April 22- 30, 2010

April 22, 2010, Thursday

We did get to stay in bed longer this morning which I was thankful for. The weather today has been pretty bad raining most of the day. We did venture out to Walgreen’s where they were celebrating “Earth Day” by refilling ink cartridges for a dollar a cartridge. We dropped off five. We also stopped at TGW (the golf warehouse) where I had a coupon for two free NIKE golf balls. Which reminds me, I forget to mention that yesterday Rocky the older gentleman from Indiana gave me his old set of golf clubs. I plan on cleaning them up and giving them to one of my grandsons, either Riley or Luke. Today I wanted to get some outside things accomplished but the weather didn’t permit me to do so.

April 23, 2010, Friday

Today the weather was a little better for doing the things outside I wanted to get accomplished. I put out chairs, cleaned out the car and put all three sets of golf clubs in trunk of the car. Next, I then put the wheel covers on the motor home, put the table cloth on our round table and put out our new solar lights. Later in the day we drove to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. It was a good and productive day for us.


April 24, 2010, Saturday

Weather was bad today with rain and wind. This seems to be something we’re going to have to get use to staying here. Kansas has shown us the ability to have some really bad storms. Now I know why the location in the Wizard of Oz was in Kansas. Except for the weather it was a relaxing day for us. Tomorrow we start back to work for three days.

April 25, 2010, Sunday

WOW! – this day went by so fast we even went 40 minutes into our lunch time before we knew it. I cleaned the restrooms and the laundry room early. Rhonda and I planted more flowers today. We are starting to get in a routine and feeling more comfortable each day that we are here. This day was short because of staying busy. And this day was again exhausting. Our trip around the park was nice and Sadie is enjoying her short golf cart trips at the end of the day.

April 26, 2010, Monday

Again our days at work seem like they are going to be very repetitive in nature. I stayed very busy all day until about the last two hours. I had caught up on everything and started looking for things to do. Rhonda’s day sometimes gets frustrating for her because she still has to call Sheila more than she wants to. But I have confidence in her – I think she is doing very well. It was a long and productive day for us. One new item is we subscribed to the Wichita Eagle newspaper for the next 26 weeks. We are receiving the weekend editions (Fri, Sat-Sun) until Oct 27, 2010 for $1.25 per week. This is a pretty good deal considering the Sunday paper has been costing me $2.00 per week since we arrived.

April 27, 2010, Tuesday

This is the last day of our three days working. After today we will be off for three days. I did find out that the other couple (the third couple) will be arriving this weekend (Saturday). They will be in training for a couple of weeks, and then we can all go to a 2 days on - 4 days off schedule. We’re really looking forward to that work schedule.

This was quite a work day. I did all kinds of jobs today, besides my normal chores of cleaning and appearance upkeep around the park. I had a few maintenance chores that came my way. We had a motor home come in that is staying with us for one year. I took them to their designated site after filling up their propane tank.
After they were in their site they called the office asking Rhonda if I could fix the water line at their site. The water spigot didn’t have a handle to turn it off and on. So I went to see what the problem was and sure enough the handle had been broken off during this past winter. It was so bad I had to replace the top and the spigot going down into the water hole shut-off valve. Before I could do that I had to shut off water to 13 sites. So I called Sheila to let her know. Then I informed Rhonda in case anyone called about not having water. I only needed to shut the water off for about 15 minutes. No one called and everyone was happy.
My next project was putting a wheel(s) on a storage gate. Thanks to Keith’s help he let me have two -wheels off an old dolly where I transplanted them to the gate. Now it’s much easier to open and close the storage gate. It was a very physical and exhausting day but one of self satisfaction too.


April 28, 2010, Wednesday

Today we’re off work but that doesn’t mean we weren’t busy. Our first stop was less than a mile from USI south of highway 96 at a roadside flower shop location.
We were shopping for more flowers for around the outside of the motor home.

We then went to a bank to set-up accounts for ourselves. Rhonda did a checking and savings account, while I only opted for a savings. All my earnings from USI will be saved for new tires for the motor home. My guess is they will cost us between $1,800 - $2,400 for six new tires.

We were in need of a lunch so we stopped at a cute little diner called, Jimmie’s Place. It had a retro-setting of the 1950’s. Our waitress had picked the name “Cookie” for her job. It seems the workers can pick a name they want to use while working at this establishment as long as it’s associated with the 50’s. It was a very good meal with good service. I’m sure we will be going back there again.

Then it was on to Lowe’s and Nature Way to look at some flowers. We went back home to let Sadie outside and put our stuff up. Then the wind started kicking up again with 20-40 mph sustained winds with gust up to 55 mph according to the weatherman. It was so bad we had to bring in one of the plants we bought today and put it inside the motor home. We had a busy day and I feel like we accomplished quite a bit. The rest of the evening we relaxed and watched a little TV.

April 29, 2010, Thursday

All night long the motor home was rocking and rolling. I don’t think I have ever been in a location that’s had so much wind. The Panhandle of Texas gets a lot but here in Wichita its murder. We have been here 20 days and I can honestly say all but 3 or 4 days we have had windy days. I’m not just talking a little; I’m talking a hold on to your cowboy hat wind or lose it kind of wind.

Later today we had a dinner date at a nice Mexican restaurant. On our way home we stopped at Target Super Store to buy a small ice-machine. They were sold out so we picked up a rain-check for this item. We made it home just in time to watch the TV show “Survivor.”

April 30, 2010, Friday

I worked around M/H mostly worked on outside and tried to get our satellite back since we lost it because of the wind storm knocking it off-line.

Sheila the owner of the park has WI-FI through Tengo an internet server. She allows her workers to have free WI-FI while working here. So I called Verizon and put our Verizon air-card on hold for the next six months. This gives us a savings of $60 per month allowing us to save $355 over the next six months just in Verizon fees. The only requirement was to pay a $15 fee to suspend it for the next six months. And let me just say the Tengo internet service is great.