It Won’t Be Long Now!

Thank you to everybody who e-mailed or left blog comments telling me to get well soon and expressing concern for my health. I think it is just a really nasty cold that has its grip on me. The good news is, yesterday I was feeling somewhat better and got a lot accomplished in the new issue of the Gypsy Journal. It’s going be a few days late, but I’m getting there. I appreciate all of our subscribers’ patience with the delay.

While I was working on the new issue, Miss Terry was knocking the piles of paperwork down that seem to grow faster than the national deficit. Just about the time she thought she had a handle on it, our mail caught up with us and she was buried again under an avalanche of orders, rally registrations, and subscription renewals. Of course, I didn’t help anything when I kept handing her things to proof for the new issue. We make a good team, Terry cooks and I eat, I make messes and she cleans them up, I write and she proofs, and I goof off and she does all the work. It’s a pretty good gig, guys!

Today is Valentine’s Day and I asked Terry if she would like to out to dinner, but she said she’d prefer a quiet evening at home. That’s fine with me too. In the next few weeks we will be surrounded with people, and chances for us to be together alone will be few until the rally is over. Happy Valentine’s Day darling, I love you very much.

Besides getting the new issue out, we also have a lot of other chores to get done while we’re here. We need to order copies of the printed version of Big Lake to have them available at the rally, we need to get rally T-shirts ordered, and we’ve got two seminar slots left to fill.

Speaking of rally seminars, Anita Rash has agreed to do a seminar on making ribbon and beaded suncatchers. Anita has done the seminar many times at Escapades and it’s always popular. There will be a small charge for materials, and the class is limited to 14 people. We’ll have a sign-up sheet at the rally registration booth when you arrive.

I also need to look into buying a new set of tires for our Ford Explorer. We’ve got one tire that loses air every day, and we can’t seem to figure out where it’s coming from. I’ve tightened the valve stem and the nut on the stem, and swabbed it with stuff to look for air bubbles with no success, and I can’t find any obvious puncture.

There’s a little bit of life left in the tires, but the wear bars are beginning to show and I need to decide whether to replace them now, or try to get the leak fixed and make do for another couple of months. I would just as soon put the new tires on now and be done with them than to have to deal with it later.

I had an interesting e-mail from a gentleman yesterday, apologizing to me for an argument we got into when I was teaching at Life on Wheels in Moscow, Idaho some years ago. We butted heads over a couple of things I was saying in the class, and it was decided that it would be better for all of us if he would leave. I’m sure he was convinced that his opinion was correct, and it was, based upon his experience as a weekend camper. However, the class was on fulltime RVing, and as I’ve said many times before, there are big differences between fulltimers and weekend campers. He wrote to tell me that he has been fulltiming for a couple of years now and has learned that the things I was telling the class were correct. I wrote back and told him no hard feelings, and we’ll get together for dinner sometime if we cross paths on the road someday. You know, we’d all be a lot better off if everybody would just accept that I really do know everything and leave it at that. 🙂

People from Alabama to Texas have written to ask me why the weather is still so nasty there when I’m all the way out here in Arizona. They asked what happened to the black cloud that always follows me around. It’s still here with me, and temperatures have cooled off quite a bit in Mesa since we arrived. But I like leaving a little bit of something behind to help folks remember I was there. Think of all that rain and cold you’re getting right now as my legacy.

When I wrote in yesterday’s blog that we’ve been overwhelmed with work now that my books have taken off and we just can’t find enough hours in the day to get everything done, some people wrote to suggest we might consider hiring help. That is something that Terry and I really don’t want to do. We have both been bosses and don’t want to be again. We’ve reached the point in our lives where we don’t want to be babysitters. Good employees are a blessing, but anybody who has ever been in a managerial position will tell you that the bad ones more than make up for the few good ones you get.

One way or the other, we’ll get a handle on things, and as I said yesterday, don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere. We’d like to slow down a bit, we’ve been pushing very hard for 13 years now and we are tired. We’re also older than when we started out. I don’t see us ever retiring, but there will have to be some adjustments as time goes on.

As of now, we have well over 120 RVs registered for the rally, and more are coming in every day. I think we are going to have an excellent turnout. We’ve got great lineup of seminars, and quite a few vendors who we selling everything from satellite TV systems to RV supplies to jewelry. There’ll be something for everybody. We’re really looking forward to seeing all of our friends who make up our large extended RV family. It won’t be long now!

Thought For The Day – I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure – Clarence Darrow.

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