Countdown Adjustment

May 1st has now become April 28th, a Monday.  To be honest, May 1st was just a “goal”, which a few weeks ago I realized that we were going to leave just a little before that.  But first, I wanted to be sure we had everything done here, especially Doctor Appointments.  

Yesterday Marcia met her new primary care doctor, her fourth or fifth one in the past six years.  Seems like every time she gets use to a doctor, they up and leave the area, their practice, or no longer take her insurance.  With one doctor a few years ago with us it was like, “we are glad you no longer take our insurance, we were not coming back to you anyways.”  She tried to get Marcia interested in “healing crystals”, and I am sure would have been more than happy to sell us some, through another person of course.  I think Marcia said something like, “Jesus needs no crystals to heal….”, just to let her know that she could take her voodoo somewhere else.  Upon our return in 2012 we got the notice that they no longer took her insurance.  So last year we broke in another doctor…who while we were gone in 2013 decided to stop her private practice and go to work for the County, at least that is the latest story we were told.  Who knows what the truth was on that.  So before we got back to Florida she had lined up another doctor within the same network….and when we got back in January she made an appointment, with the earliest date being March 11th.  When we got there yesterday, we found out that the other lady in the practice, we will call her Brooke, was going to be her new doctor.  Well, sometimes we play the lottery….and in this case our “lottery doctor” came through!  Dr. Brooke was very nice, very accommodating, and assured us she had no plans to “go away” anytime soon.  We hope we don’t go “bust” on this lottery win…

We have also been tackling the various items on our “to do lists”.  We have a list of items for the condo, and list of items for the RV/Car.  Some of these are easy, some will need to be done by “experts”.  So far, we have conquered most of the “to do ourselves” items, outside of giving the RV a good shine and packing it up to go. 

Monday I flushed out our hot water tank, something that looked like it had not been done for a decade or two.  We are lucky that it is so close to the walk-in shower, and the sand and sediment was pretty thick, that’s for sure.  At first water would not come out except for a slight dribble.  So I turned the water valve, and I opened the pressure valve…both a big mistake.  Finally, after opening and closing the drain valve a few times, water and gunk pour out with a flurry.  After letting it flush out for a good 5 minutes, I closed it up, turned on the hot water power again, and walked away.  About an hour later Marcia goes, “got a leak in here”.  First the high pressure valve, now that the water was hot, was allowing water to flow down to the drain pan, which was full.  A few knocks with my fist fixed that…but the cold water valve was dripping too.  Grrrr….   So I turned off the water, turned off the electricity, and the next day we asked her brother Mike (who is watching Bubba) to look at it.  It turned out to be an easy fix…one I could have done had I thought of it.  Luckily he was in the area doing a house inspection, so he did not care.

Before we leave, we are thinking of having our “patio” enclosed with glass windows instead of the vinyl windows above.  By doing this, the patio can be turned into more living space when we return.  We will get a bid for this on Monday.  We have seen other condos around here that have done this change, and we really like the results.

As for the car and the RV….  Due to the age of the RV, I am going to have all of the heater hoses changed out, and have them look at the transmission fluid/filter and the radiator fluid.  I doubt anything besides the hoses will need to changed, but I’d rather find out now than half way up to or from Alaska.  I also want to seal around the back tire wells and gas cap area where there are some signs of paint cracking.  Then I want to give the entire vehicle a good clean/polish.  I also got some RainX to do the outside windows….from everything I read, the trip up to Alaska and back will be a dirty one, any protection before the dirt and grime will just make it easier when we do find places to wash it down.  As for the car, I am going to have the breaks done.  It went over the 100,000 mark this last year, and the breaks seem to be the only thing which is wrong with it right now.

And now you know what I have been doing for the past hour.