January 3, 2005

January 3, 2005

C.A.R.E. Centre

DAY 199

 

Today was sunny, hot, and humid. I wore shorts and a light t-shirt. HA HA HA HA HA ! ! !

My work days here at the C.A.R.E. Centre start at 8:00 A.M., which is a lot earlier than I would like, but ... ! My first job today was to empty, then back flush the black water tanks on 9 rigs, for participants who can't take care of it for themselves. The first two I did with John Dryton ( the "boss" ), and the rest I did by myself, while John removed the toilet from the second rig. It broke while we were back flushing. Fortunately ( for me ) it broke while he was working on it, not me. When I finished the tank flushing jobs, I was assigned to do some preventative maintenance to two golf carts. By the time I finished that, I was late for lunch. There was some grumbling from the kitchen about me being late, but since Joanne had spent the morning working in the kitchen, she made sure some lunch was kept for me. She started work at 8:30, working on lunch preparation, and wasn't finished lunch clean up until 1:30. Most, if not all, of her work will be in the kitchen.

After my late lunch, I had to relocate a very heavy picnic table, then lower three awnings on Rodney's rig. Of course, interspersed with all these chores, was taking both Bo and Ginger for morning and noon walks. I went with John and Doug to a local RV repair shop to buy the parts needed for the broken toilet. The shop didn't have the necessary parts, but sold us another broken toilet for $5 that we could cannibalize for the parts we needed. Back at C.A.R.E., I dismantled the first toilet, removed the broken parts, dismantled the second toilet, removed the parts we needed, then re-installed them in the first toilet and re-assembled it. John and Doug re-installed it in the rig.

A long, hard day. I learned a lot about the internal workings of RV toilet systems. It was kind of nice to learn, and make learning mistakes, on somebody else's equipment. If and when our toilet should ever break, I should be able to repair it like an expert.

I washed, changed, and joined Joanne at social hour which was already underway. After social hour, we returned to the rig, where I began to work on one of the day / night shades in the kitchen. It broke last night when we were pulling the shades. By the time I got the blind fixed, it was time for supper. After supper, I spent the evening working onanalyzing the 2004 performance of our investments. Not bad. We've had worse years, we've had better.

I got a lot done today !

DSK