Yesterday's bird photos

Yesterday when Katie and I took our late afternoon walk, we went a bit further and closer to the lake nearest our area, and there were some pretty ducks, coots, and a beautiful egret - I think it's a Great Egret because it has black feet.  I couldn't believe I got so close and also got a clear photo when it took off over the lake.

 Great Egret - he's so graceful looking.

 Look at those beautiful feathers

Great Egret in flight.

 Wood Duck - these are the cutest looking ducks!

 Wood Duck

Male and female Northern Shovelers.

They have bills that are long and wide at the ends.

 Northern Shoveler

 We have LOTS of these Eurasian Coots

Male and female Mallards

Just bird photos today, but aren't they gorgeous?

Tom's coming this morning to bring me the Ford Escape, and I have a dentist appointment this afternoon with a new dentist - wish me luck!

From Me and Katie, have a great Thursday, everyone!  :)

Photos of my new curtain :)

Welcome to our newest Follower, Pace_A!.  Pace_A does not have any information listed, or a blog shown, so I can't tell you any more.  We're happy you are following along with us, Pace_A!  I hope you enjoy our adventures, especially when we're back on the road in a few weeks!  Welcome aboard!  :)

Here are the photos I took yesterday of my new curtain.  I couldn't put the spring loaded rod in front of the sleeping cushions.  I tried it the first night, then slipped and fell onto the couch because the rod was in the way.  Not good!  So I brought the rod under the cushions, where it works fine and actually doesn't show as much.  At least I'm not minding the white color as much.  Maybe because I'm getting used to it?

 New curtains - open

 New curtains - closed at night

Anyway, the curtain is working out well, and is so easy to close at night and open in the morning. What do you think, any comments or other ideas?

Here's last night's dinner - I'm finally getting my appetite back, and I make this a lot - easy and good!

Six layer dish

It's actually a 6-Layer Dip, but I make it for lunch or dinner a lot.  Re-fried beans with grated cheese - warmed in the microwave then topped with crushed Fritos, guacamole, sour cream and chopped tomatoes.  That's a small dessert plate, just the right size to finish every bite.  Yum!!!

I haven't gotten my son's car yet - I kept the original key and remote and left Tom with two other keys, one that came with the car when I bought it that will open the door, but doesn't start the ignition (it isn't "chipped") and one that I had made that does have the ignition chip that will start the car.  Unfortunately yesterday morning he put in the one that doesn't work (we didn't know which was which, I should have just thrown out the bad key, but didn't), and it screwed up the computer chip mechanism and the car wouldn't start.  So he drove all the way down here to deliver the box of mail that my daughter had mailed to his house.  Lots and lots of mail as well as Christmas cards and birthday cards. 

I gave him the key and remote I had for the Escape, and when he got home he tried that key and it worked - yea!   Tomorrow morning he is going to come back down here and drop off the car, so I'll have it for my stay here in Santee Lakes. 

I went to a couple of medical appointments this morning, blood tests and mammogram in preparation for my annual physical in two weeks.  Tomorrow the dentist!

From Me and My Dog, have a great Wednesday, everyone!  :)

Happy Birthday party for Kennedy

Welcome to our newest Follower, Rex Kusler.  I checked out your blog, Rex, and found it an interesting read.  Rex is an author, and his current Las Vegas Mystery Series has two books published with the third in the series due out soon.  I love mysteries, and will be checking his out on Amazon.com.  He is currently writing his ninth novel.  Welcome aboard, Rex!  I'm glad you are following along with Katie and me! :)

On January 16, my eldest granddaughter had a birthday - she's 9!  The following Saturday was her Birthday Party, which was held at Dave and Busters.  If you don't know that place, it's kind of like a Chuckee Cheese, but for kids who are a bit older and adults.  I had never been there before, and had a great time.  We had a long table, food and drinks were brought out, and each child received a "credit card" that had a set amount of money on it to play all the games.

 Kennedy's beautiful chocolate cake.

 Waiting to blow out the candles - Make a Wish!

 Brother Gavin, enjoying the food and games!

 Brother Graydin, race car driver!

See the blur where his hands are?  He's driving fast!

Kennedy with Dad and Mom - Happy Birthday!

Everyone had a great time, the kids love those games and won tons of tickets which they turned in for prizes. I was tired and left to go back to tom's house and rest right after the cake was served, so I didn't see what the prizes were, but I'm sure they loved what they got.

Tomorrow I'm getting my old Escape SUV back to use while I'm here in Santee.  My son is bringing it down to the RV park, and I'll drive him back to work.  He has a car there he wants to bring home, so everyone will get what they need.  I have two medical appointments (annual checks) on Wednesday, so it will be nice to have a car to drive.

I am making a mystery dish in my slow cooker tonight.   This is the first time I've used this slow cooker.  I cut a filet mignon into three slices and seared them in the frying pan.  Then I put some olive oil in the bottom of the cooker, added the meat slices, put half an envelope of onion soup on top of that, poured in some Marsala wine, water, added marinated artichokes on top, and topped it all off with sliced apples.

I'm cooking it on high for 4 or 5 hours, then I'm going to add some sour cream to make a rich sauce, and put the whole thing over rice.

I think this might be delicious if the meat was chicken, but I didn't have any chicken defrosted, so I decided to use the meat.  This is a round filet mignon that was wrapped with bacon that was in a 3-pack from Costco.  I love filet mignon, but I didn't like this meat, so I decided to try something different.  Even if I don't like the meat, I figure the artichokes hearts and apple slices might be good side dishes, and hopefully I'll have a nice sauce for my rice.

I'll let you know if it was a HIT or a MISS.  Usually my mystery dishes are HITS, but I'm not betting on this one.

UPDATE:  I ate dinner before I published this post, and it was delicious - except the meat.  It was still tasteless and tough.  I won't be buying that at Costco again, but the apples and artichokes, in their thick wine/onion/sour cream sauce over rice was really, really good.  Second helpings good.  I think next time I'll try a chicken breast and throw in some baby carrots; that would complete the dish and give me a couple of leftover meals, too.

Yesterday afternoon, and then again in the early evening, Katie and I took a walk to the closest lake and walked along for a bit.  The sun was down, and the sky was so pretty.  The ducks were still swimming around, they seemed to be coming to the edge of the lake where they could sit by the reeds.  I wonder where they sleep?

 Sunset - Santee Lakes

 

The Palms at Santee Lakes

Time to get that second helping, and then take Katie out for our last walk of the day.  It's overcast this evening, no sunset shots today.

From Me and My Dog, have a great Monday evening, everyone!  :)

“Go forth and be happy!”

A big WELCOME to West Tx at Heart, our newest Follower.  West Tx at Heart doesn't have much info, and isn't showing a blog, but he lists his occupation as "Dad First," so we can figure it's a man with children.  Well, West Tx at Heart, we're happy you are following along with us, and hope you enjoy reading about our adventures!  :)

This afternoon I had my appointment with the doctor who did my surgery, and he said all is good, and literally said, "Go forth and be happy!"  He's a real cutie with a fun personality, nice to have in a doctor, right?  He also said he took out my appendix for good measure while he was in there, and I was really happy about that, since that's what I was so worried about with the stomach pains - I thought I might end up with a burst appendix, which wouldn't have been good in the middle of the Arizona desert. Now I'll never have to worry about that again.  I got a two-for-one surgery!  :)

The parking structure at the doctor's office is large and not built for RVs, and there was no street parking around the building - all the spaces were taken, so I had to park quite a distance away and walk to the appointment.  I was a little worried about it, but the walk to and from went fine.  I stopped at Costco and Best Buy on my way back and did more walking.  I'm really feeling soooo much better today than I have.  I'll probably be tired tomorrow, but...    I can see "back to normal" at the end of the tunnel.

I made those stops because I want a new tablet.  Real bad.  Really, really bad.  It will be my Christmas, birthday and get well present to myself (I can rationalize anything).  But it's really expensive, and the one I want won't be out for a few months, so I'm going to wait until I can get exactly what I want.  Maybe I can save the cash up by then, too.  Here's what I want:

Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime 64G tablet w/Android 4.0, called “Ice Cream Sandwich” with an Asus Transformer Prime TF201 Mobile Docking Station/Keyboard.

It has fabulous ratings and reviews, and I can't wait.  I've been wanting something other than my laptop for a while now, but haven't seen anything that looked good until now.  It's going to be hard to wait!

BTW, to any of  my followers that have received e-mails from me in the past – I’ve been hacked again and my contact list has been sent bogus e-mails.  It has a link, please just delete any e-mails from me, especially if it doesn’t pertain to our blog business and arrives with only a link.  This one is not a virus, I don’t think, just spam, but don’t take any chances. 

I’m sorry if you get any of these e-mails from me, but there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do about it.  I’ve changed my password on my current e-mail address, but the one that’s being used is an e-mail address I had years ago, and it’s been closed for years.  When I’ve sent mail to that e-mail address, it comes back to me as a bad address, so I don’t know how they are sending mail with it.  It’s such a pain – whoever is doing this, I hope Karma gets them back.

I've been slowly cleaning and putting things back where they belong, and have my laundry ready to do - if I feel like it tomorrow, I'll go to the Laundromat here in the park and get it done.  Or Sunday if I'm too tired tomorrow.  It will be nice to have everything clean again!  Then comes the vacuuming and dusting and polishing.  Also, I have my new Oxygenics shower head, and I need to switch out the shower head.  Lots of things to look forward to doing.

I've decided I did pretty well in Arizona while I was there. I got my solar installed as well as the catalytic propane heater, then when I got to Quartzsite I changed out all my light bulbs to LEDs at a good price per light, got my "hair hat," and ordered my new shower head and what I needed for my privacy curtain.   So I did accomplish everything I wanted to do, and if I had stayed for the show, who knows what "stuff" I would have bought that I didn't need. 

The privacy curtain  mentioned above  is a curtain rod, a long spring loaded rod, that I put from wall to wall between the cab of the truck and the "house."  I wanted something that I could just open and close easily, so I also ordered some curtain rings with clips on the end.  I put up the rod and put on the rings, and clipped on my privacy curtain that came with The Palms.  It has Velcro all across the top, and it attaches to little Velcro stickies that are all around the cab windows.  It's pretty easy to put up and take down and does block out any viewing from outside the cab, but I wanted a "curtain."  This is working fine, and is easy to just slide open and closed.  I'm not sure I like the way it looks, though.  The only rod I could find that is long enough to reach across the entire living area was white, and it kind of sticks out like a sore thumb in front of the green it’s against, so I'm going to live with it for a while and decide later if I like it or not.  I would have preferred a darker color.  I'll take a photo and post it in a future blog post and show you how it looks.  It's definitely convenience over decor, though, so we'll see what you all think.

It's been a good day!  From Me and My Dog, have a great Friday evening, everyone!  :)

Back in The Palms

A big WELCOME to our newest Follower, Jim!  I don't see any information at all about you, Jim, but you're our 200th Follower, and we are very happy to have you along on our adventures!  Welcome aboard, I hope you enjoy following along with Katie and me on our adventures!!

Katie and I loaded up The Palms on Monday and drove down to Santee Lakes RV Park. We were two weeks early, so we lost the site I originally reserved, but I was lucky to get one at all!  I didn't realize what a snowbird area this is, and there were only three sites available for a 30-day term. Two were very short and close to neighbors, and one was more for a longer rig and had room on the sides, leaving enough space between rigs.  After being in the desert for six weeks, I didn't want to have to look into people windows every time I glanced out my window, so this one works fine for us.

So, we're here for a month.  I haven't been out much, just for Katie's walks.  We aren't going far, but I'm trying to go a bit further each time.  I'm finding I've lost my day to day "routine," and guess it'll come back as I feel better.  I'm still resting a lot, but I see the surgeon tomorrow, and I'll ask him if I'm taking it too easy on myself, or if I should be doing more at this point.

Tom's house is so comfortable, and the big bed in the guest room was a dream to sleep in, but it sure is nice to be home.  Now that I'm feeling better, I'm finding myself getting a little bored.  Too well to sleep all day, and not quite well enough to be running around doing my normal stuff.

Plus, I'm disappointed that the TV here isn't very good.  I'm only getting a few channels, and not the ones with the best programs.  I had a "box" for the old TV that was in here and I got more channels, but I gave it away, thinking I didn't need it with my new digital TV.  But I'm finding the few channels I'm getting are only digital, and I get none of the "air" channels.  I think I used to get both when I had the box hooked up.   Do you think I still need a cable box, with the digital TV, if I'm on the antenna?

When we drove in on Monday, I saw more large birds along the entry road lakes than I saw all last June.  I finally stopped and got the camera.  I'm hoping to get lots more when we're walking more.

This little guy was sitting in the middle of a puddle in the road.

There were tons of ducks of all colors, too, fishing and swimming.  They were really loving the rain!  We had a couple of days of grey skies, but for the last couple of days it's been really nice here, and the weekend is supposed to be HOT.

Even though I'm not posting as much while I'm recovering, I am still reading all your blogs, and can't wait until I'm back to normal and having as much fun as you are! 

That's it for today - From Me and Katie, have a great Thursday evening, everyone!  :)