Chaos Leaves Town

Haven’t done much the last couple months. I’ve tended to be a stick in the mud, stay at home guy. Sure, gone out for dinner with the kids on occasion, but haven’t really found anything of interest to post about. Spent many days per week looking for a home to buy but the prices here in this area jumped huge amounts over the last 3 years (prices are shown by AI to run -110% average below the Oregon state average but I’m not sure that’s been true for the last few years) but I balked at paying $100,000 more then last year when they didn’t do anything to the home. I did find one that would work but I took to long to decide and lost it to a quicker buyer. Yeah, I looked last year too, and the year before, and many of the homes offered last year were still for sale but with a newer much higher price. Realtor dot com shows that information. And last year there wasn’t much I could afford come to think of it. I can this year.

I did visit many homes and some of them should have been bulldozed. But, that aside, I didn’t do much traveling around the area to visit museums or anything other then a revisit to the museum I posted about last time. Haven’t even spent much time up in Walla Walla this year. I think it’s my overall anxiety about the state of the union. I don’t know anyone who feels this felon in the WH is going to help anyone. More likely destroying the republic than building it up. Millions out of work now and getting worse with the government not being funded. I fully support the Dems move to block the Big Horrible Bill and not fund the government. Most of the time I have a tiny bit of hope though and that was due to the 7,000,000 that showed up at the protest marches.

Here’s a random shot of San Felipe’s beach in front of the malecon where I was staying last March. Nice. Warm. Sunny.

There have been a few minor repairs I’ve done to the inside and outside of the RV. Found the part my sewing machine needed, ordered and installed it. My LR slide topper awning ripped again so I had it pulled off, sewed it with the now fixed machine, used lots of thread and it’s back topping the slide. Worked on my pantry slide next to the refer, I’d used some funky lithium lubricant a couple years ago and it gets sticky and dries out so I had to pull the drawer out, clean up the roller sliders and lubricate with a better lubricant. Both shelves now move with renewed smoothness. Worked on improving the TV sound system a bit, bought a new HDMI 4X1 switcher with PIP + remote for $40 only to have my old 4X1 switcher’s remote suddenly start working correctly again. Doh! I did buy a new memory foam topper for the bed that’s 3″ thick. I remember when they were over $150 for a queen size. The one I bought cost $40, and has that cooling gel. Works okay and I sleep soundly but sometimes I feel like a turtle trying to get out of bed in the morning. Using the basement heat pump extensively this summer and now fall and it’s not quite as neat as my old new one that died but it’s still acceptable.

Here’s a shot today of my RV and space. Not much happening here.

As far as the outside of the RV goes, I needed to repair the water heater when it’s anti-siphon valve stuck closed, and had my son help me with that. He also cleaned up some small annoyances with the RV and did some painting underneath the rig. I drove the RV to a local automotive shop where they’ve worked on my car and had an oil/filter change along with a chassis lube…cost $450 and most of that was for the special diesel synthetic oil. And then recently, I dropped one of the basement doors and broke one of those plastic latches so had to fix that, and one of the gas strut ball bolts came loose from one of the basement doors (same link as the latches). Spray lubed the slides and the jacks so they’re ready to go. I’ll probably head south in November this year. So, little things that needed to be done slowly got done.

Also had the son inspect the roof and there’s an area where I’ll need to clean and reinstall Ebond tape for waterproofing. And the toilet is still a bother.

That’s all that’s been going on here. I’m sort of waiting for the housing bubble to burst and maybe I’ll find a home that’s worth owning after it does. But it appears that I’ll be heading south again soon without any home purchase.

Medically I’m doing well, had a suite of blood & urine tests and the doctor said I’m doing great. Liver, kidneys, pancreas all doing well, lungs clear, etc. My eyes are still giving me problems and this year I went in a couple times because of the many black dots and floaters in my right eye (left eye had a torn retina 2 years ago) and that was a bit worrisome so my BP jumped but that’s stabilized now. Eye Dr. decided that there’s no retinal tear or detachment indicators, just aging. Floaters are common in the elderly. Knees are slowly getting better and better though I still need to grunt and groan when I get up. There’s very little pain any more.

All in all, I’m still an RV wanderer and have planned on visiting a few ancient Indian sites this year down in New Mexico. Then I’m strongly thinking of visiting NYC with my daughter early next year. She’ll fly and I’ll take Amtrak and we’ll meet there. That was the plan but she can’t find any old friends that still live there that can let us stay on the cheap or get us off Broadway tickets. Or I’ll take an ocean cruise. Might have to make a run to Mexico to avoid the craziness that’s taken root here to overwinter too. We’ll see.

Thanks for reading, sorry I ran out of things to talk about this year.