The Sandcastle

It has been rainy/stormy most of the time since we moved to Minnesota for the summer. That means we have not been running as many errands as we should. So, when we realized today would be sunny with the temperature mostly in the 60s we decided to head out.

Things to take to the car included:

1. the trash to drop off at the dumpster on our way out of the park

2. a couple bags of clothing to be dropped off at Goodwill

3. the new backup drive that turned out to be defective so needed to be exchanged

4. my Nook to be mailed off to our daughter even though it hasn’t been packed up yet

5. the battery for my scooter, said battery not being safe to leave in a hot car

6. my lumbar pillow which travels back and forth between the car and RV because we’ve not been able to find a suitable replacement yet

7. my beverage since I rarely go anywhere without one

8. my phone which needed to be unplugged from the charger to go with me because our daughter sent me an email this morning saying she wants to chat today so I will call her while Dave exchanges the hard drive

9. my iPad because it has addresses on it I’m going to need while out

10. my chair/cane which goes everywhere that I might need to sit down while waiting for anything including cashiers

11. and my “bag” which carries a lot of stuff including those things most people carry in a pocket or purse

So, off we went. Dumped the garbage, dropped off stuff at Goodwill, stopped for lunch, and exchanged the disk drive. Next stop the Segway shop to sell back to them the Segway they sold me three years ago.

Oops! The bag of Segway accessories, including the keys for it, is still at home in the RV. How did we ever mange to overlook that while packing for the day’s errands?

TTYL,

Linda

This is a mini-tutorial on how to transfer a spreadsheet from the laptop to the iPad then use it there. Most of you won’t want to bother reading this but I feel compelled to share this for those of you who want to use Numbers but don’t live with a Dave who can teach you how.

I already told you to start by saving your spreadsheet as an Excel document if it didn’t start out as one. I save mine to the desktop to make transfers easier.

When you plug your iPad into your laptop it will sync most things automatically. Your apps, however, don’t happen that way. So once the basic sync is done you need to select your iPad from the left column of the iTunes screen on your laptop.

Then go to the top of the iTunes page and select “Apps”.

Scroll down that page to the “File Sharing” section which will list the applications you have that can transfer files back and forth.

Select Numbers then simply drag your document from the desktop onto the list and sync it.

Now your spreadsheet is on the iPad–sort of. Disconnect your iPad from your laptop then open Numbers on the iPad. Do not panic when you do not see your new document. It’s there but you need to finish bringing it in.

To do that click on the down arrow and select “Copy from iTunes”.

Then click on the spreadsheet you want to bring in.

Because Numbers for the iPad and Excel don’t have all the same characteristics you likely will get some errors in the data. None of mine have been critical.

Ta da! Your spreadsheet is now available to use on the iPad.

Because it is too small for me to use comfortably, I use Apple’s reverse pinch move to enlarge it.

Now when we discover something while on the road that I want to know about in the future, I can update it on the fly.

Double clicking in a cell (The cell selected is for the Flying J in Tooeley, Utah.) brings up a keyboard that I find to be large enough for me to touch type on it.

Unless the cell I click on has been defined as a number cell then double clicking brings up this keyboard instead.

That green bar box is where your mark your insertion point if you want to edit a previous entry. The boxes to the left of it are where you can change your keyboard from numbers to calendar to text to formulas to make it easy to enter which ever type of data you want to put into that cell. When done just click on the done box and whatever keyboard you have been using will disappear.

Numbers is a really smart application. Play with it a bit and you’ll soon learn how to insert a row, sort columns, drag numbers down a column, cut and paste data, etc. Just be sure to transfer your updated spreadsheet back to your laptop before your begin working over there again. Although, the iPad is smart enough to give it a new name if you try to bring back an existing spreadsheet.

I hope you find this application as useful as I do.

TTYL,

Linda

At 6:30 pm last night the National Weather Service issued a storm warning for our part of the world.

On a map, the places listed look like this. The tan ones are the named locations and the white one is us.

Most storms in the area travel northeast so, yes indeed, we are in the path of that storm warning. So we checked the radar. The arrow points to our location.

And the view out our window looks like this. Note Dave holding his hand over our weather radio to muffle the storm warning announcement a bit. Otherwise, it is loud enough to wake the dead.

It looks like we’ll have a thunderstorm passing on each side of us but not directly overhead so we decide to wait and see.

After a bit the radar says yes we are in the thunderstorm warning area but, as we predicted, the actual storms are passing on either side of us.

And the view out our window still looks like this. And the weather radio is silent.

Suddenly a red box appears on our radar. Someone thinks they saw a tornado!

But that box is east of us and it is traveling northeast and no new warning is issued for our area. And the sky outside our window does not have the greenish look that says tornado to us. And the last line on the original warning says they are not calling out the early warning storm watchers which means they did not expect any tornadoes to develop in this storm. So we can’t help but wonder what it is that someone thought they saw.

The storm warning passed and the tornado box moved further east.

And the most we got was some fairly heavy rain.

No hail. No 60 mph winds. Just rain.

Dave and I, having lived in the Minneapolis area for 60 years and 45 years respectively, do a pretty good job of reading weather forecasts for this area. We can judge pretty well when we need to go to a storm shelter and when it’s safe to wait. We don’t try to do that for other parts of the world and we don’t recommend newcomers to our area wait.

But, we are safe once again.

TTYL,

Linda

We have arrived at Mississippi Riverwood. Many years ago this place was a KOA. Now it is a co-op RV park.

Here’s our site, #310. On the right you can see the green power pole where our water, sewer, and electrical hookups are. To the left of that is a concrete patio with a picnic table. We are to park between the power pole and the patio. Behind our parking spot is the shed that belongs to this property with its pile of firewood we have permission to use. Between the shed and the picnic table you can very faintly see a concrete fire pit. At the very far left of the picture you can see the site number post with its welcome sign and just past it the very end of our driveway/parking area which we think will hold three cars.

This is our neighbor to the north with our car in our driveway:

And this is our neighbor to the south:

This is Dave’s view of the Mississippi River from his chair:

Here are some detail shots:

The picnic table. It could use some rehabilitating.

The upper level fire ring.

The lower level fire ring.

It is, too, there. Look just to the right of the tree.

OK, so we need to wait for the river to go down a bit before we can use that one. At least we are unlikely to get flooded out of our campsite this year unlike last year when we camped along side the Minnesota River.

Our nearest neighbors. The ones we are hoping don’t move inside with us.

And our neighbors across the street.

Behind them you can see the sound barrier wall that separates us from Hwy 101. We still hear the traffic there but we don’t mind that. And, no, there are no railroad trains blowing their whistles on the other side of that highway. The trains are across the river.

TTYL,

Linda