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October 13, 2009, a Tuesday
Parker (K), Colorado, USA
— New tires on the RV, and an improved printing setup
Had my normal breakfast. Prepared images to print by combining either four 5x8-inch or two 8x12-inch prints on one sheet of 13x19-inch paper. Two of the images (below) will be new to the gallery. The bighorn sheep ram was photographed in Yellowstone National Park in March 2008, and the orange aspen was photographed near Aspen, Colorado, in September 2008. I printed the four sheets of Epson Ultra Premium Photo Paper Luster (Premium Luster) on the Epson Stylus Photo R2880 with no problems. Did some computer work. J left in the Jeep around 11:30 to go have lunch with G.


Had lunch around 12:40 of a Genoa salami and Swiss cheese sandwich on rye with Grey Poupon Country Dijon mustard with a glass of Coca Cola Classic, followed by an apple. We still haven't done any grocery shopping, so we were still out of bananas. I continued doing some computer work. J returned around 1:50.

I went outside around 2:10 to put some pipe insulation on the pipes leading to and from the water heater. (You may read more about the problem with those water pipes on my blog entry for October 10, 2009.) Unfortunately, the pipes aren't fully exposed so they can't be wrapped with insulation. They come out of a hole in the floor of the RV tangent with the wall of the hot water heater compartment, so I think the best way to insulate them is to hold some opened-up pipe insulation around the corner between the floor of the RV and the side of the hot water tank compartment. Unfortunately, I didn't have the appropriate parts to attach the pipe insulation that way.

I went to Home Depot to pick up some parts to attach the opened-up pipe insulation to a corner. The self checkout station didn't think I put an item into the bag, so I wasn't able to pay until a worker took over the transaction.

I returned to the RV around 3:05, too late to install the insulation today. We prepped the RV to move, then left around 3:40 with J in the Jeep and me following in the RV.

We went to Discount Tire in Parker to get five new tires for the RV. They had a great price on the Michelin LTX M/S LT225/75 R16 we needed.

We took the Jeep to the Kwik Wash in Parker for their mid-level automated wash that includes a manual pre-wash. Then we used their free vacuums to clean up the interior and did some detailing.

We returned to Discount Tire and J put ArmorAll on all of the plastic and vinyl on the Jeep. The Jeep was looking mighty fine when she was done.

We returned "home" in front of K's around 5:25. I leveled the RV then hooked up the electricity and blew a GFI (Ground Fault Interrupter) circuit in the house. :( Because K wasn't there at the time, I plugged into another outside outlet that was on a different circuit, and blew a GFI switch on that circuit too. Fortunately, the reset button for that circuit was on the outlet I was using, so I could reset it. After several tries, I turned on the inverter to clear out the power-bypass switch, and that let us plug in. The Xantrex Prosine 1000W inverter has a power bypass switch so that shore power can be returned directly from the inverter without using any battery power. However, when the RV is operating on just battery power with the inverter, the ground and neutral lines are connected. When I tried plugging into shore power with the inverter off, the power bypass switch was in a position where the ground and neutral lines were connected — a ground fault! :)

Had dinner of leftover J's Chicken Marsala with angel-hair pasta and green beans. It was still very tasty the second time around. :)

I left in the Jeep around 6:45 after cleaning off the inside of the windshield because something had fogged it up. I also cleaned some of the ArmorAll off of the steering wheel so I could hold onto it without applying a death grip.

I went to my storage unit to dig out the box for my Canon EOS 1Ds Mk II. I also got an approximately 20-foot (6m) USB extension cord from another box, and also picked up some other camera gear that I was planning to sell.

I returned to the RV around 8:30. I tried out the USB extension cord with my MacBook Pro in its normal location on my desk in the back office connected to the Epson Stylus Photo R2880 printer on the floor by the dinette, and it worked great — I'll no longer have to sit on the floor near the printer with the laptop on a dinette seat when I print. :) Then I printed out a sheet of self-adhesive labels for the prints I printed this morning. Had a slice of pecan pie leftover from dinner with SJ&DilK (J's "Son J" and "Daughter-in-law-K") on Sunday.