The inside story......

8:01 am - Thursday - March 19th - Wittmann, AZ - 49° F, 88% humidity, wind 2 mph out of the south by southeast.....partly cloudy today with a forecast high of 58° F.

Wednesday was cold, and began with threatening clouds, but it stayed that way for quite a while.  Nonetheless, I had predetermined to spend the day inside working on two projects.  One was to get the Villa passenger chair we installed to replace the original Flexsteel chair that came with the Newell.  The new Villa chair is a power chair which moves forward and backward under power, as well as tilts backward, and forward, has a power foot rest that raises, or lowers, and a reclining feature.  The Villa chair was gifted to us by our good friends Richard and Rhonda (Inverness, FL) last January when we were visiting them.  They had taken the Villa chair out of their Newell and replaced it with a newer model.  When I finished installing it we found that the reclining feature, and the foot rest feature were not functioning properly. To get at the drive motors, and screw drive rods I needed to remove 70 staples from the back of the chair to get access these items.....

.....I'm not kidding....there were 70 staples used to staple the back leather panel in place over a distance of 24".....crazy.....take the staple gun away from that guy!  Next up was to figure out which motors, and screw drive rods controlled these two features.....

......in the picture below is the screw drive that raises and lowers the foot rest......↴

.....in the next picture you can see the screw drive which controls the reclining feature.....↴

.....I sprayed some penetrating oil on the screw drives, and also where they enter the motor on each side.  Within minutes they began to function properly!  Only took 15 months to get to this project.  Now all the power functions in TLE's 'new' chair work.....

 In full recline mode.....foot rest raised, and back lowered

 Traveling position

 ....next up was to finish the install on the interrupt switch for the charger/converter.  While I was working on TLE's chair the things I ordered from Amazon to complete this project arrived....

.....I already had about 6' of Romex 3 wire electric wire, so I stripped about half the outer insulation off the Romex and removed the black and white wire.  Normally I would make it all black as this is the hot wire we are interrupting, but that would mean stripping all the insulation off the Romex and wasting it all.  I used the black wire to run from the breaker switch to the interrupt switch, and the white wire to run from the interrupt switch to the black wire connecting to the charger/converter.  It didn't take long before it was installed, and operational.....

.....it works as it should, and with the installation of the wall plate I was done for the day with projects.  With the deletion of these two projects from my 'TO DO' list, I am down to just 7 things left!

One of the projects I completed a couple of days ago, but forgot to report, was I called DirecTV to negotiate a lower monthly rate.  I am not a haggler by nature, but decided to see what would happen.  A few friends who have DirecTV have done this and had gotten substantial reductions of over 50% in their monthly payment.  I asked to be connected to the 'Customer Retention' department.  When I was connected to a CSR I advised him I was thinking about 'cutting the cord' and just start streaming my viewing content as my bill was way too high.  The CSR asked me what my 'ideal' monthly payment would be.....keep in mind my monthly bill was currently topping $130....I replied "I'm not sure what ideal is, or means, but I want to pay $40/month".  He kind of gasped, but said he would check to see what 'programs' might be available.  After a few seconds he came back and said "I can get your bill down to $69/month".....I replied "No, that's not good enough.  I've been a customer of DirecTV since 2004, and all I see is my bill going up and up".....a few seconds later he came back and said "I can get your bill down to $50/month" .....I let a few seconds pass before I responded "You've got a deal!".....it was that simple.  So, with a simple phone call I was able to save $1,000 over the next 12 months, and for us that is a lot of money!  I'm going to do the same thing for our XM/Sirrius Radio bill.  My friend Tom (with whom we are staying) got his bill with them down to $5/month from close to $40/month.....amazing!

Two other Amazon shipments arrived at the local Post Office, so I drove over about 2:30 pm to retrieve them.  One of the packages was a resupply of Datil Sauce (Dat'l Do It Pepper Sauce)....we fell in love with this sauce when we were in Cedar Key the first time back in 2012, and have been reordering it from a St. Augustine, FL source through Amazon since then.  In anticipation of our Alaska trip TLE ordered three bottles.  When I opened the box one of the bottles was broken.  I immediately contacted Amazon for a refund on the broken bottle, but they went me one better.....they refunded the entire $30 purchase price.....that was a nice gesture!

That was my Wednesday, and a good Wednesday it was......TLE are still asymptomatic, and still healthy.  She has lost about 6 lbs. on the Keto diet, and I about 4.5 lbs.  We are still talking about plan 'B' for this summer.....lots of time yet to change course.

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