September 2009 - The Season of the Bugs!

Welcome to September, now stay in the Camper - Bug Season is Here!

We had lots of rain in September, which meant lots of bugs - especially mosquitoes, so much so that it was hard to have any kind of enjoyment outside of the camper. which is really too bad, because the weather was OK, not too bad. But the bugs were being so bad that I started wearing pants to work, as I did not want to get eaten ALIVE - nor does Sasha. So for a while we were prisoners in our camper, until we discovered that we could go to the library to give our Verizon card a little rest.

Expenses: Hopefully not too bad. The only reason that it is high this month was because of the hitch, we are getting a Fifth - Wheel RV next month and we have started the buying of things now, so that October will not seem so bad. Yeah, right!  But the normal expenses were less than $1000 for the month, it is just that the hitch ended up costing $2775. So really the cost of living was $859.19 - an extremely frugal month for the both of us.

It seems we still spent a bit of money on things, but again always necessary things. The food costs around here are high, both in groceries and in eating out meals. So we are hoping next month that we will spend less than $300 in food & household & provisions, and less than $100 in Meals to Go. We shall see. -UNBELIEVABLE - we did it this month, got down below $300 in groceries, and below $100 in eating out! Only because I put the fear of God into Sasha (who, by the way, does most of the grocery shopping since I am working more days than him) to not go over the amount this month, just to see if we could. Well, we could do it, it worked and what we will try to do for the next couple of weeks in October, is eat out of our provisions, to get the weight down before we drive out west. 

We did go out to eat a couple of times - first time was at McDonalds as we were starving and needed some extra non-nourishment, we were headed up to visit my parents in Williamsburg. So we stopped there first and got some cheeseburgers for the road. Haven't had fast food for so long it was weird having it then. Ultimately we got up to Williamsburg, the last of the three day weekends that I would have. It was Labor Day weekend (although I would work on Labor Day, I was off on the Friday before) and we would see the niece and nephew as well as my sis and brother-in-law. So a good weekend was planned.

I must say thank you to my parents for treating us to Busch Gardens. I do not think we would have gone there if not for the kids and parents wanting to go. It is just amazing to see how much they try to fleece someone out of their money. You could say that there was no recession as far as I could tell, at Busch Gardens. Very much the spend spend spend going on with very few doing the cheap way out. (Such as bringing your own lunches and eating at their picnic tables - they did not look used at all!)

They did search the bags for stuff, I guess they were worried about people bringing in food and drink. We did not even bring in our own water, as containers were not allowed. At least, I must say that the no smoking allowed was a good thing. We went on as many rides as we could - the ones that I was not so scared to go on - long lines understandable - that is just the way of amusement parks to begin with.

It was fun with the kids - seeing the park through their eyes, but it is interesting, both did not have the kind of stamina I would have expected. They were ready to go after only a couple of rides and wanted to then go back home. I think there was a lot of walking for the little amount of rides, but that is the way it goes sometimes. Of course, our legs are a bit longer than theirs, and when walking around a bit, sometimes you get tired.

The kids slept over their "Nana and Grandpop's" house with us too, so that was fun. Then my sister and brother-in-law came over that morning to do a brunch sort of thing and it was fun. All in all a great weekend. Unfortunately, that is going to be it for a while.

We went out to eat twice more - once when we went to Ocracoke - went to the beach - that glorious beach and went for a walk on the beach, it truly is different from the Hatteras Island beach, no one around and lots of cool shells, and went to Howard's Pub. A nice enough place for the fact that it is in a resort area. The prices are very expensive.

The second time I went out by myself - well, it was with other rangers, to say good-bye to another set of volunteers. The volunteers did their 6 weeks and then go. I can't say I blame them - for 32 hours EACH person, they get a full hook-up site in a bug-infested marine forest. You also get laundry, but they expect you to really WORK. Most of the volunteers are Seniors, and while they are in shape, you are still on your feet for around 8 hours a day. It is a lot to ask of them, as well as asking them to take their lunch at 2 pm-I know I do not like that - and they do it every DAY! They do all of the work - grunt work, with none of the perks like doing a program. So I can understand doing the minimum amount (the 6 weeks), work 4 days and have three days off to do other stuff.

After an exhaustive search for a camper that we really like, Sasha has found us a new rig. It is a Fifth Wheel - in October, I will have pictures of our new rig. But since the new rig does not sit inside the bed of the truck like what we have now, we had to get ourselves a Hitch. The one that Sasha got for us, he had it shipped here. We have it now and once we get the transaction taken care of in October, we will have hitch installed and we will be towing a Toy Hauler Fifth Wheel! Our Camper and trailer will go to a very nice man in Post Falls, Idaho.

This month we went over the Verizon's 5 GB by about 300 MB! Yet it almost cost us as much as another 5 GB! So sad, I really hate the overcharging that they do, but at least we can get internet when needed. Of course, it will be interesting once we are out west, will Verizon be as good out there?

Sasha had an update on his iTouch and so we got the upgrade, as well as me sending out an application for Moab area. Unfortunately, I did not get the job, but I will start applying once we are on the road, no sense in doing it now. I did not get a winter job, so maybe we will see where we are this winter, and volunteer somewhere. We will keep everyone posted.

No major reports on the health, we were healthy this month. Our insurance is still about 1/3 of our monthly expenses.

I have started to play a new game, it is called Free Farm Game (not a really good name for the game) but still an extremely addictive, highly specialized, strategy game. It combines growing stuff with making things out of the stuff grown, and it really is just getting its feet off of the ground.  I have been playing that game more than the games on Facebook - it is just so much better. If you do decide to go there, please put my ljevtich farm name in, I have become an affiliate of them. They are that good!

Check out October, The beginning for our ROAD TRIP WEST for a new rig!