The best was 9.9 and the worst was 8.  Hopefully we can get some miles behind us tomorrow before the wind starts up.

Tomorrow is really long.  I think it's 500 miles.

Day 97

I forgot to do an entry yesterday.  It was a pretty busy day.  We had a lot of stuff to move into the trailer.  We spent a couple of hours doing that.  Cabela's had an ad in the paper with a couple of things that I wanted, to we took off for there.  It seemed better than continuing in the rain.

We hung around Cabela's for a couple of hours.  I got a couple of the things that I wanted at pretty good prices.  Then we had a late lunch at Arby's and went home.

When we got back we did more moving.  After it got dark we thought we had everything moved.  Of course we didn't.  I just stacked the stuff left on the kitchen table.

The evening was spent with TV and internet.  I'm not looking forward to the drive.

Day 96

I did some backsliding today.  I didn't wake up until 9.  I think it was because I had a really hard time going to sleep last night.  I really didn't get to sleep before 1.

It rained last night and rained on and off all day.  It was mostly a misty Seattle type rain.

The dog is really stove up.  She won't put any weight on her foot at all.  I had to lift her onto the bed and into the car.  Ellen put some dog liniment on her and it seemed to help some.

We got a late start going to the post office and the grocery store.  We had to get a bunch of groceries.  We went to Randall's.  The card "saved" us $28.  They are basically forcing you to allow them to collect data about you.

When we got home I replaced the two bulbs in the porch light.  It's a lot brighter out there tonight.  Then I loaded up the truck and parked the car in the garage.  Ellen moved a little bit of stuff into the trailer.  Tomorrow will be busy.

I decided to start another model.  I found out that I have several in my train stuff.  I'm doing a bulk fuel storage facility.  It's complex, but doesn't seem like it's going to be too difficult.  I did a little construction and a little painting.

Day 95

It was another cold morning that started off with surfing in bed.  It's a fine way to spend an hour when you first wake up.

When I got up I read the paper.  Then I decided to finish the models.  I glued the roof on the station and the last three pieces of fencing to the the coal yard.  Both models look really nice.

We started the wash and then it was off to the post office to pick up the order I made just after Christmas.  Everything was just fine.  I'm going to order another case, the first one was nice.  We also went to Costco.  They had a sale on my pills, so I bought enough to last me until we're back in Salem.  I had a craving for a Costco dog, so that's what we ate.

Afterwards we went to Whole Paycheck.  It was weird.  When we went into Costco it was over fifty and sunny.  When we came out it was cloudy and 10 degrees colder.

We took the dog to Circle C.  She did a good job doing retrieves.  Unfortunately she's now lame.  Her back left foot is really sore.  I think that's the one she hurt when she was a pup.  We're going to have to keep a close eye on it.

Day 94

It was really cold this morning, 22 degrees at 9:00.  I'm glad that I put the heater in the well house. 

I did what I did yesterday.  I woke up at 7:40, but stayed in bed and surfed.  I blame the dog.

I read the paper, surfed, and not much else until noon.  Then I called Taurus.  They said they hadn't received anything, so when we went to the post office we also stopped by Centex.  They faxed the stuff while we were there.

It was late and we went to Golden Corral for lunch.  I thought it was pretty good, especially the discount.  I think Ellen had a good lunch too, but she didn't really want to admit it.

On the way home a big piece of lumber fell off a truck in front of us on the freeway.  I had no choice but to hit it.  We weren't able to get the info on the truck.  When I looked at it there was only a small scuff on the bumper.  I am concerned about what it might have done when it hit under the car.

When we got home I built models and Ellen baked dog cookies.  I got almost all of the work on the coal yard and the station both done.  The dog really likes the cookies.

I'm watching the BCS championship.  Those BCS guys really don't know how to rate a team.  The underdog team is running over the favorite.

Day 93

I actually got up at 8 today.  Pretty good for a old retired guy.  I did spend an hour in bed surfing before I finally did get up.

I didn't plan to do anything except read the Sunday paper and watch football today.  And that's all I did.

The dog was moving pretty slowly this morning.  There was no way I was going to have her do anything today.  She did perk up late in the afternoon, but I'm pretty sure she thought she was feeling better than she was.

Football was disappointing, the Packers lost.

I wrote a reply to Dave's reply to my comments on his plan.  It's kind of fun having an email thread.

Day 92

I've started getting up earlier in order to get on a more normal time schedule.  I was going to get out of bed by 8, but only made it by 9. 

We went over to Capital today.  It was warm, in the low 70's.  It was also very windy.  That made the targets really entertaining.  The dog had a little bit of fun.  There were a fair number of people there, so she had to be on a leash a significant part of the time.  I threw the bumper for her after we were finished.  She did another great time.  I had to tell her to quit.  She was obviously very tired, but she just didn't want to quit.

We ate lunch at the hamburger place.  The owner was there with a big neck brace on.  His left hand looks like it's paralyzed.  He seems happy though.

It was too nice a day to go home, so we decided to go to McBride's.  We went a different way this time.  Again we saw some cool looking stuff down town.  We definitely need to go there sans a dog.

We looked around McBride's for awhile.  We didn't by anything.

When we got home I sat down to watch football and write comments on a set of improvements that Fiedler sent Ellen.  He's got some good ideas, and some I'm not so sure about.  It was a pretty long email by the time I was through.

I'm watching the second football game now.

Day 91

I woke up at 8 today.  That seemed too early, so I turned over and went back to sleep.  I woke up again at 9.  I knew that if I didn't get up, it would be after 10 before I did get up.  I turned over and went back to sleep.  I woke up and got out of bed at 10:30.  I love being retired.

I finished the coal yard model.  I cut the plastic for the base.  Then I painted it.  We decided to go out while the paint dried.  We went to the post office and then Wally World.  Almost all of my socks have holes in them, so I needed more.  They were having a sale on Christmas decorations, so we picked up some for the tree at the development entrance next year.  I also got a Coca Cola bear.  It cost $2.50.  I would have bought it at a garage sale for that.

We stopped at Circle C on the way home.  Lucy did some retrieves and played with some doges that were there.  Then we walked around the park for awhile.  We didn't let her swim, but we did walk along the creek in areas we'd never been before.  At one spot there was a 4 year old kid an his parents.  They had a RC boat in the creek.  The kid was doing a really good job of driving it.

When we got back to the car I decided to throw the bumper some more.  Lucy was amazing.  She just kept doing retrieves.  We finally stopped her because she was just getting too tired.  Tonight she's definitely a tired doggie.

When we got home I didn't feel like working on the model any more.  So I turned on the TV.  The chair did it's work and I fell asleep.  I woke up for dinner and now I'm watching football.

Day 90

Three months out.

I'm really trying to get the coal yard model that I've been working on forever done.  I'm down to the last few pieces.  I've decided to mount all of the pieces on a piece of styrene.  I'll paint the styrene and later on put coal ballast on it.  Only I didn't have any styrene.  So after we went to the post office I went to Hobby Lobby to get some.  They no longer carry any of that sort of stuff.  So it was on to the hobby store on Slaughter.  They had some.

After that we went to HEB to do some very needed grocery shopping.  We also stopped at Circle C.  Lucy did another fine job of retrieving.  She's really beginning to like this like she did when she was younger.

When we got home I went out to look at the train stuff I have.  There's no way I can remember it all.  I found out that I have all the viaduct pieces I need to redo part of the layout like I want to.  I also found several models that I'd forgotten I had.  So I picked out a simple one and brought it back with me.

I finished most of the coal yard model and started to paint the new model, a rural station.  I got all of the painting done except for the windows.  Ellen is going to do that.  It will take almost no time to put it together.

I'm watching Alabama and Oklahoma right now.  It's the best college football game I've seen all year.

Day 89

Today is the first day of 2014 and one day short of 3 months since we left Salem.  We stayed up until 2:00 yesterday, so we slept in until a little after 10:00.  That sounds late, but it's really just 8 hours of sleep.  I have discovered since being retired that I need about 8 hours every night.  I think of all the years when I worked and got about 6.5 hours.  No wonder I was always sleepy and felt like shit.

I wrote Travis some more questions, then the weather was nice so I wanted to take the dog out.  Instead of driving to Circle C or Zilker I decided to walk around the neighborhood.  We walked around the development to the creek.  I wanted to see how they had dug it out.  Along the way we got to look at the other places in the neighborhood.

Some people have cows, one has horses.  There are some really expensive houses and some relatively inexpensive ones.  There's one we saw that they have on the market for 540K.  I wouldn't give them that much.

When we got home it was time to put away the Christmas stuff.  I took down the lights and Ellen took down the tree.  I got finished first, so I helped her with the tree.  Then she cleaned up with the vacuum while I swept all of the nuts off the front walk.  I think the tree has finally quit dropping them.

Then it was time for a late lunch and some TV.  I fell asleep during the movie.  At least I sort of slept.  The cats kept walking on my dick and the dog kept licking my face.

I woke up in time to see the end of the movie and then the second half of the Rose Bowl.  Stanford lost, yeah.