Update on "Catching Up in California"

First of all, we have been remiss in not welcoming our newest Followers, but believe me, we appreciate their presence! These are folks who have joined us recently: Sue Malone, Gypsy Boho, Jana, Laurie and Odel, Steve DePree. If I missed naming a new Follower, I apologize, and promise to do better in the future!

We probably have left you regular readers wondering, and many of you are thirsting for knowledge. So let me fill you in on the latest:

Water situation in Thousand Trails: we got home today to find a notice that our water is safe for human consumption! Two days earlier than predicted! We are having a water fest here, making new ice, drinking good water, taking showers, flushing the toilet -- OK, we did those last couple of things anyway!

Camera: Panasonic has sent us a "reconditioned" Lumix camera to replace the one that had died just before the one-year warranty ran out!

So we are having a photo fest! We went out today and took a lot of pictures. OK, we had taken pictures with the low-level-but-only-one-available-at-the-camera-shop Coolpix. Now the Coolpix has been relegated to "backup" camera, by which we don't mean we can use it only while backing up.

Some folks wondered about the Rok Restaurant we visited.

We think it is a one-and-only place, not a chain. No, there is no discount for having to cook our own meal -- that's part of the mystique and the fun. HOWEVER: if you are a member of AARP, you probably have been invited to use Restaurant.com with an AARP discount. Using this discount, we were able to purchase a $25 gift certificate to Rok for only $2! Two catches: (1) you have to run up a total tab of at least $35 to use the $25 certificate (easy to do!), and (2) you can only use the certificate Sunday through Thursday, and we were there on a Saturday! Dammit! We actually bought four such certificates for Rok, and gave them to daughter Deb for her future use.

Along that same line, we have purchased several certificates for other restaurants for our own use, and have used them favorably. On one occasion, the restaurant had stopped accepting the certificate, but Restaurant.com quickly exchanged it for an open-end certificate. Good service once again.

Back to the water situation. Yes, we are making ice. Rosie, our 2001 Itasca motorhome, has an ice-maker built into her refrigerator, but we are such voracious ice users that it can't keep up. We found ourselves buying a bag of ice every day or two, and sometimes that ice is of poor quality and/or very expensive. Suzy went on line and found us a portable ice maker to buy. It arrived while we were at daughter Deb's place. We put it to immediate use, and WOW, the ice it makes! It delivers the first ice within about 9 minutes of being turned on, and can produce as much as 28 pounds of ice every day! That relieves the necessity of buying bags of ice, and will certainly be an advantage back in Benson, Arizona!

"Suzy went on line" is a common phrase around here. Another of Suzy's recent buys was a grapefruit knife. At home in Benson, we have a great grapefruit knife that we have used for years. It has an easy curve to its blade, a rosewood handle, and a perfectly tapered and serrated blade. Here in the motorhome, we have been using (and trying to replace) this silly plastic handled, awkwardly curved, salaciously serrated blade that tears the grapefruit to shreds.

After literally weeks of research, Suzy found this near-perfect replacement, closely matching the one at home. This baby cuts the grapefruit as it should, with little effort, carefully separating the segments, and leaving them intact with all their juices set to leap onto our taste buds at first chomp. Delightful, if slightly expensive (it was the shipping costs that really hurt, but none of the retail stores we visited had anything like it.).

Doesn't look that much different, but boy! does it work better!

That's enough nonsense for today. Come back and see us again, next time, living ... Our Life on Wheels.