Dawn

Hi!!! It’s New Years Eve! HAPPY NEW YEARS TO ALL OF OUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY!!! It’s 8:45 pm and we are home. We are so whimpy in our old age. We went to the”Yacht Club” which was fun. It’s funny, everyone we have met so far have been full time RV’ers. We met Frank the other night, who lives in Idaho and comes to Quartzsite every winter. We met Sam, who sold us our new motorhome who was at “The Yacht Club” with his girlfriend tonight. He and his girlfriend are “fulltimers”. And we shared our table tonight with two older couples who are full timers. They were very nice too. It’s almost like a little club that you’re in if you‘re a full time Rv’er. And the older fulltimers love to show you the ropes if you’re new at this. It really is so laid back and lot’s of fun.

Now we want to think of something we could make and sell at flea markets. We think it would be really fun to come to Quartzsite every year and sit in our little booth and sell our craft. I know, “You can take Dawn out of the trailer court but you can’t take the trailer court out of Dawn”. But it does sound fun to us. Maybe I could make scrapbook page kits. Nelson could make his cute Santa’s and snowmen at Christmas time, but what about after Christmas. We need some good ideas of something we could make or collect that would appeal to older people that live in their RV’s. Any ideas out there? We’re both pretty crafty! We want everyone to send us their craft ideas. I know this sounds really weird to a lot of people, but it really does sound fun to us... Do you still like us???

Well, we really love our new RV. It has two slide outs. It is much more livable (that doesn’t really look like a word, but you know what I mean). To live every day in an RV, needs more room than what we had.

We leave for Tempe tomorrow. That will be fun. But I must admit that Quatzsite kind of grows on you. We will miss it, even though we’ve only been here for 5 days.

I will post lots of pictures when we get to Tempe and have “normal” internet.

I want to thank my wonderful daughter for the beautiful pictures she posted of me. Love ya, honey. But like your dad says “payback’s a bitch”.

And Gladys, I will try my hardest to get a picture of the Naked man, just for you. We all need to find Gladys a man. She’s kind of obsessive.

But honestly...Both Nelson and I really hope that all of our friends and family really do have a very happy and healthy new year.

Dawn

We had so much fun tonight. We went to this place called “The Yacht Club”. Yes, the yacht club in the middle of the desert. It was actually called that because of the man who bought it and had a very funny sense of humor. We are actually a long way from any sea. Therefore it is a total joke that it is called “The yacht Club”.

There was a Country band playing there. Anyone that really knows me knows that I hate country. It must be my age, but I like Country Music lately. I don’t know what’s wrong with me buy I really do like it. The band probably was not even that great, they were just some old timer cowboys. But they sounded really good to me. Everyone there were like total hicks, but they were all so nice. Everyone knew each other and everyone was happy and laughing and dancing. It was really fun. I can’t remember who said this to me recently....”You can take Dawn out of the trailer court, but you can’t take the trailer court out of Dawn” That is so funny to me. It was probably either Lou or Luka that recently said that to me. But I really did have fun tonight.

Nelson and I are totally going to practice our “How to dance” tape. Oh my god, we are total losers. But I’m not kidding. Some of these little country couples could really dance well together. At first in Quartzsite, we thought ok, so after you go to the flea markets, (which are very fun,) what is left to do? These people just look forward to meeting up with the same people (friends) that they meet up with in Quartzsite every January and February.

We find out tomorrow if our offer on a bigger RV is accepted. It’s a quite a bit bigger and 3 years newer and has only 12,000 miles on it and quite a bit nicer, for not that much more $. We think it will be easier to resell that one when the time comes too. So we’ll see what happens.

I will try again to post pictures tonight, but I’m thinking you guys will be blasted with all of our pictures after we get to Tempe, not here in Quartzsite.

A Quartzsite sunset.

I can't see this picture as I'm writing this caption, but I hope you guys can see it. Damn technology when it doesn't work right!! But at least we were able to capture this gorgeous sunset on digital photography!

Nelson

Hey everyone!

We've been having some technical difficulties with the blog since we arrived in Quartzsite, and we're not exactly sure why...except maybe the mobile phone signal here just isn't strong enough to give us a good connection to the T-Mobile VPN that we subscribe to for our Internet access on the road. There is a wireless network here in Quartzsite, and it sounds like it covers most of the town, but I'm guessing we're in some sort of "shadow" or something. They tried to say we're too far from the tower, but both of our computers tell us that we get an "excellent" signal, but we can't connect to the Internet through it. Oh well. We're only here through Sunday morning.

Now that we're finally able to connect again, we can at least update the words part of our blog. Photos will have to come when we get to Tempe, it appears. We're getting more and more tempted to go ahead and set ourselves up with high speed Internet of our own when we get there. We'll see what happens.

Since we arrived here, we've been having all kinds of fun, which seems weird when you talk about a little place like Quartzsite. But we've found neat little places to eat, the "Main Event", as they refer to their year-round outdoor flea market (which was really fun), and quite possibly the most 'unique' bookstore in the world. The guy who runs/owns it is a nudist, and he walks around his shop (which he claims has more than 4,000 titles), in nothing but a g-string, socks and sandals. And he looks like an old hippy...long gray hair and a thick goatee-style beard. I think Dawn got a picture of him. We'll try to post photos again as soon as we can.

We've also been busy looking at RVs. There are a ton of dealers down here, and subsequently loads of RVs for sale.

I guess that's about it for now. I was just excited that we're able to get back onto the "Dashboard" for Blogger. Happy New Year everyone!

Dawn

I've been trying to post this blog along with pictures since last night. Quartzsite is a little behind on internet technology. I'm able to now print my words but still not my pictures. I'll get them on as soon as I am able. Sorry.

Well, Christmas is behind us and we’re on our way to Quartzsite. We had an unusual but wonderful Holiday. This is the first year that I haven’t had Chistmas at my house. Brooke took it over and she did a wonderful job. The tree and the music and the gifts and the activities. She tried to make everything as “normal” as possible. And all of us”mom’s” know how much work all of that is. So, thank you again, honey.

It was very sad to say goodbye to my girls this morning. I’m not sure when I will see them again. For sure I’ll see them in May. But to me, that’s a long time.

We were all pretty lazy yesterday. Brooke and I made dinner. The guys watched football. And everyone had fun playing with all of their new toys. Brooke bought steaks for the dogs. In the evening we all played “Scatagories”. That was really fun. We were all laughing so hard we thought we would die. Overall, it was a great family time.

Steph told us a funny story of something that happened to her a couple of weeks ago. You have to know Steph to really think this is funny. Let’s just say, she is blonde... Her and a girlfriend walked into a magic store. They were really intrigued by these little teeny coins that looked exactly like real coins only in miniature. The guy that worked there came up and started talking to the girls about these coins. He said “you know, all you have to do is take real coins and boil them in water and they will shrink like this. Well, unfortunately my 21 year old daughter believed him and started talking about how cool that was and how she was going to go home and do that. And then it finally hit her that that would be impossible and she was totally embarrassed...that’s my Steph! And I love her just the way she is, lol.

Nelson and I would love it if some of you guys would tell us about your holiday in the comment section. We hope everyone was as blessed as we were.

Later...

We’re all checked in to our new home for the next 5 days. It looks pretty cute. With palm trees and a picnic table . But, it’s nighttime so it may look different tomorrow. We’re a little skeptical, because after all it is Quartzsite.

Oh and one more thing. Craig, I found shrimp in my bed last night thanks to Brooke and Luka and Nelson. Remember, you said it best, “payback’s a bitch”, lol.

Both Steph and Brooke learned to juggle while they were in school at Hazel Dell Elementary years ago. Both can still do it, and Steph got juggling clubs for Christmas this year. She didn't wait long after opening them to start juggling again.

Brooke and Dawn made a great Christmas dinner for us! Luka made it to the front of the line, but hey, more power to him . . . dinne was great!

Merry Christmas!

Hi everybody...

It's nearly 9 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 25 as I write this, and we're all winding down Christmas Day here in LA. Wow, it was a different experience, going out in the 80-plus degree heat yesterday and trying to convince ourselves that it was Christmas Eve.

Today, though, was great. We all stayed around the house all day. We spent most of the morning opening presents with the whole fam-damily, had a traditional Christmas morning breakfast, and played with all of our new toys.

Dawn and I bought each other video iPods, they're the newest gadget from Apple when it comes to the MP3 player thingies. Brooke and Luka also spent a lot of their time helping us figure out how to make them work. Those guys know their stuff about all these fandangled gadgets, and they helped us figure out how to make them work. They showed us all about a website, www.allofmp3.com, where we can get all kinds of music for very inexpensive prices. Over the last few days, I downloaded 199 songs, and two episodes of one of my new favorite shows, "The Office", for my iPod. Now that they're all saved on my iPod, I've been playing with that all day . . . except while Luka and I watched football on TV. By the way, even though they played yesterday, 'How about them Seahawks!" I'm a Seahawks fan, so I'm thrilled about the fact that the team secured their best record (13-2 as of right now) in franchise history, and for the first time they have home field advantage throughout the playoffs. The NFC's road to the Super Bowl (in Detroit) goes through Seattle! Fantastic! I'm really excited about that. It's never happened before, not in the 30 years of the Seahawks history.

Brooke and Dawn made a great Christmas dinner for us tonight, turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, the whole meal deal! We're all stuffed. We even have a pecan pie and an apple pie to dig into a little later tonight. Sounds like we all might play a game or watch a movie together tonight.

Tomorrow by around noon or so, Dawn and I will be on our way to Arizona. It was so great to hear from mom, dad, Rick & Joan on the phone today. Thanks you guys! Merry Christmas everyone!

We're looking forward to a very happy new year for all of you.

Dawn

Oh my gosh, tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Is everyone ready? Is everyone excited? I think I’m finally getting excited, sort of. I think it was about 80 degrees here in L.A. today. Which of course was great weather, But it really did suck for Christmas. I’ve heard people say that before, but it really does suck. As much as I hate the rain and love the sun I think this is the first time I’ve ever been away from home for Christmas. It is very hard to get in the Christmas spirit with this weather. If we stay inside Brooke’s house with the beautiful tree and all of the presents and listen to Christmas music, I can almost get into the spirit. Although we did go to a “Candycane Lane” here in LA tonight. It was very nice. We parked the car and walked. We took Bubs, who always gets so much attention, Out of all four of our dogs around here, Bubs is definitely the most friendly. He just loves people and people just seem to love him. Which is more than I can say for the other 3 dogs around here. Lucy, Molly and Bella are definitely devoted to their masters and none of them are very friendly to other people.

We went out to breakfast at Denny’s today. The girls and I went to see “Narnia” at the theater today, It was very cute.

It is very nice having both girls nearby. Steph still has several friends down here from when she went to her freshman year of College here, So she’s been trying to divide her time between us and them. Must be wonderful to be fought for, which she is.

The next day...
Christmas Eve and it’s even warmer today. I thought it was so weird that we were going to go to a movie and out to dinner on Christmas Eve. None of us had ever done that. We’ve always been with friends or relatives, and never eaten out. Both places were absolutely packed! It must be tradition to go to movies and out to dinner on Christmas eve for a lot of people. We all just kept looking at each other saying “I can’t believe there are so many people here”. We had a great night though. We all voted on Mexican food for dinner because it is our tradition to go to my best friends house every Christmas Eve for Nachos with her family. Although, I did talk to Jeannette on the phone today, it wasn’t quite the same as being there. If we continue to do this “on the road” thing, we are going to have to find a way to be home for the holidays.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

Brooke and Steph at our "Christmas Eve" Mexican dinner in tribute to the Ellis'.

This is a picture of all of us sitting around Brooke and Luka's. Wow, technology has overtaken the American family. You can see four of us with our laptops on their wireless internet. But Brooke was taking the picture. There was usually all five of us on our laptops.

This was in one of the yards on "Candycane Lane" that we walked down...in our shorts I might add.

Brooke and the grandkids...er...grandpugs helped me wrap presents.

Moving Day - Nelson

Hi everyone! Happy December 20. I hope you're all done with your Christmas shopping (except Mick, who I'm pretty sure isn't) ;) I was able to finish up yesterday, which is fantastic because we were thinking I may not be able to finish until getting to LA and I wasn't crazy about that idea because I didn't really want to drive two hours to get to the closest mall. Now I don't have to.

Speaking of LA, that's where we're headed today. We're leaving Palm Springs for good this time, too (well at least until next year). Today we'll head back over to Brooke and Luka's where we'll be until the day after Christmas. Steph will fly down on Thursday which means we'll all be together for Christmas, which is really cool.

It's not only weird that it's almost Christmas (we can't believe how fast it came this year), but it's weird knowing that there's snow and ice back home, yet here in Palm Springs it's supposed to be in the mid-70s the rest of the week and in the 80s on Saturday and Sunday. Weird.

I spent yesterday working on a few little projects, besides finishing up my shopping and getting all of my gifts wrapped. Mostly stuff to get ready for leaving here. Re-packing the storage areas, cleaning things up, checking tire air pressures, checking the oil, stuff like that. We'll check out around noon today and move on.

After Christmas, we're going to that little dustbowl town of Quartzsite, just across the California-Arizona border. We're going to stay there for a few days and check out all the goofy things there are to see there. We're thinking we'll see the beginnings of the big RV rally that "invades" Quartzsite for January and February. We're looking forward to it.

Merry Christmas everyone. We're both very thankful for the friendship from all of you!

Here's the skating rink they had at the Wild Lights. It looks like ice, and the kids were wearing ice skates, but it's not ice. It's plastic with a smooth finish. People said it was just like skating on ice.

I know it's hard to see, and it's not a great photo, but this is Santa playing golf. Dang it if he didn't make a hole-in-one every time.


Enjoying hot chocolate next to the fire while we watched the band (which was behind me while taking this pic) at Wild Lights at the zoo.


Here's part of the trainscape at the Living Desert Zoo in Palm Desert/Indian Wells. If you look close, you can see a train just to the left of center. This thing is HUGE, and it's really amazing. For the most part, everything is scale, and there are trains and villages everywhere. The water is real, not dried lacquer, like most. Mick, you would LOVE this trainscape. It's the most impressive one I've ever seen. It looks like it's a permanent part of the zoo, and it's outdoors.


Here's another shot of the trainscape, on the opposite side of the shot above.


One of the walkways at the Living Desert Zoo in Palm Desert/Indian Wells. Notice the cacti. The "Wild Lights" display was the most "Christmasy" thing we've seen down here, and it was really fun.


We forgot about this picture the night we posted about decorating the Christmas tree. I think the dogs were looking for their gifts.

Dawn

Our last day here. We got some last minute shopping done. I just finally talked to Steph. Our news here said 5 storms with sheets of ice in Portland (the newscaster said mul-toe-mah county instead of Multnomah, dork) and 50 mile per hour winds. I’d been trying to reach Steph all day. But I just found out she had to work both of her jobs today, is why she hadn’t returned my calls. But she’s ok, and she said the storm was yesterday, so all is cool.

I hung out at Barnes & Noble today, while Nelson shopped for me. I bought a new Christmas book to read the girls on Christmas Eve. For their entire lives we have read “Twas’ the night before Christmas” and “How the Grinch stole Christmas” every single Christmas Eve. They are going to be very upset that I bought “Polar Express” to read this year. Yes, they are age 21 and 25... SO WHAT??? What can I say, they love traditions. And I kind of hate to let them go too. I wonder if we’ll still do that when they have children? Knowing them, probably.

Tonight we went to a “walk through” Christmas Display. Kind of like the one at the Portland zoo every year. But we thought it was cooler really. Besides all of the lights everywhere, they had a really big miniature train and village. It was the biggest and neatest one I’ve ever seen. It really made you feel like you wanted to live in the little town.

They also had a small ice skating rink set up and were renting out ice skates. But the ice wasn’t really ice. It was like plastic with a thick sheet of wax on it. But it looked like it was about the same to try to skate on. It looked like people were having fun.

And another really cool part was an outdoor band with a bunch of outdoor fireplaces. They were selling hot chocolate and food. And there were Christmas lights everywhere and palm trees. It was really fun.

The weather report here today said in the 70’s all week and possibly 80 on Christmas, is that weird or what? I must admit I’m a little jealous that there is snow at home. But only a little. I do love the weather here.

Hope everyone is having a great holiday week. Bye.

This is the outdoor band and fireplaces.

I think I need to set my camera on the "night" mode. This is the little train village. Hopefully Nelson's pics will all turn out better, sorry.

This is a "not very good picture" of the Christmas show we went to. Those lights look like all of the lights that were in the sky tonight too. It was beautiful.

You can't see this very well but Nelson barbecued us great steaks for dinner on our little teeny weeny barbeque.

Nelson doing last minute wrapping. Nowhere to hide to wrap presents around here. We just have to look the other way. The honor system. I guess I cheated when I took this picture.

Dawn

Today we decided to do all of the “touristy” things around Palm Springs that we’ve been wanting to do and haven’t yet done. We are really quite sad that we will be leaving Palm Springs in 3 days. I know this sounds weird, but it kind of feels like home. We really like it here. And if we continue to lead this lifestyle for a few years, we will definitely make Palm Springs one of our annual destinations. We went to the casino in town, which we hadn’t done yet. We didn’t play blackjack because they didn’t have any $5.00 tables. And we are much to cheap to play $10.00 tables. But it was a very nice casino. We went to the main street on Palm Canyon. We stopped in an outdoor café. We checked out another RV park near there for future reference, and we like it a lot. We went to Desert Hot Springs (which is kind of like a suburb of P.S.) to see another RV park, that we also liked a lot for future reference. We stopped at this really cool Indian Museum. I guess this Indian dude discovered the hot springs in like 1913 or ?? So he started building his home there. Which was the beginning of Desert Hot Springs. His only purpose in his entire life was to continue building on his home, so it went on and on. It was really neat. But the lady there was a “B” word, so when they asked for donations we only left $2.00.

We are watching “Home Alone” right now. It is such a cool (not awesome) Christmas movie. We haven’t seen it for years. I am finally starting to get excited for Christmas. It’s about time.

Brooke sold my movie camera for me on ebay for $425.00. Thanks Sweetie. If no one has noticed, I’ve been able to take pictures at night lately and I have a zoom. That is because I was a bad girl and bought a new camera last week that is small enough to wear around my neck or put in my purse. But I just had to do it for the sake of my blog and all of our loyal fans ,that would be you guys. So actually, it’s your fault that I bought a new camera. But the only way I could justify it was to sell my old camera. Which I have done and I even came out ahead.

Steph just called. She wanted to tell me that she ran into an old friend from high school last night, Chelsea Dixon. She’s getting together with her and some friends again tonight. That’s very cool, they were pretty good friends at one time. Actually, Chelsea was on Nelson’s basketball team when he was coaching at Columbia River High School. Chelsea and Nelson were pretty good friends at one time also. It is very cool to hook up with an old friend. We should all be better at getting in touch with old friends, huh?

I just heard that an old friend of mine, Karen Torterello has breast cancer. I don’t keep in very good touch with her anymore, but I sure hope she’s going to be ok. A few years ago her 14 year old daughter got killed when she was hit by a car. These poor people, are so nice and in the last few years such awful things have happened to them. Everyone out there that believes in God, please pray for them, thank you.

I’m going to post pictures now. Hope you enjoy them. Bye, for now...

This is a reenactment, obviously, but it really was funny before this. The waiter, who barely spoke english, asked Nelson if he was through with his margarita. Nelson said no, but the waiter thought he said yes and started to take it ,while Nelson grabbed it and tried to explain he wasn't quite done. It was very funny, like Nelson was desperate for him not to take it. But for the price of $7.50, I think, who can blame him? lol.

Cheers! To La Casitas. One of two of our favorite Mexican restaurants that we found. The "El Capitan" margarhita(sp?) is fine!

We had to go to one of our favorite Mexican restaurants one last time. I caught Nelson with a mouth full of chips. He's a hottie, huh? I'll bet all of you girls are wanting some of that. Lol.

We stopped at an outdoor cafe in downtown Palm Springs.

Isn't this the weirdest thing you have ever seen? This Palm tree just bent over. Is it hollow? It didn't break, it bent. What is inside a palm tree to be able to do that, not wood?

This is an Indian carving, like a totem pole, that was carved by the Indian at the museum. Very cool.

Molly went to the beauty shop yesterday. She is so adooorrable.

This is part of the Indian Museum. This was all built by hand by this Indian (I've forgotten his name), with just clay/stucco from the gound and stones, and trees.

Nelson

OK, OK...so my golf score wasn't the most legit. Maybe that 92 should've been closer to 100. But I honestly only took three or four mulligans (two were on the same hole), but the overriding point is that we had fun and that's what it's all about, right? It was fun for both of us to laugh at my crappy shots, and to celebrate Dawn's great shots. But at the same time, I did take most of the penalty strokes I was supposed to take, so I wasn't REALLY cheating.

And we had plenty of laughs, to be honest. On the 10th hole, I knocked four balls out of bounds (and lost them) before I finally decided to switch clubs and be a little more conservative about my approach to that hole.

Yesterday we got a chance to go out and do some more Christmas shopping. I think Dawn's pretty much done now, and I'm all but done except for a couple of gifts that I have to wait until next week in LA to pick up. Molly got a haircut, too. The gal at the groomer said that the people who came in right after we dropped Molly off thought she was so cute that they asked if it was OK to take a picture of her. We thought that was pretty cool.

The weather yesterday was absolutely beautiful. Today, not so much. It's cloudy and chilly. Probably in the low 50s right now. They're still not predicting any rain for the Cochella Valley (where Palm Springs and its row of suburbs is), but it's icky. Then again, I guess I shouldn't complain.

This morning we were awakened by some thumping sounds that our furnace is making, so that's atop my list of things to do today...to investigate that a little. It kind of sounded like someone softly bumping on metal ducts. Anyone have any hints on where to start?

Still haven't heard anything about the job I interviewed for. Not feeling too good about it. :(

Dawn

I golfed...I sucked...I had fun. Every muscle in my body is sore today, but it really was fun. Nelson, kept trying to cheat, but I wouldn't let him. I shot an 85 and Nelson shot a 92. If Nelson didn't like his first shot he would do it over...that's cheating if you ask me. He did have to obey the "texas rules" a couple of times...( not really). I just learned about that, does anyone else know what that means? Or was Nelson just making that up? One time Nelson took like five swings off the tee because his ball kept going in the bushes, and he said he didn't have to count any of those as swings, is that right? Or was he cheating again? I thought it would be fun to have a beer on the course, just because it sounded cool. But they didn't have a liquor license, so I'll have to be cool next time.

Dennis Rodman was at the Thursday night street fair in downtown Palm Springs last night, signing his new book, but we didn't go.

Brian, you will be happy to know that Nelson did not attack any part of his body yesterday. And that was very nice of you to invite him to dinner last week, thank you.

Troy, I love your comments. I think you should be a comedian. I love the one about the Charlie Brown Christmas Tree. I didn't even think of that until you said that, but it is so true.

That's all that's been exciting around here. I'm very excited to see Stephanie next week for Christmas. I haven't seen her since I left.

Oh ya, one more thing...about the golf score above... I guess I forgot to mention one small detail...
I quit playing after thirteen holes ( I was tired). That might have had something to do with my score, ya think?

Bye.

I watch "America's Next Top Model Reunion"( I know, gag) in our cozy little "Christmas tree'd" living room, while...

Nelson and Lucy retreat to the bedroom to watch "The Apprentice".

Brave ducks to hang out on the golf course...cute too.

Look at all of the lemons on this tree on the golf course. I know it's weird that I'm so intrigued by this. It's like someone thinking that an apple tree is cool...I guess I've been sheltered.

Nelson told me I should bend my legs and sit back a little. I didn't want to. But now that I see this photo, I realize I look ridiculous. I should have bent my knees and sat back a little.

Nelson

Another day in the sun. Sorry to all of our friends back in the cold, but it's overwhelming how wonderful the nice weather is. The best part is, while we're here in Southern California, we're far enough away from the big city of LA and all of its traffic that it's like we're in a great small city like Vancouver, Wash.

The difference here is we can play golf on December 14. Who's doing that back home? If anyone is, I want to know how many layers of clothing you're wearing...and why you're crazy enough to go out and play golf when the temps are in the 40s.

I bring up golf, because that's what we did today. The little golf course next door is just about perfect. It's an executive course which isn't so short that you can't get out the big dog and let it eat, in fact there are about four holes where I can hit my driver...which is actually my favorite club. I didn't play great today, but at least I didn't hit myself with a club again. Besides, the most important part was that we had fun. It was only Dawn's second time on a golf course, and she did great! Plenty of really good shots, and best of all we found out she's a really good putter.

Still working on stuff for my really cool new website, but I'm just about done with that. I'm also still waiting to hear back from the folks who I interviewed with on Monday, but I'm starting to lose hope. :(

If anyone's got leads or ideas for new business for my company, please don't hesitate to send them along. I'm still really hoping to make this thing grow into my new career.

Anyway, thanks to Ron Hartley for all the great jokes he keeps forwarding along to me. They're hilarious, and I'm sure that Jim Bakke is appreciative to receive them when I forward them to him, too.

Nelson

Hey! It's Wednesday and I just realized I haven't blogged since Saturday night or Sunday morning. Ugh. So what's been up with me? Well, on Monday I spent some time driving. Lots of time driving. From Vancouver to Richland and back. Only a 45-minute stop for a job interview existed to break up the long drive.

I still haven't heard anything about the interview from the folks who did the job, which is a bummer because it was three days ago now, and I'd have thought the board would have made their selection and contacted that person by now. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm hoping I'm not. I guess I probably still shouldn't even be talking this much about the job, since it'll probably jinx me.

The weekend was great. Spent some real quality time with my mom, with Jim (my stepdad), and on Sunday with Nancy (my sister), Michael (her husband) and their kids Trenton and Taylor. I worked for about two hours on Trenton's computer trying to get it working again. Windows wouldn't boot up on his machine, so I thought it sounded like he had a virus problem and his harddrive would have to be reformatted. He didn't care, he just wanted it all to work again so he could get back to playing his games. Turns out after Grandma (my mom) took the computer in I was dead wrong. The hard drive was fine but the power supply was messed up. Long story short, the computer is now fixed and Trenton has his "best Christmas gift ever."

On Monday, I thought the interview went really well, but it's always so hard to tell if you said all the right things and did all the right things to sell yourself as the best candidate for the job. I sure hope so, but like I said, I'm a little discouraged that I haven't heard anything from them yet. This job is a contract gig, so it would be a HUGE thing for my little company if I could land it as a consultant/contractor.

At least I got back to Southern California safely, that's the bright side. Dawn picked me up at the airport right on time yesterday and we drove right back to our Home on Wheels ("Howie"). After we unpacked from our long weekend away from "home", we decorated our Christmas tree (thanks for the tree and the decorations Mom!), and decided it's the perfect little Christmas touch that was missing from our RV.

Today I spent most of the day on the computer, building more good content for my company's website (www.noslencommunication.com). We've just launched the redesign, with a few things still under construction, but I'm VERY proud of the new look! It's much more professional than the old one. We did take a break, however, to go over to the golf course next door and hit balls at the driving range. Tomorrow Dawn and I are going to go play 18 holes. It'll be her first round of 18. I'm sure we'll both have a great time.

We'll talk to you more after that.

Dawn

Nelson’s back from Portland. I’m back from LA. We’re home. It’s funny but our little house on wheels in Palm Springs really does feel like home to us. It is so nice and peaceful in our park...except the barking dog. While we were gone a fricking barking dog has moved in behind us. It is not even part of the RV park, so there’s no one to complain to. It’s from the County Club M.Home park behind us. I think most of those are owned by seasonal people, who have those homes there for the winter. I think they’ve just gotten there because there was not a barking dog before. It sucks. I can’t believe people just let their dogs bark constanly. Don’t they realize how annoying that is to others around them? I’m not saying my dogs never bark, but at least we make them quit right away. Rude people! Oh well, goes to show you can’t run away from all stresses.

Brooke permed my hair while I was there. My hair never takes a perm. The top permed and the bottom didn’t. I’m a freak! If anyone knows of a really good strong perm, let me know. I colored Brooke’s hair. She wanted it darker with a slight red tint. I think it looks really good, but she thinks it has a little too much red, so I’m not sure if she’s going to keep it or change it back. It is so nice being able to do all the mother , daughter things with Brooke, since we’re closer to each other now. Brooke hasn’t really lived near me since she left high school, about 8 years. She’s been away at school the whole time. And I am the last person she wanted to hang out with in high school. And now that I think about it I don’t think I much wanted to hang out with her either, back then. We fought a lot.

Nelson had his Christmas with his family while he was home. We got some really nice things from his mom, Judie. She got us some great things for the RV. And got Nelson a computer program he’s been wanting for” Noslen”. I’m saving my gift to open from her on Christmas morning. But it looks big and fun. Thank you Judie. It was very funny, we had gotten her and Jim a couple of RV books for Christmas that we really like. They got us the same two exact books, lol.

A very special thing that Judie did, was send a small Christmas tree and ornaments back with Nelson, insisting we have a tree. We were just going to skip that this year. We had a really fun time decorating our tree last night. And it really does add some Christmas cheer to our home. Thanks Judie, we didn’t even realize we missed one until we got one.

We’re going to walk next door to the golf course in a little bit and practice hitting balls. I hate that though. When it’s been awhile since I’ve been to a driving range, I always miss the ball. It is so embarrassing. Nelson always pretends to look the other way like he didn’t see it. Then we always start laughing. But I guess I have to start somewhere if I want to learn to golf.

I took the car to a mechanic while I was in LA, it was leaking a little oil. It was someone who Brooke and Luka really trust so I just said fix it whatever it is. It needed to be fixed so I guess we’d just have to pay what it cost. I dropped it off in the morning and picked it up several hours later. The last person who did an oil change (before we owned it) had put a wrong seal or plug or something like that on it. It cost.........$20.00! That was so awesome. I was thinking maybe $300.00 or even more. Very cool.

I guess that’s all for now. Thanks for reading. Bye.

Our Christmas tree.

Decorating our tree.

Our beautiful, finished Christmas tree.

What form! Or....What form?

This was where I was hitting balls, lol.

Brooke, giving me a perm. She's a closet hairdresser. If it paid as well, she'd probably rather be a hair stylist than an attorney.

Aaahhhh. That sun feels so nice.

Dawn

Friday...
We got so lucky yesterday. As I was sitting in the 74 degree sun (sorry, I couldn’t resist), reading a book , a mobile RV repair man drove in to the RV park to help someone a couple of RV’s away. Nelson went down to ask him if he had time to look at our electrical problem. He did. And about 10 minutes later he fixed it! Yeah! Only charged us $20.00. So another problem behind us.

We drove to LA to Brooke’s. Got in about 8:30. Snuggled my granddogs. Brooke then showed us how to download songs and tv shows from itunes...just in case we get a video ipod for xmas??? She also showed us this other site, in Russia I think called allofmp3.com. (which is not file sharing). The songs are like 10 cents each on there, instead of itunes $1.00. We are totally hooked. It is really awesome, hhmm, cool.

Saturday...
We got up at 6 o’clock on Saturday morning to take Nelson to the airport. And here I am, watching last weeks tivo’d “Desperate Housewives”, that I missed. I hate not having DVR right now, you get so hooked on having it. I also missed “Gray’s Anatomy” last week, which didn’t get tivo’d., That, I’m totally upset about. It is definitely our favorite show.

Bob and Judi, thanks for the occasional comments. You guys are going to love this when your time comes. When are you leaving. in April? (They did it the correct way. Waited until they retired, so they will have an income. )

Saturday was a long but fun day. Most of our day was centered around Brooke seeing one of the movies that she’s been wanting to see...” Brokeback Mountain”. It just came out and it was only playing in one theater in the whole Los Angeles area. We decided to try to make the 2:30pm showing. The theater was about a half of an hour from her house, which of course, took us two hours to get to( because of traffic). Los Angelens are used to that with everything they do. It frustrates the heck out of me. When we got there, they were completely sold out every hour until the 11:00 show (and it was playing every hour). Since we had driven two hours to get there,, and it was the only theater it was playing in, we...stayed! Yep, we were at “The Grove” from about 2:30 pm to about 1:30 am. We went and shared a hamburger at a little out door café. We saw “Memoirs of a Geisha” at 5:00, which you have to line up for at least 45 minutes early to be able to sit together (which again, Los Angelens are used to) . We shopped. We lined up about 40 minutes early for “Brokeback Mountain”. At that time the line was probably about 2 blocks long. We did get to sit together but we were way down front. But, we really did have a fun day. Both of the movies were very good. The mall is unbelievable. It’s an outdoor mall, (like Lloyd Center used to be, back in the day). Very Fancy. Not your normal mall. At one point fake snow started falling over us. Everyone, adults and kids alike, were smiling and looking up to the sky. The Christmas decorations were unbelievable, again, not like at our malls. It was packed with people until really late. Christmas music was playing. It really was like being at Disneyland, or in the middle of a little Christmas Village. It was really, really neat.

We actually made it home in only ½ hour.

A huge gingerbread house at "The Grove" mall.

Me, at "The Grove" mall.

The most recent, of several, repairmen since our journey started.

Yep! Nelson, in shorts, washing the car in the middle of December.

We thought this was so funny. I think it was in Mesa. This is a donut shop. All they did is change the "W" in Winchell's, to a "V" to make the name Venchell's

Nelson

The story of my day, besides travel and the great time I spent with my family back here in River City was "customer service". It all started at 7 a.m. at Burbank Airport. Let's just say that in my opinion United Airlines doesn't have the best customer service in the world. In fact, it's just not very good at all. BUT they did have by far the best fare for this trip, considering we made the reservations three days in advance of the trip.

Anyway, my flight from Burbank to San Francisco was pretty uneventful. Yep . . . San Francisco. We all thought, because of the screwy way United set up today's flight 344 from Burbank to Portland that it was a non-stop flight. Well it was the same flight number, but it had a stop in SFO that wasn't published anywhere, except the United website. When I checked in at Burbank, I assumed that the self check-in machine (never mind the FOUR ticket agents who did nothing but tell people to use the machine) would give me boarding passes for the entire trip. It didn't. In San Francisco, I had to not only change planes (really no big deal), but also wait for a gate agent to show up at gate 76 so I could get another boarding pass. Despite being first in line, the gal told me that there were only middle seats available. This was a serious bummer, since when Brooke made my flight reservations for me, she told the airline my seating preference was window (by the way...thanks again Brooke, I'm very appreciative of your help!!). By the way, the lady at the counter (for the second time today) was a witch (replace the "w" with a "b"). But after she adjusted her attitude a little bit and adjusted the folks who upgraded to first class, I asked if there was a chance to move into a window or aisle seat instead of the middle seat. Fortunately I got a window.

Good thing for United Airlines that the pilot on the flight from SFO to PDX was cool because I was ready to say that after the customer service I'd received so far that I would never again purchase a ticket on United. As our flight approached the California-Oregon border, the pilot started talking about Crater Lake and how he hoped he could share it with us passengers because his view of it was stunning. Being the geek that I am (well, WAS, before I met Dawn), I always love listening to "Channel 9" on United flights. That's the one with the air traffic controllers on it. Today, I heard our pilot ask controllers for permission to lower the plane's altitude and circle around Crater Lake. After getting permission, he dipped the left wing so everyone on the left side of the plane, whether they had a window or aisle seat, could see the lake. Then he looped the plane around and did the same thing so the folks on the right side could see it. Man it was a stunning view!

For those who were interested in listening to him talk on "Channel 9", the captain also shared with us a brief bio about himself, and about the first officer, their combined 58 years of experience flying airplanes, Air Force stints, etc. He also told us quite a bit about the 737 we were flying on and all of the training the pilots and flight attendants do in simulators in Denver every year. Believe it or not, all that seemingly boring stuff was pretty interesting. He even told us that Jet A fuel is very similar to kerosene, but that it has ice inhibitors in it so that the fuel doesn't freeze and become useless to an airplane flying at 39,000 feet in an air temperature of 75 degrees BELOW zero.

Anyway, the pilot did a great job of not only getting us to Portland about 15 minutes early (even with the tour of Crater Lake), but he shared some useless information in a relatively entertaining manner, and kept over 100 people safe on an airplane again. But he also just may have sold me another ticket on United Airlines because he went the extra mile for his customers.

My day was capped with another example of great customer service. Went to dinner with my mom and our friends Mick and Ligaya (Mick is the cool guy who called me from the Husky Stadium stands after the Cougars beat U-Duh in the Apple Cup for the second straight year) at Who Song and Larry's Cantina (mine and Dawn's favorite Mexican place in Vancouver). This really cool server named Stephanie (yep . . . you know which Stephanie I'm talking about) took great care of us. She even sang the guacamole song and made fresh quac for my mom and Ligaya (Mick and I are smart and won't eat that icky stuff), right there at our table. Steph did a GREAT job, and it was just her third (or maybe fourth . . . I've lost track) shift flying solo as a server, not to mention that she was really busy with more tables than she'd ever done alone, including one party of 10.

Anyway . . . I'm rambling and it's getting late, but the moral to my little (OK, long) story is how far good customer service goes. Even when that good customer service is provided by someone who is close to you. We're proud of you Stephanie!! :)

Nelson

Hey everyone! I never would have thought that I'd have two trips to the Northwest from our temporary winter "home" on the road so close together when we started working on making Noslen Communication grow. But that's exactly the case this weekend. On Monday, I'm going to go to Richland to meet with some folks about a great opportunity for my little consulting firm. If it works out, we'll be in great shape for beginning this as a new career.

Anyway, because we got a great deal on airfare at the last minute (thanks to Brooke, who did the research to find the deal), I'm flying to Portland tomorrow. Its really awesome that I'm getting to do this because it'll give me time to spend with my family as "our little Christmas" time together, which we may not have had without this opportunity. I've got a list of errands to run, and a few things to pick up at our house to bring back to the RV life . . . including Dawn's golf clubs. Early Monday morning, I'll drive up to Richland (in the Tri-Cities area of southeastern Washington state) to take care of my business, and on Tuesday morning I'll fly "home" to sunny Southern California.

Tonight we drove over from Palm Springs to L.A., where we're staying with Brooke and Luka tonight. Dawn gets to stay here over the weekend while I'm gone and hang out with the two of them . . . and spend some quality "girl time" together. I think they're planning to go to about 97 different movies this weekend (or something like that). It's good that they have this time to see movies, because some of the ones they're going to are ones that Luka and I would never go see with them.

Man . . . it's nice to have wireless high speed Internet again.

Today was 73 degrees and beautifully sunny in Palm Springs. I washed the Saturn (our little tow car), and we both sat out in the sun for a little while . . . and it's a good thing we did. While we were sitting outside, an on-site RV Repair guy came through the park. I had a chance to ask him about helping us with the little electrical circuit problem we were having. He came in, checked a few things, tried a couple of other things, and 10 minutes and 20 bucks later he was on his way with our problem fixed. Everything's back to normal. There were two fuses that were blown, and a couple of other stupid things that were done sometime before we bought this rig. The guy fixed it all up and we're good to go again. What's sad is earlier today we'd made an appointment at Camping World in San Bernardino (60 miles away) to get it fixed on the 20th of this month. It was going to cost us $86 just for diagnosis. Needless to say, we got a good deal today.

I guess that's about it for today. Didn't want to let anyone down by not blogging today. :)

Dawn

Hi everyone. Boy it’s been awhile again since I’ve written. And I have no new pictures to post. The last time that I wrote I was in the hotel in Phoenix and Nelson was expected back from Bend on business. Well, he made it safely. The next couple of days we spent checking out some cities and RV parks in areas that we thought we might like to stay for awhile. We covered a lot of ground in two days. We went to Mesa,Tempe, Apache Junction, Cave Creek, Carefree, Parker , Lake Havasu City, and lots more. Nelson was even complaining about driving around too much and wanting to get home (to Palm Springs) and he doesn’t usually complain about things like that. Out of all of those places, we liked two cities... Tempe and Lake Havasu. We checked out several Rv parks in both places and found ones that we liked. So we now have the rest of our 6 month trip planned. We spend 5 days after Christmas in Quartzsite (remember the weird place we stopped at last week?). We then go to Tempe for January and February. We then go to Lake Havasu for March and half of April . We then go to San Diego for the last half of April to the middle of May and then we go home. At that point we will either sell our house or to go back to normal ( whatever “normal” really is??? ) We’ve set the middle of May as our final day because we want to go to Luka’s Law school graduation.

I talked to Lou ( who I’ve worked with for the last 20 years) on the phone today. That was awesome. She is so funny, and I’ve missed all of our joking around together. I miss her.

We were going to try to meet my very good friend, Jeannette in Disneyland on Wednesday, but we just couldn’t make it there. Sorry Jeananette. I miss you too.

Today was the very first day, so far, that it remotely even felt like Christmas. We did a little Christmas shopping, and I got some presents wrapped and” ER” is the Christmas episode. And it was really good. Abby is pregnant! That was an unexpected twist.

Nelson got called in for a job interview in Tri Cities on Monday. It’s a job for his Company, Noslen, and he could work from the road. So he is flying to Portland again on Saturday. He wants to spend some time with his family and friends in lieu of being together at Christmas. He’ll be back on Tuesday. Everyone wish him “good luck” on the job!

I’m going to spend the weekend with Brooke, so that will be fun. There are 3 movies that she insists we see, so I know where I’ll be all weekend. Let’s see, she wants to see“The memoirs (sp?) of a Geisha”, I read the book, it was really good. And another one about The Chronicles of Narnia? And another one about gay men in the 60’s?? Boy what a weekend I’m going to have, lol.

Tracy, thanks for the notes and I did go to the restaurant and every thing turned out just fine. Actually, there were two other women in there by themselves too. I’m a big girl now, lol.

Also, thank you Craig, for putting up with so much from “the ass”. You know who I mean. I really appreciate it and I think finally everything is going to go through, thanks to you.

I’m sure that everyone will be very happy to know that.....IT IS RAINING HERE RIGHT NOW! Warm, but raining. But the forecast for the rest of the week is blue skies and low 70’s. Pretty awesome, I mean cool, Brooke and Craig and Brian, lol.

Steph has taken the tests to become a waitress instead of a hostess at Who Songs. She made $39.00 in tips her first day. She was thrilled. Everyone go to Who Songs and sit in her section !

I was so upset that during a layover that Nelson had in Portland last week, Steph took him some of our mail. He got to see her and give her a big hug and I didn’t! I miss you Steph!.

Thanks everyone for reading and writing comments and emails. I’ll come back soon. Bye.

Dawn

Nelson

Hey everyone! Well...again, I must apologize for the lag in our posting. We were so good at it while we were on the road, someplace different every day. But when we're sitting here doing our regular every-day life in PALM SPRINGS, it's sometimes a little bit difficult to write something that we'd hope you all would find interesting.

Anyway, today was interesting. It actually RAINED in Palm Springs this afternoon. And it's raining right now. What's weird was 1) we didn't expect it and 2) it's still like 65 degrees or something. I wore shorts all day.

As I mentioned last time I blogged, I was traveling to La Pine, Ore., for business. It was an opportunity for me to show off my business a little bit and hopefully convince a few people that they should consider using the services that Noslen Communication offers. It was a GREAT meeting. The people I spoke to had great questions, and were interested in the services we offer. There is a chance that a couple of leads from that meeting might pay off for us, making the whole trip more than worth it!

The next day, I found out about another opportunity I might have to make the big time with this business. So I'm flying back to the hometown (Vancouver, Wash.) this weekend to go interview for this opportunity for my business. This one could be a biggie, but until it comes true (hopefully), we're not talking much about it. Wouldn't want to jinx it. I promise to share it with all of you if it comes to fruition.

I've been working a lot lately on upgrading the information and content for my company's website. I've got the world's best web designer (JS Webworks...if you run a utility, it's www.jswebworks.com, by the way), working on my site for me and before a few more days, the new design of the site will be finished and on the net. The new one will be much more professional. I'm proud of where we're headed with it.

Dawn and I are so excited right now. Today, Dawn worked hard to make reservations in each of the places we're going to be for the rest of the winter. On Dec. 20, we'll move back over to L.A. to spend Christmas at Brooke and Luka's place. On the 26th, we'll move to Quartzsite, Ariz. (scroll down for more info about Quartzsite if you missed it before), where we'll stay until the end of the year. On New Year's Day we're moving to Tempe, Ariz., and we'll stay there until the end of February. We'll spend March 15 to April 15 in Lake Havasu City, and the next month (before heading back to Portland) in San Diego. This is exciting stuff!

Well...it's time for me to give up the internet connection so Dawn can have her turn posting. Thanks to everyone who's reading, and being patient for our next posts. :) We appreciate your interest!

Take care and happy holidays to all.

Dawn

OK, finally some time to blog. Let’s see…Friday evening we went Christmas shopping at the mall. Saturday evening we went to the local nighttime parade. Of course none of my pictures turned out. I’ve finally learned that if I want to take pics at night, I need to take my bigger camera and not my little 2” one that I just wear around my neck. It’s pretty cool, but not good for all situations. The parade was really downhome and cute. They pretty much just decorated cars and trucks and towtrucks. They mounted Christmas trees on top of the cars and strung lights all over them. It was nothing like the floats at the Rose Festival, but it was really cute. We noticed a lot of the people had stocking caps and gloves on. That is so funny. To us it was a beautiful evening. Probably about 60-64 degrees. We didn’t get there until right before it started, not thinking it would be crowded. But as far as we could see it was about 4 people deep most everywhere. If we’re here next year we’ll go early and people watch to get a good spot. There were several Middle school and high school bands. It was one of the few Christmas activities we’ve seen so far this year. Lot’s more at home.

Saturday morning we took off for Phoenix for a couple of days. We stopped at Quartzsite on the way. We have heard so much about that place. It was pretty much just an old dirty town. I guess it’s unbelievable the activities that go on there in January and February. I’m kind of anxious to check it out next month and see for myself what goes on there. The scary part is that there are supposed to be tons of RV dealers with really good prices on RV’s. I’m afraid I’ll be tempted to get a nicer RV. But we don’t know yet if we’re going to keep up this kind of lifestyle after 6 months. So buying a nicer RV would be a really dumb thing to do at this point. I’d better just stay away from Quartzsite, I don’t trust myself.

A friend of Nelson’s that lives in Phoenix came over to the hotel last night. They had a great time catching up. I think it’s been like 8 years or so since they’ve seen each other. So that was a lot of fun.

Nelson was off to Bend today to speak at a conference regarding his company, Noslen Communications. I just talked to him on the phone and he said it went great. I’ve been in the hotel room most of today taking advantage of the high speed internet which has been awesome (oops, I mean really nice). You sure don’t appreciate those things until you are without them. We also really miss not having a DVR. We have a Tivo with us and we have satellite and we can sometimes hook up to cable, but I guess because we don’t have a phone line or can’t use our cell phone or something, we can’t figure out how to use it. We’ll take any suggestions from anyone out there.

We’ll also take suggestions on an electrical problem we’re having. It started when a light bulb had burnt out. When we went to change it, it blew a fuse. It must have shorted something, because no matter what we do, as soon as we turn the power back on, it automatically blows the fuse again. We have gone one by one taking out the light bulbs to see where the problem is but no matter what we do it immediately blows the fuse when we turn the power back on. We were told to make sure the bulbs were not only the correct size but to make sure they had the same amount of prongs as the fixture, like one or two. We did that, it still blows the fuse. We’re going to have to take it in when we get back. So we would appreciate any other suggestions of things to try. Thanks all.

I’m going to go down to the restaurant for dinner soon. That will be sort of weird. I don’t think I’ve ever gone into a restaurant by myself before. Oh well, time for me to grow up.

Tomorrow we’re going to check out some possible future RV sites and towns in the area. Phoenix seems a lot smaller and cleaner than I expected.

I’ll keep in touch…

Brooke takes Bella to a "pug meet and greet" . Pugs everywhere, how adoraable is that?

Like Grandma, like grandpug. Me and Bubs. I know, I'm obsessed with this dog.

Luka and Nelson trying to figure out Luka's new chocolate fountain, at Thanksgiving.

Luka, cooking our Thanksgiving dinner with his dad Cello looking on.

More pics!

This was so cool! Remember that neighbor behind our "place" in Palm Springs with the tangerine and grapefruit trees? Well, this morning he called us over and gave us all this FRESH fruit . . . right off the tree! How cool is that?


Sweet Darlene's Restaurant and Bakery. Does this give you a taste of Quartzsite, Arizona, or what? ;)