August 6 - September 4, 2026: Anniversary Celebration; Closet Shelves & Light; Home Wash & Wax; Refrigerator Fan; Campout Canceled.

My Blog Reflection

Fools aren't willing to learn from anyone - not even from the wise, while the wise are willing to learn from everyone - even from fools.

Sofo Archon

August 6, 2026:

Our 55th Anniversary was on August 6th. For our Anniversary Dinner we had a salad Kelly made and Imo's Pizza. Both were good and made for an evening about as exciting as we get these days. LOL

August 7, 2026:

We went to supper with John and Carlene, and Donnie and Mona Clements, at "Al's Place" in McBride. The food is always good there. Kelly and I split a catfish platter. Everyone was happy with their meal.

August 8, 2026:

August 8th I worked with Alexa in making shelves for her hall closet. The chimney takes up most of the closet but these shelves will help greatly with use of the space. She wants to use it as a food pantry. Here is a before and after picture. I let Aaron due all the work in the tight quarters.

Once the shelf supports were installed and shelves cut Alexa painted everything white. 

There is a wire rack on the closet door and Alea wants to purchase another to mount on the chimney for storage of additional small items. The closets in this house are quite small so she has to make the best use of the space she has.

While we were working on the closet shelves at Alexa's, Kelly made spaghetti sauce from the tomatoes that Donny and Mona gave us. They love to grow the tomatoes and always have many more than they can eat. This is a second batch of sauce. Kelly and Alexa made a batch earlier in the week from the tomatoes Bob and Ronnie gave us. Kelly freezes the sauce in jars and we just take one out as needed all year long. Alexa will have a nice stash as well.

August 9, 2026:n

I sprayed the weeds in our landscaping this morning before it got hot. Later I cut the grass. Boring. I have never cut the grass this often in August before.

August 14, 2026:

I helped Gary with a little plumbing project this morning. All went well, which is always good. I will cut the grass again this afternoon.

August 17, 2026:

There is electricity near Alexa's hall closet so we installed a motion sensing light that comes on when you open the door. It does a great job of lighting up the entire closet.  As we were wiring the light Alexa asked if we could install an outlet inside the closet. She could then hang her battery-powered vacuum inside and leave it  plugged in to keep it charged. With a quick trip to the hardware store we obtained what we needed for that install. Here is a picture of the shelves all painted and stacked with food. The light was absolutely necessary to see what is inside.

August 22, 2026:

I cut the grass again today. With the rain we have been getting it needs to be cut about every four days. A week ago I bought myself a battery-operated pump to pump gas out of the gas container and up and into the mower's gas tank. It works much better than for this old man to hold the five gallon tank up while pouring into the mower's tank, which is fairly high.

Granddaughter Wren, who is in first grade and loves to play soccer, started playing for a new team today. She is a really good soccer player for her age. She is the one in blue.

August 23, 2026:

RV refrigerators work by heating ammonia with electric or propane. As the ammonida expands from heat, it cools down the fridge.  When it is really hot outside these non-compressor refrigerators have a hard time keeping up, particularly if the refrigerator is on the sunny side the of the RV. 

The fridge has an access panel at the bottom which has vents in it. This is to allow air to come in and move upward and come out the vent in the roof of the RV.  A fan mounted in the back of the fridge will help the natural convection process by pulling air in from the outside. Any additional air flow will help cool the fins in the back of the refrigerator. I will use a computer fan for this project because I have several on hand. I ordered a thermostat so I can set a temperature for it to come on and go off based on the weather. In cooler weather it will not be needed.

August 27 - 28, 2026:

Alexa wanted to pay me money or pay for an oil change for the use of my truck picking up furniture in Nashville, Tennessee, last month. I told her instead I would appreciate her helping me wash and wax Homer. She was agreeable to that and we started early in the morning. 

I got on the roof to clean it. It was much worse than I expected. Homer had been sitting under the pine trees for two months and needles and pine tar was everywhere, in addition to regular dirt. I got about half the roof washed and was shot. Alexa came up and helped finish. She then washed Homer from head to toe and began waxing the sidewalls. 

I use a wipe-on product called "Poli Glow" on the front and back fiberglass caps to make the fiberglass shine. The lower section of Homer, which is painted blue, has gotten very dull despite yearly waxing. I decided this time rather than waxing this area to use "Poli Glow" on it as well. This ended up being a good decision. The sides shine much better now. Here is a picture with the now shiny blue lower area.

Here is a picture of Homer standing proud after being washed and waxed.

He looks pretty good for being 33 years old!

August 30, 2026:

The fan thermostat arrived and I used my 12 volt converter in the shop to figure out how to set the temperatures. Unfortunately it only displays in Celsius so I have to keep converting the temperatures to get what I want. 

I then installed the fan, the thermostat, and a switch in the back of the fridge. I put a switch on so I can turn the fan off when going down the road, etc. Here's a picture of the install. The fan is black with a silver grill and the thermostat is the white box to the right of it. Next campout we will see if it helps.

August 31, 2026:

Our RV club had a campout scheduled for this week at Babler State Park west of St. Louis. The organizer called everyone and it was agreed that we cancel due to the extreme hot weather predicted. The entire week the temperature will be 95 degrees with a heat index of up to 110 degrees. It is no fun camping in that heat. I was disappointed because Homer is all cleaned up and nowhere to go!

September 4, 2026:

There isn't anything to blog about. It is just too hot to do much of anything and definitely to hot to do anything outside. It is the Labor Day weekend but we will not go anywhere. I need to cut the grass and weed eat the lake lot but I won't do it on a holiday weekend and I REALLY don't want to do it when it is this hot. Our lot used to be mostly shade but the ice storm a couple of years ago destroyed our Elm trees.

Enjoy the holiday weekend.