Alarm bells and Special Requests

Happy Birthday Mom!

Alarm Bells

At 7:18 this morning, I awoke to the piercing sound of the carbon-monoxide alarm, which when I’m in bed, is located about 2 ft from my head.  Lord help me!  Two thoughts ran through my mind as I rushed to disentangle myself from the sheets, tripped over the dogs , and opened the doors and windows:  (thought 1) at least we didn’t blow up and (thought 2) I KNEW when I started using “the systems” something would inevitably go wrong.  I’m sure you remember the dreaded “systems”  from a previous post.

Turns out my dogs and I were not about to be asphyxiated in our sleep, it was just low house batteries announcing themselves.  As a result of my being intimidated by “the systems”, I had yet to plug into shore power and had been running on the two deep cycle marine batteries (aka the house batteries) since arriving at Carol’s house on Friday.  I guess it makes sense that they would eventually give out.  Whatever.  I am accustomed to flipping a light switch and having lights, turning on a faucet and having water, turning on the stove and having heat.  You get the idea.  What I am not accustomed to is having to know, understand, and care where it all comes from.  That is, until now.

It is said that people only change at their rate of pain.  I guess this morning’s wake up call was indeed just that and  I am proud to report that so far today, I have recharged the house batteries, filled my house with gas from a gas station, had the propane tank filled at the same gas station, AND have successfully executed the 20 amp to 30 amp to surge protector to 50 amp electrical connection.  You go girl!  Well, I can’t take all the credit.  Last night my friend Ron took the time to help me understand the whole amp/voltage thing using very helpful visuals like oversized lightbulbs and rivers and such.  Truth be told, I still don’t understand, but at least his explanation gave me the confidence to make the necessary connections today.  Thanks Ron.

Special Request

After anxiously maneuvering my big rig around the islands of gas, diesel, and propane this morning, I was out with the dogs on the nearby ski/bike/hiking trails when my phone rang.  I was so excited to see that it was my favorite friend from North Carolina, Rusty-Roo-Hunt, aka Roo, aka Rootowne, aka Rooberrybiscuit.  What fun!  We had a wonderful time talking and catching up.  I’m so pleased to hear he is a fan of my blog and once we counted up the readers, we came up with an impressive 10, instead of the previously mentioned, 6.  How exciting.  Alaskamarge Travels is on a roll!

It seems Rusty finds himself a bit disgruntled each morning when he logs on to read my blog and doesn’t find anything new.   As a result, he requested that I please provide a new post on a daily basis.  I promised to give it a go, but we’ll have to see how that works out.  I mean, what if I don’t have anything interesting to report?  Like I said, I’ll give it a go, but we’ll just have to wait and see if  the events that make up my life are worthy of daily updates.  The realist in me says, not so much.  The optimist says, why not?  So stay tuned.