Saturday, May 3

Hi everyone, well, I thought I better update you on what's been happening with us. The last time I wrote, I mentioned Ron was going to work on the swamp coolers to get them running. Last Friday, he spent 7 1/2 hours on them. The front one went pretty well, but, of course, the back one didn't even want to run right. The first sign of trouble was when the float didn't work and the reservoir overflowed. And guess where it overflowed to? Right down into the bedroom...fortunately, it didn't get on the bed, but, it wasn't far away!! I had three buckets sitting around catching all the water. He did manage to finally get the float working properly and then the next thing was centering the fan squarely in the middle of the shroud so the blades wouldn't scrape the side. He finally got it right and we had both swamp coolers running well with cool air coming out. It was great....of course, it was short lived. Let me explain that statement. I can't remember if it was that same day or the next day, but, Ron walked over to the sink to fill up his glass with filtered water and it stopped flowing. We're both wondering what was going on and Ron went outside to check all the hoses. He did discover that a fuse had blown, so replaced it. But, he's thinking that the water pump isn't working like it should and it's brand new. So, he's going to call ShurFlo and see what's going on.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, he started putting in the new shower drain, which he has in now. He also had to put up additional walls for the shower, because of the shower becoming smaller than it originally was going to be. I forgot to take pictures of Ron working on the swamp coolers, it would have been interesting to see the water overflowing the reservoir, but, I wasn't up there and we didn't think about it. I could have taken a picture of the water coming down from the ceiling, but, at the moment it happened, that was the furthest thing from my mind. But, Ron did take pictures of the new shower drain and pipe going into the tank. He had to modify it somewhat from what it was and you will see what I'm talking about when you see the picture. I'll probably post those later today, after I get off work.

Thursday, we went to town to look at some more tile and we found some that we liked. Yes, we had picked out tile while we were in Yuma, but, we feel kind of weird ordering it from them, because we were going to have them install it and now we've found someone else to do the work for a lot less. We also found some carpet which is on sale, so Ron is going to order it now for the sale price, but, have it installed after the tile is in.

The weather has not been that bad, although last Monday was a real scorcher. But, I heard it was a scorcher for the entire southern California area, so we were not unique. I think we were tied with a lot of areas that got up into the triple digits and they weren't all in the desert! Now, we're back to temps in the low to mid 90's. It's slowly getting up there, but, it's so subtle, that we hardly notice it and when it does get cooler, (like in the low 80's), we think it's cold! I'll have to take pictures of our yard again, the grass is really getting thick and green and my flowers are doing well, too. We may be going out on the river on a co-worker's boat next week on one of our days off, so that will be fun. You'll probably see pictures of that, too. For any of you reading this who may be in our area at all this summer, we would welcome any and all visits and you can see for yourself how well the bus is coming along. Ron says we should be living in it by summers end, as he still has the propane system to do so we can cook on our stove, hot water for showers and have heat in the winter.