March 2008

As you can see, I have changed the website around a little bit, so that we could give you the latest and greatest news around!

We were able to have a similar format on the March page like you see on the home page. Sasha had wanted it wider, so that you could see more from the pictures - so that we do not have to resize them as much. So the only thing that you should see is my words and the ads on the one side, and the navigation on the other side.

This month is going to be CRAZY! Almost every single day will have someone at the cabin camps, either coming in or leaving, plus we are trying to get packed for leaving Prince William Forest Park, and move to a private Campground. I have to pack stuff up first before I start the massive amount of cleaning the cabin - I want it to really shine. AND I am writing a seminar for the Mid-Atlantic Truck Camper Rally which goes from April 17th through April 20th. I am a trainer, so that is not a problem, but this is a new class for me, so just getting my thoughts onto paper has been a little difficult. Once it is on paper, fleshing it out will not be a problem. And of course, we are taking a vacation March 23rd to March 27th - real short, but needed.

You can check the Home Page as to why we are going down to Florida, main reason for me is to be with family and go to Disney World with my niece and nephew; main reason for Sasha is to get his motorcycle: a Suzuki VStrom 1000. Yikes we are getting close to the time.

March 8th: Saturday Night - At Sasha's Work
Well, you would think we would be doing fun things on a Saturday night RIGHT! No we are doing our taxes (yet again - but just checking them over one last time.) But I am working on the website posting and figuring out new things.

I decided I would rather have the expenses show for each month rather than by quarters. It just works so much better in a given month. We still have not yet decided if we want to show income. BUT I will tell you, got paid last month for Yahoo! Ads of a little over $50, yahoo! But that was from April 2007 to February 2008. I guess I have to get more ads on the site. I know others really get them up there, but with both Google and Yahoo, you can only have one or the other on the website, and I worry if they would have problems with other ads (like flashing ads from companies like Eastern Mountain Sports, Barnes & Noble, and other places.) Plus, I also hate having the flashing ads on the home page. So I probably will not.

I also tried out WordPress.  I'm not sure if I like it or not. I can not change the font, which I think is too small. I wanted to try this out to see about doing RSS Feeds and other things. So I might be going back and forth between the two websites. The other one is www.LauraNSasha.com.

March 10th: My Dad's Birthday - Happy Birthday Dad!
We had some new people come into the Cabin Camps late today.

March 12: Sasha stayed home from work today, called in sick - poor DH, he is definitely sick, I am staying far away from him. Thankfully, with two bedrooms in the cabin, I can sleep on a twin bed while he is in the main bedroom. This would be a little tough in the camper. Interesting but we did not get sick in the camper.

March 13: Campers left real early in the morning - not used to that. We are going today to get passports. Did not happen, as we were still sick - now I am sick as well. Why is it, when you have so much to do, that you get sick? Anyway, both of us are sick in bed, not going anywhere. I just checked out the group, they left it the cleanest I've seen in a long time. We also, in the afternoon, put the camper back on the Truck

Weekend March 14-16th: I'm still getting over the cold, Sasha went into work on the Friday, March 14th. We are getting things organized for leaving the camp, so putting food in boxes, putting books away, and figuring what needs to be given away and what we need to take. On Sunday, we got our passport pictures done at Rite-Aid. What a rip-off! for $7.99 they take your picture and give you 6 photos - you only need two WHY 6! It is the same photo! Anyway, the pics are done, we will go on Tuesday to get the passports. Also, for some reason, the people that were supposed to come this weekend, did not so we had the place to ourselves.

March 17th: Happy St. Patrick's Day! This week is going to be crazy, we have people checking in and out three times this week. Had a group come in on Monday - three hours earlier than they were supposed to, with no permit paperwork done. So I had to rush around getting everything done. Called up Sport & Health (the gym that we have been going to almost for a year) to make sure that we truly are cancelled and that we won't be charged another month. It seems to be the case. I'll check in April to make sure that is really the case.

March 18th: Daniel Miles Birthday - Happy Birthday Daniel! - I went into the office with Sasha, but first we went to Camping World to drop off the truck camper. Our heating unit of the AC (that they had installed) had stopped working last fall, and we wanted them to fix it. It was still under warranty (as it was less than a year old.) Let's just say, NEVER AGAIN! Never again will we go to Camping World for a big product like an AC unit. They BITE THE BIG ONE!!! Enough Said.

I also went to the banks to get my IRA money out of Citibank and into Department of Interior Federal Credit Union. With the Fed lowering interest rates today (went down another .75%) I wanted to get my IRA monies into a CD - granted, I knew it was not going to be as good as the beginning of the year, but still it is better than losing money in the stock market. The people at DOI FCU are EXCELLENT. If you volunteer for a National Park, you qualify to get an account at the credit union. It is a great deal.

Went to Book Club that evening. It is so nice to see the ladies, I haven't seen them in a bit of time. We had read the book The Handmaiden's Tale. OK That book was scary in a weird sort of way. I had read it back in the 1980's when it had come out. I will put it up on the right side here so you can see it on Amazon, but again, the best part of book club is seeing everyone, finding out how their month has gone, and see what book we will be reading next. It really recharges the batteries for the next month.

March 19th - The Long Day: We went back to Camping World to pick up the Truck Camper. They were not able to fix the AC unit as they did not have the heating unit part - which was definitely faulty. IT TOOK over an hour to get the paperwork stating that we were not going to be charged for the repair work. Like I stated before, NEVER AGAIN would we buy anything big from them. I will be taking their advertising off of our the website ASAP. I would never again suggest buying a big ticket item from them. I do not know if it is just this Camping World or the corporate ideology, but there is no point 

The group that checked in on the 17th did a horrible job on cleanup. They never finished cleaning up, and the person who checked in with me, who needs to check out with me, left the camp. It was a horrible experience, I just do not understand what some people think is clean. We are in National Historical Buildings, built in the 1930's and they should be cleaned up. Oh well. 

Then the people coming in that day, did not get to the camp UNTIL 10 PM! AND they asked for a 6:00 AM CHECK-OUT! People - WHAT in the WORLD are you DOING to ME!   I am not an early morning person, especially when I get in late the night before. But they had to be at Quantico by 6:15 AM, so that's why the early check out.

March 20th: Went into work with Sasha again, to get some things done. I had bought these high performance shorts for Sasha that I had to take back, they just did not fit. The sales lady at Dicks stated that they do not carry 3XL sizes for anything. I would think that there might be some larger sized guys that need stuff for sports. I guess it is best to just buy online. That way you know you will get the size you want.

I was going to print out our tickets for plane travel to Florida, but found out we can only do that 24 hours before the flight. So we will have to do the tickets on Saturday night. I did some work for a client of mine, Ted Collins, who is an awesome home inspector. He keeps having problems with his Dell computer, so I helped him out.

I also had to call yet another National Park to let them know that I could not work for them this season. In the fall of 2007, we thought that Sasha's job could be done remotely and so I had applied to a bunch of seasonal jobs on the Outer Banks of NC. We then found out that Sasha could NOT do remote work, so we had to be closer to his job. I then found out that Prince William Forest Park wanted to have some new people in next summer so I would have to find some else. Which started the mad dash for state parks and private campgrounds. In January I got Workamper News job newsletter and applied for a job in Northern Virginia. Got the job the next day. NOW the national parks are calling, and I am having to decline their most generous offers for a job. All of the jobs are a GS-05, Interpretive Ranger type jobs. It just breaks my heart to say no.

March 21st: Check out went smooth, even though it was FIVE Thirty in the MORNING! AGGGG! I will have to re-stock some stuff, but I will get Sasha off first and then do what needs to be done. The next group is coming in at 3 pm (although probably not checking in until 5 or 6 pm when the leader gets here.)

We will be getting ready for our Orlando trip. Sasha will be taking the old camera for pictures that he will take of his trip back up to VA (it sounds like a really cool trip) and I will be taking pictures of my family and Disney World.

March 23rd through March 27/28: Sasha and I went down to Florida for a few days, me until March 27 and Sasha until March 25. Sasha got a new motorcycle for commuting to work and so DROVE it back up to Prince William Forest Park. We will have pictures real soon. I, on the other hand, stayed down in Disney World with my folks, my sis and bro in law, and my niece and nephew. I flew into Dulles on March 27, checked people into the campground on March 28th, and will be checking them out on March 30th. We will be checking ourselves out of the park on March 31st.

Pictures coming soon. So Stay Tuned!

Expenses for the Month: Yikes but this was an expensive month, partly because we got a new motorbike for Sasha and took a trip down to Orlando, Florida: Me to see my family who were vacationing down there and Sasha to get his bike. We will have pictures soon, I just have one to show you:

I did not make this into a smaller picture because it was just so cool. It is funny, the parents' saying "You are getting a bike and taking it on a 1000 mile trip right off the bat? What are you thinking?" But he now has the experience to go on any road. He said he feels like he knocked out a year's worth of experience in a week. But what I like is that he made it home safely and he hardly spent any money on hotels and food coming back. I spent more than he did on food. 

As you can see, we have a few (ha ha) expenses. The food prices were not too bad, partly because I hardly bought any food this month as we tried to eat up the food in the freezer and refrigerator. However, the Meals to Go was high because both of us were traveling this month.

We have a few new categories starting this month, we have separated out gas for the car and for the motorcycle. You can also see the purchase price of the motorcycle. On Sasha's Trip page, we will explain all about the bike.  We also paid for insurance for 6 months, which included the motorcycle for the next six months.  We did not use the truck hardly at all this month, putting the camper on the truck before we went down to Florida. (I had a slight fear that Sasha might get hurt on the trip, so if the camper was already on the truck, I would be able to move it. - Irrational? Yes, but better safe than sorry.)

Communication was up a little because we sent Sasha's gear down to Florida to the seller's house so that we would not have to lug it on the plane. The internet went up this month, so we are quite glad that we cancelled the dial-up. I'm glad we had it, but I can't wait for higher speeds.

Our recreation went up because of going to Florida, and there is a new category called Toys Gear. This has to do with the ATV, Dirt Bike and now Motorcycle. We also got our Passports and put those expenses under Books. We put motels that Sasha stayed at under Fun Stuff because it was fun for Sasha to go to Florida.

Check out Sasha's Trip: Shorter than he would have liked but still really cool!

Check out Next Month: April, Living in a Private Campground.

(OMG - I have to now change all forums' addresses, as we no longer live in a National Park!)