SmartWeigh

Today was our "day off"--no CARE assignments, but the garage sale was still going on, so we were expected to show up. On our walk this morning we noticed that the rig weighing was still being done today, so we signed up for a 10:40 time slot.

On the way back from our walk, I stopped at a yard sale (timed to correspond with the CARE sale). I found a colorful Melamine tray. I've been looking for something like it for quite a while (well, actually, I didn't have flamingos in mind....). We used to have a very nice tray that we used next to the sink to hold the coffeepot and water carafe--especially good to catch any spills. That one was broken when it fell down while we were moving and was crushed by the slideout as it opened up.

Ken got his hair cut by Joe at 9:00 and then we packed up to go over to the nearby weigh station (by the laundry). Unfortunately, we weren't in our usual careful mode. As we brought the dining slide in, we heard a loud crack! The nearest overhead cabinet to the slideout was not properly closed, and the knob caught on the slide as it came in, bending the knob and screw and popping the hinges off. Ouch! We picked up the pieces and went over to be weighed.

We were sure that we were overweight, and the question in our minds was mainly by how much and what could we do to lighten up. To our pleasant surprise, we were within our rated limits on all measures (although we were closer than we'd like to some). The best news was that our side to side balance is excellent.

We drove back to our spot, where we had left the awning mat laid out. I followed Ken's directions and backed in. We started to hook up the utilities, etc., when Ken noticed that we were too close to the water faucet and telephone hookup. We decided to try to adjust so that those items could pass under the wheel wells. After again hooking up utilities and putting out the slideouts, we realized that we weren't level. We decided to take a break and eat lunch.

Then, we hitched up again to move over 10 inches back into the spot we had originally been in. After lots of stress and banging the slideout tray up (another story), we finally got in the proper position. We set up the Hughesnet dish (which we wanted to do so we could take an advertising photo and try to sell it). We bent the cabinet door hinges back more or less into position, and actually got the cabinet doors to be functional (sounds easy, but actually lots of effort and several trials).

At 2:30 I finally went over to help with the sale, but it closed at 4:00 p.m. Ken stayed home to chill. Then, more stress trying to get the router to connect to the new source...

Altogether, a pretty stressful day for a day off!

Another source of stress is that yesterday we bought a laptop for Cate to use to play games. Ken spent time trying to get it operational, installing security software and removing extra programs that we thought were probably slowing it down. We discovered that the CD drive didn't work and the battery was dead. I took it back over to ask for a refund, since one of the park volunteers who had worked with the machine had told me it worked and would be good for my granddaughter to play games on. In addition, I thought it would be good to let them know that sensitive personal information had been left on the hard drive.

No go--all sales final and no sympathy. Already stressed, I left the laptop with them and came home. Later when I was at the Center, the guy who had originally suggested it was okay said it was still a great buy and probably just needs Windows XP reinstalled. We'll see. We figure we've just made a $35 donation to CARE....

Tonight we didn't feel up to much, so we just watched the first two parts of Clouds of Witness.

Going to bed tonight, I console myself that Venture isn't overweight, our cabinet doors may be a bit banged up, but are functional and not noticeably damaged, and the slideout tray in the storage area still goes in and out (though with more difficulty than before). Things could be worse.....