Steve and Judy's Travels!

 

This car sucks!  It’s a 2014 model, but it refuses to get old.  It still looks and feels brand new.  It doesn’t take any maintenance save the occasional tire rotation.  It drives great.  I stop for gas once or twice a month.  It holds 11 gallons.  It costs less than $20 to fill it up.

 

How am I ever going to justify trading this in so I can get an electric car?  I can’t do it because the car is old and worn out; that may never happen.  I can’t do it to save the planet because of 11 gallons of fuel.  Darn this car!

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s hot.  The weather doesn’t change from day to day; well, unless there is a hurricane.  It cools off to 80 degrees at night, then it’s back to about a hundred again by afternoon.  I still walk every day, but I’m only good for about a mile in this heat.

 

Especially with the Coronavirus distancing, each day seems about the same as the last.  Morning coffee on the deck (always a delight), watch the morning birds while enjoying the coffee ritual.  Work, errands, chores, Spanish, trip report, dinner, television, rub feet, and we’re done.  Don’t get me wrong.  It doesn’t suck at all.

 

We think about taking a driveabout in the bus, just because we can, and the bus is ready, but at a hundred degrees outside, the house air conditioning can handle the heat better than the motorhome air conditioning can.  We’ll wait a few more weeks before we go anywhere.  Then we can visit a few State Parks.  There are plenty here in Texas we haven’t been to yet if we get a couple hundred miles away from home.  A State Park tour shouldn’t compromise our dedication to the distancing regimen.

 

Saw a rufous hummingbird at our feeder this morning.

 

 

 

We never drizzled lemon sauce on it like in the advertisement.  We just ate it right from the wrapper, as the text says.  In fact, the part of the cake that stuck to the thin piece of cardboard it was sitting on; a person could scrape that off by dragging their teeth across it.  A Coke and a Boston Pie; as much flavor, and as many food groups, as a kid in the fifties needed.  Hostess cupcakes continued on, but we haven’t encountered a Boston Pie since.

 

We remember the flavors from our youth.  The most notable ones for me are hot pastrami sandwiches and Boston Pies.  It requires a trip to Angelo’s in Oceanside California, but I can still get something very close to the hot pastrami sandwiches I remember.  The bread is different now, and not quite as good, but the pastrami flavor is the same.  The Boston Pies are unattainable.  Long gone.

 

 

Old sound bar.

 

New sound bar.

 

Preliminary report.  The new sound bar doesn’t sound as full as the previous system.  Race cars don’t sound as throaty, in fact it’s kind of tinny, but we can understand what the announcers are saying, even though they’re talking in British!  We watched an entire episode of Elementary without once saying “huh?”.  We even made it through an episode of Poirot and understood what happened at the end!  (British with a Belgian/French accent.)  Promising.

 

Several days later update:  Beyond promising, in fact.  I turn the sound bar to the highest voice setting (which is the tinniest sound), set the sound just as loud as it needs to be (which is not as loud as before), then add some normal sound from the television on top of that for a fuller sound, but not enough to distract from the voice-clarifying of the sound bar.  If we get stuck on a word or phrase, which is not nearly as often as it used to be, we can mute the TV sound and play the scene back with just the clarity of the new sound bar.  Brilliant!  We’re declaring this purchase a roaring success!  Just the invention we needed!

 

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Marilyn, beyond all expectations, is awake and responsive.  The breathing tube is out.  Of course, Buddy can’t go see her in the hospital because of Covid.  When he checked her in, they let him stay in a waiting room by himself until they got her through surgery, then he had to leave.  That was better than nothing.  Today, they held a phone up so Buddy could face-time with her.  They haven’t let her talk yet, but she is alert.  Amazing.

 

Hurricane Laura missed us and pummeled Louisiana.

 

Afternoon update.  Marilyn talked on the phone with Buddy.  Just a few words.  Yesterday it seemed hopeless, totally nonresponsive, and today she’s talking on the phone!  Still critical.  Still in ICU.  Not out of the woods, but continuing amazing.

 

And now Laura is on top of Arkansas.