The highs and the lows.....

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

We've had a couple of interesting days. Yesterday we rode over to Spring Hill to visit an former co-worker of Stu's and his wife, Joey and Sharon. This is the guy that actually got Stu interested in the fire department. He had retired a while back and moved to Florida. It was a little over an hour's ride and the weather looked perfect.

We loaded up Sadie and headed off...enjoying the sunshine all the way. Sharon prepared a delicious lunch for us topped off with fresh strawberry shortcake. YUM! The day passed quickly and the conversation never slacked. So many memories and laughter shared. It was great.

Sadie enjoyed herself, playing with Joey and Sharon's older pups, Cujo (a little Chihuahua-Pomeranian mix) and Lulu (a little mini-Dachshund). Not that they played that much with her but she got her exercise following them around. LOL!

Today started out as chore day with Stu's phone call to Xantrex being first on the list. Yup, our replacement inverter bit the dust. We had a campground-wide power outage a couple of days ago...fired up the inverter. ERROR....grrrr.....

So after three phone calls and several diagnostic tests, it was determined that we needed to send this inverter back for repair. We'll give it one more try...if the third one goes, we'll be looking into a replacement.

While Stu was busy with this, I opened up our mail forwarding package. Inside was the usual pile of statements, magazines and anything we had ordered. One surprise...a thick envelope from the IRS. Gulp!!! Inside was a bill due for over $10k including penalties....eeep!!

Several phone calls and it was determined that we while we did owe, it was more in the range of under $100. Phew! Now to print all the documentation, get it to our accountant so she take care of this for us.

The third low of the day was finding out that the RV park we have booked for the 3rd-11th had been in the middle of the wildfires on the east coast of Florida. I called to find out if they were open and they felt that things would be back to normal by the time we get there. Based on the ongoing news reports, we plan to call again before we pull out of here.

But the day got better...we had dinner with friends Mike and Chris from Nova Scotia. We first met them in Sturgis last summer and were thrilled to find out they would be coming this way for a couple of weeks. They just got back from a week in Jamaica. They invited us over for a cookout...we spent the evening catching up to date and chatting about anything and everything. They will be here at Bee's RV Resort until March 10th and will be commuting over to Daytona area for Bike Week. We hope to meet up with them there as well as our other friends from Sturgis.

Tomorrow is our big de-ooze day....having been here for two months, we have a LOT of stuff that has oozed out of its storage spots. Time to get it all back in place. If we do move on Thursday, we have to be out by 11 am.

Here are a few final shots from Bee's, including one showing the dry lake bed as it appeared when we arrived and one showing our it looked after the deluge of rain that came down shortly after we arrived.


Till next time - keep on rollin',
Donna and Stu

17 comments:

  1. those look suspiciously like some of Judy's cranes?!!! are you sure you're in Florida??? lol

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  2. Whew...$100 owed to the IRS sounds a bit better than owing $10,000. Maybe that's their new plan? Tell everyone that they owe a bundle so that they are happy to pay the lesser amount? :)

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  3. It is always fun to see the fun people you have met on the road a second time. Sounds like y'all are having a great winter.

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  4. There's certainly a big diff between $10K and $100. I don't think the IRS knows what they are doing most of the time:(

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  5. @CarolK - You should sell that idea to the IRS!

    And man, finding out that a 'backup' piece of electronics doesn't work when you need it. That must have been frustrating.

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  6. That is certainly a big difference!!!

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  7. Yikes! That bill must have given you a jolt! Glad it worked out to something much more "reasonable".

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  8. What a scare that was.... 10K! I can't even imagine that. Those wildfires are always a pain... it happened to us last year in Canada. The park we reserved was so smohey we couldn't stay there. What fun getting together with friends...Have fun!!!
    Travel safe
    Donna

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  9. Oozing.....have to remember that one..it seems the longer you sit...the more you "ooze" LOL!

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  10. If I had opened that fat IRS envelope and seen that figure...McGuyver would have had to dial 911...Glad it's just a few less zeros than they said it was!! We used to spend 2 weeks every summer at Daytona Beach when the kids were little..One of our fav places..but I'm sure it has changed...Have fun...and don't lay those nice bikes down!

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  11. Even if the wildfires are no longer threatening the campground, the air quality in the area won't be good. Might be a good idea to cancel those plans unfortunately. Whatever you do, wherever you go-have fun!

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  12. We will be heading back to Bee's for our last stay there on the 13th, right after our Disney World adventure. Then we will be heading to Daytona for a car show, after bike week. As Jeff & Barbie said, be careful about the air quality, that can be really bad right after a major wildfire. Be safe...

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  13. Just HOW does this happen? It doesn't seem possible that you've been there for two months. Something about age & time flying by comes to mind... We still have about a month before de-oozing commences!

    Hope all continues well...miss ya!

    Renee

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  14. We got one of those IRS love notes last fall. Sure does raise the excitement level a bit :(

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  15. Gotta love the IRS...NOT! Glad it was not as bad as it could have been. Hope the coming week holds lots of fun for you.

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  16. Since Craig does our taxes himself, we would not have an accountant to send things off to. I'm glad it turned out to be around $100.

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