Setting a Precedent and More On Genny

There has been a saying that I like to quote, one that almost always causes the listeners who hear it to be taken aback and have to ask for clarification. I was once told that it is a quote by someone else. However, after I have done pretty diligent searching with the use of two or three different search engines, I have been unable to find another source of the quote by anyone else that is searchable via internet search engines.

Since my blog lists that photos that I have taken and ‘most’ of the text written by me has the ‘rights’ reserved by me, I will thus put it here where it has a ‘presence’ on the internet and written by myself. The quote goes as this:

“I know what I know, and I know what I don’t know, therefore, I DO know it all.”

Having thus now been written and posted upon my blog, any further uses of that quote must include my name as the source. Otherwise, anyone using that quote without my permission will be subject to punishment. You know….. something like being flogged with a dry feather.

My work day was really a long one today. Since I don’t have a lot of vacation days built up, I don’t want to use what I have up and mess up the vacations that we want to take. So, I had to work the whole day instead of going to see Genny.

I was able to retrieve the photos on Photobucket on my computer at work, and everything looked normal. So, I sent those from my work e-mail to our home e-mail account with the hope that everything worked from that source. Those were also elongated as well. So, I decided that it was our default image viewer that was messing up.

I can retrieve them with Adobe Photoshop Elements and they looked fine, so I created another folder and saved them there from Photoshop. Now they all should work, so I’ll now post some pictures for those that don’t want to follow links.

Moira has been wanting to hold Genny, and today she tried to pick her up.  Surprisingly, in her attempts, she was trying very hard to get her hands just right and also support Genny’s head as well.  While no photos were taken of that attempt, we do suspect that Moira will “mother” her little sister.  When Moira first got to meet Genny yesterday, she kept wanting to kiss her and put her hands on her.

Until we download some more of Jo’s pictures of Genny, this is the best that we have.  It was taken with Kevin’s cell phone and sent to me at work.

Here is the one with all four grandkids that I linked to yesterday.

I can’t wait to start taking them all camping.

Introducing a New Little Angel

Our oldest son and his wife have just had the 4^th, and probably their last, child. So, God delivered to them, and to us as grandparents, a new little angel by the name of Genevieve Ruth. I know God delivered them because Nate, their oldest boy told his parents that he had seen the hand of God in the hallway of the hospital.

They had a 5:00am appointment to be at the hospital so that they could induce labor. And, along with Prissy, the maid in Gone With The Wind, “I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout birthin’ babies.” You see, two or three days ago, Amy was having contractions about 3 minutes apart. But rather than allow the birth to go as what I would call natural, they chose to give Amy morphine to delay the arrival of the baby for two more days so she would have a full 39 weeks of development.

Excuse me, but could someone tell me what two days difference would have been?

Anyway, Jo was at the hospital during all this and when she first called me, she said that they were taking Amy in for an emergency Caesarian because they “had lost the heartbeat” of the baby. Needless to say, I immediately choked up for fear of losing this little baby before she really had a chance of life. I was so choked up, that I couldn’t even explain to my co-workers what was happening.

All I could do was sit at my desk with my head in my hands and offer prayers to God to help this little one. Some of the words of my prayer went like “please put your hand around this little babe” so that she could give us the joy we expected and that we could provide some joy to her as well.

About 10 or 15 minutes later, Jo called to tell me that both mother and baby were just fine. Genevieve Ruth, to be called Genny in the future, had a knot in her umbilical cord and it was also wrapped twice around her neck.

So, did Nate see the hand of God that I had prayed for? I don’t know about all of you, but I think he did. I have one other little note about Nate. Prior to Moira’s birth, Amy and Kevin were using a midwife service for her birth. About a week prior to her birth, the midwife was asking Nate if he had any ideas as to when “the baby would be born and whether it would be a boy or a girl.” Nate’s answer was that it would be Saturday and it would be a girl. It was a cute prediction from a 3-year-old boy for a baby.

Kevin and Amy had chosen to not know from ultrasounds as to what the baby’s gender would be as they wanted this one to be a surprise. So, the next Saturday, September 13, 2009, Moira was born. Nate had hit two for two. So, anyone want to doubt a 3 year old? I won’t anymore.

Thus, please allow me to introduce the world to Genevieve Ruth, born the morning of September 29, 2011, weighing 7 pounds and 1 ounce and measuring 19 ½ inches long.

Well, much to my chagrin, the photos I had Jo download to Photobucket and that I then copied to my computer from that account all came out s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d and really un-viewable, so I will have to post a link to start with and will add pictures to a later posting.

This image is of a hospital person, Genny, and her three siblings.  Nate is to the left, Liam is in the center, and Moira is to the right.  (Note that they are all beautiful kids…..must be my genes.)

http://s1190.photobucket.com/albums/z458/TerryandJo/Grandkids/?action=view&current=_DSC4702.jpg

Preview of Coming Event

Hey, I remember that phrase being used to announce an upcoming movie. However, it isn’t in this case. Instead, this is an announcement that I am working on a review for an RV park near Pagosa Springs, Colorado.

We stayed at Sportsman’s Campground in August of 2009 for two weeks when we still had our 26-foot Rockwood fifth wheel. It is a nice place in that it is way out of town. It is about 18 miles out of town, in fact.

Since I have a number of pictures from that two week vacation, I have to decide on which ones I want to use for the review. I’ve also considered doing reviews of some of the places we went, such as Mesa Verde, the Durango/Silverton Railroad, and a few other places.

I guess I am making this little announcement to see if I will get any comments from anyone asking for certain ones first or whether you want reviews of the attractions or not. So, if you have a preference, or another idea, leave me a comment.

Heh, heh.  I imagine a comment I might receive would be something to the effect that it would be better than religion or politics.  Sorry, Folks.  You get to have it all.

Horrific Events in Progress

OK. Sorry, this one will be somewhat political, but it is being written more as an alert for those who read my comments. The news lately has been a horrendous example of a media that is bereft in their responsibilities. At least they are bereft in the responsibilities that I think they should be embracing.

Sadly, with the arrival of the presidency of a man with socialist tendencies, certain elements of our society have emerged from the darkness in which they hid to try to advance their agendas. Because I really believe that much of the media shares those agendas, they are not reporting what is occurring.

Just today, the news is out that the Governor of North Carolina, one Beverly Perdue has made a speech at a local Rotary Club event, in which she stated that she thought there ought to be a suspension of elections for Congress until after the 2012 elections. Her staff has stated that she was “just joking,” but the reality is that no one at that event laughed or clapped. In addition, she said that he hoped she could find someone to agree with her. That doesn’t sound like joking to me.

The story with an audio clip is at this link:

http://tinyurl.com/3k5ovum

There are also protests occurring on Wall Street by a number of people who have been planning such an event, and one of the leaders, Cornel West who is a professor at a college, has openly called for revolution. That video can be seen at this site:

http://tinyurl.com/44ey7re

Incidentally, that second one with Mr. West is found at a website called “The Blaze” which is made up of journalists who are out there finding news stories, audio clips and video clips that the rest of the media is ignoring. As an example, has anyone seen a story about the professor at the protests in any other media? The Blaze is a website that is associated with Glenn Beck, but a lot of stories there won’t be found in the main-stream media.

For the benefit of anyone who has not heard me say so, and I can’t remember whether I ever wrote about it, but I get a lot of news and analysis on radio talk shows like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Neal Boortz, and others. Unlike the normal media, those programs have a tendency to inform the listeners of both sides of the stories and then explain why one side is right or wrong.

I have tried to listen to radio talk shows with a philosophy more to the Left, but it usually doesn’t take long before I begin to discern dishonesty in their analysis. Plus, they are very quick to call people names when they begin to be challenged and they have no answers. Why else would the participants of the Tea Party movement and conservatives be called such names as “Nazis,” “homophobes,” and “racists,” just to name a few.

It is amazing what kind of education one can get by listening to them. However, I also look for other sources of information about many of the stories and commentaries that I hear. The website named above lets you see and hear the stories as does The Drudge Report. With Drudge’s site, he mostly supplies links to other media stories that inform one of what is going on with the news of the day.

Since President Obama is failing so much in his policies and in his popularity, the forces on the left are being emboldened to speak out more and try to do more to advance their agendas which would take this country into a Communist state. When I served in the military so long ago, Communism was our enemy. To me, it still is.

Now, in my older age, I find that my most effective weapon against the enemies of this country is what I have learned over the years and using my blog to help distribute messages about what is going on in our country today. Many of the things I write about are things that are either right or wrong, not necessarily of the political “Left” or “Right.”

I would hope that people would do more to further their knowledge base and sources of news, but I have friends who will state that they only listen to one network as it is there that they were told that people on the “Right” are stupid or otherwise uneducated.

In a conversation one time a co-worker and I were discussing some antic that Nancy Pelosi had done and another co-worker popped in and made a common (at that time) comment that was usually used to disparage Sarah Palin. She mistook whom it was we were talking about, but her comment sounded exactly like something that would have been reported on MSNBC, a very liberal news network, about Sarah Palin.

So, I simply ask people to be diverse in their sources of news and don’t be hung up on only one network. Believe it or not, FOX News is not a “far, right-wing” news source. Shoot, several of their contributors are liberals as well. How many conservative commentators will anyone find on the MSNBC and their like?

Mild Chastising of Online Friend

This month has seen a very minimal action on my part for writing posts for the blog. Part of the reason is that I have had something of a mental block as to what I wanted to write, and part of it is because the bandwidth on our Verizon MiFi was getting close to the 5gig capacity. If anyone anticipates what I have to say (yeah, RIGHT!), then I apologize for being lax this month.

I find myself needing to mildly chastise an online friend, one whom I’ve come to admire their writing skill and their life philosophies and lifestyle. In an attempt to not name this lady, I will try to be as vague as I can, but if she reads this, I hope she recognizes to whom I am writing.

The occasion arose that this lady left a popular site because she sensed that she was not being taken seriously. Truthfully, the opinion that I have is that she wasn’t slighted so much as there was a misunderstanding about the concerns others had for her safety. I shared in those concerns and was joyful that she came though that situation safely.

Now, I find myself needing to ask her to return, as the site does value her opinions and comments. Only recently, I began to read her blog. It is an intriguing site and her writing skills are very good, and her narration of her stories/comments is excellent. I have found the need to go back in her blog and read the entire thing.

In trying to get her to return, I would like to remind her that she is from a state where the citizens are known to be very independent. And, she is married to a gentleman whose origins are noble and even warrior-like.

So, I would like her to reconsider and return as I know the ancestry of her home state is that of determination and grit. So, with that, I will ask her to follow the example of the pioneers and circle the wagons in preparation for a fight, should it come to that. Personally, I don’t think that it will.

The following images are not meant as threatening images, but as images of the past of their places of origin. So, young lady, I ask you to take up your state’s known famous weapon

and be prepared for the fray. And your husband can take up a weapon known for his origins to join you in returning to the circle of friends who would like for you to return. Your opinions and insights are missed.

Should you wish to communicate with me, there is the private message function of that other site, or you can leave me a comment here with your e-mail address and said e-mail address will NOT be published.  Then, I will communicate with you via private e-mail addresses.

It is my sincere hope that you will return.

Vacation Changes….Again!!!

After initially scheduling a week in the Colorado Springs area, specifically Mountaindale RV Resort, for late August, we had to change the dates because our youngest son wouldn’t be able to go at that time because of his job.

Well, now there have been more changes. He has submitted a resume to a new company here in Oklahoma City and has a second interview this coming Wednesday. So, if he were to get a job at this new company, it would be likely that he would not be able to go with us on vacation. Now, there is still the chance that the job doesn’t work out, and nothing would have changed.

However, we got a phone call this morning from our bank. It seems that one of our cards got compromised and someone ran up about $250 worth of charges in Barcelona, Spain. With our cards, they are debit cards that are applied like credit cards instead of debit cards. While there are some advantages to a card ONLY being a debit card, there are also some drawbacks which our cards avoid. But, they can be easier compromised than debit cards.

Anyway, while we will get back the $250 for the charges, it does put a crimp on us as to being able to afford the expenses of pulling our Mobile Suites to Mountaindale RV Resort, especially if Eric were to get the new job. He would be helping with the expenses if he goes along, but since there is an “iffy” attached to this whole prospect, it looks like we need to make a change to our plans.

There is a plus side to this though. If we were to take the Mobile Suites to Mountaindale, our expenses could be likely to be enough to prevent us from being able to attend a Suites Owners International Travel Club rally scheduled for the week after our vacation. That one is at an RV park in northeast Oklahoma near Grove, Oklahoma. However, if we don’t take the coach to Colorado, we can afford to do both a vacation in Colorado and do the rally as well

We will still get the Colorado vacation, but will be staying at our relative’s home in Canon City instead of staying at Mountaindale in the coach. So, I still have the possibility of photographing some good autumn colors, provided nature cooperates, and see friends and relatives as well.

Since we had enjoyed ourselves a lot at the SOITC rally in Carthage, Missouri last year, we really wanted to be able to do the one this year as well. These are not rallies in the same sense as the national rally would be. These regional rallies are generally more social in nature than having seminars on matters related to coach maintenance, full-timing, and RV’ing in general.

So, even though we don’t get to test the Mobile Suites in Colorado cold, we still can have both halves of the vacation. Besides, we will get to test the cold in Oklahoma in a few short months anyway. It may be sooner than we want.

By doing this, we will also be able to better afford to do things to get things ready for winter. For instance, I don’t want to go into freezing weather using a plastic slinky sewer hose because of the possibility of it freezing up because the water won’t drain out of it completely after use. Instead, we are planning on buying one of the Eze Kleen systems that I wrote about in this post:

http://ignoringthebarkingdogs.blogspot.com/2011/06/settling-in-and-adjusting.html

With the all PVC piping, it should allow it to drain better and not build up frozen water after each use. I also want to get some insulating tubing to put around our water supply hoses.

On that one, I will have two hoses going from the water spigots to the coach. Then main one will be for the water supply for the coach and the second one will be for use in flushing the black tank after draining. I can put both of the hoses in insulated tubes and wrap them with heat tape and then insert all of that into a PVC pipe running from the underground spigots up to the compartment for the water inlets and sewer valves.

Then I would mostly need to get a box to cover the underground spigot area to help insulate that. All I would then have to do is raise the box and turn on the water for the black tank flush as needed. I’ll probably also insulate in some way in the water inlet compartment. I’ve considered doing some kind of skirting around the coach, but I haven’t yet figured out how to do that. There is the issue of not having a uniform area for skirting, what with the slides being out and all.

If I really get desperate, I could always buy some hay bales to put around the coach. Then after winter, I could sell or give them to any number of the folks living in our mobile home park that have horses. A number of our neighbors are related to the horse racing business, and some have numerous horses.

I will be calling Mountaindale RV Resort tomorrow to cancel our reservations. It will cost us about 50% of the week’s stay since the cancellation will fall within 30 days of the reservation. But, even with the loss of $100 for that, we will still be in good shape for having the two weeks of vacation.

Should it be that Eric gets the new job, it would be unlikely that he would be able to go on the Colorado vacation. If that were the case, then it would be doubly hard on Jo and me with expenses if we were pulling our Mobile Suites to Colorado and paying all the expenses.

I guess that things work out for us this year, even though I was looking forward to pulling a mountain pass with our F450 and the Mobile Suites. I don’t think Jo is too excited with that process yet, but being the ex-truck driver that I am, I have more confidence. In addition to all the saved expenses, we would also be driving around Colorado in our Mercury Mariner instead of the Ford F450, thus saving yet even more money.

Also, I can drive to Colorado at 70 miles an hour instead of 60 if we were pulling the coach. As much as I love Colorado, I am always in a hurry to get there, but reluctant to leave. Leaving is usually like a last minute thing and then I need to get home in a hurry as well.

I’m almost as excited as this guy over the upcoming vacations.

Sharing My Errors

As usual, one error comes because I didn’t do what is recommended on the RV forums. Another comes because I believed what was written on an RV forum. So, what is one to do?? I would say common sense is in order, even though it costs me money.

We got up Friday for work at 5:30am and while Jo showers and does her bathroom duties, I usually sit and finish off what Dr. Pepper is in my mug from overnight. But, Friday morning I stepped into some water on the linoleum in front of the kitchen counter in the middle of the floor.

After looking around under the sink, we determined that the hot water line was leaking. So, after we both finished our needs for hot water, I went out to the basement of the Mobile Suites and shut off all of the hot water valves at the manifold. I did that because the way they labeled the valves left me wondering just what valve should be shut off, and I didn’t want to have to “trial and error” each valve before going to work.

In the afternoon at work, I got to thinking about what it was that I was going to need to do to fix the water leak, as I have never worked with PEX fittings and line. And then things started to “click” in my head. We had a water leak in the wall behind the shower valves a while back and had to take the coach in to get that fixed. In that case, it was a fitting that was loose.

Then, the other day, while sitting on the commode, I reached down to flush it. After it flushed, I heard a “drip…..drip…..drip” sound for just a little bit and then it stopped. So, I flushed it again and got the same result. My first thought was that I had a leak in the plumbing of the commode. But, when I kneeled down to try to find the leak, I had to flush it again to get it to drip. That is when I found out it was dripping under the sink, and not at the commode.

Looking around underneath, I found the cold water line leaking just a wee bit. I was able to tighten it some with my hand, and after trying the commode flush again, it had stopped.

Of course, this led me to wonder whether the three leaks that we had might be related to our water pressure in the mobile home park being too high. After all, it is on a well and not city water. The obvious clue that should have made me think before is that when we water our yard with the oscillating sprinkler, it puts out a high stream of water even though we only open the water valve about ½ to ¾ turn. (Well……DUH!!!!!)

So, when we got off from work on Friday, we first went down to our RV dealer and looked into water pressure regulators. Remembering that Howard at RV Dreams had written recently about the one they had, I went looking for a similar, adjustable regulator. Of course, the dealer didn’t have any adjustable ones, so we bought one that was regulated at 45psi of water pressure.

We got back to the coach and I immediately shut off the water and installed the regulator just before the filter on our water line. Then, I got a wrench and some pliers and tightened up the fittings on the hot water line. It took a bit to snug it up, so I was pretty sure that we simply had a loose connection. I snugged the cold water line, and it didn’t take as much turning to snug up.

Since then, our water pressure has dropped a lot in the coach and our leak is stopped. I believe that the leaks we were having is because our water pressure was too high. I’m not really happy with the non-adjustable regulator set at 45psi because it doesn’t let the commode flush very well and the little spray line at the side for cleaning the commode bowl has really lost pressure.

I imagine that we will buy one of the adjustable regulators and employ it right at the supply water valve that is underground. That way, the pressure on our supply hose from the valve to the coach will be reduced as well. I just need to determine what the best pressure setting would be once I get one of those.

Now, that was the mistake I made even though the posters on the forums always say to have a regulator. Now, for the mistake made when I believed what one said.

With our Mobile Suites, they recommend that the wheel lug nuts be at a certain “torque setting” by checking them with a torque wrench. Towards that end, I bought my first ever torque wrench this last couple of weeks and checked the torque on the wheels. When I posted about that on one of the forums, I was reminded to also check the torque on the axle nuts that hold the hubs on.

In the past, that has been discussed a lot on the forums and questions had been raised as to what size of socket one would need to tighten the axle nuts. In those discussions, it was mentioned ONE TIME that the socket size was 36mm. Others said that since 36mm might be hard to find, that a standard 1 1/16 inch socket would work as well.

So today, I went to Lowe’s to check on water regulators and see if I could find a socket. To my surprise, they did have a 36mm socket for a ½ inch drive wrench. Plus, it was priced at only $9.00, where the standard 1 1/16 inch sockets that I had seen online were all higher, some of them being $20. I thought I had me a good deal.

Then, we got home after grocery shopping and I crawled under the slides with all my tools and finally got the hub cap off and then the axle hub cap off. Guess what??? The 36mm didn’t fit the axle nut. So, tomorrow I get to take the 36mm back and see if I can find a standard 1 1/16 inch and pay more for it, plus I get to spend for the extra fuel it takes to get the extra running around done.

In my defense, for those that don’t know a lot about wrench and socket sizes, a lot of times there is only a very minute difference between the width of a metric wrench and a standard. So, my thought was that the 36mm would fit EXACTLY and the 1 1/16 would be just ever so slightly bigger, but still useable. It would have been especially so, if one gets a 6-point socket instead of a 12-point one. After that little experience today, I posted on that RV forum that a 36mm would not work, so don’t even try, even if it is cheaper.

So, with all my errors, I deserve a “face palm.”