WOW!

Holy guacamole Bat Man!  Really, it's almost a month since I posted.  Who the heck wants to read something like that?  Well, sorry but I am a lousy correspondent via snail-mail so I guess expecting me to be a better blogger might be kind of wishful thinking.  So has anything been happening?

In a word, yes.  Most importantly my wife had some dental surgery planned IF this one blood test came back right.  As it turned out, the test suggested that the surgery should be put off so that got canceled.  Of course, having that sort of thing going on still involves trips to the lab, the dentist (in Vegas) and plenty of phone calls to the insurance people, etc.  It's not a minor deal even though the surgery was canceled.

So then there is the great bed purchase investigation.  We have had our bed for eight years and it is increasingly annoying.  It's not a standard size (2 inches too narrow er, 5 cm?) anyway that means sheets don't fit; it is foam so it is hot; it weighs a ton so can't be moved.  Ask my wife, I'm sure she has four or five other reasons to get rid of it.  Of course, shopping here is limited so after checking the local options, it's off to Vegas.  Off to Vegas five or six times that is!  Every bed place wants to sell you a Tempur-Pedic since they are two or three times the price of a regular mattress.  Happily for me, my wife really liked this one mattress that we saw early in our search.  Unhappily (in this case), she believes in investigating the market place so we had to hit six or eight other sales rooms.  FINALLY we got back to the first place and bought the darned thing!  Then, of course, it takes an act of Congress to the it delivered.  I love living out here but the once every 2 or 3 week delivery schedules are kind of 1870's.

Also on our list was our trailer.  Last time we used it we has a couple things that bothered us.  The big thing was that the linoleum in the main room was lifting up around the edges.  We loved the stuff when we had animals because it was so easy to clean.  But you've gotta agree that having it lift up is a bad thing.  Plus we had half a dozen other minor problems.  We scheduled a stop at the dealer so went over to Vegas a day early to get there at a reasonalble hour.  That was a happy thought.  We stayed, as usual, at the Las Vegas RV Resort on Nellis ave.  The spaces are kind of tight but it's all paved (level!), clean, 24 hour security, kind of every thing you would like in a city RV park and it was $30.  Can't beat it. We didn't have anything to eat so went out to a local place Aces and Ales.  It is a nice little sports bar-pub that has a huge selection of different beers and some not-bad food.  We each found a different porter to drink and some pub-grub to eat.  What's not to like?  To make it even better when my wife texted our daughter our whereabouts she responded "I'm on my way".  Well, I guess the way to the girl's heart is via a pub.  Who knew!  So we had a nice little visit with her.  Dropped off the rig then off home.

Of course we had to go get it a couple days later.  Back to the Resort for another night.  This time off to dinner at Casa Di Amore for an interesting experience.  The good:  the decor is 'classic Vegas' done well, the food is respectable.  The not good:  there was a huge birthday party of about 20 people making the place both really crowded and really loud.  We were lucky and got a booth on the edge of the room but it was still really loud.  And, of course, the service wasn't great since almost all the servers had some part of that huge party.  It's a place we might go back to but the clam linguine was kind of short on clams and whatever I had was forgetable since I've forgotten what it was! 

The good news about all this back and forth is that we got two breakfasts at Blueberry Hill.  We hit on this place years ago when we were visiting Vegas and it's still pretty good.  My wife loves the crepes and they have lots of other stuff.  Not cheap but it is Vegas!  There are several locations and I'm not enough of an expert to prefer one to the others.  Still, if you want breakfast that is good food and not on the strip; it would be my go-to place.

Having had the RV in the shop there are, of course, things we needed to do as well.  Highly technical stuff like putting Protect-All on the roof, replacing burned out light bulbs, replacing the anode in the water heater:  stuff like that.  It all takes time.  How did we do all this crap when we were working?  Oh yeah, we didn't have an RV.  Replacing the anode did have it's high point.  Ok, it's not tough, socket on the anode and unscrew, right?  Well, I kind of forgot that we'd used the trailer and there might be some pressure buildup in the water heater.  Result?

Yeah, I'm pretty covered in the crap that was in the water heater.  The impressive thing is that I'd taken the old anode out a few days earlier and had rinsed the heater.  Apparently I'd not done a very good job!  LOL  Anyway, it's cleaner now! 

On a less dramatic note I spent a day wandering around Nye County (here!) with some folks learning about testing our ground water for nuclear particles.  The Fed's had been doing it but now the county has taken it over so they wanted to show us all what a great job they are doing.  Actually it was kind of interesting.  The water testing itself is totally dull; it's the wells that are interesting. 

The photo is of our group checking out one of the wells supplying water to the town of Beatty, NV.  That little well house is really well insulated and from the parka in the foreground you can tell why.  It was darned cold up there!  That was a public well that is always in use so the water is always 'fresh' from the ground.  In other wells, it required hundreds of gallons of water to be pumped out before you could be sure that you were getting water from the groundwater source.  Apparently water in the pipe gets contaminated FROM the pipe so you have to pump it clear.  One of the wells being tested is in a place called Oasis Valley.  There is a spring nearby so it's relatively 'green'.  The unusual thing about that well is that some scientist from UNLV checked the water and there are elements in the water whose DNA is unknown.  Who knew water had DNA?  But apparently most water has stuff in it whose DNA is common; not like yours or mine but common for water.  Anyway, this place has DNA that just doesn't fit in with regular water.  The guy who noticed it will probably spend his career working on that little unknown thing.  Who knows what it might be!

Also on the naturalist side of things, our annual cowbird invasion has come and mostly gone.  I've no idea where they live in the winter or the summer but in the fall they come through here and pretty much take over!  They are late this year but there were plenty of them.

They are much more aggressive about the bird bath than our normal pigeons.  There would be a dozen standing on the lip of the bath and three or four more bathing.  They are the only birds other than pigeons that we've seen actually bathing.  Don't know what the deal is but if it works for them, ok.

Well, that's enough for this post.  I'll do another soon (I hope!) so until then, thanks for stopping by.  Take care.