Up until Wed. of this week, I honestly thought that we were going to leave by Tues. or Wed. at the latest of next week. Guess all my wishful thinking came true. We put the truck (Dodge Ram 3500 diesel, of course) in the shop to put in a lift pump that we should have put in last year when the old one went bad...700 miles South of the Border! Ack! We were stuck at our friend's house in Scorpion Bay for something like a week before we finally gave up and took a bus up to San Diego and John got online with some Gearheads that knew all about this particular problem. He replaced the old lift pump with another one but we needed to do some after-market engineered thing that we have been putting off for the past year. Anyways, putting that thing in and general maintenance found that we needed a new transmission....$4000 and it won't be done until next Wed.
sigh.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Monday, October 13, 2008
Can we have the luddites step outside?
I figured it out! Now anyone can come on the blog! Yay! Now if I could only think of some funny, and witty things to write about....Hmmmm...
We got our shots last week on Wed. in Santa Ana through the Orange County Health Dept. Seems that San Diego County Health Dept. does not do travel shots. Going through a private dr. for the travel shots would have topped out at a little over $2G for the Typhoid and Tetanus shots alone. Through OC Health Dept. we paid $635 for John and I to get Tetanus/Diptheria (free), Hep A/B combined shot Twinrix, Typhoid and then Yellow Fever. Yup, 4 shots and most of them did hurt! ack! Somehow Teresa had missed a Hep A shot but that was free, so she got that and Typhoid and Yellow Fever. Leo lucked out with just the 2 shots, Typhoid and Yellow Fever. And he was the one that had started to cry just when I made the appt. for the shots, yet he was the one the least affected by them. Teresa cried about her arm being sore on the way back for a good 10 min. but somehow she managed to still go to Swim Practise that night. I had a headache coming home that night, but I attribute that to just driving up there for 2 1/2 hrs. up and 1 1/2 hrs. back. The next day I was tired enough to sleep in that morning AND take a nap that afternoon AND go to sleep early that night. I have felt fine ever since. John was stricken with those "you could have flu-like symptoms for the next 2-3 days" for the next 4 days. He is finally feeling better. Well, I guess you never can tell!
John has replaced the fridge with a self-balancing one on a swivel and we now have more room for storage as this fridge had a smaller cooling unit and the same storage inside. He is having to put the solar panels on the roof permanently, another roof rack for the blowup boat, and surfboards and chairs and such. I have suggested a tarp awning off the back over the doorway and maybe one off to the side. We have mosquito netting over the door in place of a screen door. We need to get new suspension on the back, that will be tomorrow. We also have to get a new table made, the current one is woefully small, wide enough for one plate for each of us, and no room for drinks or anything else. Making the table wider would be better the kids, also, since they will be sleeping in that area.
I don't mind (complaining, oops was that my outside voice?) saying that packing for summer or for winter wouldn't be hard but packing for both is quite a challenge. The first 6 mos. we will be in areas where the temps will never drop below 70. But in South America, we will not only be there during their Winter, we will be up in the mountains visiting Cuzco and Macchu Pichu, and did you know that there are Penguins in Peru? Who says that we won't need those nice warm fleeces and jackets? Yet realistically, where do I fit it all in? I would like to take our warm fleece lined boots and jackets, but then we will not have room for other things. Ugh. I am trying.
Let's hope that my attitude towards these things changes as I start to pack things....good attitudes bring good results! Yeah, right, phooey! LOL
We got our shots last week on Wed. in Santa Ana through the Orange County Health Dept. Seems that San Diego County Health Dept. does not do travel shots. Going through a private dr. for the travel shots would have topped out at a little over $2G for the Typhoid and Tetanus shots alone. Through OC Health Dept. we paid $635 for John and I to get Tetanus/Diptheria (free), Hep A/B combined shot Twinrix, Typhoid and then Yellow Fever. Yup, 4 shots and most of them did hurt! ack! Somehow Teresa had missed a Hep A shot but that was free, so she got that and Typhoid and Yellow Fever. Leo lucked out with just the 2 shots, Typhoid and Yellow Fever. And he was the one that had started to cry just when I made the appt. for the shots, yet he was the one the least affected by them. Teresa cried about her arm being sore on the way back for a good 10 min. but somehow she managed to still go to Swim Practise that night. I had a headache coming home that night, but I attribute that to just driving up there for 2 1/2 hrs. up and 1 1/2 hrs. back. The next day I was tired enough to sleep in that morning AND take a nap that afternoon AND go to sleep early that night. I have felt fine ever since. John was stricken with those "you could have flu-like symptoms for the next 2-3 days" for the next 4 days. He is finally feeling better. Well, I guess you never can tell!
John has replaced the fridge with a self-balancing one on a swivel and we now have more room for storage as this fridge had a smaller cooling unit and the same storage inside. He is having to put the solar panels on the roof permanently, another roof rack for the blowup boat, and surfboards and chairs and such. I have suggested a tarp awning off the back over the doorway and maybe one off to the side. We have mosquito netting over the door in place of a screen door. We need to get new suspension on the back, that will be tomorrow. We also have to get a new table made, the current one is woefully small, wide enough for one plate for each of us, and no room for drinks or anything else. Making the table wider would be better the kids, also, since they will be sleeping in that area.
I don't mind (complaining, oops was that my outside voice?) saying that packing for summer or for winter wouldn't be hard but packing for both is quite a challenge. The first 6 mos. we will be in areas where the temps will never drop below 70. But in South America, we will not only be there during their Winter, we will be up in the mountains visiting Cuzco and Macchu Pichu, and did you know that there are Penguins in Peru? Who says that we won't need those nice warm fleeces and jackets? Yet realistically, where do I fit it all in? I would like to take our warm fleece lined boots and jackets, but then we will not have room for other things. Ugh. I am trying.
Let's hope that my attitude towards these things changes as I start to pack things....good attitudes bring good results! Yeah, right, phooey! LOL
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