This N That

McAlester current temperature is 24 degrees at 1:30 in the afternoon.  The high today is supposed to be all the way up to 26, but I have my doubts it will make it.  Brrrrr!

I hope everyone had a great New Year and have settled into 2011 with ease.  We stayed in for New Year’s Eve and out of the path of any drunk drivers.  We watched movies and DeWayne was asleep before midnight. 

Since my last post, I made a trip to the folk’s house for a couple of days and helped SOS get ready for the annual financial audit, then stayed around while the auditor was there.  Everything was in great shape, as usual.

I came home just in time to hand the car keys over to DeWayne so that he could take his son Scott to Memphis.  They were there to tour Graceland since Scott has wanted to do that for a long time and their timing was great since it was Elvis’ birthday. 

Then the “lovely weather” hit the day he came home and it’s been cold and nasty ever since.  I think the temps will finally crawl just above freezing tomorrow and at least the sun is shining, but we have three small heaters going in the RV and the propane heat still kicks in once in a while. 

Thank goodness for the fresh water tank because even with heat tape on the hose coming from the water spigot, our water still froze up.  The spigot that the rv park manager guaranteed not to freeze up FROZE UP!  So much for taking someone’s word for it, huh?

Let me see if I can remember everything else that has been going on for us.  Oh yeah!  Ginger stopped by here after work on Friday for a cup of coffee and when she left and turned out of the RV park, she spotted the cougar running alongside the street for a ways, so she got a really good look at it and said it was just gorgeous.  Wish I had been there with my camera.  Oh well, I’m still watching for the elusive critter to wander through the park again.  Maybe….

I’ve noticed a flock of geese feeding outside a couple of times.

One day last week, I noticed the geese were out and the turkey were out too.  Before long, they were mingling together, although leery of each other.

One indication that the cougar isn’t frequenting the RV park these days is the calmness of the other wildlife.  I took this picture from the bedroom window of deer resting in the grass near where the cougar entered the woods just a coupla weeks ago.

DeWayne decided it was time for a new computer.  He had a regular PC that took up a lot of space and was a real pain to pack away and then set up again every time we moved, so he decided on a laptop.  We also decided to buy an external hard drive to store our 4,000+ songs on in the case of a computer crash (god forbid).  He can also backup his computer to the external on a regular schedule, so if for some reason the computer is kaput, it can be restored. 

The reason for keeping the regular PC was to store all the music on the bigger hard drive, but the external drive was only $60, so it made sense to downsize the computer and free up more space.

What I didn’t know was that he would come home with a MAC. 

I’ve never used a Mac in my life and don’t know a thing about them.  I’m usually the troubleshooter when it comes to the computers, so DeWayne is having to learn the Mac system from ground up, but is making good progress. 

He got the external hard drive and now has that all figured out.  And he also bought a new printer for us that is wireless, so I love that.  Now we can print from either of our computers with no problem.  And TWO LESS WIRES to string around.  Love it!

We cleaned the old PC up, packed it and the printer up and took it to Jana for her to use with her new classes, so everybody was happy.  I’m loving not having that big PC tower and monitor to look at and take up so much space. 

The new laptop looks much better!  The only thing left to do is to buy another external hard drive to back up my laptop and we’ll be set. 

The weather deteriorated this past Sunday, as predicted.  I started seeing little specks of snow that morning, then some light sleet for a while, then back to snow……big flakes of snow.  It was pretty as it fell.




And as soon as the snow let up, the turkey were back in force.  This one was right outside the kitchen window, scratching around in the snow.

I made a big pot of homemade soup and cornbread for the cold weather, then put half of it in the freezer for the next cold spell.  DeWayne has been wanting me to bake some jalapeno cheddar bread but wanted me to use Eula’s recipe that he loves.  Heck, the entire family loves it!  Anyway, she wrote out the recipe for me, so on Saturday, I made the trip to Wal Mart to get the ingredients, then home to put it all together.  Oh, it smelled soooooo good in the oven.  I had to cut into it and slather a slice with butter before it cooled off.

We’ve almost polished off one of the loaves and have the other one in the freezer for a later time. 

We both have a little cabin fever after all the cold weather and staying in, so I think we’ll be heading for Chili’s to eat this evening.  I love their food and their sunrise margueritas are delicious!

DeWayne’s new grandson should be making his first appearance any day now, but will be arriving on the 17th for sure, if not before.  We’re looking forward the big event and welcoming yet another grandchild into the world before we move on to Arizona. 

That’s all the news for now, so I’ll shut up and get the coffee made for Ginger’s daily visit.  So I hope everybody is staying warm and enjoying the new year.  Catch ya next time, but until then…..

HAPPY TRAILS!!