12/12–12/19/2012 One Lousy Week!

(Key Largo, FL)

I don’t even know where to begin.  This past week has been the pits. 

First and foremost the tragedy in Newtown, CT.  Our hearts break for the parents whose children were taken from them.  Our hearts ache for the families of the teachers and administrators whose lives were cut short.  With the rest of America we ask why?  We certainly don’t know the answer to that.  Is banning guns the answer?  No, we don’t believe that will fix anything.  Hunters should still hunt, citizens should be able to arm themselves for self protection and to protect their families.  That said, I would like to see assault weapons, weapons of mass destruction if you will, done away with.   On this note I will leave this topic because I just don’t have the answers.

No-see-ums.  Those teeny tiny little bugs that hurt like the dickens when they bite you and then itch for hours afterward.  Because of these invisible bugs I am homebound.  I don’t go outside.  At all.  Well, I’ll go to work when I have to, covered in anything I can find that has DEET in it.  This seems to cut down on half the bites.

Since I am in the house most of the time now I have lost my tan.  I have none.  Zilch.  I feel better when I’m tan.  Crazy as that sounds, its true.  I physically feel better.

We have friends coming down on the 28th for a week.  We have been busy planning things and checking out activities and planning menus.  We are so looking forward to Diane and KK arriving.  We’ll pick them up in Miami next Friday morning at 9 and we’re heading straight to Key West.  We’re not taking the 5th wheel with us so we’ll be staying at the Navy Inn on base.  We’ll stay three nights and return to Key Largo on the morning of New Years Eve.  These two can drink just as much beer as Bob.  I’m the designated driver.

We have been on a buying spree this past month or so.  We ordered a stabilizer kit for the 5th wheel.  Even though we have six leveling jacks already there was still movement in the side to side.  Not anymore!  We also ordered vent covers for our ceiling fans but they haven’t been installed yet.  Hopefully, tomorrow.  A new 4 1/2” foam topper is going on the bed tomorrow, they just don’t outfit these rigs with great mattresses.  We’re waiting for the arrival of a fire pit.  Hopefully it will allow us to sit outside and will keep the bugs away.  If not, we’ll use it in Montana next summer.

Bob had noticed our passenger side, front tire was wearing unevenly.  Since he is all about truck maintenance we went to Homestead on Monday to go to a Ford dealership to get it checked out to see if it could be determined what was causing it and getting parts ordered if need be so that we could get it fixed.  They checked it out on the machine they had there, took it for a ride and made a very minor adjustment on one thing and declared the truck fit.  They couldn’t find anything wrong.  It was determined that because we tow such a heavy load the front tires are bowing inward when towing.  Bob had gotten this same info from many when he posted the question on the forums he frequents.  He was satisfied with the explanation and very glad it wasn’t something serious that would result in $$$$$.  In fact, we were even more pleasantly surprised when we went to the cashiers desk to get our keys and pay what we figured would be an hours worth of labor, around $110.00.  The young lady handed over our keys, asked me to sign the paperwork and said to have a nice day.  No charge!  That really surprised us.

On this same day we got a call from our MasterCard company asking if we bought something online in the amount of $2.87 from a flooring store in Connecticut.  Nope, we didn’t.  We were then asked if we tried to buy tickets from Cheap Tickets.  Nope, we didn’t.  So someone was trying to buy stuff online using our MasterCard number.  I asked the guy how this could happen and he explained that some people will sit there and punch in numbers all day in hopes a sale will go through.  Thankfully USAA is on the ball and refused to process either transaction.  Of course this canceled our cards and new ones were FedEx’ed to us.  Wouldn’t you know it…I just memorized my credit card number too.
I ordered info from Montana and Wyoming so we can plan things for next summer.  Books and brochures are making their way to my mailbox.  Seems as though there will be some pretty special festivals and such going on while we’re there.

The weather down here in the Keys has been great!  Mid 80’s and sunny during the day.  I look out the window at it all day.

It sure is hard to find anything to write about since we don’t get outside to do much anymore.  That will change in a few days.  Only 26 more days in this place.

On a happy note....seven readers signed on as Frequent Readers!  Thank you so much!  I'll do my best to find things to write about until we can get past this time in the Keys.  Hang in there, it'll get better!