Busy Monday

For as tired as we were yesterday, it turned out to be a busy, high speed day. Susun left at 9:30 am to clean Connie's Bead shop. I emptied the truck and organized all the stuff. That took most of the morning. Luckily, we use the garage entirely for camping gear during the summer. It makes the whole process so much easier.

We were quite surprised to gas up the truck and find it "only" cost $74 in round trip fuel costs. RJ will be paying the $74. It sure is expensive to travel these days! That's a primary reason we're interested in the NVUM process on the Sawtooth this year. Free travel.

After Susun returned, I set about messing with Harbor Freight. We need one of those metal racks that fit into the truck receiver hitch. We now have to carry four large highway signs for NVUM. They are bulky and take up a LOT of space. I thought the rack was one sale for $50 but was dismayed to go to HF and learn it was $80. My intuition made me suspicious so I came home and checked their ad. Nope, I was right--it WAS $50! (AN HF Rule: Always save their ads. Ads trump store staff.)
So I took the ad back with my 20% coupon and got the rack for $40 plus tax--half off. We will definitely have our camp rigging right and proper once again with this rack. Fitting in all those highway signs Sunday was a real chore.

We have someone very interested in buying the cargo trailer and we're pretty close on a consensus price. However, there's two small cracks in the front cap of the trailer. So I spent a big chunk of the day dealing with how to address and fix those cracks. Meanwhile I went to the Canyon Whitewater store and affirmed the price of a new Aire Lynx two person kayak. We're beginning to salivate now.

Somehow, I also squeezed in trips to Freddie, WINCO and Wally. Since garbage collection is today, I was "forced" to mow the yard as well. It's a good idea to get the grass clippings out of here ASAP rather than let them ferment for days.

As a result of all this busy-ness, Happy Hour didn't start until danged near 6 pm.
Susun napped for more than 2 hours and woke up wondering where I got all the energy. Hey, it's stuff that had to be done and that always puts it in a different psychological category.

I finished the evening by exchanging some emails with LBR Drew about a possible Petrified Forest camping trip he might be conducting for his family this weekend. LBR Drew, by the way, actually used the blog post about the dutch oven cleaning process to guide his efforts in restoration of an old cast iron skillet. Way to go, Drew! Anyway, during our communications, it came to light that he was heading into a major windstorm this weekend. The Flagstaff NWS weather wonky people are all jazzed about this thingie heading into Arizona:

AN UNSEASONABLY DEEP LOW PRESSURE TROUGH IS FORECAST TO DEVELOP OVER THE WESTERN STATES BY FRIDAY AND SATURDAY...LINGERING INTO THE EARLY PART OF NEXT WEEK. THE BEST CHANCES FOR STRONG WINDS AND BLOWING DUST IN THE NORTHEAST WILL BE FRIDAY...SATURDAY AND SUNDAY.

Hum...maybe Petrified Forest might not be on the agenda.

Lastly, I penned a blog post late last night that got vaporized from the blog this morning. Where did it go? Well, since the blog post kind of fell into the category of a "rant," I decided it didn't belong on this blog. I used "Rant-Be-Gone" and it disappeared! Nah, actually, I shifted it over to the Google site that's connected to this blog. If you really, really want to, you can read about "The $90 Cross Pen" by clicking here.

Busy day ahead today, too. Heck, the whole week will be busy and then the whole weekend, too. I thought we were supposed to be retired. Where's my rocking chair? Where's my porch? What's going on here?

Cheers, jp