It was 20°F (-7°C) when we got out of bed around 8:20. I had my normal breakfast and finished a blog entry. Then I started to look at macerators online. Macerators in this context are used to chop up our black tank waste so we can empty our tanks without a dump station. After our black tank waste goes through a macerator, it can be pumped through a regular 3/4-inch hose for up to 50 ft (15m) and into a regular household drain, preferably a toilet or clothes washer drain. We had talked about getting one before, but didn't think we would use one much. Well, now that we're driving about 20 mi (32 km) one way to dump, it makes sense to get a macerator so we can empty our tanks in the neighborhood. We had narrowed down the choice of macerators to the Flojet Macerator Pump because it's easy to use when needed and not permanently attached to the RV plumbing. I spent a lot of time looking at 3/4-inch (19mm) hoses, and briefly considered 1-inch (25mm) hoses because the larger the diameter, the easier it is to pump the waste a longer distance. I decided to go with the 3/4-inch (19mm) hose because it's a lot cheaper, weighs less, and takes up less space than a 1-inch (25mm) hose of the same length. I almost settled on a Gilmour 8-Ply Flexogen 3/4-inch by 50 foot hose because it has good kink resistance and stays flexible in low temperatures. I decided to get an American Specialty RT50 Handi-Hose which also has a 3/4-inch inside diameter but rolls flat on the included reel. It'll be a lot lighter and take up less space than the Gilmour Flexogen which is important. I ordered a Flojet Macerator Pump and some other plumbing items from Tweetys.com, and we'll pick up a Handi-Hose at Camping World.

J had left around 11:30, as I was still working on the macerator project, to go pick up G (J's son's mother-in-law) to go out for lunch.

I had a late lunch of ham and Swiss on rye around 12:45 after I finished the macerator project. Then I emailed a photographer friend to give him some recommendations for image storage, i.e. hard drives. Then I photographed some items to sell on eBay: Canon EF 2x II Tele-Extender, Lee Filters P Series .6 ND Grad, and a vintage Chrome Kinegon Travel Tripod. I haven't used the 2x Tele-Extender much at all since switching to digital capture in late 2004. The Lee ND filter is for a Cokin P holder (it's 84x120mm), and now that I have a 4-inch (100x150mm) filter for my Lee Foundation Kit, I no longer need the smaller P-sized filter. The tripod used to be my grandfather's, and I used it on occasion to hold an off-camera flash. Now that I have some real light stands that are much sturdier, there's no sense carrying the toy tripod around.

J returned around 3:30 after babysitting the grandkids at McDonalds. J's father had given me some coupons for free items at McDonalds, and the grandkids enjoyed the ice cream and apple dippers. J brought back the package with the Dyson accessories, and I excitedly opened it up. I was disappointed that the Multi-Angle Brush doesn't bend quite like I thought it would, and to make matter worse, none of the accessories fit our DC24! :( There's an adaptor that mounts on the hose side of the accessories to let them be used for various Dyson models, and the accessories we bought came with adaptors for some other model. :( I went online to see where to get the right adaptor, and I think Dyson is our best bet. Then I used Apple's Disk Utility to change the partition scheme on my external 1.5TB hard drive. I was able to keep the existing 1TB partition intact and then create a new 500GB partition by deleting the previous two 250GB partitions. If I had known how Disk Utility could modify partitions, I could have deleted just one of the old 250GB partitions and then expanded the other 250GB partition to be 500GB. J made some banana bread and I processed the images of the items I'm going to sell on eBay.

We had dinner at 6:10 of leftover Carino's lasagna and bread with some oil and vinegar and some of J's Four Bean Salad.

After dinner, I posted the ads on eBay, then got some things ready to take to my storage unit. I had a slice of still-warm banana bread that was most-tasty. I left around 8:25 in the Jeep by myself.

I went to my storage unit and dropped off the backup hard drives and my old canister vacuum cleaner. On the way back, I threw away some broken-down shipping boxes and stopped to fill up the Jeep with gas at a Loaf N Jug at $2.239/gal by using our 10¢/gal discount for our King Soopers (Kroger) club card.

I returned to the RV around 9:15. I had some Asbach Uralt while watching an episode of Desperate Housewives on DVD with J. I placed an order at Cabela's for two sets of Cabela's Medium-Weight Polartec® Power Dry Crew - Tall and Cabela's Medium-Weight Polartec® Power Dry Drawer - Tall and a Cabela's Outfitter Series™ Long-Sleeve Plaid Care-Free Cotton Shirt - Tall. The Medium-Weight Drawers were still backordered, but there's a good chance I'll get them soon enough.