Yes, I'm still here

Wow, a whole month has gotten away from me with no posts. Gotta catch everybody up! Where to begin...

Home front
I may have told some of you that I'm in the process of 'un-stuffing' the house. I'm in the early stages of preparing to jump off and go full time RV'ing. I want to see the country and I want to take my sweet time doing it. So what better way than to sell the house, retire from work, buy an RV, and just go?

The extremely early planning is that I'll use the RV as a base and do sightseeing in a 50 or so mile radius around it. Once I've seen everything I want, I'll just move the RV to a new spot and do it again. Some spots may be a couple of days and some places may be a month or two. Who knows? I'll probably end up making it up as I go. Might even try my hand at a little work-camping at a couple of the national parks just for the fun of it. I definitely want to do a lot of boon-docking in some of the more remote places. Just thinking about having no neighbors in sight just sounds so very good.

I've completely given up the idea of buying the boat and sailing the Caribbean. It never really did feel like a good fit anyway. This way when I get tired of it or I just can't physically do it any longer, I can just decide where in all my travels was a really great place to call home and just go there. Watch, it'll end up being someplace like Armpit, Utah or something.

Because my jumping off and going involves retiring from work, I really don't want to get specific as to dates just yet. It's at least a couple of years out which gives me time to get house renovations done. So right now the job is to get the house mostly emptied out and ready for interior demo. Man! There is a LOT of stuff in this house! There's going to be a whole bunch of Craig's list, garage sales, and Goodwill in my future shortly.

Barbecuing
I've put the trailer up for sale and I believe it's already sold. I think I'm done with that hobby. I did the Cocoa Village competition a few weeks ago and by the time I did the second turn in, I was basically done with it. Nothing went particularly wrong (other than I overslept by a mile), my heart just wasn't in it. I had the same thing happen when I did Apopka a few months ago. I had taken some time away from it to see if the 'batteries' would recharge and they didn't.

I still really enjoy my backyard stuff (jerky, bacon, cold smoking, etc.) and I'm still trying new things. In fact I'm having the same fun that I used to have when I wasn't competing.

I can always compete old school like I did 3 or 4 years ago. I would take an air mattress and my sleeping bag and just sleep in the bed of the truck. It was actually pretty comfortable.

Garden
Ugh... Summer heat has pretty much killed everything.
I've gotten about 8-10 hot pepper plants in pots kind of in a semi-shady spot and they are doing fine. I've built a frame with screening on it up on posts over one of the planter boxes in an attempt to give plants a little semi-shade. Going to plant a couple tomatoes or something under it to see if it helps at all.

I've started a whole bunch of tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, etc. seeds in the garage so that about the time that the worst of the heat breaks in another month or so I'll be ready with all new plants. That's right, I'm too cheap to go buy plants at Home Depot. A pack of seeds costs a buck or two. They want $3 or $4 per plant which I just cannot bring myself to spend. Plus, I don't get confined to whatever plants they have in stock. I can grow whatever I want from seeds.

Dollhouse
Remember that one? Yep, I'm STILL working on it! I can now for sure say that if you want to spend endless hours on a project, this one will fit that bill. Can't begin to imagine how many times I've been tempted to just throw the whole thing on one of the grills and light a match!

I'm actually starting to see the end coming into sight. I'm currently working on roof shingles. Each and every stinkin' single one. Hundreds of individual shingles prepped, lined up, fitted, and glued on the roof sections. Thank goodness for headphones and good tunes!

Believe it or not I'm actually thinking of doing another one when I finish this one. Now that I know exactly what is involved in doing one of these, I'm thinking of doing another one and going all out with the details. Really doing it right with floors (wood, rugs), walls (wallpaper), kitchen (cabinets, appliances), interior lights, etc. Should take at least a couple of years to do.


That's enough for now. I'll set a calendar alarm to remind me to update periodically. Obviously I can't remember to do it on my own very well.