Wednesday, January 10, 2007

11/18/06 A Trip to the Big City

We slept in this morning, tired from the concert and our day of travel to get here. We decided we'd take a ride to the store for some much needed grocery shopping. I walked up to the office to find out where the closest grocery store is and was dismayed to find out that we would have to drive to Panama City, 28 miles away or to Marianna which is 20 miles in the other direction. Forty mile round trip for groceries???

Grocery shopping is something I enjoy doing.....alone. I spend so much more when Bob is with me. I find things in the cart that would never be there if he wasn't there. Here's an example: A couple of years ago, for whatever reason, we ended up in the grocery store together. When we got to checkout I found a tin of "kipper" on the conveyor belt. What the hell is kipper and how did it get in the cart? That's just one example of things not on my list that somehow find their way into my grocery bags when MR. Quinn is with me. Bob also doesn't understand that you can't rush grocery shopping. When I see something I want to buy I have to think about what I have at home that will "go with it" and also take into consideration the ingredients I'll need to prepare the dish. You can't rush this and I don't think Bob quite understands this yet. If I feel rushed I'm sure to forget something and a 40 mile round trip is not something you make for a forgotten can of tomato paste. I can see where a detailed grocery list is going to be the order of the day on food shopping days.

Back at the campground we continued on getting settled in and making our house on wheels.....home. Its going to take some doing because we don't know where anything is, at the end of our packing things were just stuffed anywhere we could find room.

Bob, the campground owner came around in the afternoon to see if we were settled in. He is a retired Air Force colonel and it really showed when he talked about the "recreation" facility he installed when he bought the campground a year ago. A Gold's Gym! Now we thought this was a bit strange to be the highlighted recreation offering for a group of people are generally retired when they come to this campground. We thought the first thing people would think when they saw the treadmill was STRESS TEST! Speaking of recreation offerings, other than this gym, there are none. No pool or planned activities such as bingo, movie night etc. that one finds at most campgrounds. So here we are in the middle of nowhere with no cable TV, no planned activities, miles away from anything even slightly entertaining and neighbors who stay in their RV's. Oh,,,,it's gonna be a long winter.

We took a walk over to the office/rec room/shower room with the owner so that Bob could over the job he would be starting the next day. The men's bathroom/shower is being remodeled and two workampers have started the project, Wayne is a diesel mechanic by trade and Jim is a retired Chicago cop. They have gutted the room and started putting the insulation and drywall up so far. When we walked in to look the job over Bob noticed right away that the wall was so out of plumb (level) that it wasn't even funny. The owner took notice also and said it had to be fixed which meant it would all have to be taken down and re-done after fixing the problem that is causing this in the first place. Bob said no problem....he could fix it.

After dinner I took Shag for a walk and then we settled in to watch some TV. I watched (listened) Amazing Race by squinting to see through the fuzziness. What I wouldn't do for my 75 channels of Comcast Cable TV!

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