My wife is a very hard woman to shop for, because she doesn’t want very much in the way of material things. Whenever I ask her what she wants for Christmas, her birthday, our anniversary, or whatever, she always says she has everything she wants.

Once in a while, she’ll let me buy her a bottle of perfume, and I’ve managed to get her a few pairs of earrings over the years, but that’s about it. I guess I should be grateful, she’s not only easy on the eyes, she’s easy on the pocketbook.

I, on the other hand, am easy to shop for. I want everything! I’m like a chimpanzee in a department store. If it lights up, makes noise, goes fast, or tastes good, I want two of each. Why do you think my friend Brenda Speidel calls me Gadget Boy?

I love wandering through the tool section at Lowes and Home Depot, even though I know it’s kind of like going to one of those stripper joints. Most of what I’m seeing I have no idea what to do with, and I’d probably just end up hurting myself if I tried.

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Of course, living in a motorhome (not to mention being of modest means) does put some restrictions on my wants and desires. I really miss my hot tub, from our life before fulltiming, but I just can’t figure out where to put one in a Winnebago.

Actually, there really is very little I want, and nothing I need, that I don’t have. Most of my wants are not things, but rather experiences. I really want to do some kayak fishing, someday I want to catch a fish from an ocean pier, I want to take a cruise, and I want to see Alaska one of these days.

But, if I had to choose one material thing I’d like Santa to bring me, assuming the big guy could figure out a way to slide down the chimney our motorhome doesn’t have, I guess it might be a DVR so I could record some of my favorite television programs. I know a lot of people don’t care all that much for television, but after a lifetime in the small town newspaper business, I’m a news hound and I like to watch the news, if for no other reason than to see who we’re at war with this week. And there are several silly sitcoms, and a drama or two that I enjoy watching. It’s kind of like junk food for the brain.

Of course, it wouldn’t do me any good to get a DVR anyway, according to Dish Network, who told me last week that you can’t watch TV in an RV! 

How about you? What do you want for Christmas?  A new RV? A flat screen TV? A GPS unit? Maybe a new laptop computer?

Or are you like me? Does your wish list include more experiences than things? Tell me about some of them.

Thought For The Day – Whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply didn’t know where to shop.

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Yeah, I know, you watch TV in your RV all the time. I do, too. In fact, I have for over twelve years now. But according to the dweebs at Dish Network, you can’t watch TV in an RV. Who knew?

In Monday’s blog, titled You Win Some, You Lose Some, I wrote that Dish Network had agreed to send somebody out to install a new DVR receiver in our motorhome. Since we already have an automatic Dish high definition receiver on our motorhome, “installing basically means plugging the receiver in and hooking up the input and output coax cables. The installation was supposed to happen yesterday afternoon. It didn’t.

About 8 a.m. the installer called, asked where we were, and I gave him the campground’s address and our site number. “Hey, you can’t put a TV dish on an RV,” the guy told me. “I have to mount a pole to the side of it to hold the dish. That won’t work.” I assured him that he didn’t have to “mount a pole” to the side of my motorhome, all he had to do was hand me the receiver and go on his way. He said he’d have to have his supervisor call me back.

That noteworthy individual called back a few minutes later to tell me that you can’t have a TV in a motorhome. Okay, here we go. We batted that one back and forth for a while, and he said that there was no way they were delivering my receiver to me. End of story.

I called Dish Network back and spent the next three hours on the telephone, mostly on hold, while a series of people who could barely speak English told me that it was illegal to install a TV in a motorhome, put me on hold, never came back, or eventually hung up.

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Finally I got to a Customer Retention Representative in the United States, who assured me that the only way it was legal for me to have a TV in my RV was to park it permanently on a lot and never move it again.

I asked her to stop reading off her cue card, and look at my account and note my RV waiver, and asked her what the RV waiver was for. She said it was to allow me to receive east and west coast networks while traveling in my RV. “Okay, if I can’t have a TV in my RV, why do I have an RV waiver on file so I can receive those distant networks while I’m traveling?” I asked her. She told me that the waiver was to allow me to receive east and west coast networks while traveling in my RV. (Yeah, I heard it before too.)

Finally the light seemed to go on, and she had a solution to my problem! She told me that I was a valued customer, and all I had to do was park my RV and not move it anymore, and I could get my free receiver. But if I did that, I couldn’t keep my distant networks, because then I wouldn’t be traveling anymore.  Okay, next nitwit please.

Then that nitwit’s boss came on the line, who was another nitwit,  and explained that only Standard Definition receivers would work in an RV. Not High Definition, and not DVR receivers.

Aha! So I can watch TV in my RV, just not HD TV?  He said yes you can have an SD receiver, but no, you can’t watch TV in an RV, because every time you move, somebody would have to come out and reinstall it. Huh? Are you getting a headache yet? I was getting chest pains by then!

I told him that I know many, many RVers who have HD DVRs. I even called Bill Adams from Internet Anywhere to be sure I wasn’t missing something. Bill is the recognized expert when it comes to mobile TV and satellite dish systems. He assured me that I could use the HD receiver in my RV, with my automatic Dish HD antenna.

But when I called Dish back, after talking to Bill, they assured me that Bill was wrong, you can’t have a TV in an RV.

If it weren’t for the fact that my Winegard Trav’ler automatic rooftop dish can’t be reprogrammed to DirecTV, I’d switch today. As it is, I’ll just sit here and remember the good old days, when gas was $2 a gallon, and I could watch TV in my RV.

Thought For The Day – Politics has taught us that it is not necessary to understand things in order to argue about them.

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In spite of noisy trucks coming and going, we slept soundly at the Georgia Welcome Center, and felt refreshed when we woke up yesterday morning. Before we hit the road, we turned on our Onan Quiet Diesel generator, and while Terry brewed herself a pot of coffee, I had a bowl of cereal, checked e-mail, fixed a typo in the blog, and logged onto Dennis Hill’s and Greg White’s blogs, to see if  either had updated them since the day before. Dennis hadn’t, but Greg did, so I was batting 50% for the day. For me, that’s darned good!

We pulled out of the Welcome Center just after 9 a.m. and traveled south on Interstate 95. The highway crossed over several rivers, some as wide as small lakes, and a lot of marshland. None of the bridges were high, most were the same level as the road, so I didn’t snivel even once!

Last year when we took this route, we traveled through road construction for several miles north of Brunswick, and it doesn’t appear that they have gotten much accomplished, because we again ran into construction in the same stretch of highway.

Traffic was heavier than the day before, and by the time we crossed into Florida, it was getting really busy, and stayed busy all the way to our destination.

We took the I-295 loop around the east side of Jacksonville, and I still didn’t snivel, even when we crossed this bridge over the wide St. Johns River, a major waterway in this part of the world. Maybe the bridge didn’t bother me because it was four lanes wide, and we were in the third lane, and maybe because it wasn’t awfully high except in one place.  The loop adds a few miles to the trip, but it’s a lot easier than dealing with all of the traffic in Jacksonville.

South of Saint Augustine, we pulled into the Flying J to get fuel, and our Rewards card wouldn’t work. This sign on the pump said the problem was due to “technology changes.”

Like the Pilot the day before, the pump would only let me put $75 worth of fuel in before it cut me off, and when we tried to pay for more, the message on the screen said to see the cashier. Terry went inside, and they charged $200 to our credit card. We didn’t need $200 worth, so now they have to charge the difference back to our card. The clerk did give Terry a discount off the pump price. This is getting to be a real pain. I wonder how many forms of ID they would require if I just paid cash?

Now here is an example of the kind of RVer that makes us all look bad. 12:30 in the afternoon at Flying J, and he has his jacks down, awning out, and satellite dish up. And he wasn’t even in one of the designated RV parking spaces! Why do people do that? When it comes to losing the courtesy parking so many companies offer, we are our own worst enemy.

Back on the road, we arrived at The Great Outdoors in Titusville, Florida a little after 2 p.m., and got settled into the lot our friends Peter and Connie Bradish own. Soon after we arrived, Connie came by to make sure that we had arrived safely. Thanks for your hospitality, dear friend.

It was pretty hot, and by the time I had the RV hooked up and Terry had things unpacked inside, we were both tired and hungry. We ran into town and had an early dinner at Sonny’s Barbecue, a regional favorite of ours, and then it was back to the motorhome to veg out the rest of the afternoon and evening. We’ll be here a week or so, and I hope to be able to get some pictures of the space shuttle launch, which has now been delayed until Tuesday.

While I was writing this blog post, I got an e-mail from Dish Network that they have settled their pissing match with Fox, and that our FX and National Geographic channels have been restored. Yay, I can watch Sons of Anarchy again! Of course, then I got a message from a fulltiming friend who uses DirecTV, who said the company told him his monthly fee for distant networks is going up.

Thought For The Day – When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.

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Our plans to play tourist in Washington, D.C. were rained out yesterday. It started raining just after midnight and came down all day long. Not just a drizzle, but a hard, pounding rain that was not fit for man nor beast. So we spent the day in the motorhome at Cherry Hill Park, watching TV, cruising the internet, and being lazy.

I’m pleased that the Winegard Trav’ler automatic rooftop TV dish we had installed on our motorhome last December doesn’t suffer from rain fade nearly as much as the old tripod mounted dish we used to use. I don’t know if that is because the dish is bigger than the old one, but whatever the reason, it sure is an improvement.

A blog reader wrote yesterday to ask me about rooftop dishes, and if there are any major differences between DirecTV or Dish Network. We had DirecTV in our home and during our first few years on the road, before switching to Dish Network. I believe that the programming choices and prices are about the same overall, though personally the Dish support folks have been just a tiny bit more helpful, in my opinion.

I’m curious, what type of antenna do you use for TV reception, and do you subscribe to Dish or DirecTV, rely on over the air programming, campground cable TV, or?

We had a couple of orders to mail out, so about 4 p.m. we left the campground and ran to the post office, then stopped at Home Depot to look for some cabinet latches to replace a couple of broken ones on our kitchen drawers. No luck there, so I guess I’ll have to order original equipment replacements from Lichtsinn, a great Winnebago repair shop and parts supplier in Forest City, Iowa. Winnebago will sell you replacement parts if you go to their service facility in Forest City, but otherwise you have to order from a dealer. Don’t ask me why, because I have no idea how or why any company makes the decisions they do.

Back at the motorhome, it was still raining, so we did the same thing we had done all day. It seemed a perfect day for a nap, so I stretched out on the couch and did just that for a while. I woke up in time for dinner, but I’d have been just as happy snoring away until morning. Rainy days make for good sleeping.

Today the weather is supposed to be a little better, and we hope to spend the day touring the Newseum and whatever else we can squeeze in. We covered most of the major monuments and a couple of the Smithsonian museums during our last visit to Washington, so this trip we want to get to some of the attractions we missed the first time around.

Thought For The Day – If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. If life gives you tomatoes, make Bloody Marys.

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As fulltime RVers, we get to see all kinds of wonderful things and all over the country, and we visit places most people can only dream of. But not every day is about playing tourist. Some days we just keep busy with life in general. Yesterday was such a busy day for us, even though we were not traveling or out sightseeing.

Terry’s parents, Pete and Bess Weber, were fulltimers for several years, and now that they have settled into a house in Apache Junction, they keep their motorhome on a leased lot at the Hon Dah RV Park, here in the White Mountains. Yesterday, they drove up to get their Pace Arrow ready for the summer, and we spent most of the day helping them with that chore.

After the water, electric and sewer connections were hooked up, and Pete had purged the water lines of the winter antifreeze, we got their car unloaded. Then Pete and I raked a winter’s worth of dried pine needles and debris from their patio and the rest of the lot. Meanwhile, Terry and her mom were inside putting things away in the cabinets and closets.

A winter storm had knocked over their tripod mounted TV dish, and before Pete hooked up his signal finder meter, we just pointed the dish in the general direction of where the neighbor’s dish was, and went inside to see if by any chance we had gotten lucky. Unbelievably, we were locked onto a good strong signal! Then Bess had to call Dish Network to reactivate their motorhome’s receiver, since it had been on hiatus all winter long. 

I’m sure glad we live in our Winnebago year around and don’t have to move in and back out every few months, because by the time we were finished, we were all tired!

After we caught our breath, the four of us went to Red Devil Pizza in Pinetop for an early dinner and some more visiting. Red Devil has absolutely the best pizza in the region, as well as great sandwiches and pasta. Terry and her mom had lasagna, I had an Italian sub sandwich, and Pete opted for the fish and chips, and it was all delicious.

After we parted ways at the restaurant, Terry and I stopped at my friend Jim Lewis’ book store, so I could have Jim adjust my back again.  It sure is great having a bone cruncher in the family!

Then we were off to my daughter Tiffany’s place in Show Low, where she had a package of mail waiting for us from our forwarding service. We got our mail and our grandkid fix, but didn’t stay long because it was close to their dinner time.

Back at the Elks lodge campground, Miss Terry cut my hair and trimmed my beard, because I was so shaggy that I was getting very close to violating the city’s leash law. I have reached that point in my life where, even though I have lost most of the hair on my head, by the time we get my ears and eyebrows mown, it takes just as long.

We had a quiet evening, catching up on some e-mail and watching TV before we called it a night and headed for bed.

Thought For The Day – Save the Earth, it’s the only planet with chocolate.

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