Dinner with Laurie, Quiet Do Nothing Day

You ever have one of those feelings like, "I should be doing something...but what I am doing is just sitting back doing nothing?"  That describes Thursday.  Other than taking Indy out for a few breaks, pretty much did nothing until we left to meet Laurie at Texas Roadhouse.

Laurie and Marcia after dinner

Leaving Indy alone is always a concern.  If I leave her treats, she does not eat them until we get home.  I don't have cameras in the motorhome, so what I have to say is just a "most likely" scenario.  

We are leaving, I have the TV turned up a bit and on FidoTV.  The AC is on, and AC fan is on constant low, so if it gets down to 74, the fan will still run.  I hear Indy doing a small wimper...I leave a window shade open next to my computer chair.  I go to that window and see her looking out.  We drive off.  More about this after dinner....

Laurie pulled up in her Mazda MX-5 (I think that is what it is) just before we do (she texted me a picture of her in the car).  We are all about 10 minutes early...which is typical with each of us.  Two hours later we are saying good bye.  It was a nice dinner, very nice company, and always too short of a visit.

It takes us 25 minutes to get back to the motorhome.  Indy has been alone for 3 hours and 15 minutes.  She is ALWAYS so happy to have us home, and I got her outside before Marcia got into the motorhome.  I sit out with her for a bit, but she won't do her business...she wants to lick my face, and then she wants inside.  Inside she jumps up on Marcia and then goes back and forth between the two of us.  I give her about 2 ounces of my steak that I brought back, and she gobbles it up.  Then I give her the bone (I had the Ribeye Steak with Bone-in).  At first she sets it in her bed, then comes over to us again.  I change my clothes, and take her out where she does do her business...and then she wants right back in.  She goes to her bed, where she left her bone, and for the next two hours the bone stripped clean.  I got her to bring it over to me after the first hour, and although she growled at the idea, I needed to cut off a small bone end that is barely attached...then I give her the big bone again.

As for what she did while we were gone...  The cover over the window of the driver door has this 'cave' which just fits her little head and neck as she looked out that window.  Marcia's window is the same.  My computer chair, which has a cover over it, now has the cover all bunched up on the seat, as she certainly put her paws up on the back to look out the window.  I am sure she went from window to window to window.  Eventually, she probably fell asleep.  Hard to say if she even watched the TV at all.  Now, she is crashed with a full tummy, tired from the anxiety of being alone, and tired from gnawing on that bone for two hours.  When I took it away from her I praised her at how well she did with it, and tossed it in the trash. 

While out with I caught this nice sunset with my cell phone. The cactus and bush was pretty much in the middle of the sunset, so I took a picture to the left of the cactus, and another to the right.  2 minutes later it was all gone...

Last Day in Utah

After a rough night at the Utah / Nevada border on Sunday, I slept like a rock on Monday night, doing the blog post about Monday after I woke up today (Tuesday).  My agenda on Tuesday was to take Stephanie out for some shopping, then dinner with her and her roommate Jenny, who has been such a blessing for Stephanie and for us (Stephanie’s family) in helping Steph through her traumatic brain injury from last fall.  They have been friends for many years, and have shared apartments for 3 or more years now…but that is unfortunately coming to an end at the end of June. 

Our investment folks from Morgan Stanley needed some paperwork signed by Marcia, which they sent via email in PDF format.  I needed to get this printed off, so I headed over to a UPS store near Stephanie's apartment with a flash drive containing the documents, and for $1.35 I got four pages printed off.  (I only needed 2 pages, but I have learned my lesson that it is better to have more than one copy in case coffee spills, dogs eat it up, etc. etc. etc.)

First stop after I picked Stephanie up was to Sam’s Club.  A little of this, a little of that and our eleven items came to just under $100.  One thing she really wanted was a container she can put her homemade smoothies in, one that has a cover in case she spills, which happens since her coordination is not the best still.  So that brought up the idea of getting a smoothie, so off to…

Jamba Juice!  With 800 locations, you might have seen them, even tried one.  Yes, they are good.  Yes, they are costly.  But, while ordering I saw this Jamba Juice container that you can use over and over again…so I got one for Stephanie.  Those Jamba Juices were good…and came in real handy for me after lugging all that Sam’s stuff up the flight of stairs to their 2nd floor apartment.  Three loads up the stairs at 4,500 feet elevation = one dead daddy!

Around 2 pm I headed back up the mountain where the motorhome is parked.  After Marcia filled out the required two pages, I took a picture of each page and converted them to a PDF format and emailed them back to our Morgan Stanley folks.  (That, my friends, is how you conduct business on the road now days!  And for those who were wondering, I also have two extra pages that we did not have to use...but had I not had those pages, you know what would have happened...)  At 4:15 Marcia and I headed back down to Salt Lake City to get Stephanie and then over to the Texas Roadhouse Restaurant where her and Jenny wanted to eat.  Jenny met us there after she got off of work.  We had a great meal, although the restaurant was a bit too loud for our liking.   Hugs and kisses goodbye, and we hope to see them both again when we plan to drive through on our way back home in September after a short stop in California upon our return from Alaska.   Next stop, the Tetons!