Housecleaning in an RV

There’s nothing like having your mother come stay with you for a while to get you to clean your home! 

I don’t think our little vacuum cleaner has come out of its hiding place since the last time she was here.

Neither Jim nor I are very high on housekeeping.  In fact, I think that was one of my reasons for wanting to live in an RV rather than a house.  I figured – a space that small – how much work can it be?  Truly, in a couple hours you can clean front to back, top to bottom.  What I didn’t count on is how quickly it gets dirty again.  Every square inch is in heavy traffic pattern! 

I also can’t hire someone to clean my RV like I would do sometimes to clean my house.  I mean, how can I stay out of their way while they clean!?

Anyway, our plan to have my Mom come with us to the RV-Dreams rally in South Carolina was a good motivator to get the floor washed and waxed, clean the air filter for the AC, clean windows and mirrors, and throw away or put away all the piles of paper. 

Aaaaaahhhh.  Now we spent a few hours on the road, and Mom’s in her favorite spot – the mother-in-law suite in the cabover

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We made it to St. Augustine and will stay here two nights while we see some sights and visit our friend Glenn.  It’s a nice campground – I was entranced by the golden light just before sundown.

 

The temperature was perfect for dinner outside.  This is the life we love.

Back in Florida

We got back just in time to go to our Kayuba Club picnic at John U Lloyd State Beach.  We hoped to go kayak diving, but it was too windy.

See for yourself in this little video we put together.

Rally’s Over

Our last day’s seminars were all about making your own websites and blogs.  We ended by teaching about Wordpress – this was a brand new seminar for us.  I think it went pretty well.  All our seminar handouts are on our website and easily found on the tutorial page for the topic you want.  All except Wordpress, because we don’t have any tutorials on it yet.  Here’s a link to the Wordpress seminar handout.  We make these publicly available to anyone who wants to read them, but they are for personal use only.  If you want to use them for any other purpose, please send us an email OK?

It SNOWED!

What was extra cool, was how we used our Droid phones for our internet connection.  See the article I wrote on RV.net for more details.

On Friday, we had a free day and had plans to take the famous Sandia Peak Tramway – the longest tramway in the world, going up 2.7 miles to the 10,378ft top.  BUT – they were closed due to weather :-(  No, it wasn’t snowing again.  This time it was too windy.

We planned to take the Tramway ride with our friends Phil and Tracey from TechnoRV.  We met them last summer at one rally, and then again at a few more.  They set up a very classy booth to sell all sorts of cool gadgets.  This year, they’re also selling our books and DVDs … we like that!  Luckily, they know the Albuquerque area better than we do and recommended a local winery – I think this may be the beginning of a beautiful friendship! :-)

We topped off the evening by going to dinner in ‘Old Town’ Albuquerque.  So, we got to see some sights after all!  Thanks Phil and Tracey!

A Four Seminar Day!

Had to get up at 6 am to be ready for this day!  Our first seminar was at 8 – Picasa, then 9:45 – PIcasa Advanced, 11:30 Google Earth, and finally 1:30 – Internet on the Road.

Then, we told people who wanted to by our books or DVDs that we’d be at our table from 3-5.  When we got there at a few minutes before 3, there was a line!

I know, I know, LOTS of people in this country work hard from 8-5 every day … but this is definitely not normal for us!  And, today, we’re doing it all over again = with 3 seminars: Blogger, Advanced Blogger and Make a free website with Wordpress.com.

Here’s a picture of our Picasa class:

It *is* great fun though.  This is what we live for – the appreciative audiences.  Here’s Diane and Tony who told us that we’ve become a part of their lives!  As fulltime RVers, they take a lot of pictures and use their computers a lot, they turn to our videos whenever they need help.

We also had a camera crew web-casting the seminar.  I thought that was pretty exciting until I learned that it wasn’t publicized so nobody was watching the webcast !?  I guess it was just for practice.  Maybe next time.

Albuquerque and the FMCA Rally

Facebook and my new Droid App Phone are beginning to cause problems for my blog.  You see, Facebook allows me to just post a sentence or two about where we are, what we’re doing.  To write a blog post takes a little more thought and effort.  And, the Droid allows me to make those facebook posts while I’m a passenger in a car for example, or while we’re in the plane sitting at the gate.  It is OH SO COOL, and I love it … but then I think OMG, I haven’t posted to the blog in several days!  Here’s my Facebook posts:

I’ll calm down once the honeymoon is over with my new Droid phone.  But, for now, I’m LOVING it. 

So, yes, we are in Albuquerque and we’re staying at the condo of an old friend of Jim’s – Ron Kennedy.  We have a great view of the city.  At the rally – we don’t have any seminars till Wednesday, so we’re hanging out at our special table in the Information Center by the Computer Help Desk and Wi-Fi area.