I crawled out to a bright sunny morning with the outside temperature already at 80 degrees. This at 9:00 am in the morning. Incidentally, the high today is forecast at 94 degrees, and it is only April 3. 

We wandered around the park and on the outside road and only saw one other dog and camper. Luckily, they were walking away from us. We covered our usual half mile before returning for breakfast. I sat and read all about today’s troubles, most of which were either a continuation of or the same as yesterdays. Emails were the same and every single one was trashed except for a couple of newsworthy ones. 

I turned to the blog which did not take long to write as not much had happened, yet. 

 The big project in front of us for the future is to go through ALL the many and various boxes that we have brought up from Quatro and decide what to keep, what to give away and what to trash. At the speed I work, it will probably take the rest of the year. 

We went out for another short walk and then telling the dogs that I would not be long, I jumped in the Jeep and drove into town. The first stop was at H&R Block to check on the status of my taxes. They were not ready yet, so I moved to the Home Depot. I did not need much, primarily a long-handled hose wand to save on water as I water the plants. Naturally, what I wanted was in the gardening section which is located right where all the beautiful plants are. I had already decided that I needed a couple more and spent a bit of time picking out the right ones. 

I paid for my goodies and had to walk the entire length of the parking lot to find my car…again. i really need to get smarter about which end of the store I park. Still, the exercise is good for my old body. 

The next stop was HEB which is located right next door although requiring a circuitous route to get there going the back way. Still, it misses Hwy 290 traffic which is bad any time of the day. 

I had a list and kept to it pretty much as I wandered up and down the aisles. I have shopped in that store many, many times and as they do not move things around, you would think that I know where everything is. But, it appears, I did not as I got to the end of the store and the end of my list and noticed that I had missed an item. Needless to say, the missing item, in this case, a loaf of bread, was located way up at the other end of the store where I first started shopping. 

I trudged back and found the bread section and it took a while to make up my mind which one I wanted. You would think it was an easy decision as bread is bread, right? Wrong as they have an entire aisle devoted to the stuff. It comes pretty much in the same shape and size but there were all kinds of bread with names I could not recognize. I searched around and finally found a plain old fashioned sliced white loaf, but it had taken checking an entire aisle to find it. Still, it did add to my walking mileage. Incidentally, I covered 3.5 miles for the day. A good day by our lax standards. 

I made sure to buy Daniel a case of his favorite beer to try to repay him for all his help and when we got back to the campground, handed it to him as he drove by. This was followed by an invitation to help him drink it and after walking the dogs again and then they helped me to put the groceries away, I wandered over to his RV, just across the street. 

Delores was already sitting there chatting and the three of us sat for a while chatting about everything. We were joined by another gentleman, whose name I do not know although I have spoken to him before and the four of us sat and talked.  

Then, somehow, the conversation turned to religion. Delores is a strict practicing church goer and has very strong views on religion. Daniel is a halfway believer whose occasionally goes to church. I do not know too much about our other friend although I suspect he too is a believer. And then there was me. I had such a tough time as I listened to Delores going on about her church that in the end, I just had to disagree with her on just about everything.  It was apparent by my share of the conversation that I am not a very religious man and that I have a hard time believing in the Bible and consequently, although we never actually got into any real disagreements on the subject, all our views were very apparent, with me being the only non-believer in the group. Sure hope it does not affect our friendships. 

About that time and after consuming 2 beers which may have contributed to the conversation, I felt the call of Nature which came at a suitable time in the conversation, and I bid good night to them all. Back in the RV, we went out for a short walk before retiring for the evening watching a Premier League game. Incidentally, I had called Daniel and apologized if I had said anything out of hand and his response was, “No issues” his standard response to anything and everything. 

Written 04/03/2023 Read my other blog at https://pondblog2011.com