Sometimes things work out the way you least expect. Carol’s new computer came on Wednesday the 4th and I thought we could be gone by Friday at the latest. Wednesday, as I noted, we had some interesting electrical occurrences with the water heater and the microwave. It turned out that the microwave was not a self repairing failure. Thursday we discovered that although the lights would light and the oven made the right noises, things did not get hot. Discussion with Samsung Tech seemed to indicate that the magnetron (the thing that makes the microwaves) was broken. The shocking news was that it was still covered under the original 10 year parts only warranty. Who’d a thunk? Then there was the matter of finding someone who could do the work and Samsung has no service support people anywhere near Las Cruces. Phoenix here we come!
But wait a minute, that truck over next to the fifth wheel behind us says “Richard’s RV Service” maybe he will have an idea. In the meanwhile we have been searching the web for a new Convection/Microwave Oven to fit in our cabinet, no more than 24 inches wide. Not One! Richard listened to the tale of woe and looked at the oven and offered to call a local repair man who does this sort of stuff to see if he wanted to even look at it. The short answer is, 30 minutes later Richard brought his power screwdriver on board and undid the 6 screws on the front of the machine and slid the entire unit out in a matter of a couple of minutes. It has sat on two metal brackets with indented places for the feet for five years of hard road, secured by 6 little screws driven into the wood surround. We are waiting for the repaired unit to be reinstalled Tuesday. Then we will be off, slowly.
The weather has deteriorated. There is not a sign of blue in the sky, the winds have been nasty and the temperature peaked in the mid 60’s this morning and has dropped off to the low 50’s this afternoon. I know you northerners would think this is springlike, but here it feels like winter. The gray is too familiar, it feels like February. . . in Rochster.
What are we doing for entertainment? Well, we have spent the last couple of days moving all of Carol’s data from the Mac to the PC and installing the necessary software. The real issue is replacing Adobe Photoshop with The GIMP. $700 or free which sounds like a better option? We are going to go with The GIMP (that is an unfortunate name, it stands for GNU Image manipulation Program). If Carol absolutely can’t stand it, back to Photoshop. We have taken a hike in White Sands National Monument and we have biked down to the Rio Grande River, about 5 miles from our campground. We have met with a realtor and will be doing some sightseeing with her on Monday. Although we are not in the market, we have come back here repeatedly and keep saying we might want a place here, so now is the time to take a look and see if we can find what we want. That will be hard because we don’t know what we want. It will have land so we have space for our coach and maybe a guest or two; it may have a house, or not. It will have some decent views, which are not hard to come by here. It will provide us with some entertainment and something to talk about. Neither of us is really ready to buy anything, but you never know.
The Kelter Zeitlin family have left for Rochester for Zvi’s (that’s Zvi Zeitlin, Leora’s father) recital in Kilbourn Hall. They have caught the best of what Rochester has to offer for weather at this time of year. We expect that they will be back some time on Monday. It is unlikely that we will get to see them again this trip, but I am sure Carol and Leora will talk before we roll out of here. You never know!