Tuesday January 16, 2007

Reporting from the frozen tundra of the Rio Grande Valley….

OK so I exaggerate just a bit…but it is quite cold here. Of course, folks here are telling us Valley newbies this is just the most unusual thing they have ever seen/had here in the valley. I guess the Ziaja’s just had to show up for the aberrant weather. For those without a dictionary, that means unusual, abnormal or my favorite…deviant. Figures. Sunday evening we were sitting under our style setting palm trees enjoying the evening, and now we are sitting in the rig with the furnace on.

News on the purchase of grandpa’s new abode. He has rescinded his first offer on the Siesta Village unit and is in negotiations for the unit here at Rio Valley Estates. I think the ladies will be throwing in the golf cart so he is thrilled. Paul has been in contact with the other sellers (who swore up and down they wouldn’t cash the check until papers were signed, but the same day cashed the sucker…they must have skipped bible study to do so…that’s what they told us they were going to do the afternoon we left the check. Hmmmmm…) We attended the Spaghetti Feast this evening at the clubhouse. They did an excellent job as there were over 300 people in attendance and everyone had been served in less than 20 minutes. The pasta sauce wasn’t as good as the Elk’s sauce (which I have since been informed is a closely guarded secret here in Weslaco…) but it was edible. Paul said he saw huge cans of Ragu in the clubhouse kitchen yesterday so they must have used that as a base. I don’t have anything against canned sauce that is doctored up, but Ragu sucks. It was bland… I guess because anything too spicy wouldn’t appeal to all these geezers. But, we did have ice cream with a sugar wafer for dessert! Worth the wait…

Not much going on here in the park except the card and cribbage games. Not many of the walkers are out either. I gotta get out of the rig tomorrow or I am going to go nuts. There is an outlet mall near Harlingen that I am gonna make Paulie take me to.

I am still having problems with the wifi connections. I keep losing them I am going to make a home-made antenna like the one pictured here….

http://i1.tinypic.com/29krfoi.jpg

I already have the Belkin unit with the stand and the strainer should be easily found at Big Lots or Wally World. I am going to attach it to the TV antenna outside of the coach. It’s worth an experiment right?

Paulie made chili today for our dinner tomorrow. I had purchased a can of chili sauce when we visited the Tabasco plant on our trek through Louisiana. It has a bit of kick to it so I guess we all better take our tums before we eat. He also made some fresh salsa with the stuff we got from the Mexican market on Saturday. Oh, my…it was good. The jalapeño pepper was a bit much but it was still good. Next time we will ask for MILD jalapeños if such a thing exists. Our new fangled chopper works really well. At least the chef liked it…that’s all that counts I guess. Plus it has a juicer attachment and I am dying to get some fresh oranges to make juice….strained of that nasty pulp of course…no comments please, it’s MY juice.

Well, hopefully we will have some more exciting adventures to report tomorrow…but don’t hold your breath. The outlet mall is most likely not all that exciting.

Later,

dee