Monday, October 13, 2008

Green Peanuts

Ocala, Florida

Weather: low 70 degrees, high 87 degrees, partly cloudy skies

I got an early start this morning (nothing new for me), and was finally able to get the tires on the truck rotated and balanced. Even though I was the first customer of the day for the shop, it still took almost two hours. I have not gotten the greatest service out of this Sear's store here. Here's a little bit of how the exchange went with the service writer today.

Me: I would like to have my tires balanced and rotated as part of the warranty service on the tires.

Service Writer: Is there any vibration?

Me: No.

Service Writer: Then you don't need to have your tires balanced.

Me: I want my tires balanced.

Service Writer: You don't need it.

Me: I want my tires balanced.

Service Writer: I'm just saying that if you don't have any vibration, you don't need balancing.

Me: How many times do I have to tell you that I want my tires balanced.

Service Writer: Okay.

I think what is going on is that Sear's was not making any money on this deal, so they were trying to keep their costs down. I don't mind them saving money, but not at my expense.

We spent most of the afternoon at Carolyn's mother's house, visiting with different brothers, sisters, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren. That's right, five generations were present at one time, and I got a picture of the event. I'll try to get it into the blog soon.

You may have gathered from some of the entries in the blog over the last week that Carolyn loves boiled peanuts. After we left her mother's house this afternoon, we drove up to Citra, a small town about 15 miles north of Ocala. There is a vegetable warehouse there that receives and processes vegetables from the local farmers. As we drove up to the warehouse, we saw that they were unloading green peanuts, fresh from the fields. I went into the office and found that they sold to the public. A bushel of green peanuts was $32.00, so I waited for the staff to wash a bushel for us. That was really a stroke of luck to drive up just as they were unloading the freshly picked peanuts. We will be taking them back with us to Tuscaloosa, where we will boil them. Obviously, we won't be able to eat that many peanuts before they spoil, so we'll freeze most of them and enjoy them later on.

Earlier today, I found another RV park that I think we will be using in the future when visiting here. The park we are in at this time has amenities that we don't use, but we still have to pay for them. The new park has what we need and use, and it will be less expensive.

We will be leaving here tomorrow, on our way back to Tuscaloosa. The return trip will take at least two days. Carolyn has a doctor's appointment next Monday. After that, we will start making our plans to go to Texas for a couple of weeks.

More later, be safe.

Today's Town - Citra, Florida: Home Of The Pineapple Orange

Not all who wander are lost.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Tell Mom she is back on my good side, for now at least. I better get a WHOLE bunch of those boiled peanuts to make up for the short change last summer! We shall see how much she shares this time......

Anonymous said...

One more thing, there has been absolutely no activity on the house this past week, bummer. However; we are making a happy home for at least one group, the deer. They are having quite a feast off of the roots from the shrubs in the front yard. We went to check on things one day and as I was pulling up I noticed tufts of grass randomly strewn around the front of the house. At first I thought it was a gopher until I saw a huge hoof identation in the dirt. They managed to nose around each and every shrub looking for the root ball. So, I took two boxes of Miracle Grow and spread it throughout the mulch (the shrubs needed to be fertilized anyway). Since then I havent seen anymore evidence of feasting deer. That will keep them away for a bit. Maybe we should have kept our pups a while longer!