Category: Uncategorized

It starts, of course, with the Internet. After all we are geeks.

So we begin at IKEA’s website. And we open tabs for items of furniture we like. Then we begin weeding them out. Then we add our favorites to a list. Which soon looks like this:

Then we take that list to the store and see what those items look like in person. Then we cross some things off the list and add others. And we take notes on some things such as how tall is that chair arm and how tall is that end table thus how well will they likely work together.

Then we take a break and go to Houston to deliver our RV to PPL Motorhomes there.

Then we come back to Minneapolis and go to the store again. We find more things to consider.

Finally we make a list of the items we think will work best for us that are actually in stock at our local IKEA. As we travel through the store one more time we get items from our final list entered into the store’s computer system in three different departments. We go to checkout to pay but they don’t want enough money. Something is wrong. The last clerk entered our items but did not save the entry. A phone call fixes that and we blithely hand over our credit card for more than $2000. Which is not bad for an entire apartment’s worth of furniture.

Then we take that receipt and the picking list to another counter. There we spend another $100. For that, other people will pick all our furniture off the racks, pack it into a delivery truck, and deliver it right into our living room. More than 700 pounds of furniture we don’t have to handle until it is home.

Then we spend the better part of three days doing this:

 

I read the instructions as we inventory the parts then I walk Dave through the steps of assembling our new furniture.

Then we go back to IKEA and buy accessories.

After discovering that apartments don’t come with nearly as many cupboards and cubbies as motorhomes do we make another trip to buy another end table which we haul ourselves this time. It takes both of us to move it from the shelf to the store’s cart. A good Samaritan helps load it into our car. At the apartment, Dave drags it from the car onto the bottom shelf of one of the grocery carts the apartment keeps for use of us residents. Then he drags it off that shelf onto our carpeted floor. What can I say; we are not used to lifting huge 75 pound boxes. But, it is now home and assembly begins again.

Then we order what turns out to be a huge TV from a different vendor. This time UPS delivers it to our living room. And the maintenance man is here doing small fixes as we are ready to set it up so he offers to help lift this time. We like our maintenance man. Thanks, Paul.

We have been in this apartment nearly two weeks but I think we are almost done now. I hope.

TTYL,

Linda

Computers only speak binary. Their language has only two numbers. That means every switch in a computer is either set to zero or one. Everything  is either off, in which case it is 0. Or it is on, in which case it is 1. That’s it. Either a 1 or a 0.

Today is November 11th. Of the year 2011. The eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year of this century.

That is commonly written 11/11/11.

So at eleven minutes and eleven seconds after eleven o’clock today, commonly written as 11:11:11, our whole world will be turned on.

TTYL,

Linda

As we get settled into our apartment we need all our energy focused on that. But we still need to eat. And I prefer to do that within the parameters of my new way of eating as much as possible. One solution is breakfast sundaes like this:

Except they aren’t quite as decadent as that sounds. Or looks.

Here’s one version as ingredients then in the bowl:

 

Here’s even more detail of another one:

 

For those of you who really want the details it is 1 cup of 1% cottage cheese, 1/2 to 1 cup fruits of your choice, and 2 Tablespoons chopped nuts. I prefer walnuts but sometimes use slivered almonds or pecans.

All that for 7 points plus in case you are tracking those.

Yummy.

TTYL,

Linda

 

When we decided to live fulltime in an RV we sold almost everything we owned. Since RVs come fully furnished we had no need of that houseful of furniture so it all went to various new homes.

I did keep my favorite lamps, though, as they are not making that type anymore. Mine have no switch per se. Each lamp base is the switch. You just touch any metal part of the lamp to turn it on. And it has three levels of brightness from just a standard light bulb. Touch once you get dim, again to get brighter, and again to get brightest. One final touch will turn it off. I love these lamps. When I am sleepy I don’t have to struggle to find a switch, just touch the lamp and be done.

As RVers we bought a camp chair (we already owned one), a bar stool, and a TV tray but no other furniture.

So they day we got access to our apartment our living room looked like this:

Two camp chairs, a TV tray, and a lamp with no shade. Not what you’d call fancy.

But this was the view from those chairs that evening:

 

I think we are going to like this location.

TTYL,

Linda

In Palmer, Texas, just south of Dallas, I saw a multiplex drive-in theater. Yup. Five screens in a circle. Just like at a walk-in theater you pick your movie then point that direction. What will they think of next?

The billboard for Sonic drive-in restaurant said, “We built it. Now come.”

I-35 in Oklahoma has scenic turnouts. Who woulda thought?

A Cracker Barrel billboard said, “Relax. Unwind,” with a picture of a Slinky. The child in me cried, “No! When you unwind a Slinky you kill it!” Guess how I know that.

A Maine license plate on a truck said, “semi-permanent.” It wasn’t a semi-truck so that couldn’t have been what it meant. So was it “semi” or “permanent”? How could it be both?

It’s different traveling in a car instead of an RV. Now we can stop anywhere for lunch; it doesn’t have to have pull-though truck-sized parking spots. We can pull into any gas station without worrying about if we will have to unhitch to get back out. We can take side roads without worrying about low or narrow clearances. The road doesn’t have to be seven lanes wide for us to make a u-turn. But we can’t stop just anywhere for a potty break; we have to find public toilets. Ones we’d be willing to use. And I still see every Blue Beacon Truck & RV Wash along our route. I wonder how long that will continue?

And motels. I’d almost forgotten what it’s like to stay in motels. We mostly stayed in Comfort Inns on our trip because they were well spaced for our planned stops and we could get rooms with refrigerators to store all the meat we cooked before we left to snack on during the trip. And we could get rooms with desks and sofas where we could sit during the evenings to do our computer stuff. And they serve a hot breakfast in the morning.

But, there was one Comfort Inn we will not be returning to. The one on 14th Street in Des Moines. They would not honor their website price. They advertised a sofa but actually provided a chair and ottoman that was very uncomfortable; in fact it tried to dump me out of it. And the toilet ran off and on all night. We’ll choose somewhere else next time we pass that way.

But, we are home. We are settled into the Extended Stay America where we lived for a month a dozen years ago while the builder finished the house we sold when we decided to hit the road. And we’re slowly getting moved into our apartment. More about that later.

TTYL,

Linda