Sunday, June 29, 2008

Update - Work & School

It has been 30 days since my last post. Not good --- I know.

The boys finished up this school year on 14 June and now they are a Senior and Junior in high school. Joey graduates June 2009 and Tom in June 2010.

I'm in summer session with Columbia on-line and taking HR Management and Marketing. Both very interesting classes...but LOTS of work. I have weekly tests and papers to write. But so far so good. I have 8 more semesters and that is taking 2 classes and maybe 3 for one or two semesters. Problem is Columbia didn't take all my transfer credits from SDCC so I need to redo a Humanities and Upper English. But I'll get through it and move onto the MBA.

Maria is hard at work taking care of her child care business and of course all things at home. I don't know how she does it all, it would drive me nuts. But she's got LOTS of energy and motivation so she perseveres through the tough stuff.

Haven't been on an RV trip since Memorial weekend. Between my school and Maria's work, we just haven't found the time for it. The boys are having fun with their friends over summer; swimming, paintballing....teenager stuff. But behaving well.

We are having friends visit us from Oregon on 5 and 6 July. We are bringing the motorhome from storage and parking it in our "RV parking" next to our house for the weekend, plug it in and it will be nice for them to stay in. It's only for one night. Then I'll take it back to storage on Monday.

We have a 18 X 45 cement slab that we poured next to our house that we used to park our quads and trailer, worked great for a few years, but this last year we sold both quads and trailer. (That hurt in the beginning, but now....well it's just "stuff"). But its use is really RV parking with an electric plug for 20amp. That works well for what we need it for A/C only. There isn't any need to use anything else when you're parked 3 feet from your house.

It sure will be a good selling point when we sell the house!!! I want to upgrade to a 50amp plug and maybe tap into our sewer line. I'll have to see what city regs say about that.

The reason I don't permanently park it at our house is because I don't like the look. We have a few neighbors that have their RV next to their house (and there's plenty room for it) but I just don't like how it looks. Something very strange about having this BIG motorhome parked between 2 houses...again, just don't care for the look.

So I pay the 20.00/month to park it on the base. I like it there because we use the base facilities to wash it, service it, etc. Also that is our "base" when we leave/return. I take it out from base storage and park it in their RV park (not much to write home about) and then get it all cleaned and go to the commissary and exchange and get what we need for the trip. We rarely bring anything from home. We have the "staples" in the motorhome and then get what we need just for the trip from the commissary or the exchange and get rollin'. It works for me.

Future plans: We are still committed to selling our house in 2010 and getting on the road in Sep 2010 (when I retire from USN). Our plan is to get on the road and then I start my MBA while we are camp hosting. We will set off to "Explore what I served to protect!"

Stay tuned for the next update!