What the Bissel?

7:37 am - Thursday - November 29th - Campbellsville, KY - 34º F (feels like 28º F), 72% humidity, wind 8 mph out of the south by southeast.......cloudy today with a forecast high of 46º F (much better than yesterday!).  Slept until after 7 am........it is so nice to be home when the sun rises.....

Just after I snapped this picture it began to sprinkle....and now it is raining once again

....we tried to sleep in Wednesday, but were wide awake at 5:30 am....we usually get up (on work days) at 4 am, so technically I guess 5:30 am is 'sleeping in', but it doesn't feel like it.  To me sleeping in involves sun coming through the windows of your home, not getting up when it is still quite dark.  It is the little things like that which make your life a little better on your 'off' days.

When I first got up Wednesday it was about 19º F, but it felt like single digits.  It was bitter cold, so the outdoor activity options narrowed considerably down to zero.  Wednesday is almost always 'black tank' day for us here at Heartland Campground, and since the forecast calls for rain Thursday I needed to do the deed Wednesday.  Around 11 am I set out to tackle the task and quickly found out that my the residual water in my tank flushing hose was frozen, thereby rendering it useless for the flushing task. Fortunately I carry extra hoses.....I think maybe too many extra hoses......so I retrieved one of those from the trailer and set about the task of dumping and flushing our black tank.  It takes three times filling it half full of fresh water before the water coming out is once again 'clear'.  Clear is a relative term, of course, but for the purposes of water coming out of a black tank 'clear' is good enough.  I've tried filling the tank completely full with flushing water before dumping it, but it still takes three times, so to conserve water I only fill it half full now and get the same good results. 

I was finished with the task about 11:30 am at which time I retrieved TLE's inside vacuum to take it apart to clean the fan.  Over the 7, or 8 years we have had that vacuum hair has accumulated on in and around the fan housing reducing the effectiveness of the vacuum.  I had it apart and cleaned in about 10 minutes, but discovered that one of the  screw anchors (there are 7 of them) had broken.  When I went inside to retrieve my LockTite super glue I found it had bitten the dust after 4 years.  I like LockTite because it does last so long, unlike other super glues.  So a trip to Lowe's was in order to complete the repair of the vacuum.  TLE needed to do some grocery shopping, and we needed to fill the VW gas tank......it's been almost 6 weeks since we filled the tank!  We get gas credits from Kroger each time we shop, and we had accumulated a 30 cent per gallon gas credit which needed to be used before the end of November.  We use Premium Unleaded gas in the VW Beetle (factory recommendation), and have been paying either just under, or just over $3/gallon.  With the recent collapse of the world oil market (crude oil is down to $50/barrel now from a high in the mid 70's) it is now much cheaper, and with the 30 cent per gallon credit our fuel only cost us $2.15 per gallon for 10 gallons.

We were back home a little after 2:30 pm, and after transferring the groceries from the Beetle to the Newell I went out to the trailer to finish fixing the vacuum.....

The Bissel Feather Weight vacuum all together and ready for use once again

.....I had the broken screw anchor glued and fixed in no time, then reassembled the Bissel and returned it to TLE.  This Bissel also had an long extension handle so it may be used as an 'upright'.....

The extension handle for the Bissel

.....TLE uses this for doing quick vacuum jobs, but for the really deep cleaning we bring in my ShopVac from the trailer.

After fixing the vacuum I headed back inside (it never got above 31º F all day) to the comfort of the warm interior of the Newell.  There were at least two naps taken as the day wound down to a close.  We streamed the two hour 'Survivor' at 8pm via our ROKU TV, and were in bed a little after 10 pm.  A very relaxing 1st day off work!

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