Sep 27 - It almost rained

That's the way that it goes here. I was on SR44 by the fish store, about 2 miles away as the crow flies, and it was pouring rain. It didn't rain at our house. Later in the day a huge system was heading for us ... but missed us. Just when you want it to rain to see how this Rainhandler works ... it doesn't.

While there were clouds in the area I tried adjusting the satellite dish and then gave up on that. I couldn't get it above 25 signal strength and ECB 0. That was the reading on both dishes. Later, with the clouds gone, I got a signal strength of 46 and ECB 3.something -- that's good enough reception for anything other than HD and we don't get HD here anyway. It seems that the big dish goes out of alignment by a hair every few months. That's what I get for mounting it on the roof. I need a fixed pole mount like I have up north and then it would never move. Never say never though -- it would probably catch the wind in a hurricane and disappear into the swamp.

I went over to West Marine and picked up a few things -- boat hook, since we're high over the water now and it's harder to simply reach down to retrieve something -- in fact it's hard to do that except at the very back; a repair kit for the gouge that I made -- I've fixed the gouge and it's probably as good as it gets without a professional job -- I still know that it's there; some fuel stabilizer; a package of two spare drain plugs -- wasn't looking for that but one for up north and one down here would be good; a replacement motor flush plug that allows a quick disconnect to work ... I think that's it. I almost bought a cooler that was on sale, perhaps another day.

I did a side trip to Home Depot on the way home, picking up the handle for the new bathroom door -- Sandy wanted a lever handle so I obliged. I think that she wants to eventually replace all the door handles with levers, easier to operate if your hands hurt -- her hands were hurting when she came up with that idea. Naturally I made another couple of impulse purchases -- AA batteries, since I was out; a magnetic sweeper that was on sale at a giveaway price -- one for here and one for up north and some other small thing but I forget what it was. I need to give the yard a going-over here because I am constantly finding shingle nails from the last roof work; I hate that.

Back home I worked at the gouge, finishing up this morning when the material had hardened, leveling with a razor blade. I also prepped the porta-potti, putting deodorizer in it and filling the water tank. It hasn't been christened yet ...

We watched a couple of SG1 episodes, drank some wine, ate our tuna and the day was over.

Today we are going for a boat ride. Sometime today I should hear from the HVAC guy re install date for the new furnace / air conditioning units. He is expecting Wednesday or Thursday, hopefully that will come to pass. As part of that install I'm getting the 4" pleated high efficiency filter -- yay ! -- we didn't have a filter slot before without opening up the furnace itself (and I didn't even know that was a place for filters, and there was never a filter there anyway). We had one of those filters in Radnor (Philly) and they are wonderful.

That's it. I think. It's time to hook up the boat for our next jaunt. I haven't decided yet which way we'll head, north or south. We have not gone south in a long time. If we go south we need to pack a lunch. Perhaps that's what we'll do.