it was a good day

Good morning.
I made it to Muskegon and back with no issues.
I arrived around 9:30 and visited with my sister and Mom. For lunch, Mom wanted Chinese so we headed out to the House of Chan. A Chinese restaurant that's been there for years. Well, we discovered it was closed on Mondays, and Mom didn't want to deal with all the traffic around the mall, (and I don't know why cause I was doing the driving) so we headed over to Applebee's. As we approached Applebee's we went past a place called the Red Wok. I said "there's a Chinese place, do you want to go there?" Mom decided to try it. It was, of course, was a buffet. Now I don't do buffets but Mom wanted Chinese so I was stuck. But I actually liked it! They had a huge selection of food and I love Chinese food, so I filled my plate twice! The place was clean and the food was well tended to by the staff.
After lunch, we of course went to the club for drinks and pull tabs.
A couple hours later, it was time to take Mom home and head to Grand Rapids to drop Linda off at the airport for her trip back to North Carolina. It was good to see her after so many years, and she enjoyed her time with Mom.
Craig had a busy day while I was gone. He said he got up at 9 which surprised me, went to the bank, the pond store for more Algefix, and grocery shopping. Came home, did more laundry and mowed the yard. Fixed Hamburger Helper for dinner, but used sliced sirloin instead of hamburger, and also added peppers from the garden.
It was a good day.

time for a little drive

Good morning.
The heat is back! Got to 90 yesterday, and today and tomorrow is suppose to be more of the same. But the holiday weekend is projected to be in the mid to upper 70's. That will be perfect!
After cleaning the Salon and the inside of the mo-ho, I woke Craig up and we had coffee and read the Sunday paper. Then it was out to do a little grocery shopping.
And while he did bookwork, bills and laundry, I did manage to wash the mo-ho, PT Cruiser, and Kia, and clean all their windows before I started to melt from the heat.
We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing on the deck with cocktails. I cooked pork cutlets on the grill with marinated zucchini and baked potatoes for dinner. Yummy!
Today, I'll be heading about 100 miles west to Muskegon to visit with my sister and mom. I'll then take her to Grand Rapids (about halfway between Lansing and Muskegon) for her 5:45 flight back to North Carolina, on my way back to Lansing. It's been years since I've seen her. North Carolina is just a little too far to travel in the mo-ho since we can only do long weekends right now. So I'm looking forward to spending the day with her.
So now it's time for a shower and hit the highway!

ps.....I bet with me gone Craig will sleep till noon!

and then there was pizza

Good morning.
I've just returned from cleaning the Salon, and after a quick post, I'm off to clean the mo-ho.
Yes, we got the mo-ho back on Friday afternoon with a brand new $874.00 hydraulic jack. That makes 2 we've replaced this year. I hope the other 2 hold up for a while. ;-)
It was another busy week at the Salon which is good since next week is short due to the holiday weekend.
The yard is looking real bad. Only .44 inches of rain this entire month with very warm temps. Every thing's burning up. I haven't even mowed for 2 weeks since brown grass doesn't grow.
But the seasons pretty much over anyway. It's almost September, and fall is just around the corner. The summer is going by sooo fast! As usual.
To end this short post, a pic of the home made pizza Craig made us for dinner last night.

Ground beef, cheese, mushroom, onions, and tomatoes. Yummy!

my friday post

Good morning from a bit chilly Lansing.

It's currently 48 out. The coldest it's been all summer! But a heat wave is due back in a day or so.

It's been another busy week in the Salon.

Other than that, not much to say.

The mo-ho is still in the shop. I'll call today to see what's taking so long to replace that jack.

My sister from North Carolina flew in to Michigan yesterday for a surprise visit to our Mom. I'll go up to Muskegon on Monday to see her and take her back to the airport for her flight home.

And despite the lingering dryness, some late summer flowers don't seem to mind....

Helenuim, Perennial Hibiscus, and Ligularia Dentata.

Have a great weekend!

an expensive summer

Good morning.
This is becoming a very expensive summer.
It started out earlier this spring needing new tires on the PT Cruiser.
Then it was a new security system for work. Then replacing a ceiling fan at work. Then the washer/dryer, and then the phone system.
And now besides replacing a hydraulic jack that quit working, I get a call yesterday that the leaking jack needs to be replaced.
We're spending money faster then we're making it!
But I shouldn't complain, at least we're still working and making money. I had another customer last week who after 10 years was told her position was being eliminated. Not a good time to be looking for a job.
But come on now, do I need to keep the economy going single handed?
And in other news...
I did get out and did a bunch of weeding and deadheading. The yard looks more like late September than August. It's been so hot and dry, everything looks worn and tired. It's hard to get motivated when everything looks so bad.
To end the day I cooked chicken and taters on the grill and watched a couple episodes of Glee.
And now I'm off to work to make more money for the next big thing that I'm sure will be coming along.

trip #8

Good morning.
We've just returned from our latest weekend trip.
This one took us a couple of hours away to Lake Michigan and Van Buren State Park.

Here's our campsite. It's a fairly wooded campground, and not a very big state park. But it does have a nice beach and a lot of day use areas.
And although we got there and back safe, it wasn't with out a few incidences. First, after we parked, leveled and started to put out our chairs, Craig noticed pink liquid running out from under the mo-ho. The front passenger jack was leaking hydraulic fluid!

So quickly I went inside, pulled in the slides, and raised the jacks. Since our site was fairly unlevel, I was able to put down the 2 jacks on the drivers side to level us side to side, but our front was low so we felt like we were walking uphill or down hill for our stay. But that wasn't enough to abort our stay. It wasn't until we were ready to leave that I thought about putting some boards down and driving up on them to raise the front. Oh well. I did call and make an appointment to take it in this morning. I hope it's just a bad seal. It would be nice for a change if it didn't coast much. We'll see.
That evening, as we were setting in for some TV viewing, the handle that turns the antenna striped. So I had to go up on the roof to manually turn it. I had to do that about half a dozen times trying to get the best direction for TV viewing.
Of course, the local RV dealer here carries Winegard parts, but our antenna is a different brand, so they had to order it. Should be in later this week.
Then, later as I went to put more pop in the fridge, (we keep extra pop in a tub under the sink) there was half an inch of water in the tub! Discovered the drain pipe was leaking. One of the screw caps was split. This must have happened to the previous owners, because the cap that split was white, and all the rest are black. I did have that part in the garage since its the same stuff I used in our house.
But we didn't let those 3 fairly miner things keep us from enjoying out trip.
So Saturday morning I awoke to rain. Turned on the TV and found it was going to continue until around noon time. So what do we do when the weather is crappy? You guessed right! Off to the nearest casino! Which just happened to be the Four Winds about 40 minutes south of us near the Michigan border. After a couple of hours, and not doing so good, we headed back toward the campground but first stopped half way back at the city of Saint Joesph which has a restaurant called Clementines Too. The original is in South Haven just north of the campground and is always too busy to get in so we hoped this one would be easier. And it was!

And the food was tasty!
After that, we got back to the campground with sunshine and headed down to the beach.

I swear, Michigan has the best beaches! lake Michigan is soo blue, and the sand, while not white, is still great!

And we finished off the day with a bike ride, pork on the grill, and a DVD, Journey to the Center of the Earth. A bit corny, but entertaining.

Sunday found us going to South Haven to see 5 tall ships. We even manage to get there when they opened the drawbridge.

There are many marina's along the river, and they open the bridge at regular intervals to let the sail boats through.

And here's the tall ships. Now this one was pretty neat, but the others in the top pic were pretty puny looking. Found out these were smaller replicas. That was a wast of time, so it was off a little farther north to Saugatuck where they were having the 'Taste of Saugatuck'.

And for a small tourist town, it was packed! it was held on the street near a park. And they set up tables and chairs in the shady park where you could sit and eat.
It was real nice. I had fish tacos that were yummy!

Then a little shopping, and back to the campground and another trip to the beach.

It was very windy, and as you can see, they have a red flag which means 'dangerous conditions, no swimming.' But as you can see, it didn't seem to stop anyone. They don't have lifeguards here in Michigan at most beaches due to budget cuts, so they just post signs saying swim at your own risk, which people do. There have been several drownings this summer, partly due to a very hot summer and more people going to the beach's. The undertows can be very strong.

And we finished the day with another bike ride, kielbasas on the grill and some TV.

All in all a good trip!

And now I'm off to clean the Salon, and then wake up Craig and take in the mo-ho. Wish me luck!

another weekend!

Good morning.
It's been a crazy, busy, exhausting, week at work, but now it's the weekend!
I'm a little stymied as to why the Salon has been soo busy the last few months. The economy here in Michigan hasn't changed much, but service sales are up and so is retail. I'm certainly not complaining, just a little puzzled.
It's looking like typical August here. The grass is brownish, and the plants look worn. We've gotten little rain here in Lansing as most rain systems seem to go north or south of us. I have been watering the veggies, and getting tomatoes, peppers, and I dug potatoes. The squash vines are recovering from the woodchuck, but I'm thinking it's too late for the fruit to set and mature.
We are currently on the downside of trips. 7 have passed and just 6 to go. We still have Van Buren State Park, Indiana Dunes, Pokagon, Holly, and Ludington, so still lot's of fun to be had.
There's also an RV show in Detroit in October that's also on our schedule. Love looking at the new stuff!
And that's all I got for now!

in other news...

Good morning.
I know, an unusual Thursday post, but I don't have to be at work until 9am today.
As much as I was thrilled about the bridge being open, apparently they still have another month of work on it so only 1 lane in each direction is open. That wouldn't be so bad except, they have decided to keep the entire street one lane for a mile leading to the bridge. I suppose it's to keep people from driving to fast and trying to get ahead of each other before the 1 lane bridge, but what it's done is you get some slow ass who appears afraid of the orange barrels and drives way to slow. It's worst than the long way to work. So now with most of the traffic back on that road, I may just take the long way. With out as much traffic, it may be quicker. God I hate all the road work! It's just sooo inconvenient!
In other news....
They're doing painting on our mall. I got to work yesterday, and they had painted all the back doors green, instead of the store bought gray. Not sure I care for that, but it's not my call. And it's been very busy at the Salon. That is mostly good except for longer hours and me more
tired at night. ;-)
And because it's been so busy, I haven't had time to go to the Salon supply store, so I ordered on-line Tuesday morning for delivery on Wednesday. I get to work and there's a message on my phone that they were out of a couple of things and to call them and see if I want to substitute. They would hold the order until they heard from me. Ugh! I wanted the stuff Wednesday! So I called and took care of the issues and now will get my supplies today. Why do they say same day shipping on their website when they should say same day shipping only if the planets are in alignment and we feel like it.
Okay, I need to go and get ready for work.

Mom

Good morning.
Just a quickie this morning.
We went to Muskegon yesterday to visit my Mom. It was an early birthday visit. We went to Red Lobster for lunch and then to the 'club'.
Mom seems to have embraced public transportation. There's 3 different services for seniors she can use. One will take her only to medical appointments, and doesn't cost anything. One will take her to the 'club' and it's $3 each way. It's the same with the store. Another will only take her within the city limits, (the 'club' is in North Muskegon) but it's only $1.50 each way, and that will take her to stores and another 'club' she belongs to.
I'm quite impressed she has it all figured out as good as she has. But Mom has always been very independent, and I knew she was going to be okay with out a car.
And that's all I got for now.

just another Sunday

Good morning.
It was another usual Sunday in our not so exciting lives.
Craig did his usual bookwork and laundry, and I tried to be productive. Mowed the yard, cleaned our 5 birdbaths, washed Kia, washed bug guts off the front of the mo-ho, restocked water, pop, paper towels and tp for our next trip, and grilled chicken for dinner. Craig even offered to make his wonderful potato salad! It was a good usual Sunday.
And in other news.....
I read in the Sunday paper, the road we take to work is opening today! Yeaaaaaaaa!
And during the 6 weeks the bridge was closed, they also repaved the entire road, so we'll have a nice new road and back to a nice short drive. Life is good!

caught the little bastard!

Good morning.
I've just returned from cleaning the salon. It is already 75 out at 8:20 am. Gonna be another hot one today. But it looks to cool down into the low 80's next week.
We completed a very busy week in the Salon, and it showed when I cleaned. Took a little longer that usual.
To end the week, Craig made a tasty Spicy Orange Stir Fry.

Served over long grain wild rice. It was yummy!

I also caught the little bastard that's been eating my veggies and ornamental vines. A big fat woodchuck! He's the latest to enter the Wayne Relocation Program.

This is what the pot looked like this morning. In a couple of weeks, it should be all leafed out again.
Even the squash vines are budding out again. I don't know if it's too late to set and mature squash, but we'll see.

And the bridge is still closed that I take to work. I drove by there this morning, and it looks like it's ready. Hopefully it'll open this week.

Now it's time for my shower, and to wake up lazy bones.

just a quick rant

Good morning.
Just a quick bridge update. The closed bridge that makes me travel several miles out of my way to work is still closed. it was suppose to open on Aug. 6. Yesterday I found out that the concrete mix that was delivered for the bridge wasn't the right one and it'll take 2 weeks for another one to arrive.
First off, I didn't know there were different ways to mix concrete. Second, why is it going to take 2 weeks?
In other news, They have huge sections of our parking lot at work marked off. They are cutting out bad sections and repaving. Now this parking lot is only 2 years old. Don't you think it should have lasted longer than that? All I can figure is when the landlord had the new parking lot done, that was his expense and got the cheapest job possible. And the patching is considered maintenance which all the tenants have to pay for. But that doesn't make much sense either, since over half the mall is empty, and he'd have to pay that share of the work himself.
Anyway, I worked 10 1/2 hours yesterday, and it looks to be about 10 today.
Now you know why I don't often post much during the week.
So this is it for now, and I'm off to work!

poor plants, damn critters

Good morning.
Another weekend over. They go by so fast. And I have a 3 day weekend. I can't imagine having only 2.
But anyway, remember the critters eating my plants? Well here's a couple of pics of the damage.

Squash vines with buds and leaves eaten off.

A pot with 3 types of sweet potato vines. You can see the purple leaf vine has almost no leaves, just bare stems. The variegated vine is almost completely gone, and the petunias are just stubs. This all happened while we were gone. What ever was eating the tomatoes has stopped after eating 3. Hope it got indigestion.

And yesterday was a take it easy day for me. Craig of course did bookwork and laundry. All I managed to accomplish was repainting the deck chairs.

Looks brand new right? And below is a chair before it was repainted. They have spray paint for plastic, and it works really good. No runs at all!

We've had these chairs for nearly 20 years. They're very comfortable, and fold for easy storage. We haven't seen these any where for years.

This is the 3rd time I've repainted them.
So another weekend gone, and another trip done. Summer is whizzing by too fast!

And now I'm off to work for what is looking to be another busy week.

update

Good morning.
And some more pics from our trip.

A view from the parking lot in front of camper village where you can see the Top Thrill Dragster, the really tall one in the center. Also the coasters Gemini and Millennium.

Here's the Mean Streak and an empty parking lot.

Most of my readers know I'm an early riser, and I took the rest of these pics Monday morning while most people were still sleeping.

The original Hotel Breakers right on the beach next to the park
Look closely and you can see Power Tower above the roof.
One of the newer wings of the hotel with the Magnum coaster off to the right.
Looking the other way and some even newer wings of the hotel with the rides Wicked Twister, the Ferris Wheel, and an observation tower.
Then back to camper village. In front of the rv's all along the water are these cottages you can rent. They are basically park models. They are all landscaped with decks over looking the bay. They are probably quite expensive. Even the camper village is expensive compared to other campgrounds, but soo convenient to the amusement park.

Oh, and Scott, if your interested in taking your rv to Cedar Point, get online and book it, because if you just show up, it'll most likely be booked. It's a very popular campground.

In other news, I did get the antenna fixed. I went online to IRV2.com. It's a very large rv forum. I searched for antenna problems and found I needed to get up on the roof and lubricate it. I did and it now works just fine. And for a change, it didn't cost anything!
I also came home to find a critter has feasted on my yard. It has eaten all the buds and shoots off my squash plants. I'm assuming it's the same critter that has eaten my tomatoes. It has also eaten all the leaves off my potted purple leafed potato vine. Now it's a bush of purple stems. Oh well, it's always something isn't it?

And now I'm off to clean the Salon.

trip #7

Good afternoon.
Yep! We just returned from another RV trip!
This one took us about 3 1/2 hour to Cedar Point Amusement Park. The nations largest roller coaster park!
It's situated on a peninsula out into Lake Erie about an hours east of Toledo, Ohio.

We stayed at Camper Village, which is a Cedar Point resort located at the tip of the peninsula.

We were parked at the red star.

And here's me at our campsite.

We arrived Saturday afternoon, and had 'twilight' tickets for entry after 5pm. The park was packed, but we were able to ride a few rides that evening. Sunday, being a resort guest, we were able to enter the park 1 hour before general admission. That got us on the most popular rides without much wait. We love the coasters! It was ungodly hot! But fortunately they had many places offering liquid refreshments. :-)

We also took in a couple of shows. A tropical revue, and an extreme skateboard/bike show. Both were very entertaining.

Cedar Point is such fun!
We arrived and returned without any major incidences, but of course it wasn't completely incidence free. Our roof top antenna would not turn so we were unable to get all the available TV stations. I'm going to try and figure out the problem without taking it in. Wish me luck. So now I'm off to do that.

A few more pics tomorrow.

boring busy

Good morning.
Well, it's been another busy uneventful week in the Salon. And in a couple of hours, I'll be back there again.
The weather has been hot and dry. The last few weather systems that went through have gone just south of us, so no rain here for the last 3 weeks. The grass is getting pretty brown. I keep the flower beds watered, but it's not the same as rain water. Still, they look pretty good.
And our bridge on the road I'd like to take to work is still not open. The sign had originally said Aug. 6th, but it's not. I really dislike the long way to work, but I'm sucking it up as I've got no other way. There's sooo much road construction going on in the Lansing area, it's impossible to go anywhere easy. Even the highways on both sides of town are under a 2 year reconstruction. Must be all that stimulus money.
Anyway, not much else going on around here, but I'm hoping for a nice weekend away from the Salon this week....I hope.
Have a great weekend!

The rest of the weekend

Good morning.
As expected, after 2 days of very busy, I just didn't have any gumption to do much.
Oh, I did go in to the Salon and sit while the tech installed the new processor for the phone system, which appears to be in good working order.
Then we went and voted in the primaries.
Then we did our weekly grocery shopping.
I did manage to trim up a large maple tree on the side of the yard where the branches were drooping down almost to head level. Now there way up about 20 feet.
And I've been picking tomatoes. Mostly semi green ones to let ripen on the window sill. We've got some kind of critter eating the tomatoes. It started last weekend. The first tomato to ripen. I discovered something had eaten one side of it. The next day, nearly 2/3rds was gone. The next day, all of it was gone. The next day, it started eating the green one next to it. So it looks to be a race to get the tomatoes before it does. I have no idea what's eating it, but at least it finishes one before going on to the next.
And with our first ripe beef master tomato, we had a BCT sandwich for lunch. That's Bacon, Cheese, and Tomato. Actually, Turkey Bacon, Mozzarella, and Tomato. It was yummy!
And the rest of the afternoon was pretty much relaxing on the deck with some cocktails.
Dinner was ham steaks, mashed potatoes, and corn on the cob.
And now, another long busy week at work.

system update.

Good morning.
Yesterday was another beautiful day weather wise.
I started it by cleaning up the inside of the mo-ho and then it was off to the Salon to call First Telecommunications to set up a service call. They opened at 8am, and I was surprised to have a tech at the Salon by 8:45. By 9:30 he had determined there was a corrupt system reboot card. But he wasn't sure if the corrupt card had damaged the processor so wanted me to monitor the system and let him know if I had any more trouble. He suggested I might want to replace the processor to extend the systems life. At 13 years It was getting iffy on how much longer it would last. Basically, the phone system is like a puter. It has a hard drive, processor, memory and such. And we all know how long a puter lasts!
So Craig and I decided to go with the processor. It would take a day to get, and would cost $800. A lot cheaper than the $5000 the system cost originally.
And a good thing we dicided to do that, since we had a couple more outages during the day which signaled that the processor was damaged from the corrupt card. So I'm meeting the tech at the Salon at 8am this morning for that. And that means I'll have been at the Salon every day of my weekend. That's the 'fun' part of owning your own business.
And the rest of the day was spent waxing on the mo-ho, checking tire pressure, and water levels on the house batteries, in preparation for our next trip.
And now, before I'm off to the Salon, I'm going to catch up on some blog reading.

a productive day

Good morning.
Sunday was a beautiful day, and very productive.
We ended up taking our answering machine and a spare phone to the Salon and bypassed the other non working system so customers can at least leave their name and number and we can call them back. As soon as the company that installed the original system opens at 8am, I'll set up a service call to hopefully get it fixed.
I didn't want to pay overtime rates to have it done yesterday, since we have 3 stylists on vacation this week, and no one is working today.
And while Craig did bookwork and laundry, I washed the mo-ho, and then washed, waxed, and cleaned the inside of his Honda Accord.

Ain't it pretty? It's a 1998, just turned 50,000 miles, and has never seen snow. The color? Black Currant. It's kind of a real deep plum.
And your probably asking why I'm doing his car and not him. Well, he says he has carpal tunnel, but I'm thinking he's just lazy. :-)
I also managed to wax the front and back of the mo-ho, so a very productive day. I figured I better get it done yesterday, as I'll probably be sitting at the Salon a lot today, waiting for the repairman to get there and waiting while he checks it out and hopefully fix it.
And for dinner, Craig made a delicious pork pot roast.

fingers crossed

Good morning.
It's looking to be a nice warm dry weekend.
Work has been very busy. But now we're having an issue with our phone system.
We have a Lucent Partner Mail VS system. This allows customers who call to hear a general greeting with a listing of the stylists extensions. Every styling station has a phone with their own extension so the customer can reach their particular stylist who makes their own appointments. This system work well because with out a receptionist, we can keep our chair rental rates lower, and only each stylist knows how much time they need for each customer.
Anyway, when I went to work Saturday, the phones would have a dial tone, then nothing, then a dial tone and it would keep cutting out. I had Craig bring in canned air to spray in the vents thinking maybe it was over heating and shorting somehow. I also called the phone company to have the lines checked.
After about an hour, the system seemed to be working fine, and it worked the rest of the day. The lines were checked and they are fine, so Monday I'll call the company that installed the system for a service call.
Well, this morning when I went in to clean the Salon, it was doing the same thing, so more canned air in the vents. After I got done cleaning, the system seemed to be working again. So I don't know if it's the canned air that helped, or I'm thinking now, it might be the room air. We always turn the air up at night when no one's there, and turn it back down when we go in in the morning. Maybe it gets to warm during the night, Maybe it just needs a good interior cleaning. I'm hoping that's it because It cost $5000.00 to install it and I'd hate for it to be going bad and we need a new system. It has been here 13 years, and you know how electronics are. Keep your fingers crossed that for once, we come out on the cheap side instead of the expensive side.
And now, some flowers currently blooming. A selection of Rudbecia's.....

Above, the well known common Black Eyed Susan's, and below one that looks the same but the flowers get about 5 inches across and is called Indian Summer.

A tall variety that gets 6 ft tall and has a green cone and called Rudbecia Hemstonne.

And a double variety I have no idea what it's called.

And now it's time to wake up sleepy head Craig!