Tampa, McDill AFB
Thursday January 26, 2006

Well, I am trying to recreate the wonderfully witty words I had tried to post earlier this evening before blogger burped. I guess that is the bane of us blogger and budding novelists/wannabe writers. My original post apparently was dumped into the cyberspace recycle bin after my carefully well chosen and articulate words were painstakingly typed. *Sigh*.

I shall now try to recreate my earlier post. Don't however, expect miracles...it is now 8:30 p.m. and my tail is a draggin'.

Last night was a very cold night in the Ziaja rig. I thought Tuesday night was nippy, but nothing compared to last night. One of the disadvantages to camping in a dry camping area such as where we are here at McDill is that there are rules. For instance, no generators after 11 p.m. I awoke about 3 am. My nose was so cold it had no feeling in it! The toilet seat was pure agony...it just seems somewhat unfair that we ladies cannot whiz standing up. I should preface this however with a nugget of knowledge my younger sister Kathy had shared with me. She has a lot of practice doing this necessary function standing up due to her many travels in the pursuit of hockey and Irish dance competitions. (I can't remember how to spell the correct word for these competitions BTW.) I find this remarkable. I have no desire to emulate her, and when necessity stikes and the facilities are less than, shall we say, sanitary, I pull out my trusty bottle of Purel sanitizer, whip out a baby wipe from my bag and after wiping down the implement, follow this up with a paper seat protector. My delicate tush does not touch any surfaces that are outside of my own home. Recall yesterday that I wrote that I do not put my feet into anything that does not have a cement bottom? I also wear water shoes in the water with the cement bottom. Ok, so I am OCD when it comes to certain things yanno?

I digress. After the frozen buns awoke me completely, I decided to put on a sweat shirt and some socks. I got into bed (which was much more comfortable after we put the thinner air mattress on it). I then covered up with the two quilts, took all the pillows I could find and laid them over my body. This really helped and I finally dozed off. Did I mention the ceramic floor was like stepping on a glacier? Well, it WAS. We finally got up about 7:30 just so we could get dressed in warm clothing. Paul turned on the generator and I stoked up the furnace.

We had a nice breakfast, read the papers and watched the Today show. I took the car to the shower house and took a nice hot shower. After we all got dressed we set off for Lazy Days RV center, the largest RV dealer in the country. It is truly a huge place. We wandered around for awhile looking first at Fleetwood products. Some were nice and had very good layouts, however with four slides, the “new” innovation to provide a larger living area, there is very limited storage space anywhere in the coach or in the “basement area” under the coach. We then found the Tiffin coaches and I fell in love. It is a 2006 40 foot Phaeton. It has a king size bed, 27” plasma tv in the front of the coach, the same in the bedroom. It had a washer and dryer unit, and a dishwasher. There were two sofas, leather of course, and the kitchen had a ton of counter space, was solid surface and even had a pull out peninsula with drawers in it!

Well, after looking at the Tiffin products, everything else was really not up to their standards in my not so humble opinion. Paul had to keep telling me to shut up when I kept muttering “Look at this crap”. I said that about the upholstery, the cabinetry and everything including the hardware on the sinks. I was smitten and nothing I saw after my love-coach could even come close. No, I didn’t look at Country Coaches or those rigs in the “ritzy” section(the place where all the high end coaches sit waiting for someone to take a fancy to them and drive them home. Why be bitter about something I will never have?) The Phaeton on the other hand was my ideal and not so far out of what is a feasible price range. Of course this is a predicated on me winning the lottery or falling down in some megastore and settling my negligence suit out of court. LOL!

Well, I will finish this later, the boys are badgering me to go back to the coach. Paulie is staying here at the activities center, waiting to join in on the poker game. Poor guy.

later,

dennise