An Antique Find

We went out browsing  this morning and found the perfect ice cream scoop for Suzy & Bill.  Suzy has been looking for a scoop larger than the ones you can find on the market.  We spotted this one in the Southern Picker's Antique Store and made a deal on it.  It is a Gilchrist No. 31 scoop made between 1900 - 1926 when the company was in business.  It is about 11" long and the mechanism works beautifully on it.  The scoop measures 3"s across so it's like getting a regular dip and a half with this baby.

Thursday we went over to Austin so we could go to Sam's Club.  Ugh, traffic was awful and we encountered a lot of road construction.  The store was fairly easy to find, but our Tom-Tom maps aren't quite up to date so we got turned around a little.  It wasn't a big deal, just a little detour.

Larry is the "Pool Guy" this summer.  He does all the maintenance, cleaning, etc. 5 days a week between 8 a.m. - 10 a.m to open the pool and then 2 nights a week he takes care of all the chemicals and closes the pool.  He's pretty well got the hang of it.  One morning he was removing the Shark that cleans the bottom of the pool and over-reached a little and fell into the water.  That was a little jolt he wasn't expecting.  Then another morning, he was going around the pool to clean out the filter traps and encountered a small snake.  He showed it to the manager and she called it a rat snake.  The are water moccasins in the lake here and also 3 other poisonous snakes in the area:  rattlesnakes, coral snakes and copperheads.  Aren't we lucky?  Texas has them all.  Fortunately, I didn't see the critter or I would have been packing my bags to leave.

My bad knee (torn meniscus and Baker's cyst) continues to give me problems daily.  Some days I can barely walk it seems.  This fall when we get back to Mesa I will probably see about getting it fixed.  Last winter I was dealing with too much to even have it looked at again.  It's always something.

Until next time, enjoy your summer and stay healthy.

Johnson City, TX Day Trip

Wednesday we traveled over to Johnson City, TX, sub-title home of Lyndon Baines Johnson, former President of the USA.  It is a very small town, but draws lots of travelers that visit his former home and the LBJ Visitor's Center and Museum.  We did not do the tour but saw both.

We did visit a couple antique shops, one of which was an old lumber yard building.  After doing some browsing, we ate at a small establishment called the Silver K Cafe.  What a delightful little cafe with excellent food and service.  Best part was absolutely wonderful key lime pie - it was absolutely delicious.  Worth another trip over just to have the pie!!!

On our way back to Kingsland we stopped at the Exotic Zoo between Johnson City and Marble Falls. It is set on 137 acres with over 500 animals, most of which were exotic breeds of deer, gazelles and lots of emus and ostrich. It is a guided tour while you ride in a large wagon pulled behind a tractor. We learned so much information about the animals, such as most deer family members only have upper teeth so they really cannot bite you. Did anyone know that? Also springtime is when lots of new babies are being born. We were impressed that so many of the animals have recently had new little ones. There is one species of India deer that produces 1 set of twins every year, one female and one male. Now what are the odds of that happening - very interesting fact, I think. We wanted to share a few photos we took during the tour.



This is a baby buffalo born Wednesday morning a 7 a.m.  She is a bit shy and momma didn't let her move around too much.

This is Humphrey.  He is only 9 months old and he whined loudly every time the owner came into view.  He is fed a bottle twice a day and they are trying to wean him.  He's not buying it though.

Isn't this little lady the cutest?  She is only 2 weeks old.  Each zebra

had individual markings, no two exactly alike.                                                                              

It was such a fun day.  We were back home by about 5 p.m. so we could attend a pot luck.  One of the guests here at the Resort cooked up some homemade gumbo and cornbread for everyone.  Really was delicious.  After everybody ate, a few of us played penny ante poker.  I think Dee was the only loser as she did not win 1 hand all evening.  She was glad we didn't play past 9 o'clock.

Spring Is in Bloom!

This is how the countryside looked on our drive through the Texas Hill Country. Usually the black-eyed susans, firewheels, and Indian paintbrush were mixed in with the blue bonnets making a spectacular palette of colors. Several small towns in the area are having their Blue Bonnet festivals right now. *Please note we did not take this photo as we couldn't find our camera, but photo depicts the countryside exactly as it looked.

We arrived in Kingsland, TX last Monday, later than we expected, after spending the night in Snyder, TX. About 5.5 miles north of Eden, TX we had a tire blowout on the driver's side of the motor home. Totally unexpected, of course, as the tire was only about 2 years old and had less then 10,000 miles on it. Emergency roadside service came out from San Angelo, TX bringing a new tire with them to change out the blowout. We were along side the road for about 2 hours. A local sheriff, Richard Doan, stopped by (he was off-duty at the time) to see if we needed any assistance. Really a nice man.

We're all settled in on our site now and have begun our Workkamping assignments. Larry is taking care of the swimming pool & pool area every morning and I am working in the office learning the routine. We will be working every morning 5 days a week. Really nice managers and owners.

Dee has traveled to Marble Falls twice with Joy and Janis to play duplicate bridge already. She is really out of practice at duplicate but imagine she will catch up shortly. The Club usually has 6 tables of duplicate bridge with a good percentage of ACBL Life Masters playing in the group.

That's it for now, but will keep you posted on our where-abouts as we check out more of the area. This is the busy, busy season for summer guests here at the Resort - most of them are from the Austin area.

Tis Time to Travel

No, this is not an April Fool's day post! On Tuesday we leave sunny Mesa, traveling east toward Albuquerque, NM and then Amarillo, TX. It's been a tough winter season but we're on to better things now and both of us are feeling good and anxious to be on our way to the summer season.

Our motor home ceiling has been repaired - ozite upholstery replaced and what a change it makes. No more ugly dark brown water-stains. We rented a park model here at Mesa Regal for the 3 weeks the unit was in the shop. Camping World did a wonderful job. Of course we had to remove all items from the upper cabinets, refrigerator and freezer. Then we had to put everything back when we got the unit back. What a job, don't want to do that again in our lifetime as we're getting too old for that kind of manual labor.

Enough for now. Hope you all are doing okay and looking forward to spring. Sure hope the Texas blue bonnets are still in bloom when we get to the hill country.

New Year, New Beginnings 2012

After a very trying New Year beginning, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Many of you probably know that in October a malignant lump was discovered on my left breast after being cancer-free for almost 23 years. Talk about a whammy diagnosis! After much discussion and contingencies, we decided to travel on to Mesa, AZ for lumpectomy and followup treatment. All of my previous mammograms, sonograms, MRI's and biopsy had to be repeated before surgery. M.D. Anderson Cancer Center wanted to make sure what they were dealing with and then chart out best course of action. Finally had surgery in December with a favorable result, non-invasive ductal cancer, commonly known as DCIS. All of the tumor was removed with good margins and no lymph nodes were affected. Followup treatment has been radiation 5 days a week for 6 weeks. Below is a photo of my radiation team along with me ringing the bell signaling my end of treatment. A certificate was also presented to me for completion that said I completed my full dose, tolerating cold hands, a hard table and holding still. Patients then ring the large bell 3 times well. It's toll to clearly say, my treatment's done, this course is run, and I'm on my way.

As you can see a lot of people were involved in this process. I really liked the techs but can't say as I'm not glad to see them anymore. One of the techs, Caleb, was asent when the photo was taken.

That's enough for now. Will try and keep post more frequent from now on. Just trying to get back to normal time now.