Thanksgiving Dinner

Well, we woke up early Thursday so we could participate in the Thanksgiving dinner Express Pro had arranged for us. They catered the turkey breast and ham and all of us workampers brought the side dishes. They had to set up 5 long tables to accommodate all the side dishes. We had the dinner at the local Army armory because it was the only place big enough for the 200 or so that came. What a feast we had and the conversations were wonderful! It was very, very nice.

Thanksgiving Day work hours for Inbound personnel started at 8 pm and we were such good, productive workers :) we finished at 1:15 am and got to go home early. All and all it was a very nice day.

Jim's Birthday

Here is a photo of Jim with his "birthday pie"; an Apple Crumb Pie that I made him as his present. Like a lot of "old married couples" we don't exchange gifts any more; but we do cook special dishes for each other to celebrate special events like anniversaries and birthdays. The pie was my birthday gift to Jim.

I took Jim out to dinner tonight at Lanning's Downtown Grill to celebrate his birthday. What a neat place! It is casual, has a bar and very reasonably priced. Jim had the Chicken Fried Steak , which was with real meat-not processed mystery meat and homemade with fresh breading. Even the fries were real and fresh; not processed. I had Fantail Fried Shrimp - EIGHT of them for $8.98 with bacon and onion seasoned green beans and a baked sweet potato. All mighty tasty.

They had some unusual offerings also like chicken gizzards, liver & onions and on Saturdays their special is Hoppin Nuts ????? you ask - it's Frog Legs and Rocky Mountain Oysters!!!! Sure wish we didn't work on Saturday nights as both Jim and I are partial to Rocky Mountain Oysters. If they are not your favs, they also have a full menu with all the normal fare and nothing over $9.98 - even a 8 oz. sirloin steak for $8.98. They are open for breakfast also.

Tomorrow we go back to work and we will work Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, also as the holiday pay is good. Express Pro, the temp agency we actually work for, is providing turkey and gravy and we are providing all the side dishes at a dinner at the local armory. So we will eat our dinner at noon and go to work at 5:30 pm till 4 am.

We have only four weeks to go; but that sounds like too long, so Jim came up with it is only 16 more days of work! That sounds like a lot less somehow. So only 16 more work days and then we will head for Florida for the winter; staying at our Escapees RV Club park in Bushnell. Several of our friends will also be at Bushnell so it will be fun...especially the 4 o'clock daily happy hours.

I was raised in Florida and so I want to go back to my old hometown, Lake Worth, check out my high school, church, and see how things have changed since I was last there some 15 years ago. While in Florida Jim and I are going to try to take a cruise as they certainly are inexpensive now-a-days.

That's the update for this week - check in next week for more! Remember - you are loved!

Getting Cold!!!

Yes, it is getting cold. In fact, yesterday morning we almost broke the all time low record.....it was 19 degrees.....and the record was 18!!!! Florida is looking better and better, I tell you. I still wear my "ninja" outfit as I usually work on the top floor of a mod and it is always warm up there. I do wear sweats over my shorts coming and going from work. And this cold weather is different from Colorado, which is dry. Here is is humid and moist and I feel cold at 40 degrees, where in Colorado I wouldn't even be wearing a jacket at 40 degrees.

Well, they called off mandatory overtime, now we can sign up for Thanksgiving Day overtime. We are considering it as the pay will be good, we already had our turkey two weeks ago, and Thursday is our normal work day.

Amazon.com provides a lot of goodies for us at work. We get free beverages like Gatorade, hot cocoa, coffee. There are ice machines and coolers to store our lunches. There are filtered, cold water stations throughout the plant and on every floor of the mods. There are several break/lunch rooms throughout the plant with machines that dispense sandwiches and even frozen meals. On Tuesday and Thursday nights Pizza Hut comes out with pizza slices for sale...which is a nice change from our nightly sandwiches.

I told Jim we needed to go out somewhere because I needed some photos for the blog and something to talk about!!! Well, not this time -- you have to be content with just me blabbling along.

Well, that's enough blabbling for today. See you next time and remember - you are loved.

I'm a wimp!!!!

Yes, I am a wimp and officially know "I am old". I can't do the fifth night overtime. I was pretty OK up to "lunch" at 10 pm on Saturday shift, but after that my body started to rebel and scream. I mean really scream, "what are you doing to me, you Fool?" By 3:30 am I was really wondering if I could walk the quarter mile to the time clock to check out! My thumbs were swollen and hurt to move and had shooting pains running from my thumbs to my wrist. That scanner gets very heavy after 8-9 hours of holding it and squeezing that trigger. I cried when I got home I was so miserable.

So I am not going to work the fifth overtime night anymore - just can't do it folks. So tonight Jim cooked a wonderful roast beef, boiled potatoes and green beans for dinner at 3:00 pm and I made him a roast beef sandwich for "lunch" for tonight at 10 pm. Bill and Lesle will drive to work with Jim along so I can have the truck and I will stay home and watch "Dancing with the Stars" semi- finals and knit on my scarf!

We also received a call from Disney World and were told "thanks but no thanks". That there was a hiring freeze and there wouldn't be any more new hires for the winter season. So we don't have our job at Disney World as planned. We talked with the Geno's who are already down in Orlando area. Nancy is a returning cast member so she has hours, but her husband Chuck was going to work there the first time this year and he got the same phone call message as we did.

Now comes the choices of where to spend the winter months - will it be still Florida and stay at Escapees park at Bushnell where there will be alot of Escapee friends (we could go on a cruise from there or "vacation" at Disney World); or Escapees park in Summerdale, Alabama (where we've been before and really like the area); possibly back to Quartzsite, Arizona, where there will be lots of Boomer friends; or go somewhere new like Fulton/Rockport, Texas down on the Gulf coast? Oh, decisions, decisions, decisions. But isn't it wonderful that our home is on wheels and we can realistically go to any of those places to spend the winter in pleasant weather. Boy, do we love this rving lifestyle.

Remember - you are loved!!!

What do you fear about growing old?

As we grow older, we all seem to have a fear or two. Mine has always been falling down and not being able to get up ..... yes, just like the commercial. I just have known many older people who can't get up when they fall, so about ten years ago I started sitting on the floor every day and getting up...so I knew I could.

Well, with this job at Amazon.com I have no doubts as I kneel down or squat 50-60 times a day/night. I sure am building up some thigh muscles! And carrying around a 2-3 pound hand scanner for 10 hours not only has built forearm muscles, but also is making for some sore thumbs from holding it up and squeezing that trigger thousands of times a shift.

Our hot water heater went out last weekend. The seams rusted out. The former owners never changed the anoid (sp?) rod. We did change it when we bought it but rust damage had already occured. Thankfully we have Good Sam's Continued Service Plan and for $300 a year it covers that kind of thing. So luckily there is a certified RV repairman amongst the workampers here and Dennis ordered us a new water heater. He installed it this morning and oh, did that first really hot shower feel good. You there in your stick and brick houses don't realize what a luxury you have in hot water. We flip a switch and wait a while to get hot water. Most times I just heat water on the stove to wash dishes.....kind of like always camping.

Well, today is our fifth, ten hour night and now it is time to go to work for the final time this week. Yippeeeeee!!!!!! Think we will go to Bartlesville, Oklahoma on Monday just to get out of town for a while.

Remember - you are loved!!!

Ninja Girl

When I get ready to go to work, Jim calls me his Ninja Girl! This is my work clothes complete with sweat bandana, rubber & knit gloves and box cutter. I always wear shorts because it is so hot inside the warehouse.




It is 4:19 am and we just got home from work. It was a good night's work .... they moved me from Stowing products in bins to working in Receiving shrink wrapping undies.....hundreds and hundreds of female bikini boxer black undies!!! So if you happen to buy your undies from Amazon.com I could have packaged them :)



Pizza Hut started bringing pizza, salads, wings and desserts to the plant for sale by the slice. They do it two days and two nights a week. Pretty nice for a change from sandwiches.



Last night we met a challenge from management on the amount of pieces processed, so management barbequed hamburgers for everyone on the night shift. Pretty good, too.



This is the third night of our first week of mandatory overtime....have to work five, ten hour shifts....yes, that's 50 hours a week....but, boy, is that time and a half good for the bank account. But it is hard to get cleaning, laundry and grocery shopping done with two days off and working 50 hours a week. But we only have five more weeks to go.



I have been walking 5-7.5 miles a night while Stowing. I haven't lost alot of weight (only 3 pounds), but am dropping inches like mad. Soon I will need suspenders to keep up my elastic waist shorts. When I stretch to put product in a bin over my head, my drawers fall down....got to watch that!



Well, it is time to go to sleep ... we wake up about noon and leave for work at 4:30 pm, in which we eat a little breakfast and then cook and eat our big meal around 3 pm. Crazy hours and crazy living.



Good night/morning and remember, you are loved!!!

This and That

Today the post is a "mish mash" of a bunch of things. Two weeks ago at work we only worked 36 hours because of the economical climate. Last week we worked our normal 40 hours and this week we have to work a 50 hour week. The work has gotten easier as our bodies adapt to the rigggers of the 10 hour shift. Our bodies have really hardened and we are both beginning to lose weight and inches...yippeeeeeee!!! The long shift doesn't leave alot of time to do the "domestic" chores, or prepare all the meals. We eat out about twice a week.


On our two days off this week we have "caved" mostly.....just hold up in our rig and let our bodies rest. We did laundry and visited the library, but them it was nap, rest, read and knit.....and go out for meals. It rained yesterday so that made "caving" a little easier.


Our water heater went out this week. Luckily there is a fellow workamper here that is a certified rv tech so we didn't have to take our rv to Tulsa or Joplin to get fixed. So for a week we have to heat water on the stove to wash dishes....there is a shower house in the campground so that has been a blessing. Then again our electric coffee pot broke, so we used our Coleman stove top drip coffee maker for a few days, then decided to buy another electric one as it is faster to brew....Jim was trying to make the Coleman work faster by staring at it with a scowl on his face....it didn't perk any faster though :)


We are experimenting today by trying to roast a turkey in our little rv oven, which is only 15 inches wide and 13 inches deep. But Jim and I are so very hungry for the taste of turkey....in our "sticks and bricks" house we ate turkey 4-6 times a year...many times cook on our gas grill outside. So yesterday we bought a "little" turkey - like 8.5 pounds - and are cooking it now in our rv oven. That's Jim's had to give you a perspective of how small the oven is. Those are unglazed six inch tiles on the bottom oven plate to help distribute the heat. Oh, the smell is divine!!!!! Jim made his famous dressing and we are cooking up the giblets for gravy.....oh, my, I can't wait!!!! We just tested the internal temperature and it is almost ready, but being only 8.5 pounds there is hardly any rendered grease in the pan to make gravy because it is such a young turkey. Oh, well, we'll just have to add more butter for gravy.

Doesn't the finished turkey look wonderful?


Remember, you are loved!!!

Coffeyville Public Library

Now this post is for my friend, Salai Taylor, who is the Lead Librarian at Southern Peaks Public Library (SPPL) in our hometown, Alamosa, Colorado (I worked at SPPL before retiring). Here at the Coffeyville Public Library they have a few features I think are very helpful to library patrons and I wanted to show them to Salai as she might want to incorporate them at SPPL.

This is an area just for the youth to hang. It has neat, modern furniture, bright colors and they have their own computers to use away from "the adults".

This is an area the library created just for people to use their laptops and connect to the library's wifi. Notice the built-in surge protectors to plug in to and the privacy the desks provide. Great idea! Many fulltimers are not using aircards to connect to the Internet, as we do. But there are still many fulltimers who rely on free wifi connections easily found in almost all public libraries, as well as coffee shops, truck stops and pubs. This wifi desk configuration is a very good idea for libraries, as in most libraries you only have tables to use and usually without electrical hookups.

And this is really a clever idea - using grocery store style shopping baskets with the library's name on it for patrons to carry around and gather their books to check out. At SPPL people use to come to the check out desk with arms full of books and tapes - sometimes piled up to their chins. The shopping basket idea is a great solution to that problem.

Hay, Salai, maybe the Friends of the Library could buy them for the library!!!

I want to say "thank you" to all our other blog readers for indulging me in periodically making personal posts to people with photos on our blog. It is just so much easier to posts photos here than to take the time to resize them all and attach them to an email.

Obama wins!!!

Hip, hip horray Obama won the election! We are so excited about the prospects for the future with Obama as our President. Hopefully this shows that Americans can finally accept racial diversity. There are smiles on our faces. Jim and I stayed up and watched CNN all day and late into the night till Obama was named the winner. And what an inspirational acceptance speech Obama gave.

Watching the celebration all over the world, you can see that having Obama as our President will have a positive impact in the rest of the world also. It is exciting to think about all the ways the world can change with his leadership.

Campground Library

Having retired from a public library, it is hard to be away from books. Even though there is a wonderful local public library there were several people making comments about not having books available in the campground as there usually is, so......

Yah, that's me and the new campground library hosted outside our rig. I started out with eight paperbacks and in two hours they were all gone and replaced by eight different books; then came magazines, people asked if they could leave DVDs, etc. It has taken on a life of its own already.

Here is another photo that is really cute. This is Foursocks; a cat that was dumped out here at the campground a couple months ago. The family next door has four young boys and they have adopted Foursocks. Yesterday we had two couples we carpool with over to share dinner. Everyone brought a steak and a side dish and we enjoyed each others company. When Jim opened up the storage doors to get out chairs, in jumped Foursocks and he settled himself down next to the clothes hamper; can you see him there? He really protested being shooed out!!!

Well, it's 4:00 pm and it's time to get ready for work. Seven more weeks to go. We have hardened up the last four weeks and can get through our ten hours without too much back and foot pain.....we sleep real good also. Off we go - write you more later.

Remember - you are loved!!!

Sherlock - the pup

This post is just for one of our workamper couples, Sally and Larry, who wanted a photo of their dog, Sherlock. He has blue eyes and they never seem to show up in any photo taken of him. This photo that I took shows his pretty eyes I think. So I'm putting this large photo on our blog so the owners can save a copy for themselves. Aren't Sherlock's markings beautiful! And he has a darling temperment.

Work update

We are getting stronger backs and found the right combination of shoes, socks and inserts to enable us to live through our work shifts . The work isn't particularly difficult, it is just hard manual labor. Jim and I both lift cartons, totes, bend and stretch and are on our feet the entire shift. I've been pretty happy stowing books this last week.....so many books on so many topics...I was in heaven!!! Jim is in Receiving mostly working with apparel. There is also a whole lot of clothing here, so my granddaughter should be happy to know I found some cute tops for her. I know I am buying all our holiday gifts from Amazon and hope you do too......help insure we have jobs till the end :). My dad taught me to buy from the company that pays you. Makes sense to me.


You can sure feel the change in the weather here. It has been windy and raining and when it rains it's all day and night here....not use to that coming from the high desert of Colorado where we only got six inches of parcipatation a year. We had to run the heater and stayed inside because of the weather earlier this week. Sure wasn't anticipating using wool socks when I left Colorado!

But this was just a cold spell and will warm up this weekend. Today was wonderful weather in the mid-70s.....absolutely gorgeous!!! We barbequed and walked around the park....wonderful day.

Well, we just got off work and it is time to eat a bowl of cereal and go to bed. One more day and then we're off for three glorious days.

Remember, you are loved!!!