Life Lately....
February 21: When you write a blog, your life is often your content. We can essentially look at everything as a possible post, photo op, or moment to share. This is great for our readers when it is visiting places that you have on your bucket list, sharing food photos that make you drool, or reminding you that you need to take a break form the corporate world. But sometimes posting about our lives includes the mundane, the somewhat boring, normal things of life. So our only hope is to provide you with something semi-amusing to read while you are in the waiting room at the doctor’s office with nothing else to do or when you accidentally click on a link of Facebook and this article pops up. Regardless of how you ended up on this post, here’s a glimpse into our life lately…
I think we mentioned previously that we don’t seem to put too many miles on our car being here in Texas. Considering most of our sight-seeing trips have been 2+ hours, it may seem surprising, but the car doesn’t move from our campsite at least four days during each week. So it may seem strange that we are talking today about car maintenance, but our last oil changed just happened to be about 2,300 miles away in Bar Harbor, Maine at the end of our stay there. So just that trip alone put us near time for an oil change. Man here I am talking about an oil change in a blog post I hoped would be semi-amusing. The material is dry, my friends, so work with me here. The material is actually wet and slippery, yes, that was a bad oil joke. We made an appointment for the old girl, our Honda Pilot, at the Honda dealer in Victoria about a half hour away. We had planned to make the appointment for first thing in the morning to allow a coffee break at the nearby Starbucks across the road while we waited for our car to be tuned up. Unfortunately, the morning was booked, but that allowed us to strategically request a lunch hour appointment which would include a Chipotle Burrito Bowl which just happens to be nearly in the Honda parking lot. We should really thank the Service Advisor who couldn’t secure us that morning appointment which may have resulted in being struck by a car as these two Java-deprived fools tried to cross the road in search of strong coffee. Instead we safely waddled back to the waiting room with a mild case of burrito belly. Thank you Honda, you really were looking out for us. Before long, the Old Girl had her share of TLC and we were on our way to our next exciting task ….. swimming with the beluga whales, I mean grocery shopping. I really had you going there didn’t I?
I would say I was disappointed that part of my day had to be spent grocery shopping, but I do tend to enjoy this task. (While often our opinions match, Russ may have a different one on this statement!) The love of grocery shopping runs deep in my family. Yes, my family are those weird people whose vacation plans include a visit to a unique or local grocery store. Our grocery trips to Victoria, usually include a stop at Aldi and then followed up with a visit to H-E-B Plus. We were originally drawn to Aldi for some of their gluten-free offerings, but have since been attracted to their fresh produce and great prices. While Trader Joe’s is still a favorite, Aldi as its parent company also uses a no-frills design. One of Aldi’s core values, is simplicity creates efficiency. There is truth in that for sure! They use boxes instead of shelves, freeing up the need for more employees which in return keeps prices lower. Don’t expect them to bag your grocery, which for me is not a negative. I think I secretly want to be a bagger at a grocery store. After all Tetris was always my favorite Game Boy game and bagging in my reusable bags creates a similar thrill. They have definitely stepped up their game in the organic-food space and many of their store-brand products are without artificial ingredients and added sugars for dollars less than their comparables at a larger grocery chain. Make sure to bring your quarter for your cart that you get back when you return your cart to the front of the store which again minimizes the need for additional employees. Plus I feel like I’m getting paid to return my cart. The only negative to our Aldi experience is not knowing which products they will have each visit. Sometimes I can find avocado oil, curry paste, and whole turkeys, other times we can’t. We always stock up on unsalted cashews, coconut or almond milk, and lots of veggies! Once we check as many items off our grocery list as possible from Aldi, we scoot over to H-E-B Plus. Howard Edward Butt is the founding father of the grocery chain in Texas and Northeast Mexico. While I did hope this post would be a bit-funny, I promise that last sentence was not a joke. Yes, that is the man’s name and he is the namesake of the grocery chain. We like to call it “HEB” and Mike & Annette like to call it “Hebbie Jebbie”, but if you want to sound like a native its “H-E-B.” That is where we do our shopping in Port Lavaca, but when in Victoria we get the privilege of visiting the H-E-B Plus. It is like a grocery store, electronics store, boutique, and department store had a baby! Yes, you can fill your cart with a bag of spinach, fashionable jewelry, a TV, a baby stroller, gardening tools, and clothes all in one stop! After a successful day of errand-running, we headed back home to Port Lavaca. We joke about the trip to Victoria as once you get to Route 87 which connects the two towns, it is a straight shot that takes about 20 minutes. With the speed limits in Texas being a bit higher than we are used to, we set the cruise at 75 and feel like we are on a runaway about to lift off.
NERD ALERT SECTION: The next morning, we did something we don’t get to do often as full-time RVers, we headed to the library to signup for library cards. Being on the move, we don’t get the chance to enjoy local county services, such as libraries. That is a perk of working here in Calhoun County Texas for an entire year! When we left, Russ joked about posting on social media, “Did you know there is a place you can go that lets you take books for free?” We are looking forward to wandering the aisles of the local library and enjoying their books for the next many months! Since I’ve failed to be very funny thus far, how about some book jokes…
What did one library book say to the other? ---Can I take you out?
Why did people stop going to the library? ---It was all booked!
Why does an elephant use her trunk as a bookmark? --- Then she NOSE where she stopped reading!
Okay, enough already. I know that was about one too many corny jokes, wasn’t it? So on to the next mundane topic. We started our days off from work with an oil change and ended it with a windshield repair. A few weeks ago, somewhere between Houston and home, a stone tried to give our windshield a high-five. The windshield didn’t get his hand up quick enough and ended up with a slight facial scar. It only took a few clicks through our Metlife Auto Insurance profile page and we had an appointment scheduled with Safelite. And yes, we did sign the “Safelite Repair, Safelite Replace” commercial jingle nearly a dozen times that day. Go ahead and chalk up a few more times as I couldn’t type it without singing it! The repair man worked quickly and efficiently in filling the small chip to avoid the need to replace the entire windshield before the little chip decided it wanted to be a large crack instead. Before we knew it, he was packed up and on his way. We finished off the day kicked back in our zero-gravity chairs under blue skies and our palm tree reading our new library books. Even everyday life is good!
