11-25-12 Sunday (Car Shopping)

The Friday work day lasted longer than I thought necessary.  The only saving grace was that I was off the phone for over an hour.  Well, I was on the phone for a conference call but that’s different than being on the phone with customers.  Really.  I’m Pilot Lead again for another software upgrade and aside from always wanting to know things ahead of everyone else, I also like this kind of stuff and it gets me off the phone as noted above. 

As our typical Augusta-after-work-Friday goes, I came home, loaded the last 1 or 2 things into the car, grabbed the dog and headed south to pick up Jim from work.  Since the weather is colder, picnic dinners at the rest areas are on hold until Spring.  We ate dinner at a burger chain called “Cookout”.  They have a pretty expansive menu and the food is pretty good.

We arrived at the motorhome around 9ish.  When we switched on the water heater, the pilot wouldn’t stay lit.  Jim tried figuring out the issue but we couldn’t get it to work.  He activated electric mode which doesn’t do as good a job.  Great, another issue.

Saturday we went to Sugie’s Kitchen for lunch off some deal Jim had.  The place had 3 tables. 2 huge and 1 small.  A guy meets us at the smaller table, sits down and hands us menus.  Were we supposed to sit with him or something?  We took the menu to a larger table and sat down.  The place was a dive.  Another place that from what I could see had an unregulated kitchen.  I was like being in someone’s house or something.

We both got Philly’s which came with fries.  For an extra side we ordered mac and cheese.  Jim ordered his Philly with mayo.  Both of them came with it despite my order.  Jim’s came with tomato which hates.  I’m not sure how hard it was to take an order from 2 of the only 4 people in your restaurant.  We had to re-ask for the drinks we ordered.  I didn’t like any of the food.  The fries were coated in some batter.  The Philly meat (crappy meat) was severely over cooked while the onions should have been cooked longer.  My hoagie was wet/soggy on one side.  The mac and cheese was terrible.

With full bellies of ick, we went to Sears.  Kmart and Sears are just terrible anymore.  They’re so outdated and uncared for.

Above: At the entrance.  How “grand”.

Above: This one sprig of décor adorns the pretty electrical conduit that feeds the register power from the ceiling.  It was dusty.  I asked the clerk.  She giggled and said it had been there for 7 years.  We could tell.

Above: The Portrait Studio’s proud display of their hours.  Very nice.  Looks like the dot matrix printer ribbon had some dry spots.

Then for more excitement, Jim took me car shopping to one of those pull-a-part junkyard places to find a center cap for the Jeep’s wheel. 

Above: He told me I could pick which ever one I’d want.

We were unsuccessful in our center cap locating expedition.  Perhaps next time.

We picked up a long wire brush to fit into the water heater tubes along with a can of compressed air.  Back at the RV, Jim was able to use wire, the brush and the canned air to get the water heater to function normally.  It was probably a bug that clogged the gas tubes.

Above: Flame on!

Saturday night dinner was at Maryland Fried Chicken.  It’s a small chain that we’ve never heard of until Augusta.  The food was OK but while eating I noticed the clerk who had served our food come out to the lobby to wipe down the tables, clean off the front counter by condensing the individually wrapped pieces of cake, go back behind the counter to serve up more food and then collect payment.  Not very odd is it until I noticed she did it all with the same pair of gloves.  Does she think that simply wearing gloves protects her and us from germs? 

Sunday we went to Long Horn for lunch.  It was all so incredibly yummy.  We took half our meals home to enjoy for dinner.

The main purpose of this trip was to winterize the TURD aka motorhome.  That basically means running a special antifreeze through all the water lines.  Shockingly, this may have went well, without a disaster.

If we go back mid winter, it should be easy and inexpensive to unwinterize (would that me summerize?).