And a good morning to you too!
Thank you! You have no idea how wonderful this is, your new adventure that is...
You see, for me sitting here reading your blog, it feels like I am out camping and traveling myself. I am thoroughly enjoying the experience, so I sure hope you and Buddy are loving it too!
Love Lynn and Ralph
OH, P.S. - We were in Steveston for the Canada Day Salmon Festival doing our thing with the Richmond Amateur (HAM) radio group providing communications for the parade and afterwards. The sky's sprinkled early on and threatened a couple times but all in all it was a lovely day. They treat us volunteers well - even provide a free private lunch room area with a cold buffet and drinks (pop, coffee, water, tea and even beer and wine)
After the parade duties, where everyone is assigned an area to be, we go for lunch breaks. Then we all wander around in our yellow traffic vests. So Ralph and I go see the Trade Show building and all the other stuff we want to see - available if needed via the radio. So basically volunteering gets us to the Salmon Festival and we enjoy the activities while we are there. Sometimes we just need that nudge to get us out to enjoy ourselves.
One set of parents to a 5 year old yesterday were lost for a couple of hours - turned out that each one thought the other had the kid, only to discover when they ran into each other that they didn't. Meanwhile the kid was having fun eating ice cream and playing at the Community Police Station on the grounds.
The radio group shut down at 5p.m. (started at 8 a.m.) Ralph and I visited the lunch room again for afternoon coffee break. I was really enjoying the potatoe chips and dip - even checked to see what the dip was - gad, now I forget, something like Vegetable Ranch,, Something Ranch for sure - it was an orangy color. What was fasinating was that the chips were Salt and Vinegar - which was fantastic with the dip. yum yum for sure.
Can you tell that my life revolves around food sometimes, LOL.
Last weekend was the annual Amateur Radio 24 hour Field Day event/contest. The Richmond club was set up at Gary Point in Steveston. We park our van and stay overnight every year. Club members man the radio's all thru the night (11 a.m. Sat to 11 a.m. Sun actually) That was our first camping experience for this year. We want more... We really enjoyed being parked by the mouth of the river looking out at the gorgeous scenery. We have travelled 100's of miles in the past to camp in similiar locations and here we were in our own back yard camping for free.
I ended up staying up thru the night Sat. manning one of the radio's. Went back to the van at 6 Sunday morning. Ralph woke up and we decided to pack up and head home where I crawled into bed. It worked out good, cause we were having to move the van anyway to make room for the annual Bullhead kids fishing derby set up. And neither Ralph or I were much help in the dismantling take down anyway.
Once home, Ralph continued working at cleaning and painting the kitchen to prepare for the 'new to us' stove and fridge. You see, the weekend before we were at Ralph's daughters place here in Richmond. They had a garage sale and had invited us to bring stuff over to sell too. They had sold their house and had bought a condo. Anyway, at the end of the day when we were saying good bye - Trudy asks us if we could use the stove and fridge from the condo. She had already talked to the movers who were moving their stuff into the condo on Monday Jun 28th and they said they would deliver the stove and fridge to us.
I felt a sense of relief like a weight lifting from my heart space and I teared up. I told her that she had answered our prayers. Ralph has been watching Craigs list and has been on the look out for a used fridge for awhile now. Our "harvest gold" appliances were probably the original ones when this apartment building was built. The fridge has been filling up with water that needed to be bailed out every couple of days or there would be a puddle on the kitchen floor. It still kept food cold and frozen though.
So we (or I should say, Ralph) hauled the stove down to the van on Tues and over to the recycling at the city works yard on Wed morning. I called BC Hydro for their fridge recycling program - they had a pick up on Friday (wahoo Universe - perfect timing for us) They came up to the apartment with their fridge dolly and did all the work - and they send us a $30 rebate cheque in 6 - 8 weeks.
So Ralph scrubbed walls and floor. We bought a gallon of paint and he got the area where the stove and fridge go, painted while I was sleeping Sunday. When I woke up he asked me how I like the color - my silent answer in the moment was "we are going to have to repaint" I bit my tongue and lied, hoping the color would grow on me. Eventually the truth came out and I told him about my initial reaction. He then said - that he wouldn't have picked that color, when I choose it at the paint store. GRRR! Anyway, there the kitchen sits unfinished waiting for the color to grow on us.... LOL It is totally amazing how much stuff we had stored in the kitchen that is now sitting on the living room floor. We have both said out loud that not much of it is going to go back into the kitchen. Anyways, it is like Christmas around here seeing things that we had forgotten that we even had.
I am so grateful for Ralph, he has been working his buns off around here. BC Hydro replaced a transformer - notices were sent out that the power would be off in the other building from 9 - 5. That meant no hot water as the boilers have electric motors. The emergency lighting only works for 30 minutes so everyone was in complete darkness. Of course there were problems - job was finally finished and power back on at 3 a.m. Ralph was responsible for turning the electric motors back on for the boiler system and woke up at 4 and went over to check on things to find hydro crew was gone. And he has been doing lots of other jobs around here for the condo too!
That's us in a nutshell.
Thanks for the forum, I will probably copy this to my blogspot maybe.
OH again... I went to the Introductory Evening for Pat Hercus. (forwarded his email) I signed up for his workshop. It will be on Aug 21 and 22, two full long 10 - 12 hour days.
In the meantime I have been watching lots of EFT tap along video's at You Tube. Have you checked that out yet?
Then last night I for fun searched YOuTube for wood carving and found 5000+ video's teaching that. Ralph will be checking it out now that I have shown him. Ah, I think I will go search HAM radio. The club members keep bugging me to take the exam again (I failed when I did the course)
