Mid-December Almost

Time marches on and we're gradually getting back to some warmer weather.
Both Sandy and I have commented that the cold seems to be so much more
miserable this year! Does age have anything to do with it?

It has been a pretty quiet week in the park. We did visit with the
Architectural committee about getting a building permit or at least laying
the ground work before we leave. The answer is NO. The committee does not
want to be the depository for numerous permit applications. Okay, I guess
we will wait!

Today we were visited by a fellow who is in the park and is looking to rent
a lot so that he can stay for another month. We have a tentative agreement
and Sandy and I have to decide if we really want to leave on the 23rd of
December. His current lot rental agreement is up on the 24th and he has to
move off of the lot. We have said that if someone wanted to rent our lot,
we'd leave today! I guess someone is calling our number. It is a bit
earlier than desired for us, but it also means that the lot would be rented
January, February and March with no gaps. (We like that part of it.). I
guess the plus also is that we know how the Christmas dinner will be served
in this park and we don't like it (to put it bluntly).

So while we may leave earlier than desired, I've assured Sandy that we will
go to another RV park in or near Quartzsite for a week or two. We will make
several calls tomorrow and see what those parks do for a park wide Christmas
dinner. We've seen how various parks handle the Christmas dinner and we
have some definite opinions. So why not pick one that serves dinner like we want it?

We were blessed this week with 3 small packages from Hong Kong, two of them with
an old ZIP code. EBay had thrown me a curveball and I didn't catch it that
the shipping address had an old ZIP. When I purchased a third item, eBay
allowed me to use the correct ZIP. Anyway, we can relax. The items were
LED assemblies that I want to get installed in the coach prior to our trip
to Quartzsite. We added one of the lights to our sink light strip and Sandy even
agreed that the new one and the old one give off enough light in the sink
area. Perhaps more would be desired, but for a couple of weeks, it is
tolerable. Each light assembly is a flexible plastic strip with 24 LED's
embedded in it. The total current consumption is about 0.1 amps, a whole
lot less that the 1.5 amperes that the incandescent bulbs consume.

Now I need to find a fixture so that I can provide more light in the living
room area. The second and third items that came in were LED assemblies
with 48 LEDs in each. The devices are in the shape of a small funnel, about
2 inches diameter and 2 inches deep. The challenging thing is that they
use a different base from anything locally available. The base is composed of two
pins, a quarter of an inch long and about a quarter of an inch apart. It
is a standard socket and I will order some via eBay tonight or tomorrow.
(If we leave on the 23rd, that doesn't give us much time either!)

This afternoon I took a long walk to the cotton field east of the park. It
is interesting how cotton is harvested. Since cotton is so fluffy, they
actually have a packing machine to reduce the shipping volume. In the
field, the harvested bale of cotton is about the size of 40 foot semi
trailer. To move the huge bale, they have large truck bed similar to the
trucks that are now used haul cars off of the highway. The truck bed
slides way out at an angle, and I think they put a cable come-a-long around
the bale to slowly winch it onto the truck bed that then pulls it up onto
the truck frame. Of course when all of this is done, there is lots of
cotton bulbs scattered around. It probably is not that many pounds, but the
white cotton on the dark soil just look like poor processing.

Gene