What's been happenin'.....

Well, hopefully none of you have been going through too much of a major withdrawal since our last post. Just not a whole lot exciting been happenin' so not much to really write about. But figured I should post something so you'd all know that we're still alive!

As we mentioned, we've had several doctor's appointments. The highlight probably is that Russ got new glasses and had a cardio stress test, and for all you non-believers, they did find his heart! The doctor said it looked "perfect" (his exact word!), which was a relief to hear. Of course, the advise was still the same, "lose weight, quit smoking, exercise". Yeah, ok.

I've been visiting the Baton Rouge Chorus on a weekly basis and enjoying my time singing with them and being with friends. I had lunch with my friend Patty, who used to be in the chorus, but can you believe I forgot to take my camera with me??!! And last Tues. night my friend, Susan ("Sooz"), picked me up for dinner and went to rehearsal with me (this time I DID remember the camera!). Sooz used to be a member of the chorus, too, and enjoyed seeing everyone. She's been quite busy with her family and work, but one of these days who knows....Sooz just might find time to rejoin.

The weather has been kind of crazy with lots of rain. One day last week it was 70 degrees, and the next the high was 45! There have been two mornings in the last couple weeks where the temperature was only 27 degrees when we woke!! Left the water running a little during the night so the hose wouldn't freeze, but a couple folks weren't so lucky. It's supposed to be warm in the south! But at least it's not snowing.

Last week I stopped by my former place of employment here in Denham Springs, Greystone Golf & Country Club, to say hi to everyone and wound up having lunch with Pat, who currently works in the Pro Shop and started working for Ron not long after I started. We had a great visit and hope to get together again before I leave.

On Friday Russ and I stopped by there again to have drinks with Ron Menville, Managing Partner of Greystone, my former boss, and good friend of Russ' and mine. He and Russ had worked together on a project in the past and that's how I met him. We had a great time chatting and catching up, and made plans to have dinner in a couple weeks with him and his wife, Susan. While we were there, Moses came in so of course I had to get a picture with him! He is the Cart Staff Manager and a super nice guy. Greystone is in the process of updating their website (http://www.greystonecountryclub.com/), but you can still check it out and get the pertinent facts on what a great place it is!

We finally started eBaying some of the small stuff from our storage unit. We listed two items last weekend, one of which was our cordless phone system. We had listed a starting bid but also a Buy It Now option, and it was sold in a manner of hours! Russ said we obviously didn't ask enough for it!! We've currently got 13 items listed and are keeping very busy researching other items and preparing to list more for posting next weekend. One of the most amazing things is some cologne that Russ got back in the late 60s called Nine Flags Cologne. Russ hasn't used any of it in at least 40 years, but had held onto the bottles for some reason. During our online research to see if anybody was buying such stuff, we found that there are folks out there definitely buying this stuff up at big prices even for partially used bottles! So we've got it listed and already have 3 bids on it with 5 days to go!! Unbelievable! Now if everything would just sell that way, but we know that's asking for way too much.

So unless there's something exciting that happens, we probably won't post for another couple weeks. Happy Super Bowl, Happy Mardi Gras, and Happy Hour!

Denham Springs

Though not a lot has happened, I suppose it's time for a weekly blog update! As you know we are staying at the Denham Springs, LA, KOA, and as it turns out, we were able to get the monthly rate after all. Though still a bit pricey, it's cheaper than the $1,000 we had anticipated.

Before we hit the road back in June, we would occasionally drive through this campground to try and get a feel for the lifestyle, and figuring we'd be back here for a couple months, to see what the park looked like and had to offer. In the six months since we left, they have made some improvements and are expanding the number of monthly sites. One of the improvements they've made is to put in a small dog park area, which the kids love! It's not huge but big enough to let them off leash to run and play for a bit. Another couple who have been here for about 6 months, Linda and Dick, have a 3 year old boxer named Raz, who has become fast friends with Abby. They have about the same energy level and have a blast. Linda also showed me a city dog park, located about half mile behind the campground, which I never knew existed the entire time we lived here. We walked the dogs over there last week before all the rain hit, and they had fun playing with some 6 month old pups. Mikey generally prefers to walk the perimeter and sniff everything he can, going on sensory overload!

One of my chief complaints since we starting fulltiming is that we've never had hot water. It's always been warm, or mostly lukewarm, but I just figured that was one of the downsides of the RV lifestyle. Well, we hooked up here in Denham Springs, and lo and behold we had HOT, scalding water!! But then the next day we noticed we had a hot water leak, too! Russ got out the manual, we drained the tank, fiddled around as much as we could since we couldn't reach all the parts, filled it back up, ended up draining it again, and finally made an appointment to have it looked at since it was under warranty. There was a certified Atwood water heater repair shop in Hammond, about 40 minutes away, so early Wednesday morning we closed everything up, anchored everything down, and drove the motorhome up to Hammond. Long story short there was a crack in the hose fitting. DJM Enterprises (http://www.thervservicecenter.com/) was very professional and extremely customer service friendly. They are a small shop, but we would definitely recommend them to our RV friends should you find yourself in the area needing service. I still have very hot water, but no one seems to be able to figure out why the temperature suddenly changed. Can't just be the Baton Rouge water!

The night before this adventure I visited my friends in the Baton Rouge Chorus (http://www.batonrougechorus.org/). It was their first night together since the holiday break and nearly everyone was there except for 3 (hopefully I'll see them next week). They are a very small chorus so even when a couple are missing, it can make a big difference! On this particular night they were being visited by Janie Macchiaroli from the Regional faculty. Every chorus in the region is entitled to these visits, and it's beyond me why any chorus would turn down this great opportunity but I hear some do! Janie is the Education Coordinator for the Region, a Certified Sound Judge, coach, quartet medalist, Associate Director of Houston Horizon Chorus, and most of all a friend of mine! She has been a member of Sweet Adelines since 1971 and has also served on the International Board of Directors. It was great not only gleaning more words of wisdom from her coaching but also to chat and catch up afterwards.

The chorus, under the direction of Cate McRitchie (pictured front row on the far left), is planning to spend the next 13 weeks working hard on their contest songs, and I intend to visit as many times as possible while we're in town the next couple months. It was fun to see everyone and get the chance to sing again!

Other than that nothing much has been happening. The park here has a small kitchen which serves dinner on Saturday nights and breakfast on Saturdays and Sundays. We gave it a try Sunday morning.....good and reasonably priced. We made our first of several dr. visits and went to our storage unit. We're in the process of going through the couple hundred LPs that we've accumulated over the years to see if there's any worth putting on eBay. And I found a guy locally who will buy up the remainder for $100 so that will get rid of a couple boxes! We've also got about 100 45s of which only about 4 are worth eBaying so will probably throw those in to the guy, too. So until next week continue to have a great New Year!

Missouri Roasts Hogs from the "Great SEC"!

The only thing missing at the 2008 Cotton Bowl was a pit to roast the hog in! The Tigers completely dominated Arkansas in every phase of the game winning 38-7. It was such a brutal beat down that most of the Arkansas fans had left before the start of the 4th quarter. Missouri's running back, Tony Temple, set Cotton Bowl records for most yards gained (281) and most touchdowns (4). His performance completely overshadowed Arkansas' Heisman runner-up, Darren McFadden. Although McFadden ended up with 105 yards, most of that yardage happened after Missouri had raced to a 28-0 lead and the game was basically over. It was the perfect ending for the Big 12 North Champion Tigers! The Tigers finished the season 12-2, and with 17 returning starters, will look to be a force during the 2008 football season.

There's nothing quite like the atmosphere of college football! Even if you're not really into football, there's the fun, traditions, excitement, and pageantry of it all. Add to this a January 1 Bowl game, with the tradition of the Cotton Bowl, and it's a great time. With over 75,000 fans in attendance, equally divided between Arkansas and Missouri fans, the atmosphere was electric. The bands, the flyover, and a great rendition of the Star Spangled Banner all added to the excitement.

When we arrived at the stadium RV parking lot in Dallas early Sunday afternoon, there were already about 50 RVs decked out in Arkansas colors and decor, some with flags flying. The Arkansas Razorbacks have a huge following of alumni (about 450 RVs) who travel to the games in their RVs and call themselves the Road Hogs. Many were already in fine spirit and had begun a 3 day tailgating fest! When we arrived, the parking lot attendant told us that we were only the 4th Missouri supporters he had seen so far. Think we got our numbers up to 8 by game time! But the Arkansas fans are fun and friendly, offering to share food and drink at a moment's notice. In the end there were about 200 RVs in the lot. Although the Arkansas fans were loud and boisterous before the game, after the game they sure seemed in a hurry to get out of town.

There was a group of 4 couples from Texas who enjoy traveling to all the local bowl games no matter who's playing and just go for the fun of it. Someone had put together a Q&A and scavenger hunt for the ladies to complete before their mini pep rally later in the evening. They had to get the answers to various Missouri and Arkansas team questions and then secure specific items from the fans.

There was also a group that had some huge speakers over which they played all types of music well after midnight, and since they had a karaoke machine, they were singing along most of the time. Nothing like a bunch of drunk karaoke singers! Definitely a party atmosphere and a great way to bring in the New Year!

Over the next 3 days we heard the Arkansas fight chant waaayyyy too many times! It goes "Woooo Pig Soiee!!", which they yell 3 times, then end by yelling "Razorbacks!" We wondered what Arkansas valedictorian came up with "Wooo Pig Soiee!" We also wondered if a hog could quite possibly be the worst mascot imaginable. If you were looking for a mascot, it would seem that an animal that loves to wallow in its own shit would be far down the list! Oh well.

We had contacted our friends, Kelly and Lynne Herring, who we've known for years and who currently live in Dallas. They picked us up at noon Monday to go to the Cotton Bowl parade downtown. The wind was whipping and the temperature was in the low 40s, but there was a good turnout with the parade lasting about 2 hours. We stopped by the Missouri Pep Rally at the end of the parade singing the Missouri fight song and joining in the cheers. Afterwards they took us to Dickey's for some good ol' Texas barbecue!

After two days of listening to the "Wooo Pig Soiee" cheer and fight song, on gameday we awoke all the Arkansas fans by playing our CD with the Missouri fight song! Most were probably already awake, and the sound didn't travel far because we didn't have those huge speakers that the Arkansas fans had, but we made our presence known by playing it several times! We walked over to the stadium about 9am to pick up our tickets and find our seats. Though it was a 10:30 game, we weren't sure how long the lines would be, but everything ran very smoothly and we were inside the stadium within about 40 minutes. I was very surprised that in this day and age they weren't doing any security check of purses or bags! On the way we encountered many more Hog fans and were getting a bit concerned as to how many Tiger fans would actually show up. But never fear, we arrived in huge numbers.

We had some concerns about spending 2-1/2 days without power, but it went off without a hitch. We had loaded up with fresh water and found that our batteries would support normal operation of the TVs, small appliances, and heat for about 8 hours without recharging. A couple times a day we fired up the generator to recharge the batteries and used that time to run the microwave and any other large capacity appliances. The refrigerator worked well on propane during the entire stay, and when we went to bed, we changed from electric to gas heat, keeping us warm and toasty. After this trip, we feel that we could easily stay for 6 or 7 days while boondocking out in the wilderness.

On Wed., Jan. 2, we packed up and headed for Baton Rouge around 10:30am. We planned on making it to Lafayette, LA, to spend the night, but after stopping for lunch in Natchitoches, LA, we noticed an RV park next door. It was nothing fancy but had full hookups and was only $16/night. Being tired from the previous few days, we decided to spend the night there and drive into Baton Rouge on Thursday arriving around 1pm. We are now set up in the local KOA in Denham Springs and working on getting organized for our stay. Doctors appointments, some warranty work on the RV, getting rid of some of the things in storage, and visiting friends are on the agenda for the next month. We haven't committed to when we will be leaving here, but right now it looks like in about two months.