Busy month.

Location, At Home

Much has happened since I last posted.

A cruise on the Star Princess.

On Oct 1 Clyda and I joined our friends Cindy and Gary in San Francisco for a 10 day round trip cruise to Mexico. We had great weather, (as in hot), low sea state (as in no waves), and a great time. We played lots of trivia against other teams and even won twice. We enjoyed the prize, a bottle of champagne for one win while the ladies won while we were ashore in Cabo San Lucas.

 Under the Golden Gate Bridge as we get underway to Mexico.

 

 Trivia in the VIsta Lounge with people from Illinois.

  The reason for the cruise.

Birthday cake from Princess.

Cabo San Lucas was our first stop where Gary and I tendered ashore. The sea was a little rough for the ladies to disembark. The town has been decimated by Hurricane Odile and all hotels were closed as well as many of the waterfront establishments. In particular was the demise of Senior Frogs. The only way we knew it was the correct building was because someone had spray painted the name on it.

 Plywood from store fronts in Cabo San Lucas.

We walked the waterfront, had a beer in one of the few open restaurants and went back to the ship.

Our next stop was Loreto which is a new port for Princess. Again we had to tender in but it was worth it as the town while small is unspoiled by tourists. We hired a cab and had the driver give us a town tour. Later we ate at an outdoor restaurant near the city center and then strolled back to the dock.

 On the waterfront in Loreto with Star Princess in the background.

The next day we were in La Paz where we docked but had a one half hour bus ride to town. La Paz is a nice enough town but it happened to be very hot while we were there. Instead of riding the bus back to the ship we opted for an air conditioned cab ride.

Our last stop was Puerto Vallarta which is well known and a fairly large city. Again we hired a cab to give us the town tour. As part of the tour we visited a tequila distillery, sampled the wares, and purchased a bottle to bring home.

 Gary, Cindy, Ed, and Clyda on the dock at Puerto Vallarta with ship in background.

The Star Princess visited Santa Barbara, CA today.

Yesterday I drove to Lompoc and picked up the RV. Everything was fixed but the new fender skirt is a much darker grey than the original. Of course, some of that is sun bleaching I am sure. The insurance company has already paid to have it repainted after my desert trip.

Speaking of which, I have been working like mad to get everything ready to leave Saturday morning. I bought food today, gassed the truck and did all those things that need to be done before any trip. Tomorrow I will load the truck and finish all the other chores.

This and that.

Location, At Home

Let’s see, what is happening.

I am still working some Genealogy, mostly checking dates. There is a big discrepancy in some data I have found as to birth and other dates so I need to check and recheck as much as possible.

On the RV side, not much is happening. I am still waiting to hear that the insurance check has arrived at the repair shop. Meanwhile, my drop dead date is creeping closer. All involved are aware of it.

As to my new PC which also operates as a tablet, BAD news. I called Dell yesterday and thought we had all issues settled with my email. Not true! When I turned it off then back on to test everything, it just wouldn’t receive email and every time it asked for a password it told me it was incorrect.

Later I found out from an Outlook website that Outlook at Microsoft was having a problem. Whoopee! Even Microsoft is against me.

This morning a Dell tech called me to see how everything was going and I explained what had happened. The result of that was his recommendation that we wipe all programs from the computer and start over as something was drastically wrong. This took some 3-4 hours. He will call me back tomorrow and we will go from there. I hope!

Yahoo.

Location, At Home

Yahooo!, Yahooo!, Yahooo!

A breakthrough!

I had mentioned in a posting a short time ago that I was working on family history and making some significant progress. Well, tonight I made a major breakthrough concerning my Great-grandfather and the two children he brought with him to America. I knew some of the facts related to their immigration but the details were missing.

For years I have searched the Immigration Ship Transcribers Guild website for records related to my forbears. These records are of ships and passengers who immigrated to America mostly before Ellis Island opened. I never found any record related to them.

Tonight while searching using Ancestry.com I found the original record of my Great-grandfather Franz, his daughter Rosina, and my Grandfather Stephan who traveled from Bremen, Germany to Baltimore in 1883. This information correlates with other data I had found including their passport which I have in my possession. They traveled in a Family Compartment on the ship and brought 2 steamer trunks with them. I have one of the trunks and my sister has the other.

With this information I can now enter more of the data that I have discovered in my Ancestry file.

What a great day!

Surviving the heat.

Location, At Home

Back from a week of camping with friends in Pismo Beach. Too much good food and lots of games played. Great time was had by all.

On the way home we dropped the trailer off in Lompoc so the damage to the body from the tire blowout can be repaired. The long lead item (21 days) is the fiberglass fender. It should be ordered Monday.

We stayed in Lompoc and had dinner with friends before driving home after dark. I don’t drive much after dark as there is no need for it normally so I was extra aware as I drove home.

The weather here is warm to say the least. Temps are in the mid-80s with higher than normal humidity. We also have clouds reminiscent of summer monsoons in Arizona. I doubt if it will rain however, but sure wish it would.

It is really dry here and the lawns look terrible as most people have stopped watering. I intend to keep our fruit trees watered as I don’t want to lose them. I have the barrels hooked up to catch the wash machine output and I hope to water the most needed parts of the lawn. We would like to remove the lawn in back but that requires a lot of work and lots of money to do what we want.

Maybe El Nino will happen this winter. Who knows?

Heading out for a week of camping.

Location, At Home

A short blog before we head out for a week of camping at Pismo Beach.

I am still working on my family history and have made some real progress finding facts and details about my gr-aunt and her family. I did bite the bullet and subscribed to Ancestry.com as I found much info there and I didn’t want to lose what data I had saved on their web site.

I managed to get things settled with the insurance company and will drop the RV off after our week of camping for the repairs because of the tire blowout.

I got a lot of work done yesterday and today. I washed the front and rear of the RV. It had not been washed since we returned from our summer trip so the front cap had a lot of bugs on it. I waited until we had a foggy morning hoping that it would help loose those bugs. Not a chance! It still required elbow grease while standing way too high on an 8 foot ladder.

Today I washed the truck and aired up the tires. I should be good to go now.