Today is the day it begins. Tomorrow my van will no longer look like this:
It will be the end of October before it’s ready for me to pick it up, though.
(Ignore those things in the back of it. That’s my iPad and GPS we sat down to take the picture when we were in Texas.)
TTYL,
Linda
Some things I find myself thinking about.
I’m glad we have bug-out bags. It was easy to grab them, throw my computer in one, and head out the door knowing we had all the important papers and data we would need if we had to start over. I was surprised at how many people left without a purse or phone or anything.
It’s good to have a plan. We know where our fire extinguisher is and how to use it. We know where our stairs are and where they exit the building. We know to test the apartment door for heat before opening it and, if it is hot, to go to plan #2. Plan #2 is to head out onto the balcony. With wet blankets if we think we have time to get them. There is a water hydrant below the master bedroom window so we are confident we would be found quickly if there was a big fire even though we would be on the back side of the building. We live on the top floor but we chose a building that is only three stores high so the fire rescue ladders would reach us. We have a good fire department that wins awards so we trust them to serve us well. We are as prepared as it is possible to be.
The thing I worried most about was the car. We park in the underground garage. It did not feel like a good idea to go down there to retrieve it since we didn’t know where the fire was and we were not sure the automatic garage door opener would work; it’s one of the old gas station cable type things you drive across and the door opens.
While I like having new things, I would not like having to buy absolutely everything all over again. Most of our things are relatively new anyway since we bought all our furniture less than a year ago and I’ve had to buy new clothes as I lose weight.
I’m glad my new van will not fit in the garage. In the future we will have an escape vehicle with the basic necessities of life on board if we should need it.
How prepared are you?
TTYL,
Linda
We got to spend some time outside today meeting some neighbors.
It sure was a noisy experience, though.
The building fire alarms went off, all the fire doors closed, and I got to prove I can walk down two flights of stairs. Carrying our bug-out bags just in case this was real. And worrying about our car being parked in the underground garage.
Then a fire truck showed up. Only one, though, and they didn’t seem to be in a hurry so we thought it was probably a false alarm.
Not.
It seems someone near the center of our building had a small kitchen fire.
Made me glad we have fire extinguishers in case that ever happens to us.
And that I can still walk down the stairs.
Sorry about no photos. That was not what was on my mind until we got safely back inside.
TTYL,
Linda
Being under the impression that I am sleeping better I decided to use my FitBit to check it out.
Time it took me to go to sleep: 6 minutes. Times I woke during the night: 10.
Those feel like good numbers for me.
So, imagine my surprise when I went back and looked at my weeky averages for those weeks I measured my sleep and found those number to be typical.
It’s all perception, people.
All of life is just perception and interpretation.
TTYL,
Linda
We’ve been asked to post as much as we are willing to do about our new GPS for the benefit of those in the market for a new one. So here’s today’s trip.
We live in a suburb on the west wide of Minneapolis, Minnesota. Today we had several errands to run which included a stop at our favorite Denny’s which is far from home but on the way to the outlet mall which was one of our destinations for today. So, after making the close to home stops, Dave entered Denny’s as a name search. But this GPS only finds points of interest that are fairly close to where you are at the moment and we weren’t close enough for it to find it. Since we knew it was near the intersection of I-94 and Hwy 101, we put those as the cross streets in the intersection search and it found that.
Normally, from where we were at the time, we would have backtracked to the freeway and taken a couple of them to Denny’s. But, our GPS took us on a pleasant drive through the country on two lane roads and past a KOA we’ve stayed at many times so we arrived unstressed by the drive. Nice!
When we were ready to leave Denny’s we wanted to enter the outlet mall as our next destination but we weren’t sure of the name of the mall. No problem. There is a POI section for shopping so I chose it then selected shopping mall as our category. And it found the one we wanted in a town about 6 1/2 miles on down the road.
We are enjoying using this GPS in territory that is familiar to us because it is helping us learn how to use it when I get into unfamiliar territory. And Dave likes it so well he is talking about buying one for him to use in the car when I take this one with me in my RV.
I don’t know how we can recommend it any higher than that.
For those of you who might be just tuning in it is a Garmin dēzl 560LMT and, if you search this blog for that term, you will find my first review of it with details of using it in following blogs.
Happy travels.
TTYL,
Linda
