RNO1 - Day 16 - TD and HP!

Worlds are colliding as I write.....TLE was up an hour before me on Thanksgiving.....for me this is very disorienting.  I am used to having the 'place' to myself for an hour, or so, but there she was sitting in her recliner reading a book when I got up around  11 am.  I sometimes forget what a 'creature of habit' I am until I am reminded by something like this.  I think it took me a good hour to re-orient myself.  

One of the benefits of spending weeks in one place as we are now is the opportunity to spend quality time with friends and loved ones, and it is that one thing that has been the primary motivating factor for our last few sojourns.  

We headed over to the home of Chris, Cousin Lois' son, for Turkey Day (TD) dinner around 3 pm.....everyone was there....Uncle Bob, Aunt Jane, Lois, John, and Chris' kids, Bailey and Brady.  John, the chef of this clan, was responsible for most of the food we ate......the fare, in my opinion, was very non-traditional, but right up my alley.....our appetizer was chips with great salsa, and bean dip.  The star of the dinner was braised beef ribs that were so tender.....omg!

Back row from left to right: Lois, Aunt Jane, Uncle Bob, John, Bailey, 

Chris & Front row left to right: Moi and Brady

In all we spent 3 more hours with relatives who arefast  becoming good friends again.  Both Elaine and I are so grateful for the time we have been able to spend with then, and are excited that we still have three more weeks to get together a few more times.

Of course, there is always our next shift at RNO1 looming out there, and Thanksgiving day was no exception, but there was a wrinkle.....instead of our normal start time of 6 pm, we did not have to report for duty until 10 pm this day.  On top of that we get Holiday Pay (HP) which results in us getting paid for 10 hours even though we only worked 6.  After we got home from our holiday dinner we both took long naps, and then were in the car headed east to Fernley about 9 pm.  Our shortened shift passed quickly and we were on our way back home by 4:30 am.

I'm sure many of you have noticed the falling gas and diesel prices these past three months.  When we are rolling our wheels the cost of diesel is very important to us.  The lowest retail price we have paid for diesel in almost 3 years was in El Paso, TX the first month we were on the road back in February of 2012 at $3.59.  When I went to gas up the VW the other day I noted that the diesel price had fallen to $3.56 at the local Maverick station, and I have seen it as low as $3.49 at a Sinclair just down McCarran Blvd. south of I-80.   With a barrel of oil closing at just over $66/barrel today I would expect that within the next few weeks we may see diesel at under $3.00/gallon!  A drop of $1.00/gallon saves us $180 when we fill up our 180 gallon tank.....that is significant!

The weather continues to be much warmer these past few days.....when we got off work at 4:30 am it was 54 degrees........quite the contrast to a week ago when it was just 26 degrees at the same time.'

Thanks for stopping by!