A very boring day

Today was so boring... I was hoping to have a short talk with my friend Alan about embracing the boredom part - he seems to have found the key to slowing down and enjoying the stillness - but no such luck tonight.

I managed to distract myself somewhat by reading the small book "Conversations with Vati". The book is about my grandfather. It was written by my uncle Hartmut. There is a lot of very interesting information in there that I had only bits and pieces of previously. My version of history was quite a bit different...

I stopped at Home Depot today to see if I could find any parts for my solar water heater. I am still planning a batch heater, but am having trouble finding a suitable water tank. I have not been able to find one that is designed for drinking water. I can find plenty of hot water heaters and pressure tanks, but nothing for just storing pressurized water. I will have to do some more searching tomorrow. I need a fairly small tank that lends itself to the job. I may just put 100 feet of garden hose out in the sun and tie it into the system. At least to give us something right now to heat our shower water while I search for a more elegant and permanent solution.

Our refrigerator has been basically defrosting every day when the temperature gets above about 80 degrees. We've had problems with it ever since we hit the hot weather. So far our solution has been to freeze half a dozen water bottles at night and transfer them to the refrigerator every morning so that the food won't spoil. We lost everything once already anyway when the temperature hit 95... Taking the vent cover off the back of the refrigerator seems to help some, but it looks really bad (trashy) to leave the back vent off here at the RV park. Anyway, I installed a fan in the back to help exhaust the heat out the top vent. From what I understand this is a common problem with RV refrigerators. They don't vent well when it's really hot outside and need a bit of a boost. We'll see if it helps over the next few days. It's supposed to get pretty hot again tomorrow.

Becky and I made a real bed for the girls today. Up to this point we had been converting the dinette to a bed for them every evening and then back into a dinette again in the morning. They were using their sleeping blankets as a kind of wrap (although it's been too hot to cover up with anything heavier than a sheet most evenings). Today we converted the back couch unto a full size bed complete with foam pad topper, a full set of sheets and matching comforter. They are very excited. Hopefully this will remove one of the more frustrating routines from our day and give the girls a more permanent feeling place in the RV.

With both Becky and I finding it difficult to entertain ourselves we've been tackling lots of projects around the trailer and resolving problems that we've not felt like dealing with.

There's been a lot of smoke in the air the past few days. The smoke has been hanging out in the late evenings because of some kind of inversion. While the sunsets are gorgeous because of it, the smoke smells like burning plastic - I can only assume that folks are burning garbage. I have seen many 55 gallon steel burn barrels full of garbage in side & back yards. Not the best way to deal with one's waste, but I guess it's cheaper than paying to have it hauled to the dump when you're poor.