5C's Que Pasa

Little by little, we are getting the job done.  I feel like I am still behind a half day but all I can do is take it one step at a time.

Someone long ago gave us this greeting card.  I came across it this last evening as I was tidying my desk….a Chinese Proverb. “Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it”.

It was too cold to go get the RV until about 10AM this morning.  Here comes Colin driving the wrong way down our street.  This way we have the RV door perfectly lined up to load.

A miracle.  New RV fridge shelves are over the top expensive.  So I purchased some appliance touch up paint a few months ago.  The plan was to do the touch ups before we turned  on the fridge.  However when Colin went to to the job, he could not find the touch up paint.  So I said forget about it and just turn on the fridge.  So today, lo and behold, I found the paint  – in the Tupperware shelf!!!  Must have been a gremlin.

When I found the paint I took a chance and touched up the shelves even though the fridge was cold.  It worked.  Quite the difference and I am very happy.

Yesterdays sunset.

It has been a full day of to do’s ( including four loads of laundry ) and we still have another few hours to go.  We will stop around 8PM tonight.  Meanwhile it was a good day and we worked between the rain showers.  Colin has his hard drives all ready for the trip and is currently working on more Photoshop.   This last job was to be done on the road but he is stealing a few hours here and there to do some of it here on his 27″ desktop.  The rest will have to be done on the laptop as Photoshop is only registered on those two computers so he can’t use my desktop even though we travel with it.  Why do I travel with a desktop, you ask?  Mostly for the blog 😎   So Colin is working on the most difficult photos and taking advantage of the larger screen.

21 cards for Mommio to be mailed every two weeks.  I chose them, addressed, stamped them and figured out which dates ( birthday, Halloween, Christmas and general greeting card ) they were to be mailed on.  Today Colin wrote in each card and as we always do, added a few 4 X 6 prints of us, the girls and our travels.

I love the deep red color of the berries on our Mountain Ash tree.  I can just imagine snow on the branches and birds pecking away at the berries.  So very pretty.

My desk is a mess. That is my project for this evening.   I need to put my desk to bed for the winter.  The list under the pen is food items that must be packed.  The book to the right is my daily to do list.  Normally it is only one page per day, at the moment there are enough to do’s to fill two pages per day.

Colin pulled a lot of stuff out of the shed that will go directly into the RV basement except for the tow hitch on the right.  All the boxes on the top step and the big blue one on the next step down are full of tools.  We do travel with a lot of tools and they do get used, both metric and other.  Do you all travel with that many tools?

My car and the golf cart were washed, parked and tarped for the winter.

I was so happy to get all of the dry good and pantry items ready to move to the RV tomorrow.  Between this stuff and the fridge and freezer it will take most of the day for me to place everything in the correct spots inside the RV.  Libby can you see your box on the extreme left next to my desk?  Somewhere in one of those bags is your request Joyce.

With the permission of friends ( who are only here for the summer ) we are temporarily parking the Jeep in their driveway, just a few feet away.

This is major progress.  Looks like we are about to leave.

Only four more sleeps.  Thanks for checking in and I so appreciate your comments.  Adios for now, as I need to put some time into sorting out my desk.

I won’t go into all the details because at almost 7:30PM we are still working.  The good news is that the business is 98% complete.  I did get the taxes completed this afternoon.  So 2018 has been put to bed except for some incoming deposits.  I even got to write my first two cheques for 2019 and one was for our March corporate tax installment for 2020!  The years are just flying by.  I remember being at a posh RV park ( even back then we paid $75.00 per night ) in Palm Springs for New Years Eve 1999.  The big talk then was the Y2K bug or the Millennium Bug, a problem in the coding of computerized systems that was projected to create havoc in computers and computer networks around the world at the beginning of the year 2000.  Some thought that the world was going to end, no functioning banks, no heat, no electricity, no water, etc.  We danced the night away and when the clock struck midnight…nothing happened.  Well we did have a glass of champagne before we got back to dancing.   As I recall we were doing some great samba that night.

Taken yesterday on the way to the tire store.  That is Colin in front of me. I have never seen a 5th wheel with a bunk bed set up in the rear.  That D and the 0 you see are what I see at the bottom of my windshield.  I am in drive and when I am moving the 0 shows my speed.  It is fabulous as I don’t have to dip my head to check my speed.  As you can see yesterday was miserable as well.

Fall is definitely here, the sun is setting earlier and there is a nip in the air.  There was also a lot of rain around here today.  I asked Colin to take a break from his computer chores to go over the the RV today to turn on the fridge.  That way it will be cold enough for me to transfer all my frozen foods on Monday.  He was supposed to touch up the nicks on the inside fridge shelves but he could not find the appliance touch up paint I had purchased months ago.  I know I bought it and I remember sending it to the RV earlier this summer.  Somehow it has disappeared.  I know that we will find it eventually.  I guess I will just have to do the job next spring after we return.

We had a late dinner last evening as we will tonight but this one was so good that I had to take a photo.  Tomatoes, carrots and steamed Swiss chard from our garden, our usual Caeser salad, a mix of steamed quinoa & rice and a real treat, turkey cutlets with gravy, a non meat veggie product by Gardein.

Now that we have the new plates for the RV ( which took Colin a long time to deal with the back license plate bolts, they are plastic and old ) I was able to call and get our Mexican vehicle insurance.  Wow the prices just keep going up and up.  Back in the day it seemed to stay the same price for years and years, no longer.  The Jeep went up over $75.00 USD since last fall so we lowered the value down $3,000.00 and only had to pay an extra $25.00.  We ended up lowering the value of the RV as well by 5K.

I am going to put another 30 minutes in, have my bath and then start dinner.  Tomorrow I get to start packing 😀

A full eight hours of go go go.  New tires done and seem great.  We managed to pick up all the cheques, had to go back to one place twice as they were not ready.  I even got the one cheque in the mail that I was hoping for.   All went smoothly until we got to ICBC which is the only place that you can get insurance on your vehicles here in BC, Canada.  They have a monopoly and no one seems able to understand the new computer system ( ?? 2-3 years old ) 😥

Those of you who live here in BC will understand.  We had five items to deal with.  Knowing the system, I asked to be able to sit down with an agent rather than stand.  In the end we were there for well over an hour 🙄  First off we put my car into storage effective midnight tonite.  However they needed an exact date to end the storage.  How do I know, so we chose June 25th, a few days after we are back from Europe.  I will then insure the Lexus for four months ( it was only three months this year  😕 ), guess we are traveling too much.

Next off was the Jeep.  We downgraded from full insurance to senior insurance as Colin is no longer going to job sites and doing business.   We were credited $65.00.  Once the paperwork was done, I had to think about that for a bit, as in fact we also needed to renew the senior insurance on the Jeep for a full year effective November 10th which I thought that she was doing.  However she said no, you can’t as you can only renew 55 days ahead and we did not have that.  Colin quietly and calmly pointed out that we were legit.  So she had to add that on and was not happy about that.  Meanwhile the new paperwork from now until November 10th was printed as the ink was running out in the printer and I could not even read the dates nor the license number.  She was not impressed that I asked that it be re printed ( going thru the US/Mexican border – hello !! ).  She had to change the ink cartridge.

Last up was the RV.  The Aviva portion was up for renewal October 1st but she had to reread the entire policy to be sure it was correct 😡   At this point I politely mentioned that I had another appointment ( to get my new glasses adjusted ) in about 10 minutes ( they were closing in 15 minutes ).  Instead she started to help another agent who had no idea what to do with her client.  I simply sat and fumed quietly.  Colin later told me that I did good not reaming her out.  Finally the Aviva portion was complete and then we had to do the ICBC portion of  the insurance for the RV.  Another long and drawn out event.   Finally after over $1800.00 total for all of our transactions or so, we were done.  I of course missed getting my eye glasses adjusted as they were closed.

We got home, unloaded and put stuff away.  Colin immediately ( about 3 hours ago ) got back to photoshop and I got caught up as much as I could.  I still have not finished off on the final invoice.  Great news is that we only have ( other than the direct deposit payments ) two outstanding invoices and those will be taken care of  by the end of the day Tuesday :-D. So many phone calls with clients today and one very very long one with our accountants assistant.  They really do not like me shutting things down so very early.  Tough 😆

I got a twinkle of excitement today.  Yeah, we are hitting the road for a full six months, only six sleeps.  Once I get through tomorrow I only have to pack, load and store the RV.  Not too may brain cells required.  One of the stops today involved purchasing wine until we left, and some for the RV and even two bottles for when we return home in April 😛

My only complaint is that I am freezing cold.  We have had full on rain for almost a straight 24 hours.  Someone today, made a comment on how I was wearing winter clothes today.  I was and I was/am still cold.  Yup socks in my sandals again.

Thanks for following along…..off to warm up in the tub along with a book and a glass of vino.  Eventually it will be time to make dinner.  Gosh,what am I to do with all of my tomatoes and carrots?  We can’t bring them into the US and we certainly can’t eat them all.

Yes bright and early, one week from today, we will be on the road.  Oh how my soul craves to be in the RV sweeping down the open road mile after mile after mile.  Soon, but first so much to do.

I had to have a strong talk with Colin this afternoon and insist that no he could not do yet another job for a client tonight.  Yes it is nice to want to help your clients but it is time to help ourselves.  He still has two full days at his computer.  Meanwhile I can’t quite close the books as I need to get the final two invoices ( based on the amount of photoshop time  as well as photography time ) in order to sort out the GST and the PST.  I can’t pay those taxes until the invoices are done.   Tomorrow we have sixteen errands to run 😯  Likely it will take most of the day.

Almost beach time 🙂

Three of those stops include picking up cheques and then later doing a final deposit.  I do have one large cheque coming in the mail from Edmonton.  If it does not get here tomorrow then that means another run to the bank next Tuesday.  Our mail comes late in the afternoon.  I have three cheques coming by direct deposit within the next month.  These last two invoices will be easier, one will be an E-transfer. ( ASAP I hope ) and the other client is very graciously going to take the cheque to a branch of our bank early next week and deposit it for us 😀

Tomorrow at midnight the insurance runs out on my car and it will go into storage till the end of June.  That also means that we will only have the one vehicle from now on.  We also need to insure the RV tomorrow.  Once that is done we can finally order our Mexican insurance.  So many details.

One of the big issues we are dealing with tomorrow is getting two new tires on the Jeep.  You might recall that last year we had to get two new front tires in Mazatlan.  Colin went to two different tires stores here last week and apparently the back tires have cracks in them and the heat of Mexico will only cause more problems so they say.  I did some online research and it is actually cheaper for us to buy the tires here than in the US and tomorrow is the day.

I am still behind a day in my to do’s but if I get through the day tomorrow and put in another two hours afterward, then I just might be able to start some packing on Saturday.  I have visions of next Thursday morning coming and not being loaded.  I do have one small appointment on Saturday and another major one on Tuesday and then I am not leaving here unless I am in the RV 😛

There is a bright light coming.  We have two days of rain ( not showers ) to deal with and then the sun is going to come out 😎  That means loading the RV in sunshine with a bit of heat ( 18 – 21 C/64 .5 – 70F ).  Perfect.  Looks like our Indian summer is a non event this year and fall is early.  Can winter be far behind?

I leave you with this fun graphic about beer prices around the world.