Yes, it’s miserably cold here in central Florida. Yes, I am chilled to the bone. Yes, it sucks. But I shall not snivel. Yesterday evening we watched news coverage of the blizzard that is blanketing the east coast, and all of those folks stranded in airports, and others who were busy shoveling snow, or getting stuck. Compared to them, we have it good.

But just because I’m not going to snivel doesn’t mean I have to like it! If my fingers ever thaw out enough that I can type again, I plan to write a strongly worded editorial!

We knew the weather was going to be ugly yesterday, and we had no place to go and nothing to do, so we slept in, then stayed in bed snuggling for a long time, because neither of us was in a hurry to get out from under the covers. When we finally did get up, we wore our sweats all day long, and put on our warm Teepee Creepers sheepskin slippers. While Miss Terry has to have her morning kick start, I don’t drink coffee. But I sure didn’t turn down the cup of hot chocolate she made me for breakfast!

I spent the day catching up on a backlog of paperwork I had let pile up, and managed to make a big dent in it. Terry kept busy doing some laundry, puttering around the kitchen, and working on some other chores she needed to get out of the way.

It never got much above 50 degrees all day long, and the wind kept gusting up. Looking out the windows, we saw very little activity most of the day, except for a few people bundled up, walking their dogs. That’s another reason I don’t have a pet. I love dogs, but I’ll go play with theirs when it warms up, and leave the dog walking in the cold to them.

We love our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage motorhome, and it has so many nice features we didn’t have in our MCI bus conversion. The one place where it is lacking is in insulation. When we built the bus, we put several layers of different kinds of insulation in the floor, ceiling, and walls. We didn’t have a furnace in the bus, but with an Olympian catalytic heater, or a small electric heater, we  stayed warm and toasty even when outside temperatures got  down below freezing several times.

The Winnebago has two furnaces, a heat pump, and we use space heaters as needed, but it was still cold inside it yesterday. But I’m not sniveling!

Since the overnight temperatures were going to be in the mid-20s for the next few days, I went out in the late afternoon and disconnected our water hose to keep it from freezing.

Today and tomorrow look like more of the same thing. Terry has been saying that she needed a few days of down time to spend at home, and it looks like she’s getting her wish. but I’m not sniveling!

Thought For The Day – I used to be lost in the shuffle. Now I just shuffle along with the lost.

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Today is the last day to take advantage of our Two For One Holiday Special. So if you haven’t clicked the link above, there’s still time. You can enter a new subscription to the Gypsy Journal for yourself, or renew your subscription early, and we’ll give someone on your Christmas shopping list a free one year subscription, with a note that it is a gift from you. All you have to do is enter your mailing address, and send me a separate e-mail with the name of the recipient of your gift subscription at editor@gypsyjournal.net and we’ll do the rest. The special ends tonight at midnight, so if you snooze, you lose!

It’s still unbelievably cold here in Fort Lauderdale, but at least the wind has stopped. We’d like to do some sightseeing while were in this area, but between having to get the new issue of the paper finished, and the weather, I don’t know if we’ll do much of anything but stay home and work.

I got an e-mail from my friend Tom Owen down in Key West yesterday, and he said they tied a record low, set in 1952, and that folks on that tropical island are running around in winter coats, gloves, mufflers and longshoreman caps. Tom said that the wind chill was 30 degrees in Key West! We won’t be going to the Florida Keys this year after all!

Speaking of the cold weather, I have been exchanging e-mails with a couple who are staying in their RV, in a relative’s driveway in the upper Midwest, until after the holidays. They wrote to ask for advice because their water lines were frozen, and I suggested that they put a droplight in their utility bay with a 25 watt bulb. That’s what we did when we were stuck in northern Michigan years ago during Terry’s battle with cancer, and it kept it toasty warm in the water bay.

They replied that their son didn’t want them to do that, because it would run up his electric bill. I also suggested they use heat tape on any exposed water lines, but the lady wrote back and said that was an “awful lot of trouble” and asked me if there wasn’t a simpler way to solve the problem. Uh, yeah, there is. Turn the key and get the heck out of there!

My friend Chris Guld from Geeks on Tour spent most of the afternoon yesterday helping me make some changes in our e-mail program, laying the groundwork for migrating our websites to another host, and talking about where we want to go with our online business in the future. The technology is changing on a daily basis, and it is amazing what we can now offer our readers online.

Later in the afternoon, Chris and her hubby Jim treated us to a wonderful seafood dinner at a restaurant called Catfish Deweys,  that is a local landmark. I had the blackened seafood platter and Miss Terry had blackened catfish, and both were excellent. Thanks Jim and Chris!

Bad Nick has been quiet for a while because he has been on strike, protesting the cold weather. But he finally got of his duff yesterday and posted a new Bad Nick Blog titled Snappy Comebacks. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – You shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands. You need to be able to throw something back sometimes.

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Terry and I can really feel the difference in comfort levels between our MCI bus conversion and our Winnebago Ultimate Advantage motorhome in this cold weather! The Winnebago is much colder inside than the bus.

When we built the bus, we added a lot of extra insulation to the floor, walls, and ceiling. We were in temperatures down to 10 degrees a couple of times and a couple of electric cube heaters kept us comfortable. Last night it was 16 degrees here in Lexington, Kentucky, we had both furnaces turned up, and we were still chilly! I think we need to look into a catalytic heater. We let our Olympian Wave 8 go with the bus, and now I’m wishing we had kept it! That thing sure put out a lot of heat, and used a lot less propane than the RV furnaces do.

My appointment at the VA hospital Friday went as well as could be expected, and we are leaving today, headed back to the Escapees Rainbow Plantation RV park in Summerdale, Alabama. No place in the country seems to be warm right now, except for maybe the Florida Keys, but we have had to cancel our trip that far south this year. At least Summerdale will be a little warmer than it is here. We’re about 675 miles away, so we hope to be there sometime Sunday afternoon.

Then I have to chain myself to my desk and get the new issue of the Gypsy Journal ready for the printer. The unplanned trip back up to Elkhart to sell the bus, and the burglary that happened there, have put me way behind schedule. The paper should be printing right now, and all we would have to do is get the new issue ready to mail out. I hope our subscribers will understand about the delay. Most folks have been pretty easy going when we’re late, but as a lifelong newspaper publisher, it eats me alive to miss a deadline.

A lot of readers have been asking how we are making out with our insurance company after last week’s incident. One writer went so far as to say that the theft and vandalism were only the start of our misfortune, and the real violation would come from our insurance company. Things are not wrapped up yet, but so far, I get the feeling he was not far off the mark.

I won’t go into a lot of details yet, because I don’t know what the final outcome will be, but so far, it looks like our “disappearing deductible” sure had the right name, because when we needed it, it disappeared! All I will say right now is that I think we’ll definitely be shopping for a new insurance company once all is said and done. Of course, I’m sure that they will be just as bad. What’s that they say about a rose by any other name?  

Meanwhile, Bad Nick is staying inside close to the heater outlet, and he posted a new Bad Nick Blog titled Keep It In Your Pants. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – He who digs a pit for others will fall into it himself.

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I’m going to change my name to Nanook of the North, because I’m beginning to feel like an Eskimo. It looks like winter has already set in here in northern Indiana, and we’re freezing! There is a small rally of old GM motorhomes here at Elkhart Campground, and I keep thinking that those folks are even worse at planning than I am. We have to be here to get the new issue out, but those fools chose to be here this time of year!

I know that there are folks who enjoy cold weather, but I’m not one of them. I lived in cold country too many years to have any attraction to it. A lifetime ago when I was a young soldier, we held war games in some Godforsaken place like Iceland or Greenland, to prepare us for combat if the Soviets ever invaded.

I suggested that we give the frozen place to the Commies and regroup in Key West to look out for the Cubans, who might use the diversion to launch a sneak attack on our rear. As it turns out, the strategists really didn’t want my input, but time has proven me right. Russia isn’t a threat anymore, but Cuba is still there, just waiting for us to look the other way, and they’ll be swarming ashore and heading for the bars on Duval Street. Wait a minute, they already do that…! I’m not Nanook of the North, I’m a soothsayer!

That’s better anyway. I don’t have room for a sled dog team in our Winnebago, and that whole Eskimo nose rubbing instead of kissing thing just doesn’t work for me. What’s sexy about two red, runny noses bumping into each other anyway?

One problem with cold weather RVing is condensation. Cooking, showering, even running a propane furnace, all put a lot of water vapor in the air, and we have noticed that the outside wall at the back of our bedroom closet, as well as our windshield, are collecting condensation. We open the bathroom roof vent and turn on the exhaust fan when we shower to allow the steam to get out, but it’s still an issue we need to keep an eye on.

Years ago, when Terry was being treated for cancer, we were stuck in Traverse City, Michigan into the winter. No matter what we did, our Pace Arrow Vision, the Motorhome from Hell, was wet inside. It was so bad that Terry had a package of rolls of paper towels stored between the front passenger seat and the dashboard, and they were saturated. Our Ultimate Advantage is a lot better insulated than that Fleetwood lemon, but we still have to deal with condensation.

Of course, the best remedy is to get out of the cold and into someplace warmer. It’s something I’m really looking forward to. I think we’re in for a long, cold winter in much of the country, and I want to get as far away from it as I can and still be on dry land.

Bad Nick is no fool. He spent his time inside where it was nice and warm,  working on a post for the Bad Nick Blog titled The Higher Education Scam.

Thought For The Day – In insurance policies, the big print giveth, and the small print taketh away.

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