Adventures in Grocery Shopping

Today is a rainy day, but it's actually quite nice - no brutal sun, lower temperatures, and I can finally take the dishtowel off the door.


It was time to go grocery shopping and since we're in a new place, I decided to try a local grocery store instead of the ol' standby (Kroger). So I got ready to go to another chain store, called HEB. This was a special occasion, so I decided to be stylin'. Heh. (And yes, this dress is one of my designs, and yes, I dressed up to go to the grocery store.)



(Also, please note the demonic kitty lurking behind me. OOOOHHHHH Spooky!!!)


This store was AWESOME. I loved it!

Just look at the produce section! (And the neato little separated compartment at the front of my buggy - very practical for fragile stuff!)

Massive produce section. There were vegetables there I had never even heard of, particularly in the Mexican section (yes, there was a Mexican produce section!). Look:

Tamale wrappers! And some kind of weird Tuber of Mystery! Neato!

So I'm being dorky taking pictures of the jicamas and tamale wrappers, and turn around to see something else thrilling (ok, thrilling to me, and I am easily amused, but bear with me - it was cool). Victor! Who is HEB's onsite tortilla maker! Check this out!

I asked Victor if I could take his picture, since I'd never seen tortillas being made before, and he gave me a free tortilla, hot out of the oven. YUM. I decided to go ahead and buy some tortillas from him - imagine how good fajitas are going to be on these. YUM YUM YUM I'm taking pictures of food again. Sigh.

After passing by Victor, I headed toward the deli section, where I was offered another free sample by a lady making soup. She gave me a taste of soup, a bite of steak, a bit of potato, a taste of brownie, and 2 pieces of marinated fruit. At this point I turn to the lady and tell her I'd never been in an HEB before, and had no idea I'd be getting a full meal too! She thought this was funny. :) Poor silly girl, never having been to a fancy-pants grocery store.

So another fascinating thing in the HEB was a MASSIVE gourmet cheese section. OH BOY. I got some aged gouda, one of my very favorites.

But just in case you thought that this place was 100% highbrow, um...no. I learned something new today - not only do shooting guns and drinking beer go together like chips and salsa, but apparently the beer companies are now helping hunters to keep hidden WHILE shooting guns and drinking beer. BEHOLD:

Camouflage beer.

I particularly like the hunter orange writing. Classy! And safe! Because when you're drinking beer and firing off your rifle, safety ALWAYS comes first.

In Which I Pick Up Motorcycle Parts, Go on a Field Trip, and Show Frightening Signs of White Trashiness

Yesterday I decided to go on a field trip! I had to go into Houston anyway, so might as well make a fun time of it, right? Must explore!

But first, I had to go by a locksmith to pick up an important piece of Bertha, the motorcycle:

The ignition. Which Noel had removed so that they could make new keys for it. At some point during our trip here, the only key we had for Bertha went missing. I'm not blaming anyone, but 2 certain black fuzzy kleptomaniacs living in the RV might be to blame. We may never know. They won't talk. I tried to interrogate them, but nothing.

Anyway! So I got a call from the locksmith to come pick up the ignition and keys, and since they're almost in Houston, I decided to cut across the city and go visit one of my favorite locations in many major cities:

IKEA! I am such an IKEA dork. I adore just strolling through the stores, imagining my life being so organized and Swedish and full of kitchen implements called Blorgensmarks and Vugenmarkls. The little sample apartments that they set up are also so fun. I love seeing how people can live so stylishly in such tiny little apartments (250 sq. ft). And then I realized this time that I actually live in such a tiny little apartment! But alas, I have no Blorgensmarks. Ah, the tragedy.

So I head toward the IKEA, which, as I said, is on the opposite side of Houston from the locksmith. I figure at least I can see some of the city, right? Know what I saw?

Traffic.

After an hour, I finally arrive. And am STARVING and so miserably hungry that I'm about to start getting the shakes (or maybe that's just road rage?). No matter, both can be cured....with Swedish meatballs! And mountain dew, because they didn't have that awesome lingonberry soda they sometimes have.

Yet another picture of my food. I....might be slightly obsessed. But that lingonberry jam? Is SO GOOD.

After such delicious libations, I headed for the showroom floor. I stroll through the store, oohing and aahing and petting the pillows and remarking to myself about how clever their Florgenmurf magazine holders are. One thing that i also enjoy about IKEA is that it generally gives me good ideas for things I might like to make, or inspires me to develop other crafty projects. And yes, that happened this time (a neato mail holder that I had an idea for) so I wrote it down in my little idea book that I keep in my purse for just such occasions.

Also, I found a couch I absolutely COVET. It doesn't show up well in my surreptitious photo below, but it's actually a light blue background. LOVE THIS.

Also, it's fun to make up pseudo-Swedish words for stuff. Lockenblufen! Torgenmarvn!

On my way out, I decided to grab a few things for dinner. Heh.

Since traffic was so hideous across the city, I decided to continue on I-10w out of town, and then cut around the city and go south and avoid the traffic. Did it work? Absolutely not. TWO HOURS to get back home. But! I took this picture for my sister - you can't see it very well, but the city sign in the middle says Sugar Land! I don't know if it's where the band came from, but...

I also saw this cool vintage truck painted like the Mexican flag. Fabulous!

Now, some of you may be asking, what is Noel doing while I'm galavanting all over town? He's working! See? He's ready for a day on the job!

And here he is after work. Did I mention it's hot here?

Also, do you like his welding caps? I've been making them to sell. Halloween is a great time to find fabrics for welding caps (these tough guys and their skull/flame/barbed wire themes - I want to find some kind of skull fabric with hidden bunnies in it, just to trick them. HA). Might have to get some more fabric soon, before Halloween is over and they remove that fabric from the stores!


Some of you may notice I haven't been posting much about knitting. That's because it's hot. Did I mention it's hot here? I had to take drastic measures the other day. The window on the RV's door is frosted, but still lets a lot of light through. The A/C unit is running all day and sunlight streaming into the living room doesn't help much. See what I mean?

(Ok, so with the flash you don't see the light. But trust me - it's there. The kitties even lay in the floor just so they can sun themselves, til they overheat.)

So I took the white trash route to taking care of the problem.


Yes, I taped a dish towel over the window. I'm not proud. And I have to say, it works. If it continues to be a problem that the heat comes through the window, I'll make a pretty curtain instead of the oh-so-classy fish dishtowel. It does add for a certain je ne said quois, doesn't it? Hopefully tomorrow it'll be gone. I REALLY hope.

Tuesday Fun Time!

Monday and Tuesday were busy and productive and full of picture taking! On with the Picturama!

Monday I worked hard on my older niece's costume. She wants to be one of the American Girls, Rebecca, who lived in the 1930s (per the book) and is kind of a glamour girl, from what I gather. My other niece, who is in Kindergarten this year, wants to be a Twi'lek Jedi. Heh. So this is what their costumes are based on:

Yes, the Kindergartener wants to be the one with the blue head tentacles and leather outfit. This will be HEEELARIOUS.

And thankfully, I was getting so much help with the sewing! See?

Loki was thrilled to discover that if he jumped up on the sofa (where I have my cardboard cutting board laid out in the above pictures) he would slide, especially if he managed to jump on top of the satin for the dress. He decided this was his newest favorite hobby and thus must do it at least 2 times a minute. Makes for easy dressmaking, I tell ya. I finally lured him away with food. (hey - it works to lure me away from stuff all the time!).

Anyway. These kitties are very talented! While I was so industriously pinning and sewing said costume, somehow the kitties managed to sneak into the bag next to to my knees, pull out some gold rickrack for one of the costumes, and drag it into the bedroom where they were busy playing with it when I discovered the theft.

(Please note that I do in fact make up the bed each morning, but the kitties somehow manage to destroy the bed covers and wallow themselves in the rug on the floor. As soon as I straighten it out, they wallow on it again. Martha Stewart would NOT be proud.)

Such an innocent face!

I think they have promising futures as cat burglars. HA HA HA I made a funny.

When I wasn't busy trying to wrangle my sewing supplies back from the kitties, I went for a bike ride, which was...hot. And sweaty. The campground we're in has a small residential neighborhood around it, so I went out for a ride to see what I could see. And what did I see?

GOATS!

AND PONIES!! (They're hard to see in this picture, but trust me - there are ponies and donkeys in the field). And they're cute! Hello, ponies!

And just to prove that I really, really am in Texas.....

Wagon wheels. Nice.


Where's my 10 gallon hat, y'all?

Hello from Houston, Texas!

Hi everyone! We've arrived in Houston, Texas after several long days of travel and much adventure (and a few mishaps - to be enumerated below). The main thing is, we're here, safe and sound!

So! On to the review of the past few days:

We left on Wednesday morning, after packing up and getting our stuff squared away the few days before. The main things we have to do when getting ready to go are:

- detach all wires/cables/hoses (this is stinky work)

- put away anything that could move or fall (especially the coffeepot!)

- attach the trailer to the RV or truck

- hit the road

Here's our rig on the way - Noel wanted to put the trailer behind the RV, for a smoother ride.

Now, some of you who are familiar in any way with camping/RVing may be familiar with the state maps that many people put on the side of their RVs. They're basically a blank map and when you go through a state, you can put a sticker on the map to track where you've been. We've seen people who had every single state in the US and each province in Canada. Impressive! So far we've been dorky and put our map on the back of the RV, even though we only had 1 state (and it was the state we were currently in!). So pathetic.

So we were finally able to put some new states on our map! We stopped at the rest stops on the state lines for the first 1 or 2, so that (even more dorkily!) we could put the state on the map right after we qualified to do so. Not that there are any state map police or anything - no one is going to pull us over to make sure we really did go through the areas that we say we did. We hope.

Our first day on the road, we planned to get past Mobile, AL before stopping for the night. We decided to go south to Jacksonville and then turn onto I-10 from there. I-10 basically goes straight to Houston with a little diversion to New orleans, which we opted not to take (no time, unfortunately!) As we got into the panhandle of Florida, Noel reported on his walkie talkie that the RV was vibrating badly. We pulled over and noticed that one of the tires (the front right) seemed to be flattened and was causing the RV to shake a lot. We decided that the tire needed to be replaced and we'd get as far toward Pensacola and stay there overnight. We called to reserve a campground there, and found a tire company (hooray for the Campers Directory!) that would come to the campground to replace that tire.

We kept driving, slower this time (to keep Noel's teeth from vibrating out of his head) and while driving down the road...

We blew a tire. A DIFFERENT tire. Noel pulled over immediately and we realized it was the interior rear left tire. We stopped at the next exit and found a campground there, called the tire guy to see if he would mind driving a little further, and tried not to throw things.

Sigh.

The concern was, we had no idea how old these tires were - we bought the RV used and hadn't replaced any of the tires. So! In order not to have to deal with this yet again on a different trip, we opted to replace ALL of the tires.

Say hello to Kevin, our saving angel of tire repair!

Kevin spent all evening doing this:

We spent all evening doing this (please note bottle of cider to keep me sane):

Everyone in the campground was really happy with us, I'm sure, since it was about midnight when he finally finished the last tire. Kevin taught us a lot about tires, including how to tell how old a tire is (it has a DOT number on the side of it - interesting!). Also he showed us how lucky we really were. Remember the front right tire that was flattening, the one that caused the initial concern? It was, to quote him, "a ticking timebomb." Wanna see what a tire that's about to blow looks like?

EEK.

But! We survived with no scratches. The RV, however, had a small issue - namely, that when the rear tire blew, it hit the tire well so hard that it severed our water hose.

Did I mention "Sigh"?

But! From problems come solutions and learning, and learn we did! Noel taught me how to do CPVC plumbing! See? I helped! Also, we figured out where the closest Home Depot is, and visited it more than once!

Yet another Sigh.

So now we have a set of spanking new tires and new plumbing and the toilet works so I'm happy.

Please note that we were not in this optimistic a mood when we were dealing with all this. Now we can look back on it with some nostalgia and only mild anger.

We saw some neat scenery in Louisiana (along with really bumpy roads - Noel was very thankful for the new tires at that point!). One interesting spot was a long stretch of road that ran WITH a river, instead of across. It ran for probably 10 miles, and we had never seen anything like it.

We went over some neat bridges.

And went straight through Baton Rouge.

Now we're getting settled in to Texas. We're in a small suburb south of Houston. Houston, by the way, is HUGE. We drove around some yesterday and saw...traffic. And highways. And I think the Astrodome, but we couldn't really tell. We also drove to Galveston, and saw some gorgeous houses, some of which were still recovering from Hurricane Ike. Some were still boarded up, waiting for someone with money and love to come help them.

There is also a gorgeous cathedral there:

And beside it the Bishop's Palace. It's open for tours, but we didn't opt to do that (yet). Impressive house though - this guy knew how to live in style!

This is an historic home that is also open for tours, called the Moody House. Guess it's pmsing (ha). But beautiful!

We also happened upon a gorgeous cemetery in downtown Galveston, full of old stones and mausoleums. We loved that it had little walking paths that meandered through it. Some of the stones were from as early as the early 1800s, and I love cemeteries that have such personality - all of the stones are unique and truly reflect something of the person they memorialize. Some of the mausoleum doors were open, but there were no bones or anything creepy inside. Darn.

Noel starts his new job on Monday, and will be working for a power company here. There is a TON of industry - just check out this skyline south of Houston:

The scenery right around our campground though is really nice (although full of mosquitoes).

So here we are, a few days into our adventure, and have traveled about halfway across the country so far. Don't believe me? Check out our map!: