Unintentional Hiatus

Four months. I have never gone that long without a post! I really do admire all the bloggers, especially those who have been doing it for years, that consistently post daily or even on a regular basis. I had fully intended to do so; it didn't happen!

So what have we been doing since we left Amazon at the end of December?

January
We arrived home in Homosassa on New Year's Eve, after Al had worked an extra week at Amazon, covering a vacation schedule spot. We had our annual prime rib holiday meal with the family a week late -- no extras this year.

 We started out strong, trying to get all of our doctor appointments done and over with. It was working out well, until that monkey wrench was thrown into the works, as usual. Al ended up with a bout of his atrial fibrillation. Fortunately, he was not symptomatic this time and managed to stay out of the hospital. With a deductible on our insurance of more than 13K, this was good news! After two weeks, he did convert with the use of medication, and all is well on that front.

We had a picnic with a large group of our RVing friends that gather in Florida for the winter. I hope I don't miss anyone in this list: Joan and Steve Crowe (who organized the picnic in their hometown of Apopka in a great park, Magnolia Park), who we met through their blog, FOSJ; their friends, whom we met in Custer last spring, Jim and Deb Britt;  Pat and Diana Brown and Bonnie and Richard Waltman, who were blog followers of mine and have become cherished friends; Jessica and Harry Riker, Dino and Lisa Olivieri, and Kelly and Bill Murray,who we met at Amazon and work with each year; Cliff and Flo Ann Avery, Ken and Jan Hermann, and Carol and Ken Blevins, all of whom we worked with in Bar Harbor, Maine; Ellen and Tom Whitesel, who we met through our dear friends Dan and Jonell Anderson and worked at Amazon with for a short while last fall. We hope to make this a yearly event!

Our family reunion went off without a hitch at Walt Disney World, and that brings January to an end!

February
We finished up our family reunion, then spent a couple more days over at Titusville where we visited the Kennedy Space Center. Dan had returned from Wisconsin by that time, so he and Jonell joined us for the day. It had changed a lot since our last visit there many years ago, and we had a very enjoyable day. Jonell has written extensively about it on her blog, Liv2RV.

We then proceeded to Tampa for two weeks, where we embarked upon a new adventure for us, working for the ScootAround company. Scootaround is a "personal transportations solutions" company, and they hire workampers to man their concessions booths at events such as the Florida State Fair. I had been looking for something to bring in a few dollars over the winter for two reasons; one, we really did not get very much overtime pay from Amazon this past fall, and, two, we have a rental property that we receive income from, and we were losing our tenant the end of January. I wasn't sure how fast we would pick up a new one so we would be short that income. ScootAround seemed like it would be a very good job for us as it allowed us to pick events to work at that we could do around our busy winter social schedule :-). Basically, we are renting scooters, strollers, and wagons to event attendees. It's not hard work, by any means, but it can get very hectic and good organizational skills are an asset in keeping the paperwork in order. If anyone has questions about it, feel free to personally email me.

This is Duke, a Great Pyrenees. He belonged to our coworkers at Booth 2, Charlene and Jim. Duke enjoyed "working" at the booth :-)

After our return home from the State Fair, we had about a week to relax and get geared up for company arriving from New York. We also met up with Dan and Jonell and Tom and Ellen over at Disney Springs, the new shopping and dining area at Disney, and we had a great lunch at a new restaurant, Art Smith's Homecoming. We won't see either of those couples until we get back up to Wyoming.

March
Our first guest from New York, our friend Ed, arrived the beginning of the month and then it was ten days of mostly the guys golfing! Luckily, it's fairly inexpensive to golf in Florida. We also visited Tarpon Springs one day and went to the Flower and Garden Festival at EPCOT another day. Dinner at our friends Alan and Sharon Babula rounded out that ten days, with a great wine tasting of Alan's homemade wine.

A few days after Ed left, it was time to head back to the airport to pick up my brother. Bill and another couple from New York, our friends Greg and Viena, had come down to go fishing with Al for a two-day trip out in the Gulf. They came home with a ton of fish!

And what was I doing while the golf and fishing were taking place? Well, I was setting up my proofreading business, putting together a marketing program, finding clients, and getting to work! I've actually succeeded better than I could have ever imagined, and I have gained a steady roster of clients and read thousands of pages of legal transcripts in the last three months. It doesn't sound exciting, but I'm very happy that I set myself a goal and managed to accomplish it. Learning wasn't as easy as it used to be!

The third weekend of March we headed over to Daytona, where we worked for ScootAround at the Spring Fling Turkey Rod Run, a classic car show. That was very interesting. We worked with three of the couples we met at the State Fair and had a great time. Then it was back home for a week.

Our booth is all ready at Daytona.We had 160 scooters for rent, and we sold out both Friday and Saturday!

Some of the cars at the Daytona Spring Fling

April
April 3rd we headed north to Concord, N.C., where we worked our last event for ScootAround this year at the Charlotte Speedway Spring Auto Fair, another classic car show. This one was much larger, much more hectic, but it was interesting, and we had fun.

Unloading the scooters from the tractor-trailer in Concord. I did not get a picture of everything set up, but we had 235 scooters here, and we sold out Friday and Saturday.

We then headed back to Florida to spend Easter with the family and get everything ready for our departure west. We had reserved a campsite for the weekend before we left so that we had hookups. This enabled us to steam clean our carpets and just basically give everything a really good cleaning, dusting, and polishing.

April 17th, we headed north and west! It will be a shorter than normal trip west since Easter was late this year, but we are still taking the time to do a little sightseeing along the way, with stops in Rockport, Fredericksburg, Alpine, and Big Bend National Park in Texas, and Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. We are currently in Rockport, and I will have pictures of our adventures here, soon -- promise!!