November 27, 2023 - November 30, 2023 - Social Sunday, Spectrum Equipment, Paint Purchase, Dishwasher Cleaning, Painted Walls

Sunday:

The Sunday Social Dinner and Dance in the park was from 5:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. It included free drinks, a meal, and live music. It was a good deal for $10.00 per person. At first, I thought the hours were a little early but as it turned out I liked the time frame. We had a great time. I was told the band members are guys who live in the park. They were quite good and played a lot of Beatles music. Here is a picture of the band which I took over Kelly and Celina's heads. LOL

The following is a picture of us that was on the park Facebook page the next day. The lady in black in front of me is Sharon. A really nice lady from Ohio who lost her husband last year. We got her to get up and dance. She said she hadn't danced in years and thoroughly enjoyed herself. The lady behind me is Donna and she is a hoot. She and her husband Richard (he was gone for the picture) moved here from the State of Washington last year. Their place is behind Celina's place.

It was a dancing crowd. They played music we all liked from the Sixties. The guy in the black shirt and white shorts in the following pictures is our neighbor across the street, Doug. A really nice guy. He and his wife, Judy, live here full-time. I don't know the lady he is dancing with. His wife only danced slow dances.

Monday:

The TV equipment from Spectrum acted up all day Sunday so we took it back Monday morning and exchanged it. From the Spectrum store we headed to Sherwin-Williams to buy paint for the living and dining room accent walls. I was concerned about getting coverage over the dark "Raspberry" color. I asked about putting on a primer coat first but the salesman said primer then a color would be two coats. If I just give it two coats of color it will cover fine. 

After Sherwin-Williams we headed to Publix to grocery shop. We needed a lot of staples and items for the long stay like flour, peanut butter, salad dressing, pasta, etc. We ended up with a full cart. I didn't even look at the final bill. LOL

After we got home and put all the food away, I decided to clean the dishwasher and its filter. The dishwasher is an older Maytag model. The bottom is white plastic and it had a stain trail down from the door to the center drain. After seeing how the air-conditioning filter looked, I figured the dishwasher filter would be bad as well. Unfortunately, this old model Maytag did not have an easily removable filter like ours at home. I dove into the project by taking apart the center wand assembly. Once I got the top pieces off I found a round screen filter inside. In the picture below it is the round piece just outside the "X" shaped piece. I took all of the pieces apart to clean them. In the picture you can see the nasty brown trail from the door to the drain. Kelly tackled it as well as the rest of the bottom with Bartender's Helper and it came out like new.

Surprisingly the filter wasn't bad but all the working pieces in the center were coated with a mushy lime, or some other deposit. Here is a picture of the piece that covers the filter before I cleaned it up. 

I thought I took a picture of the center assembly as I took it apart, but I didn't. I guess I thought about it but got busy and forgot. Luckily, I was able to get all the center parts back together correctly, or so I thought. We ran a load of dishes and there was a strong electrical smell. Upon opening the dishwasher, I found that there was no water coming in. I tried several different settings but never got any water.

I obviously didn't get something put back together correctly! I took it all apart. The top piece in the picture above is the only thing that could be put in differently. It could be installed in a couple of different orientations based on the bolt patterns. I couldn't tell the proper orientation from on top and of course I didn't mark it before I pulled it off. I rotated it 180 degrees and reinstalled it. After making this change it worked perfectly. Yippee!!!!  I don't have to buy a new dishwasher.

Tuesday:

All of the rooms, except the bathrooms, have ceiling fans. We leave most of the fans on all the time to help with the humidity and air-conditioning. Each fan has two chains, one for the light and one for the fan speed. The chains are all the same length and I pull the wrong chain every time! Too solve this issue I bought a length of chain and made all of the chains for the lights longer than the chains for the fan speed. Now I hope I can remember - long chain - light; short chain - fan.

In almost fifty years of owning a home in Perryville I never put outside Christmas lights up. We found some Christmas lights in the shed and put a string of green and red lights out on the porch. Here is a picture. They don't show up very well in the picture because right across the street is a very bright LED streetlight. I ordered a timer because I will forget to go out and unplug them each night.

Wednesday:

Every Wednesday morning I go to the doctor to get my allergy shot. I asked for the earliest appointment which is 10:30 a.m. For me 10:30 a.m. is the middle of the day. Anyway, even though I have the first appointment it is usually 11:00 a.m. before they call me in and by the time I see the doctor, get the shot, and wait for a reaction, it is close to noon before I get out. I hope they start working.

After getting home from the doctor I went to work prepping the accent walls for the new paint color. All the old picture holes were filled in and everything was taped. The China cabinet is quite heavy but Kelly was able to help me get it moved out of the way. I then began painting. Here I am starting the process.

We are quite happy with the result. The new color gives the area an entirely different feel. A much more "Florida" vibe. 

Kelly placed all the dishes and wine glasses that she brought down from home in the cabinet. It makes for a very handsome China Cabinet.

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Thursday:

Down here garage sales are Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. A huge garage sale was advertised in Largo so we headed down with Celina. When we got there it was a total bust. The guy is a junk dealer and that is all he had - junk. He needs a big dumpster. We then went by the Restore to check out desks but they don't open until 10:00 a.m. We didn't want to wait 45 minutes, so we headed home.

We had lunch and decided to head back to the Restore to look for a desk and chair. To our surprise we found a desk and chair that would work nicely for $35.00. We bought it. Before heading home we went to the Salvation Army Donation Center to give them all of the items which weren't picked up on the lawn yesterday. 

Once home did a little work on the desk and cleaned the chair. We then put it in the guest bedroom. Here is a picture. 

It is much nicer than a folding table and dining room chair. A good place to work on the blog!

I then used the green paint from the wall to pain over the raspberry leaves on the living room floor vase that came with the house. We think it looks a lot better. Tomorrow, when it is totally dry, we will put the flowers in it and tie them up with a dowel I bought for that purpose.

Things in the house are really shaping up. Tomorrow is an off day. We are heading down to Sarasota to scope out a place for the members of our Carri-Yals RV club, who winter in Florida, to meet for a winter luncheon in January.  We have gotten together for years in the middle of the state so this year will be different. I'll report on what we find.

    

November 19, 2023 - November 25, 2023 - Trip Down to Florida and Setting Up the House and Settling In

Trip down:

The trip down to Florida this year was much different since we were not pulling a fifth wheel trailer, as we did for the last 10 plus years. Since we weren't hauling we let Apple Maps lay out our route. It took us to places in Tennessee and Alabama we didn't know existed. It was a zig-zag route which ended up being 50 miles shorter but took the same amount of time. It was an interesting route but we won't go back that way. 

Sunday:

We arrived at the house about 2:30 p.m. on Sunday and wasted no time unloading the contents of the truck onto the lanai. (They don’t have porches in Florida, they have lanais. LOL) Celina invited us over for supper, which was great because we had no food in the house.

Monday:

Monday was spent getting the Spectrum internet hooked up, buying groceries, unpacking totes, and deciding where we wanted things to go. I brought down a rolling toolbox and found space for it in the shed and loaded it with the tools I brought. I also unloaded and glued together a shelf I made by cutting down a wider folding shelf we weren't using at home. We are using it as a spot to hold our phones and haring aides when they are charging, as well as a place for small items like sunglasses. We had been using the kitchen table, which created a constant mess. Here is a picture. We may paint it in the near future the same color as the accent wall. I like the natural wood color but I've always been partial to the natural wood look.

Tuesday:

Tuesday was spent buying a TV, organizing the shed, getting the golf cart operational, and attending a Golden Nuggets meeting here in the park. The Nuggets are a group in the park which puts on potluck suppers, dances, etc. throughout the year.  At the Nuggets meeting I mentioned that I wanted to try shuffleboard and a lady invited to come Saturday morning at 10 a.m. and she would show me the basics.

Wednesday:

Wednesday morning I met with my new Florida GP for the immediate purpose of getting my allergy shots. I brought the serum down from my allergist in Perryville. Dr. Iyunni was quite busy and, as a new patient, I had lots of paperwork to complete and they needed time to put it all into the computer. The visit ended up being a two-hour affair. I was pleased with the time Dr. Iyunni spent with me. I then headed to Walmart to pick up a few things we needed.  I hate the local Walmart for a lot of reasons, but it is handy since it is next door to our park.

Thursday:

Thursday morning I switched out a number of light bulbs to LED to get more light. The lamps and the ceiling lights had fluorescent bulbs, which I hate.  

The new LEDs are brighter and more efficient. Thursday I also started individually charging the six golf cart batteries. It took a full day to disulfate each battery, so I got the process started. I also put all the empty totes in the back shed to get them out of the way until we head home in March. 

Then, on a whim, I next decided to check the AC filter. I was absolutely shocked at what I found. It was totally black. I never saw anything like it. Here are a couple of pictures. We thought maybe it was a charcoal filter, but it wasn’t, it was just a cheap Home Depot filter. Crazy! I think it was a lot of mold, which you fight all the time down here because of all the humidity.

The inside of the grill needed a good cleaning as well.

I also checked the master bath toilet because Kelly said it was running at times. When I pulled off the tank lid it was easy to see the problem. The flapper was crusted in calcium deposits and sometimes would not set down right to make a seal. Here is a picture. I never saw anything like that before either. The flapper color was black.

We had Thanksgiving Dinner at Celina’s. She and Kelly split the food preparation chores. Since there were just the three of us, we had a roasted chicken for the main course instead of a big turkey. It turned out great and nobody went away hungry. After dinner Celina taught us how to play Mexican Train dominoes. After dominoes we had our pumpkin pie for dessert. A nice evening.

Friday:

Early Friday morning, as in 6:00 a.m., I went to Walmart and got a new AC filter and a new toilet flapper. I learned that early in the morning is the best time to go to Walmart here because it is not crowed. People get up later here. Many businesses do not open until 10:00 a.m. I came home and installed the filter and the flapper both of which have to help with the utility bills.

The hall closet is very dark. There is no electric in there so no light. I installed a battery-operated ceiling motion light I bought. Before I could install the light I had to hunt up a piece of plywood to cover a whole in the ceiling. We have no idea why it was cut out. The light works great, here is a picture. 

Once Kelly was up and moving around we started moving furniture and hanging pictures we brought down. We rearranged the living room furniture and hung the Sandhill Crane wall hangings above the couch. My friend Ron bought these for his Florida condo in 2006. We bought the contents of his condo from his estate ten years ago and had the cranes hanging in our basement at home. They are back in Florida where they belong. Here is a picture.

On the lanai there was a wreath of colorful plastic flowers hanging over the water heater access door. It was ugly. We took it down and hung up two items Kelly purchased the other day. Here is a picture

Also on the lanai we hung a three-dimensional hanging of parrots in a tree, which we also got from the contents of Ron's condo. It really livens up the area.

On each side of the shed door on the lanai there was a little shelf with plastic flower baskets on them. We took the flowers down and replaced them with bottles of silver and gold tequila and margarita glasses. It gives the lanai a little party atmosphere we think. Here is a picture.

On Friday all of the golf cart batteries were finally individually charged. I headed up the street and down the next but barely made it back to our place. In fact, I had to hook up the charger to get it all the way up beside the house. I won’t be going anywhere in the cart until new batteries are purchased. LOL

While moving furniture Friday Kelly vacuumed with the Hoover vacuum cleaner that come with the place. She turned it on and OMG it smelled like twenty-year-old dirty socks. It was disgusting. I took it outside and opened it up, removed the bag, and began cleaning it out. The area behind the bag was caked with white stuff. I don’t know if it was baking soda or what. After I cleaned it all out and sprayed the guts and hose with Febreze it smelled fine. There is supposed to be a filter on the side. It was missing. In opening the filter holder the plastic tabs broke off. I superglued the pieces back on then used JB Weld to reinforce the area. I ordered a new filter and bag for it.

Here in the park people put things they don’t want out near the sidewalk. Sometimes they notify everyone via the Facebook page but often not. People walking by can take the stuff if they want it. Wednesday morning I put a plastic lawn chair, the plastic flower wreath, and the little flower baskets out. Within an hour all of the items were gone. It beats having to drive to a donation center. Here is a picture of the next pile of items we took off the walls and will put out on the street. You can see the prior owner loved fake flowers and little shelves, we do not.

Saturday:

Saturday morning I had my first experience playing shuffleboard. The courts were packed. We played three games. Folks play on Saturday and Tuesday mornings. It costs $.50 to play. If you get the high score, you get your $.50 back. LOL. The rest of the money goes into a pot for a party at the end of the season.

While waiting for the TV to be delivered we put a couple of strings of Christmas lights out on the porch. I also decided to clean the shower doors. They had lots of water spots from the hard water here. I took them off and scrubbed them with vinegar then sprayed them with Rain-X window cleaner. It is supposed to shed water. Time will tell. They look better for now. I also installed a new Oxygenics shower head. It is a big improvement.

My friend Gary asked what the size of our place was. I didn't know so I went out and measured it. It is 43 feet by 23 feet, which comes out to 989 square feet. It also has an 8 x 10 shed attached which provides space for the washer and dryer, storage, and a small work bench. There is an addition metal shed out back that is 5 x 8 foot. That is where I am storing the totes, my bike, etc.

About 4:00 p.m. Best Buy delivered Kelly's new TV. She wanted a large one. This one is actually smaller than the one she had her mind set on. I'm glad she settled for this "smaller" one. Here is a picture of it in the living room before we unpacked it.

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It was a two-hour ordeal to get it unpacked and set up. We switched to Spectrum TV and we could not get it to work without a call to tech support. The guy was very helpful and got everything going. Clearly the instructions were not complete. Here is a picture of it up and running. I need to work on hiding the modem, router, and all the cables. Kelly agrees it is plenty large.

Sunday:

Here is a picture of the raspberry accent wall in the living room as it was when we moved in. This wall is going to be painted a medium green next week, along with the wall behind the China cabinet in the dining room, which you can see on the left edge of the picture.

This is a current picture with the love seat there instead of the couch. Yesterday Kelly purchased the two prints from a man in Clearwater, about fifteen miles away. They are framed St. Petersburg "Mainsail Art Festival" prints from past years. He delivered them and we quickly hung them up to enjoy, even though they are on the Rasbery wall.

Yesterday the plastic handle broke off the sprayer in the kitchen sink. I HATE plastic.

I went to Walmart this morning after church and purchased a new one and installed it. Of course it leaked until I made a modification using parts from the old one.

Three plumbing projects and we've only been here a week. LOL.

Our first Golden Nuggets event is this evening - a Sunday Social consisting of a light dinner and a dance with live music. It should be worth the $10.00 admission charge. I will report.

November 11, 2023 - November 16, 2023 - Early Thanksgiving - Backup Camera Saga - Module - Christmas - Audio Books

Early Thanksgiving Dinner:

On November 11th Alexa and Aaron came down from St. Louis to share an early Thanksgiving dinner before we leave for Florida. Kelly outdid herself once again with a great turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, and buns. We were too stuffed to attack the pumpkin pie Alexa brought for dessert.

Dead Battery and Transmission Module:

The backup camera, monitor, and second wiring harness were returned. I went out to install them Tuesday and found that Homer's battery was completely dead. What? A little investigation while the battery was on the charger revealed that the dome light had been on. The doors had been closed and I hadn't gone near the dome light switch on the ceiling, so this befuddled me. Upon further investigation I found that sometimes the dome light would go off when the door was closed and sometimes it would not. I have no idea what that is about all of a sudden. I never had this issue before. I sprayed both buttons with contact cleaner and watched to make sure the light went off each time. From now on I will have to watch every time I close the door. 

Upon opening the hood to hook the charger to the battery I found the old transmission module laying on the top of the air cleaner on the top of the engine. I was shocked that it did not fall off on the fifty-mile, winding, two-lane trip home from the transmission shop several weeks ago. It is sizeable piece of equipment, about six inches by six inches by an inch and half thick. It could have done some damage. Here is a picture.

The good news is that this is absolute proof they replaced it with a new one.

Backup Monitor and Camera:

I plugged the monitor and camera into the wiring harness and hooked up 12-volt power. The monitor worked. Yippee!!! I then spent an hour fishing a wire from the top of the dash, where the monitor sits, to the bottom of the dash where the wiring harness connects to the cable going back to the camera. I got the wiring harness through the dash. Before continuing with the installation, I checked that the monitor was still operating. IT WASN'T! NOTHING! The monitor would not come on no matter what I did. I could again hear a low clicking noise coming from the monitor. That doesn't seem right. Why it has worked for the RV Cam guys every time and won't work for me I have no idea. I believe something is wrong with the monitor, but I don't want to buy a new one from them because I cannot return it if it is not the problem. I gave up on this project for this season and put Homer in storage. In the spring I will buy a new system. The current monitor is ten years old. The camera is much older than that and only in black and white.

Christmas:

Alexa is coming to Florida for Christmas this year, as well as Erin and the two grandsons from California. We will have a house full for a week. We are not used to having a toddler around so we will have to work on making the place "toddler proof" before he arrives. (If that is possible.) It will be great fun for these old people.

The Trip South:

While driving on long trips we like to listen to audio books which we download to our phones. In Homer we take a Bluetooth Bose speaker and set it on the engine doghouse and Bluetooth connect it to our phones. It works great. The Toyota truck has an upgraded Pioneer stereo system that has Bluetooth capability so we can communicate with our phones. Kelly and I tried multiple times to pair our phones to this stereo but it wouldn't recognize our phones to pair them. Encountering this technical glitch, we planned on using the "Homer method" (using our Bose Bluetooth speaker sitting on the counsel connected to our phones). In talking about this with my daughter, Annie, she informed me that if the stereo has an "Auxiliary" plug we can just buy a cable to connect the auxiliary plug on the stereo to the phone charging port. I had no idea you could do this. When cell phones had headphone jacks I had a cable to connect the auxiliary port on the stereo to the headphones port to broadcast from the phone through the stereo speakers. I immediately went to Walmart to pick up the cable we needed. They had 10,000 plugs and the only one out of stock was the one I needed. I got online and ordered one from Amazon. It arrived yesterday and upon plugging it in, the stereo will broadcast our audio books. YIPPEE! All we have to do Saturday morning is load a backpack with a change of clothes and our medicine and we are ready to roll with a one night stop over somewhere! 

October 31, 2023 - November 10, 2023 - Getting Ready to Head South - Backup Camera Issue Continues

Getting Ready to Head South:

Well, now that the house windows have been installed, we began to think about the trip south. Part of that process was getting doctor appointments out of the way. Monday I had an eye doctor appointment, Tuesday my annual visit with my GP, and Wednesday a visit with the Allergist for an allergy shot. I should be good to go. I found a doctor near our park in Florida who will give me the allergy shots each week. I'll use her as my Florida GP as well. Kelly made all of her doctor appointments and blood work as well. 

With all the stuff we want to take to Florida and leave down there, we have to take the truck down. We decided to start packing the truck today (November 10th) so that we could figure out what was going to fit and what had to be left behind for a future trip. We picked today to load up the truck because we had nice weather, Alexa and Aaron are coming down tomorrow for the weekend and an early Thanksgiving (so no work then), and we didn't want to run into any snags with last minute packing. Before the packing process started I filled the gas tank and checked the oil so we are ready for the road.

Almost everything we want to take to Florida fit in the truck. Some wall hangings will have to go down on another trip. With all the stuff in the back seat that couldn't get wet, there was little room for our clothes. We crammed a bunch into totes in the bed of the truck. There will be a lot of ironing to do once we unload. I know we have an iron in Florida but we may have to hunt up an ironing board. We should be able to find one at a thrift store because nobody irons anymore.

The back seat is stacked to the ceiling with items which cannot get wet or which we need to access during the trip. There is a small space on the blue cooler for the overnight bag we will use on the way down. Here are a couple of pictures. 

Interestingly the back seats left in their normal positions provided more room for larger items than flipping them. I thought this was odd. In my Ram truck, flipping the seats up created a lot of room. Not so with the Toyota.

The bed is tarped, bungeed, and cargo netted. Almost the entire bed floor is covered with totes.  By using the totes nothing packed in the bed should be harmed by rain or other foul weather. To be safe I Duck taped all the lids on the totes. The reason the pile sticks up so high is that we are taking down two rod iron rockers for the front porch.

I am happy to have this project completed and the truck in the garage until we leave. 

One last traveling detail was to connect my phone by bluetooth to the truck sound system so that we could listen to audio books on our way down. The truck has an updated, sophisticated Pioneer sound system but it would not pair with my phone. We tried Kelly's phone and it would not pair either. Our phones showed they were connected but the readout said that the connection failed. We will take our Bose speaker and Bluetooth to it. We find listing to audio books makes the trip go faster. 

Homer's Backup Camera, Monitor, and Wiring Harness:

When the new wiring harness arrived the other day I hooked everything up. Still nothing worked. I called RV Cams and was online with a tech for almost an hour. He had me get an alternative 12-volt power source so that the system got its power from that rather than the motorhome, in case that was an issue. Still nothing worked. I boxed up the monitor, camera, and new wiring harness and sent it back to them once again for testing. They tested it and found that the new wiring harness was bad. They are replacing it under warranty, but I still have to pay shipping for the third or fourth time. If, upon getting everything back, it doesn't work, I'm going to give up on it until spring when I will buy a whole new system.

While waiting on the camera issue to get resolved I took the two chassis batteries out and put them on a smart charger in the garage for the winter. It is a chore to get them out of battery compartment. The compartment was not designed for the taller 6-volt batteries I use. After testing the monitor and camera when I get it back next week, I will put Homer in storage and pull out the chassis battery and put it on a charger in the garage as well. Lots left to do this week before we leave.