wet week end

This past week end was pretty much a wash out. Saturday we loaded up and drove about 15 miles to Thorntown where they were having the Festival of the Turning Leaves. We met our daughter Amanda there and walked around looking at all the craft sales. They have a parade that started at 1pm and we found a nice curb side spot to watch. Both of our grand daughters were in the parade. They participate in a tumbling/dance team through their school. They were so cute in their little purple out fits :-).

Right after the girls went by the rain started. Amanda drove over to pick up the girls and Nick, our grand son, hopped in with us. He wanted to spend the night and Rudee wanted to spoil him some more so ........ ;-)

The rain continued off and on the rest of the day so we decided to take Nick to a movie. We saw "Money Ball" which is a movie about the California Angels baseball team. Pretty good movie but really long, we were all ready to get up and move around some when it it ended.

Sunday we fired up the semi and drove Nick home in it. When we bought the truck it had 2 spare tires mounted on steel rims behind a home made diamond plate "box". I decided to chuck the worst of the two along with the box to free up some storage room on the bed. When I looked the tires over I decided neither were worth carrying anymore. One had a large split on the sidewall and was a no brainer. The other one was a re-capped tire and had never been on the road but the rubber had deteriorated on the side wall and just did not look reliable. I am not too confident on using re-caps anyway and of course you can't use them for steer tires anyway, so decided to chuck them both.

Son in law Ryan had some steel to take to the recyclers so I was able to add them to his "pile" so the rims will eventually be recycled.

Back in Crawfordsville (in the rain of course) we stopped at Wal Mart and put some fuel in the truck. Still have a little way to go to get it full but it's a little hard on the pocket book to fill it up all at once .... ouch!

Looking ahead to another week of work. Hopefully the rain will quit and Peyton Manning will recover so the Colts can win a game! I'll keep you posted.

curve ball

Another week at work down .... yahoo!!

We got some news this week that our tenant is wanting to move out of our rental property down in Florida. She is wanting to buy a place in the same park and wants out of the lease 8 months early.

We are working to come up with an acceptable agreement to let her out of the lease. She has been a good renter and we are happy for her to be able to have a house of her own, but we still have to protect ourselves and our investment.

Looks like we may have to take a trip down to Florida pretty soon to take care of all the rental stuff. This kind of throws a wrench into our plans, but we need to learn to "roll with the punches" :-).

We have been checking into a rental management company and have even went so far as to get the paperwork needed to sign up.

This would cut into the monthly income the house generates when it's occupied but they do handle everything related to the house including advertising, interviewing and background checks on new rental prospects as well as taking care of all the day to day things that crop up. Looks like it might be a way to go since we may be several states away committed to a work camping gig when something needs handled.

The weather has turned a lot more "Fall like" around here. The farmers have kicked the harvest into high gear as well.

No big plans this week end, there are a couple of festivals going on in nearby towns and we may visit one or two. I'll keep you posted.

Back "home"

Sunday morning I was up early and watched the sunrise behind the 5th wheel. What a pretty start to my last day on vacation :-).

Rudee was was shortly afterwards and I microwaved some bacon slices and toasted us some English Muffins for breakfast.

We started our individual routines of packing up the RV for travel. Rudee does the inside chores and I do the outside ones :-).

I had to add air to most of the tires since the weather has been getting cooler. The rear tires on the truck all needed between 5-10 lbs as well as all the RV tires were slightly low.

When we first got the semi I installed a retractable air hose to the onboard air compressor so filling the tires is a pretty simple process.

The fairgrounds RV sites were all on grass and that grass was now very wet with dew. Our truck does not do real well on wet grass and I was a little nervous that the truck would "spin out" trying to get in position to hook on. Once the wheels start spinning you are usually done and need to be pulled out.

I took it slow and backed under the 5er without any problems. Once we had hooked on Rudee helped me load the bike up and strap it down. We pulled out right at 10am and slowly worked our way through town to I-69 and headed South.

The drive home took us a little over 4 1/2 hours with a stop for lunch. We did run into some sprinkles but no heavy rain and were able to get set back up in site #4 at the KOA by 3pm.

We even took a quick trip around town after unloading the bike just to cool down after working hard sitting up :-).

The grand kids came to visit us Sunday evening and we had a nice time seeing them. Nicholas (the oldest) didn't make though, he was at a friends house.

Monday it is back to the routine of work everyday. YUCK! Don't get me wrong though, I like to be busy and don't mind working bit I am sure looking forward to being able to work at a "fun" job instead of the drudgery work I am doing now. To say I hate it is an understatement and I struggle everyday to stay focused to do the best I can do. It is defiantly time for a change. I'll keep you posted.