Birthdays Galore

It has been to long since I last blogged, but all we have done is go to work, come home and go to work.

I do want to wish my bride of 34 years a Happy Birthday, she is – well let’s just say she is a year older.

The highlight of the last couple weeks was going over to Omaha to celebrate birthdays, Marie’s – June 12th, Sarah’s – June 30th and Daniel July 2nd. I really hope I got those dates correct. Daniel grilled hamburgers and brats, they were great, since Emily and Isabel like the ice cream cake from DQ, so do I, I bought one of those and we devoured it. It was a fun day.

Last Sunday Tiffany, Matt and Alexa came down to see our new home. Alexa like it that is really what counts? We went to Black Market Pizza in Ankeny for supper. The pizza was very good but it took a long time to get it. They will have to step up there service level to justify the price of the pizzas.

Only 58 calendar days left to work. It will seem strange the first Monday morning not getting up to go to work, I’ll love it. Most people say I’ll get bored etc. and maybe I will be bored at times but I believe I have enough interests to keep from getting that way. With the RV lifestyle all you have to do is hook up and go to a new place with a variety of new opportunities and challenges.

We leave Friday night after work to go visit good friends Dave and Shari who are workamping in Mt Pleasant, IA. We have known these folks for all of our married life and I knew Dave before Sarah and I got married, we drove bus for Trailways out of Burlington.

We will go to visit the cemeteries where Sarah’s folks are buried, her sister Alice’s grave and where my dad is buried. I plan on seeing my aunts Millie and Marcella if they are home, I suppose I should call and warn them of my intentions on stopping by for a visit.

We went to Costco tonight to get some things for the weekend like Pub Mix, this is a mix Colleen told us about several years ago and it is great. Larry’s wife Kathy asked us to pick up some trail mix and a fruit trail mix at Costco. Since it is Sarah’s birthday today I splurged and bought her a Polish sausage at Costco, it was very good. (Just to be clear it was her choice to eat there.)

We got home and had a visit from Tiffany, Matt and Alexa; it was nice to see them.
Dave has offered to cook dinner one night so we bought two big bottles of Margarita mix all of it ready to drink. It should be a great time. We hope to see my brother Larry and wife Kathy over the weekend. Also, Mark and Beth Steingreber are suppose to come out, we saw them last in Texas in March. It will be fun to see everyone.

Reluctantly, we have to go home on Tuesday. Hopefully the weather will be nice during our visit.

Nothing more happening here, I am looking forward to this weekend. Only 58 days till retirement, Dreams Do Come True.

Better Late than Never

I haven't kept up my blog for the last two weeks or so and with NCIS on tonight, probably a rerun, I don't know if I will get it done tonight.

It has been a fairly busy last couple of weeks. Work is the same, so we won't talk about it except to say only 80 days left.

Friday night of Memorial weekend we went to Daniel's. I wanted to go to Cabela's Friday night and Camping World on Saturday. So we first went out to eat, the kids wanted Cracker Barrel, it was a fair meal. I had the pork chop and it was way too thin. Then off to Cabela’s, I was looking for a BBQ grill and I found one. It is a Weber Go Anywhere grill, not real big but big enough for four or five people. The legs on it fold up over the top so it can be carried by the top handle. I also bought another table that rolls up and you store in a bag. I have a small one but this one is a bit bigger and very nice.

First thing Saturday morning Marie wanted to go to the beauty supply store, so off her and Sarah go. When they returned we all took off to Camping World, there were a few things we wanted to get. We ended up buying what we needed plus a couple of items I had thought about. The grandkids saw and talked their way into getting a toy camper, each. Isn’t it interesting how kids can twist us and their parents around their fingers?
Later when we got back to the house Daniel grilled some brats and hamburgers. It was great; Marie’s mom made some potato salad and Sarah made a pea salad at Daniel’s request. Both were delicious and there wasn’t much left of either. It was Isabel’s birthday, the previous Wednesday; I went to the DQ and bought Isabel’s favorite an ice cream cake. It was a great time.

We left later in the evening and arrived home about 9:30 pm.
Sunday we went over to Carl's house, he is Sarah's nephew. We had a good time visiting with them and their son Rusty was home from school. He is studying to be an RN; he is in an exhilarated program. When he graduates, in Dec 10, he will work in an ICU unit for a year and then get into a nurse anesthetist program. He will be 36 or 37 when he gets all done.

Monday we didn't do anything, we stayed at the camper. That evening Sarah's brother Bill and wife Mable came out with Cynthia and we grilled chicken breasts on my new grill. The chicken was great.

On Thursday June 3rd we left for Beloit after work. I don't know if I want to do that again or not. I really got tired going down the road. Anyway, we were going up to Mason's graduation from 4K school.

He will go into kindergarten next year. Friday night we went out to eat at the Olive Garden in Janesville, WI and had a great meal. I had stuffed chicken Marsala and it was great. We had a terrific waiter; he received a fairly good tip. After dinner we went to look at two campgrounds that are in the area. I am trying to find on that stays open into the middle of October so we can spend some time with the kids before we head south.

The two we saw only one was open until the 15th of Oct and it was expensive. I think we will probably stay at the KOA in Deforest WI for two to three weeks. We will be about an hour away from the kids but we can’t' be there every night anyway and we have other friends we can see in that area so I think this is the best one to take. The graduation was fun to watch, the kids put on a skit and sang and they put on the caps, they made them, and received their diploma, it was quite a production.

Saturday morning Mason had a baseball game so I had to go see him play. It is two early at five years old he is not a hundred percent into the game, there are too many distractions, but it was fun to watch him.


We headed home after lunch Saturday and got home about six. It was good to be home; next time we go up we will have our home with us that will be nice.

Sunday was a lazy day and then back to work yesterday morning. We got up and went to church as usual, and then we went to the grocery store where we had breakfast and did our shopping. Then it was off to the gas station to fill the car and get my free Sunday paper. I haven’t paid for a Sunday paper her in Des Moines because the Kum & Go station gives a free paper with every fill up. I am not sure why I still want the paper, except I like to read the comics. Actually most of the paper is funny there are so many ads in it to make it ludicrous. Anyway we went home and unloaded the car and got everything stored and spent the rest of the day relaxing.
I grilled some shish kabobs in the evening. While grilling, our neighbors came over and we visited until 7:30. When they left we put everything away and had something to eat.

It was back to work Monday morning and the daily grind of getting up early each morning. Only 79 days left and we will be able to get on the road. Looking forward to it.

Dreams Do Come True

Am I Invisible?

I'm coming up to an overpass to the Interstate and a car sitting at the off ramp stop sign pulls out in front of me, maybe 50 ft of distance, I hit the brakes and being the good person I am I refrain from waving at him or yelling a spicy refrain at him. I remain calm and go on my merry way. I did wonder why the guy didn’t see me, I drive a fairly good size car and it isn’t red. I read somewhere the color red is difficult to see, not sure where who came up with that idea because I have never had trouble seeing red or the color for that matter. Another instance, I can be standing at a counter wanting to pay for something, the money is in my hand where the clerk can see it and nothing, no acknowledgment of my presence at all. And Sarah wonders why I don’t like to go shopping.

We had a good weekend, we went to visit my mother, she had her 86th birthday last Friday, and so we went down for the day on Saturday. Sarah cut her hair and then she wanted to go to Wal-Mart and the Ben Franklin store. The town where mom lives is a small town so when we go to Wal-Mart I like to look around and see what is different from the stores in Des Moines, so far I haven’t found any difference, I don’t expect to find any difference but I don’t like to shop so it gives me something to do. The Ben Franklin store's redeeming value in my eyes is the fact they carry bulk candy, primarily bridge mix. I remember buying this type of candy by the ounce; I did not have much money, back when I was a kid. It is a variety of chocolates and I really do like it. For sake of not gaining too much weight it is a good thing we don’t go in there very often.

Sunday it got hot, low 90’s, so we did not do much, stayed indoors. Sarah did laundry and I got our finances all caught up to date. I did some reading and watched a bit of TV. Nothing real exciting going on at our house.

This week is a short week at work; we get off at 1:00 pm on Friday for the Memorial weekend, so Sarah and I are heading for Omaha right after work. We will get to see the kids this weekend and we go to Wisconsin the following weekend and get to see the kids there. It will be fun, Mason is going to have a baseball game, and I am looking forward to that.

I am going to try and take some pictures this weekend and maybe I will put some on here. Until then….Dreams Do Come True.

A Restful Weekend

This past week went by quicker than I could imagine. It wasn’t anything at work that made it do so I guess I am just enjoying the lifestyle we now have. We are still getting the choreography of living in a tight space down, but it is coming along nicely.

Work was just work, it actually is the same thing every day with very little if any variation. We had a town hall meeting with the CEO of our company. Marsh Consumer USA is part of the Marsh & McLennan Company or MMC for short; they are the world’s largest insurance broker. Anyway the meeting was about the company’s last quarter, not too bad, and what the future looks like, pretty good. The CEO is a very upbeat individual who exhibits enthusiasm for the employees and company. I believe will be leaving the company in good hands.

Wednesday night we met friends Orren & Norma at the Texas Roadhouse for dinner. After all the bread and peanuts I couldn’t eat all my pork chops, it became a second meal this week. Sarah didn’t eat all of her meal either so we both made two meals out of the dinner. We had a good time and enjoyed ourselves. We got home about 7:30 or so, watched a bit of TV and then to bed.
Friday night we went to Barns & Noble and I bought myself a Nook, so now we both have them. I have already loaded it up with free books. Sarah finished the book she was reading so I loaded it on my Nook and I will read it also. Evidently you can have up to six Nooks attached to one account and you are then able to share whatever books you buy.

Yesterday, Saturday, I spent the afternoon in the basement. I pulled everything out and did some rearranging and I was able to get rid of four of my five boxes of books. I put the ones I want to keep in a clear plastic container so I could see what I have. I did have a few overflow books but I plan on reading them this summer. Sarah and I sat outside and read for a while until it became to chilly to do so. She tried out one of the recliners we bought. I didn’t get mine out because I didn’t know if I would like it or not, but after sitting in Sarah’s for a bit, I believe I will keep it.

Today we went to church and then to Hy-Vee, a local grocery chain, to shop and have breakfast. They have a breakfast buffet, $6.99 each, we both had it and it was good, but I believe in the future I will opt for off the menu; I tend to eat too much on a buffet. We got our shopping done, we were able to use $3.55 in coupons so it saved us about 7 percent on the bill, not a lot but every little bit helps.

We came home and put the groceries away, I read the paper and Sarah vacuumed, it probably takes as much time to get the vacuum out as it does to do the job itself. We have a central vac system and it does a decent job. I did some dusting and then finished reading the paper and did some other reading.

I am in the process of reading about eight small books I have about my home town of Burlington, IA. They were written by Dan Bied who worked at the local newspaper, The Hawkeye, I remember seeing him there, I worked at The Hawkeye in the summer beginning in my senior year of high school. They are very good and I am learning things I never knew about the town. It’s funny I had to wait 40 plus years to learn this stuff.

I bought a couple of the Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour movies to watch and then take down to Centerville to give the facility mom lives in. I watched The Road to Utopia tonight, it is interesting to watch these old black and white movies, they are still entertaining even without all the technical wizardry they do now a days. I hope the folks in Centerville will enjoy them.

I have dental appointment tomorrow at seven so it means getting up a half hour earlier than usual. I will drop Sarah off an hour earlier than she needs to be at work, but she is going to take her breakfast with her, she is a trooper.

So that does if for now remember - - Dreams Do Come True.

Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all Mothers, especially my own mother and Sarah the mother of our children. There were six of us kids when I was growing up, we didn't have all that much but we did have what we needed. When our two plus Tiffany reached school age I remember telling my folks I could never raise six kids, I didn't have the patience, I still don't have it. I applaud all parents it isn't easy raising children in today's society.

Sarah and I haven't done much today, went into town to fuel the truck and get my free Sunday paper and a little shopping at WalMart. I haven't paid for more than 10 Sunday papers in the last 11 years because when you fill the car with gas you get a free paper so I take advantage of that as much as I can.

We ate at two o'clock and then went for a walk and visited with the neighbors for a few minutes.

Other than that we have spent the day at home.

I am trying to mentally prepare myself to go to work tomorrow. I know I will make it and I know the time is counting down quickly, 15 weeks, 110 days to lift off.

Dreams Do Come True.

What Happened To Spring?

Here it is Saturday already, where did the week go? The work week went by quite fast; we had a few tours, a few terminations, not in my group but among the VPs, and not much else. I don’t like seeing anyone getting laid off and since there was really no good explanation for the layoffs I would think they were for the monetary value and not much else, but who knows. The couple of them I knew personally I hate to see leave, but there is nothing I can do about that. Otherwise nothing much going on at work.
Last Sunday we went to the Iowa Cubs game, the first one of the year for us, I really enjoyed it. The weather was great until the 5th inning and then the clouds began to move in so we moved up under the skybox seats. These seats coast more but if you wait until after the 3rd inning or so most everyone has shown up for the game and we go sit in the empty seats. Once in a while we get kicked out by someone showing up with a ticket for one or all of the seats we are in. What’s the matter with the people they should be there for the beginning of the game, not half way through it? So in the 8th inning it looked like it was going to rain so we got up and left. I had to go to the restroom and I left Sarah and when I came out she was gone. I figured she left without me but instead she went to the restroom also but by that time it had begun to rain and rain hard. We didn’t want to go out in the rain; I didn’t want to get wet sugar melts you know. Our friends the Cairo’s were at the game and we saw them waiting for the rain to quit also so we visited with them for a while. The rain let up enough to head home.

Home, the camper is now HOME. I told Sarah we have to call it home not a camper because it is NOW our HOME. We have it almost done, we have some things for Robert but we’ll get those to him in a couple of weeks and then the clutter is gone, alleluia.

The rest of the week was interesting. We had nothing to do in the evening, we got home at 5:30, we were able to walk around the campground, and we didn’t have to scan pictures or move out of an apartment. It was great. Of course I had to watch my NCIS, which is on almost every night for an hour or two. We went to Costco Wednesday evening and I bought two Bob Hope road movies, we watched one of them last night, it was in black and white but it was good, hokey but good.

Today we exercised the truck today by going to Wal-Mart, I needed to find a couple of bulbs that burned out in the camper, they are twelve volt and we ended up going to a parts store to find the bulbs. I got the burned out ones replaced with the good ones and to my amazement they worked. I am what my brother Jerry would say mechanically impaired. I never have been interested in doing to many repairs in the home etc., but I will do more now. I do draw the line on the major things, I won’t compromise Sarah’s safety that is me screwing something up and causing more problems than I had to begin with.

The black water and the grey water tanks showed full, I just emptied them last night, but I was having trouble hearing the water flow so I thought the tanks were empty but they weren’t. Tonight I went out and emptied them again plus I hooked up a hose to rinse out the black water tank and now both tanks show empty. Sometimes it is the small things in life that makes us the happiest, hah.

Another project I have been putting off is getting the pictures onto other hard drives to give to the kids. Today I put everything onto one computer to do some weeding of duplicates before I copy them to the other hard drives. We have something like 50k plus pictures, I know at least half are dupes, so I want to get rid of the dupes if I can, or at least most of them. I enjoy looking at the old ones; some of them are really fun to look at. We didn’t have a lot growing up but we did have fun.

I talked to our friends Mark and Sharon, they are workamping at a B&B outside of Rapid City, and they had a bunch of snow this past week and a lot of wind. We didn’t get the snow but we got the wind. The wind hit 50 mph gusts; the camper handled it quite well.

Tonight it isn’t supposed to be windy but it is going to be cold, there are frost warnings out for the area. What happened to Spring?

Dreams Do Come True.

Berkshire-Hathaway meeting

This week was nothing but work, well actually we finished up scanning the last of the pictures and sorting the prints out as to who we give them to. This was finished by Tuesday and we have enjoyed the freedom of the night with nothing to do. So we went for a walk every night and just enjoyed not having to work on pictures.

Sarah and I went to Omaha last night so we would be there to go to the Berkshire-Hathaway stockholder's meeting. It was a neat event, we've gone to it the last three years, and I always end up spending money at these events. This year I bought Warren Buffett's favorite, peanut brittle, and several different types of See's Candies. I have been looking for a small air compressor to air up the fifth wheel hitch, it is an air ride hitch and I found one at the show for $30, the cheapest I could find online was a Craftsman at Sears for $50, so I bought the one at the show today.

There was also a cool Lionel train layout that was impressive to say the least. It had five or six different types of engines and cars, very nice. They also had two train simulators that were also cool.

Quite a few of the companies owned by Berkshire has a presence at the meeting. One of the noticable things was at the last two meetings M&M candies gave away samples, this year they didn't. DQ was there again and for a dollar you could buy either a blizzard or a dilly bar, of course I had the dilly bar. The money collected was donated to a local charity.
There was a completed home from Carlton Homes, two RVs from Forest River, shoes, Borsheim Jewelers, Pampered Chef and many others. It was fun to see.

We didn't go out to the airport this year to see the Net Jet planes, we went home and got the girls and went to Panera's to eat lunch.

All in all it was a good day.