5C's Que Pasa

First off, our business is officially closed until mid April 😆  I only need to do a bank deposit on Monday morning.  Should have been able to deal with that today but 2 clients screwed up, one with a post dated cheque.  Good news for me because I can now concentrate 100% on getting ready.  The RV Tech came for 2 hours today and will be back on Saturday.  I told him that we needed him to get his thing done so we could leave.

It’s not often that I see a sunrise. This was the first shot of the day.

More devastating news on Hurricane Patricia today.  There are entire villages with no roofs on their homes and according to one of the articles the government is not helping.  One article is here and the other is here.  As I was driving about today doing my necessary last minute errands, I had the radio on and became quite upset. ” They” were talking about the hurricane and stating how wonderful it was that there was no damage and that no one was killed.  There were 6 people killed to my knowledge and per the Mexican news articles above there was much damage.  “People in the know” say that the storm petered out before it hit land.  Those who there endured Category 5 winds and devastation for over two hours.  If you click on the comments on one of the articles above you will see a ‘feed’ from Sparks who was right there.  He refers to Steve, a fellow blogger whom we have not heard from since the hurricane.  He is alright I understand but has no electricity and we have no idea how his house is.

If you can afford $5.00 or more please, please donate to the Go Fund Me site.  Can you imagine how much worse the situation could have been?  However for those who have been affected it is the end of their world.  If you love Mexico or are just a humanitarian please help.  Five dollars to you is not much but to someone who has no roof over their heads nor food or electricity it means everything good in life.  I understand from Sandy in her comments to yesterdays post that the Go Fund Me is not sent up for USD or Paypal.  I suggest to those of you in the USA that you use my Paypal and that I will then send your donation in for you.  Meanwhile I have sent an email to the person who started the Go Fund Me site and asked if they could make some changes.

Same sunrise but a tad later.

The day Colin arrived in Winnipeg.

Colin is on a plane flying home from seeing his Mom for her 101st birthday.  He told me just before he boarded that she is sad to see him leave.  He tried to make it a fun time for her.  He said goodbye and then came back to her apartment to give her yet another final hug.  He did this a few times, making her laugh.  I already have mailed a card which she should get any day now telling her how much we love her.  While we are away we have pre done cards and notes to her which she should get every 3 weeks or so.  I do worry about Colin, he only gets home just after midnight and is off at 9AM for the last job of the year.

Mommio’s official 101st birthday. Celebrated at where else, but the Fort Gary Hotel which also celebrates the same 101 years.

Colin has been taking her there for years to celebrate her special day and this particular waiter has been most attentive as the years have passed.  Apparently he rushed over and gave her many kisses and hugs throughout the evening.  She mentioned to Colin that maybe  it was time for her to look for a man friend.

Not bad for 101, eh 😉

It has just come to light that Punta Perula has been devastated by Patricia.  It is a lovely area of Mexico just a bit south of Puerto Vallarta.  We have been there and it breaks my heart to read about this. Click here for the story on Punta Perula and how everything from homes to schools have been destroyed.

A Go Fund Me has been set up to help the locals rebuild.  The monies donated will go directly to help rebuild schools and homes.  This has been set up by a couple who live there many months of the year.  Their home town is just 25 minutes away from us here in Canada.  Please try and donate $5.00 or $10.00 and more if you can.  Every penny will make a huge difference in these peoples lives.  The Go Fund Me page is here.

Colin has been unable to get me some photos to post.  It seems that his Mom is keeping him on the run.  He can’t believe how agile she is.  They walked both floors of the mall today and are now about to head out to the Fort Gary Hotel for her birthday dinner.

Meanwhile I am burning my eyes out but starting to see a tiny light at the end of the tunnel.  It has become obvious to me that my eye problem is in direct relation to stress and too much work.  I was back to wearing sunglasses inside today as I am literally dealing with burning eyes.

The RV tech just came by yesterday to check on things and to see what needed to be done. As of 5:50PM local time he has not come today 😥

So much to do, so little time.  If we were not working and needed to cut off our books, write cheques until April and prepay taxes etc, it would be nice to just get up in the morning and decide to leave tomorrow with none of this busyness.  One day I’m sure it will happen 😕

The girls got a quick walk at noon today and we got back just before the skies opened.  It is damp and cool, my body needs to feel some heat and sun on it 😎

Up at 5:15 this morning to drive Colin to the airport.  He is off to Winnipeg to spend almost 3 days with his mom.  Mommio turns 101 tomorrow.  I’m sure I will get some photos to post soon.  He brought our new laptop with him and used that new rolling carry on bag I bought last month when I was in Edmonton.  As he returns at almost midnight Thursday I am not going to pick him up.  A cab ride is just under $20.00 and I don’t like driving at night. Besides if I did pick him up I couldn’t have any vino and by then I likely will need it.

Guess who is going to miss Colin?

First thing this morning will be dealing with getting the carpet in the RV cleaned.  It is badly trashed.  Fortunately, as we had hoped to get some renos done on the RV, we held back on our annual carpet clean.  The fellow who is coming today will start by vacuuming the roof as is is full of sawdust.  I’m also going to get him to wash all of the living room upholstery as well as the carpet.  Things will feel much better in there after that.  The RV tech is only coming Wednesday afternoon and possibly another day again if he doesn’t get his list of to do’s done.

Meanwhile I am going to do my best to close the business totally so that come Friday I can concentrate on packing.  As Colin is doing his final job Friday out in Enderby that means that the loading won’t start till Saturday but that day is half taken up with some scheduled appointments.  I’m going to try and do a few of them tomorrow to ease the load.  I would like to be in the RV if I have some extra time over the next few days putting things away that we brought over this last weekend but with a wet carpet it is likely not going to happen.  However the forecast is rain and rain showers for the next six days so we’ll be wet loading anyway 🙁   The good news is that because of the clouds it won’t be freezing cold.

Can you believe that we’ve done 42% of our annual business in the month of October 😯   I would say unbelievable if I hadn’t been the one doing the invoicing. Think of all the work Colin did.  Of course that means collecting the receivables before we leave which is a bit of a challenge.  Still working on that.

The good old days, I  wonder why no one ever put one of these in an RV.

We are officially leaving on November 4th 😎   Mexico here we come.  Hoping to have the electrical issue sorted out by Thursday along with 14 other items on the to do list for the RV tech.  I realize that I owe you a post on the RV renovations but I need some time to do a longer post.  Yesterday was my highest amount of steps on my Fitbit, over 13,000 😀  Getting things done.

I have not eaten meat for at least 35 years.  One of the reasons I give people when I am asked why, is that I believe meat to be cancer causing.  All those years ago I had read research on this subject with enough proof to convince me.  Now the World Health Organization has made it official.

First off, don’t worry, we are all just fine BUT we are almost going 24/7.

Colin did his last job on Friday, it’s over an hour drive from here and when he arrived he discovered that only the exterior was ready to be photographed.  So that means he has to return this coming Friday ( when it has to be finished by ) to complete the interiors 🙁   Friday was supposed to be a loading day into the RV 😥 I’m trying to close the books so I that I can prepay all the taxes until the end of March and other things.  Not only that, but we have another job in the Vancouver area that we are sending a fellow we use from time to time to do the photos.  The weather is not promising so I am unsure whether to invoice it to close the books or what.  The big problem is that once we leave no mail is opened until we return.  That means cheques are not deposited until after April 20, 2016.  Meanwhile I’m doing all I can to collect the receivables.  I gave everyone October 20th as a deadline, maybe 2 clients heeded that request.  This year seems to be extra challenging.  Mind you I’m sure that Colin was challenged while I was gone last fall.

On the way to pick up the RV last Wednesday we stopped at A&W for an egg and cheese breakfast muffin. A first for me but it was delicious and I did need the protein. The girls love a drive through. If they are lucky, they do it once per year but they certainly seem to remember that it means bits of whatever we order.

I’m much too busy to edit photos and do a post on the RV.  It will happen sometime within the next few days.  Suffice to say we were both discouraged and considered our RV broken.  Colin has been trying this and that to get the generator to work, to get the electricity to work…we simply had no power.  Just two days before we took the RV in for the renos in early September, we had all of our house batteries replaced as it was time.  So why were they not charging and why did we not have power?  We are unable to work on either shore power or battery power!

We were able to contact a friend on Wednesday, who allowed us to use his RV site just 1/2 block from us for the cost of electricity 😀   Sadly we were unable to get electricity.  For almost 3 days Colin has tried this and that to no avail.  Finally today, our RV tech guy came although he was already booked up and could only give us 30 minutes.  Turns out that he is now teaching “how to be an RV tech” at the local college and is only available after 3PM and on Saturday 😯  The good news is that we now have battery power.  He is the one who had installed our new batteries and he told us today that he had forgotten to connect a wire 👿   I certainly better not see today’s 30 minutes on the final invoice.

Can you imagine that if we had not taken the RV in for renos, we would simply have driven south only to discover that we had no battery power.  Would someone have been able to source the problem?

We are getting there.  Baby steps.  But we are confident that D Day is still November 4th.  The RV Tech comes back Wednesday (after school at 3PM ) to work on the electrical issue and a few other problems.  Suddenly the water pump is not working, something wrong with the switch in the bathroom.  We also have a broken latch on a basement door as well as a broken latch on the shower door.  None of these things were supposed to be affected by the renos but it appears that they were.

We are working hard to get our home on wheels ready to roll as well as closing down the business as well as preparing to leave.  Tomorrow will be my major food shop day.  At least now I have a functioning RV fridge to put things into 😆   Poco a poco, little by little.