Someday I’ll have to watch that movie, or maybe I have. Lots of people are referring to it these days on Facebook and in blogs. The main things that differ are who we Zoom with and for how long.

However, yesterday Carol asked me to get out the “Winter Bin”. Deep in the bowls of the coach basement it is a bin designated to hold winter clothes when summer approaches. It is that time to move the heavy stuff into longer term storage than the closet. Diligently I opened the basement and rolled the sliding tray with the bins on it out to the driver side (ds) so I could extract the bin while risking severe injury from the bottom of the slideout above should I raise my head a moment too soon. It really hurts and I have the scars! This time in several trips under there I managed to keep my head down, especially when Carol had her hand on it pushing down.

Simple task completed in less time than it took to write a bout it. While the baggage slide was fully extended to the ds I walked around to the ps and noted that the floor exposed by the tray’s position was filthy. I have noted this in the past and ignored it as I had other things to do. It flashed though what is left of my intellect that I did not have “other things to do.” I got the shopvac and somehow the morning passed with me cleverly vacuuming the entire baggage area which included removing everything we have stored under there. Unfortunately my determination to “get the job done” lapsed and everything that came out went back in. Stuff that we have carted around since our first shopping trip for the coach in 2001 and never used is still safely stowed away in its usual places. 

But you never know. In 2001 I bought a set of safety triangles instead of flares. They have been stored near the door of a bin waiting for an emergency for 19 years and last Fall as we were returning from Rochester to the West Coast we had the breakdown and I used the safety triangles! They do have a purpose. The handle with 250 feet of kite line on it is another story. Haven’t flown a kite in many years and all the ones we carried are destroyed, but you never know, I might have the urge to go fly a kite any day now.

I have read that people are having many more dreams they remember and they are more HD than in the past. Count me in to that group. I will not recount what I can remember because it seems too weird and at the same time too boring to recount for others, but boy at 3 and 5 AM I think I am awake until the dream or some variant  resumes.  

I have no idea what I might write about next, any more than I knew where this was going when I started. Couldn’t even think of a catchy title.

There are very few high points that mark the passing days. Unless you call a Zoom gathering a high point or the rare trip into town for supplies that are urgent. We have put gas in the Jeep twice since March 18, and only  a half tank each time. 

Each evening we check the calendar for the next day to see if we must get up at some time. Carol gets up most mornings at 6:15 to work out in the living room. Monday, Wednesday and Friday I must be at my computer with at least a shirt on to host an hour long gathering of the tech gang the the tech wanna be’s called JCATS at 8 AM. Mostly the trouble phone has no calls and we share stories of things that have broken in the past. We also are working on replacing an existing PBX phone system that was installed when the park was built in 1990. It was bought used! It’s amazing how few phone systems are built that aren’t cloud based. Cloud based comes with a monthly subscription and a special phone that costs a lot more than the $10 Princess type phone from WalMart.  Somehow I ended up a Chairman and my CoChairman just got appointed to the Board so I may need to replace him. There are only 4 of us on the committee.

In my last post one of the failures was the water heater. It resumed working just fine after having a 12 hour hissy fit. I did nothing to fix it, just opened the cabinet and looked around seeing nothing amiss on the surface. It has been working just fine ever since. Its replacement is sitting on the deck waiting for the mobile tech to come to swap it out. I keep saying “It Works” Carol keeps saying “Until it decides not to” This has gone on intermittently for 7 years (It was trouble free the first year). 

We had a Sedar, just the two of us and our three guests from the bedroom. By the window are Owl and Fox and diving into the Sedar Plate is Olm. Its a shy creature from a cave in Slovenia. Carol took this picture which is why she isn’t in it and I am. I could show you my version but it isn’t anywhere near as good.

Dose anyone need some Kosher for Passover Matzah? In the scheme of things we had to by 2.5 times our need. The cost to ship 2 boxes was more than the cost of 5. It’s gone now. 

Daily life is filled with small pleasant surprises. Each day some baked goody appears on our doorstep and on many others as well. All the bakers need to bake and then take part of what they baked to others. The trick is to deliver without being spotted. Not easy since we are all in our RVs most of the day and there are plenty of windows. Carol has been caught a couple of times

A brisk walk with mask on never goes for more than few minutes without stopping to chat with someone at a greater than 6 foot distance rehearsing what we have done today and what we think we might do after the walk. It does beat beating our heads against the all to close, at times, wall of the coach or whiling away hours on facebook or reading the NYTimes. 

“so it goes”

ps we do Zoom and will be happy to meet with anyone at most any time, 

Haven’t posted one of these in a while. You would think that sitting still for week after week there would be nothing to go wrong, go wrong, go wrong!

Earlier this week Carol’s computer (new in November)  started having problems with using the power button to bring it up after a night’s sleep.  Then the WiFi device went away. Did all the usual hoops including reboot and uninstall reinstall the device, no go. Even spent time with Dan finishing some more esoteric diagnostics. There was no WiFi device to be found. Found a JCAT with an adapter from ethernet to usb and got her online.  Called Lenovo got a ticket number. They are backed up two weeks! Very next morning after the usual struggles to start the computer it came back on WITH wifi! Go figure. Will probably send it in for repair anyhow, it is under warranty. I have set it to NEVER turn off and it seems perfectly happy.

Went out to our shed and found the power was out. Did the usual, reset the breaker, no help. Decided to wait for a warmer, drier day to work on it. That was today. I tore into the box with the switch and the outlet and puzzled and puzzled. My meter showed power to ground, but nothing to the negative. Finally I noticed that the outlet I was holding in my hand was a GFCI and it was tripped. Reset it and put everything back together feeling just a bit dumb. There is now a great big label above the box “GFCI ” maybe I will remember the next time.

As we prepared dinner last night there was no hot water flowing from the water heater! It had been a bit erratic recently so this was not a total surprise. But it was particularly unpleasant as it was Friday night, of course. We went into “camping mode” and prepared to do without hot water until at least Monday. This morning while washing up I ran the hot water more as a joke than an expectation. And there was hot water. Maybe the fact that the rain has stopped and the humidity is returning to normal made a difference. I have no clue and no expectations other than we will now replace the water heater after 8 years of intermittent problems.

A final minor kerfuffle involved Zoom. I have a licensed account. I noticed when Carol installed her free account the application was a newer version than mine. When I tried to update I got a message “Auto Update Blocked, Call your IT Admin” I tried calling myself, then I called Dan, again, and we spent an inordinate amount of time trying to fix it. Even tried reinstalling it which did nothing. Eventually out of lack of anything better to do I, uninstalled the application and rebooted the computer. Then I went through a new install which brought me to the current version with all the new security “stuff”.

That was one week of stuff during which the temperature never rose above 60 and the rains were almost continuous and we were content to being Safe in our coach in our wonderful SKP Resort where the virus has not yet intruded.  At least I didn’t have a lot of time to develop cabin fever.

A week ago I moderated my first Zoom meeting. Today I am beginning to  feel like a pro – actually I paid for a Pro account to accommodate longer meetings. We like to talk when we get together and 40 minutes isn’t very long either  for family or JCATs. 

Early in the week we learned that our sister-in-law Natalie Rudin had a very serious stroke, at 85 this is not to be taken lightly. By Thursday she was in hospice in NJ and no way for anyone except her son to even see her. We gathered the family from coast to coast and NJ to FL on Zoom and spent time getting reacquainted and starting to share memories of Natalie. Friday afternoon we received word she had died. Shabbat precluded immediate sharing, we have received word the funeral will be Sunday and will be live streamed in some manner. Shiva, the 7 days of mourning in Jewish ritual,  will be on Zoom. It enables us all to be “present” and saves a lot of air travel. Would rather get on the plane, but . . .

Also during this week we learned that Carol’s dearest friend from before Kindergarten – even before me – is in hospice after a long time of in and out of hospital care and weeks of no news. 

Pile this all on top of quarantine and necessary supply trips and it has been an exhausting week. A week like we have never seen, a week of watching stock market gyrations that are making me sea sick and I don’t get sea sick on the ocean. Sometimes, unintentionally I hear the orange head proclaim something clearly contrary to fact and wonder how our nation will pull through both medically and economically. Many governors seem to be actually responding to facts and scientific reason rather than emotion and bias. That may well be the source of our recovery leadership. 

Carol and I feel safe and secure. We are still under quarantine from our return from Panama, only yesterday was our scheduled return. We made a trip into town on Thursday to get hearing aids for Carol and pick up some last minute necessities – Yellow Dot Irish Whiskey is clearly a necessity isn’t it. We also bought supplies for a neighbor. We have daily offers to run errands and help us with things we cannot do in quarantine. As soon as we hear of someone having a need it seems a member will supply the need, even to an internet router replacement.  

I attended two events in Rochester. On Monday I attended a meeting of the Rochester Jewish Community Board of Directors by Zoom like all the other members. Yesterday afternoon we attended Shabbat services at Temple B’rith Kodesh in Rochester, it was a bit early, but we needed the break and the sanity and even more it brought us back to the community where we have spent most of our lives. We do miss it, but not quite enough to give up our current lifestyle and venture back into winter.

I have time on my hands and very little really happening. I have the computer on my lap and feel the urge to communicate. We are travelers, no surprise to most of you. We live for the next trip/adventure. There has been something planned for the not to distant future since we got our first motorhome and foreign travel has been an annual, at least, experience since I retired/sold my practice in 2012. 

There is a flight booked to Charlottesville for April 6, somehow I don’t have great expectations that we will be going. I just checked and Delta is expecting us . We had planned to drive to Alaska leaving Jojoba Hills on April 26 , that also seems unlikely since the border with Canada is closed to all traffic other than necessary commercial traffic. We talked about booking a trip to Sicily in the Fall, unlikely. I am feeling a bit stranded. Even a trip into town for medical or supplies requires intense thought and planning to get the most out of the time with the least contact with other people.  No surprise, supplies for staying safe are not readily available. Forget toilet paper and hand cleaner. Facial tissue is almost unavailable as well – I saw a box of 75 sheets for over $10 on Amazon, price gouging much? This was an outside seller delivering through Amazon. 

My expectation is we will be here through the summer. As we adjust to the new way of living, it will get easier for us. I am grateful we are retired and not dependent on work to keep food on the table and rent paid. Too many people are without work and without income. We are concerned about our staff, most of whom are laid off as “non essential”. We are paying our monthly maintenance fee based on paying their salaries, shouldn’t we just keep paying them? That may be an existential question to put to the board. Glad I am not on the board now.  

Tech is king now. We Zoom to get together and to have working meetings.  Even our Happy Hours include gathering around the computer screen with Zoom with drink in hand. We have apps for the stores where we will shop so we can preorder and have the order waiting at the pickup location for us. We email, text, message and write blogs to stay in touch. We even make phone calls! I know there are many other social apps people are using, but it’s enough to keep track of the ones I mentioned.

What am I doing? Washing my hands, watching PBS News Hour, watching movies and series, reading books and writing here and on a variety of forums and FB groups that I participate in. If you want to talk, send a zoom link, send a text or just call me at 585-721-2355. Do remember I am in California so 10 AM on the East Coast is 7 AM by me and I might be a bit out of sorts 🙂