bunrab: (Default)
Since connie doesn't have a computer, let alone wifi so we can use our notebooks, I couldn't post from her house. Thank goodness for coffee shops!

we had a great stay in Katy with Pam and Dan! As we were leaving Wednesday a.m., Pam gave us a HotShot water heater for our tea, and pillows! Which, you will recall, are one of the things we forgot to pack. So now we have pillows.

The drive to Austin was straightforward enough - we don't need GPS for that one. We stopped at Mikeska's in Columbus for a quick bite to eat (and enough of a dose of rural Texas to remind us why we wouldn't want to live there).

To a large extent, who we see during the short amount of time we're in Austin is determined by who is willing to come to far south Austin. The RV has a mileage charge, as well as paying for gas (it's been getting between 11 and 12 mpg), and also, although it is small for an RV, there are still many places we won't even try parking (condo complex parking lots, for example). And as usual I've overestimated how much energy I might have - after a few days of driving, I needed to sleep till 11 a.m. And we can't stay in Austin longer - one of our stops is in Oakland, CA to visit my brother, and he and his family leave the next day on vacation, so if any of the trip got pushed back, we'd miss them. So, this is a whole bunch of excuses to say, I'm sorry, we are not going to be able to see everyone in Austin. Our range is pretty much from Connie's in Oak hill to the parkking lot in Westgate Mall (at Ben White & S. Lamar). Thank you so much to the people who have been willing to drive down here to get together! We've given the short tour of the RV (well, there really isn't a long tour one can give of a 19-foot RV) to Jerry & Kathy, and Susan & Scott. We got to see Anita and Dana for a few minutes, as they live near Westgate Mall and dropped over here for a bit just before I started this post. (Yes, they are close enough that it wouldn't have been any trouble to drive there, but remember I mentioned our unwillingness to tackle crowdede condo complex parking lots? Case in point. We'd never have made it through there to their condo.)

Tomorrow morning, we leave Austin and plan to get as far as Van Horn. There's a KOA there, so I should have wireless, and since there's not much else to do there, I probably will sit around playing Farm games on FB. The 21st century is certainly weirder than I ever thought it would be. None of the science fiction writers got it right, that we would be doing everything with our cell phones (including camera) and looking at Lolcats online - the power of the World Wide Web, devoted to lolcats and trading imaginary farm animals.

I need to mail a few things - postcards, etc. Next post Friday night!
bunrab: (schneider)
One of the nice things about Passover is that many kosher-for-Passover foods are low in salt, since some people are under the misapprehension that salt is a leavening agent. (It's not; it's a catalyst for yeast, but sugar is what the yeast actually eats to make it work, so if there's no yeast and sugar, then salt is not a problem. Anyway.) Obviously that's not true of everything - the sodium content in gefilte fish is ridiculous, for example. However, there are a great many unsalted matzoh and lots of cookies and cakes that don't have baking soda or baking powder in them. So I am cleared the neighborhood Safeway shelf of coconut macaroons, and bought some varieties of matzoh I've never seen before, like "sundried tomato, garlic and basil."

Sunday we'll go up to my sister's house near Philadelphia for Easter.

The joys of an eclectic upbringing.

Recent reading:
Nancy Kress, Nothing Human
Joan Hess, Malpractice in Maggody
anthology Crime Through Time II
Ed McBain, The Frumious Bandersnatch

Also re-read one of Sharyn McCrumb's Elizabeth McPherson series, just because it was there.

Finished one sock of the new pair I started the other day. Between Thursday's doctor's appointment and Friday's avoiding-doing-taxes moments, I got lots done! I did finish and mail the Federal taxes though. Still haven't even LOOKED at Maryland taxes.

Speaking of which, doesn't anybody besides me know about Certificate of Mailing? When I went into the post office at 6:15 (they close at 6:30) on Friday, I asked for a Certificate of Mailing, and the clerk told me that I was the first person all day to ask her for that for my IRS-addressed envelope, and she had had a LOT of them. Pretty much everyone wanted to send theirs registered or certified. She tried to tell them they don't need to spend that much, but apparently people don't listen. Maybe you-all will. If you don't want to drop your return in the mail with just regular postage, you can still get proof that you mailed it without going up to Certified Mail. A Certificate of Mailing, a/k/a Proof of Mailing slip costs only 95 cents, and proves that you handed your envelope addressed to the IRS over to the post office by the deadline. If the post office truck later runs off a bridge and into the river, and loses your return, the IRS can require you to send them another copy of all the forms, but they can NOT penalize you, because you did your legal part by getting it into the hands of the USPS by the deadline. So, all you Monday last-minuters, save yourself some money, and save the postal clerk some time, since the form is a lot simpler than the certified form and return receipt.

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