Yesterday just spun by, then dinner and I was tired, and it was time to go home to the trailer to sleep. I seem to be really busy, most all day, but sometimes not getting much accomplished.
Just showing flat, soybeans, corn, and to the right sunflowers. We see a lot of corn and soybeans, and this is the first little spot of sunflowers, and they are not quite in full bloom.
Somehow I was able to finish the window-well cover yesterday. It functions, and will hold a child, and a light adult, but I’m not real proud of the workmanship.
This is todays project, if I can find a bucket to mix a little cement patch.
The sun was full, and orange prior to setting to the sliver of light in this picture. No clouds and a haze hanging in the air, make spectacular sunsets. The sky is so big that it reaches all directions, down to where it touches the ground, way off in the distance.
Life and time is slipping by at an incredibly fast speed for us. It is funny how just taking care of ourselves during the day, is all that we have time for when we are on the road, and takes up the whole day.
Yesterday found Anne-Marie and the girls deciding that it would be a great day to have a shopping trip. Sara had been house bound for a few days, and was being a little stir crazy, and as I like to say “needed to shake the house smell out of her clothes”.
I welcomed the quiet time in the house, because Michael was studying at the Library, and there would be no distractions for a good nap. Not ten minutes into the, winding down time and my cell phone rings, “Steve? This is Doc, from the RV Park in Tucson”. I haven’t spoken with Doc since we left Tucson the end of April, and this really eroded into nap time, to the point that it just wasn’t going to happen today. Doc has been receiving correspondence from the local phone company since June 13th, about the DSL Internet service that serves the RV Park, and the phone company would like Doc to change his service to a dedicated circuit, and away from the DSL system. My mental state went from a near slumber, to about sixty miles per minute.
The Internet service providers, phone companies, cable TV companies, and even the cell phone companies, are running our of internet bandwidth, and they all have conditions of use policies in place, and some of them are measuring service by the total amount of data used, and not just the size of the data pipe. The Phone company also has rules about reselling their service, when DSL is used. The people that I called at the Phone Company, only knew a small part of their system, and I find this a bit frustrating. The Phone Company Representatives only know that the data use is high, and a business account, and needs to be off the DSL service soon, or be working on a solution to limit or balance internet use. The circuit solutions are very expensive $500-800+ per month, and make checking into cable TV for the internet service as another option.
On the phone for about 2 1/2 hours yesterday, and a lot of agony over what can be the least expensive solution, kept my stress level up. Internet access is important for all of us, and more so with travelers, to keep in contact with family. When I was still working, I dealt with emotional issues of this magnitude on a daily basis, and I don’t know how I continued for as long as I did, and it probably contributed to my health issues that got me an early retirement. We have a solution somewhat sorted out, and a fall back plan if the phone company service doesn’t continue, I just hope that it doesn’t cost too much. I just wish that Doc had called a bit sooner.
Today another trip to the hardware store, and I hope to have the window well cover done, and safe.
Yesterday morning, we got a call from Sara, saying that our Granddaughter wasn’t feeling well, so Anne-Marie and I had a day of touring alone. We drove down to Rockome gardens, a forty minute drive, expecting to have several hours of looking at the displays and buildings, but we were surprised with a closed sign, seems that they are closed Monday and Tuesday. Rockome Gardens has been an exhibit of the Amish lifestyle, and crafts, since the late 1930s. We will have to make a better coordinated visit at a later time.
Anne-Marie and I toured around the Arcola, Illinois, area, looking for a favorite Amish store. We passed through rural areas, that the local power company didn’t even bother to install electric lines down the roads. This is the Bagdad School, it seems to have a propane stove for heat, and the addition to the right has a large 4X4 skylight, and a light tube to provide light within. There is no evidence of electric, or phone lines entering the school.
The Amish have a lot of farmland in this neighborhood, and some have extensive buildings, and others not so much. There were even some newer houses, that were in the Amish fashion, of being built with no provision for electric lines. The pictures show the countryside with no lines.
Beachy’s is a grocery store, that caters to the tourists, and the locals alike. The locals ride bikes, horses, wagons, and buggies to the market. The bike parked in front of the store, was ridden by a Amish woman, in typical dress, and bonnet, and bare footed. In the store, we saw several women barefooted, I find this amazing, because if I find the smallest rock on the rug inside the trailer, it hurts my feet, they must be tough. The men were dressed in the same fashion, suspenders no belts, buttons not zippers, and the haircuts were of the same style, and the women had dresses that were pinned together, no buttons, and nearly all had the same style of bonnet.
They give the closest parking spaces to the local’s with their horses, wagons, and buggies.
The store has no commercial power, but they do have electric checkout registers, and what looks to be electric light fixtures in the ceiling. The light fixtures might be skylights, but I couldn’t tell, they were quite bright. There is extensive use of propane light fixtures of this mantel type of light fixture, throughout the store.
The cooling fans, and ceiling fans, are powered by compressed air. Each fixture has a compressed line in, and a exhaust line out.
The shelves in the store were full of prepackaged bulk food, and many, many varieties of preserves under their own label, and other Amish food processors.
Beachy’s labeled, mustard mayo pepper spreads, and Planks locally made mustards and spreads. These same labeled foods can be found in many local markets around Champaign, and Urbana.Anne-Marie and I stopped at a local meat market, Dutch Valley Meats in Arthur Illinois, and not knowing what to expect about how they can keep everything cool, I was surprised to see common coolers, lights, phone lines, even a wireless Wi-Fi router, and they accept credit cards. The girls behind the counters, were Amish, pleasant, and very knowledgeable about the operations of the meat market. They work with the latest technology during the day, and after work return to a lessor technology equipped home. I read about the struggles of the younger people in their community, and some are attracted to the modern world, and then others are repelled by it. The pace of life in this community is slower than the big cities we have been to, but it requires more energy and work than what we are accustomed to since retirement.
The plans that I had for yesterday, just didn’t fall together. The Amish community trip got pushed out till today, The weasel is still running free, and undocumented, not photographed. The weasel, or another one has been in Sara and Michael’s yard and at the next door neighbors. The neighbor thought that it was a chipmunk like squirrel, and it was using a hole in their lawn as a home. The kids would shoo it off, if it ventured into the lawn when they were playing. They haven’t seen it for about two months, I guess it moved a few houses over.
Sara and Michael’s white car had non-functioning A/C, and it had an appointment to get fixed, and this cut into the afternoon too deeply for the Amish community trip.
I worked some on one of my chosen projects, and in the true fashion of all of my volunteering to be helpful, I have started to dread and dislike this project, because of the multiple trips to the hardware store. Every little design bug that I work through, means another trip to the hardware store, and I lost focus yesterday late afternoon. I now have all of the parts cut to size, and I just need to drill holes and use the rivet tool to finish it up.
The project, it’s a cover for a window well. Home Depot didn’t have the proper size in stock, so I am building one based on the neighbors cover. This will get finished tomorrow.
My helper audience, Grace our Granddaughter with the glasses, and the Neighbor’s daughter.
We were busy all afternoon, and I didn’t even get a nap. I didn’t get anything done, but I did make a lot of headway on the window well cover, seems that engineering problems, and lack of a shop with work benches add building challenges.
Anne-Marie and I saw a small weasel yesterday, just two houses away from Sara and Michael’s house. The small weasel was in the street, next to the curb, and it looked to have a body about the size of a mouse, only about three times longer, and a tail that was hairy, but not bushy. The total length wasn’t much more than 10 inches, nose to the tip of the tail. The critter loped across the street, in the typical weasel/ mink fashion, and once into the lawn area, it stood up on its hind legs and looked back at us in the van, and worked its way across the lawn area to the neighbors garage. Anne-Marie and I parked the van in Sara’s driveway, and I grabbed the camera, and walked back to where I saw the weasel. The weasel loped across the driveway, and just into the grass, next to the garage, and raised up on it’s back legs to look back at me, I wasn’t even to the far edge of the drive way, 25ft or so, and it disappeared. There was a hole in the sod, at the edge of the pavement, and runways in the grass, branching out from the hole, and the hole to its burrow was small, like a gopher hole. I wanted in the worst way to knock on the neighbors door to ask permission to set up my trail camera, but I have restrained myself, maybe today.
The water provided in the park has a green tinge to it. Anne-Marie washed dishes last night, and it wasn’t obvious in the sudsy wash water, but the rinse water, has a green look to it, almost like a herbal tea color. I have been instructed to install the new inside water filter, and to use filtered water for the morning coffee.
Yesterday the weather got a bit cooler, as we had some thunder boomers pass over the area, and last night we had a large red sunset, and this picture doesn’t quite do justice to it.
Our trailer is at the far corner of the RV Park, and I’m trying to show the vastness of the field of crops. I haven’t figured out which way is down hill, and I don’t know how the water can find it’s way to the streams and rivers.
Todays adventure if we have the energy, is a trip to Rockome Gardens, and the Amish Community. Michael and Sara took us to visit the area, two years ago, and Anne-Marie and I both have our own shopping lists for Amish made items, if we get back there.
Saturday morning Anne-Marie and I had to hurry our morning routine to get over to Sara’s, early enough to run downtown to the Farmers Market. We were at Sara’s before 9:00AM, with plenty of time for browsing the market.
The market has all of the typical vendors, that can be found in nearly any city. Bread and baked items were available from over a half dozen vendors, fresh local vegetables, popcorn, waffles, even some Amish folks with their unique jams, jellies, and syrups. I visited the Amish booth, to buy their Mild Jalapeno Mayo & Mustard spread, but when we got home I found that I picked up the Zesty Habanero Mayo & Mustard Spread, I hope it’s not too hot.
There were some street musicians, and this one with the flute, looked to be a free spirit.
The political booths were mostly grouped together, and I was sure to wear my T-shirt from Funks Grove, Illinois, to not look like an out of Towner, and I guess I looked like I should be interested in the local politics, because most all of them approached me to be interested in their cause. Anne-Marie, Sara, Grace, and I made a fairly complete tour of the Market, and the heat drove us home early.
The banner picture shows that our trailer is backed up to a corn field, and the heat hasn’t hurt it much, and this wide picture shows how close the lake is to us, just across the road. Last night there was a resident trying to catch a fish, and as the sun was setting, the water was like glass, and reflecting the heat and light into his face, too hot for me. The water that is supplied to us, here at the RV Park, has a little bit of color to it, Anne-Marie calls it green. I installed a new water filter out side, when we arrived, and I have a new filter for the under the sink filter system, and Anne-Marie is encouraging me to change the inside one soon. The inside system only feeds the little instant hot water tank and its faucet, and the drinking water water faucet, and it is supposed to catch all of the bugs and cooties, and help the taste.
The heat has been a big concern here in the central states, and the thermometer in the van usually gets a little higher than the true temp, when its just parked in the sun. These show the hottest I’ve ever seen the temp, and as the van moves, the temp falls to the true outside numbers, it was 100+ something.
We seem to be bothered with an occasional small fly, something like a fruit fly sized little bug. These little bugs are hard to catch, and they like to be in my area of vision, somewhere between my face and whatever I’m looking at, and sometimes even on the inside of my reading glasses.
When we are moving, and catching up with friends like Steve, from Tucson, we will have two or three daily news worthy adventures or tours to report about, but that isn’t always the case when we are visiting with family. Our Granddaughter Grace, is busy, really busy. Sara is on the verge of being uncomfortable, and unrested all of the time, from expecting another baby, and chasing Grace all day. Michael is studying near constantly for the New York Bar exam, and he has note pages scattered about the house, just incase he finds himself without a study aid in hand, he should find one close by. Michael’s biggest hurdle, as I see it, is being interested in legal stuff that in my opinion is a bit uninteresting.
I have been given a few projects around the house, and I got to visit the local Home Depot for parts and materials, and that was my treat for the day.
Here in the Mid-Western States, the biggest local news is the heat, and yesterday, the temp was over 100 and the heat index is 110 or so. The heat index has something to do with the sopping wet muggy humid air, and some amount of heat, and added together makes it feel hotter than the heat alone.
I have a nifty camera, it’s a Sony, and I have used it for most of the blog pictures, and what I liked about it was that it is simple, and if I get it in a mode that doesn’t work, I can just turn it off, and it gets back to easy mode. being easy is good, but the on-off button is big, and it seems to get turned on in my pocket, or when in its case. The camera, when its trying to come alive in the case, looses its battery charge, and this can mean a lost photo-op, and this happened in Tucson when a rattlesnake visited us during happy hour, I lost precious time, first running to get the dead camera, then running back to the trailer to get the standby camera. I have looked at the next model up of the Sony camera’s, and those that cost a little more, have a better engineered on-off button, smaller and recessed. I want a camera that doesn’t come on in my pocket, and I’m working on getting into the correct emotional state of mind, to make the decision on what model to get. The emotional wellbeing is something I have to work on to keep guilt at bay, so I study and justify the upgrade.
This morning the planned activity is a trip to the Farmers Market in Urbana, and Sara says we need to be early to get the good stuff, because a lot of venders run out of the good items.
