Little critters and pretty trees

I have a correction from last week. Our fresh water tanks only hold 160 litres and not 250. It was still a nice amount of water though. 

Because it has been cloudy the batteries haven't been fully charged for a while, Eddie decided to put the charger on,only to find it wasn't working. Oh no! A little bit of wailing and teeth gnashing ensued. It turned out he hadn't connected the earth wire when he was re assembling after the wall repair. Whew!

That was the most exciting thing that has happened all week.

Eddie has been busy creating shelves to put our little friends on. From top to bottom they are Cecil the lion, Harvey Oswald Grainger (HOG), Bronski Bear and Lost Bear. The one on its own on the other wall is Canada. I bought Cecil around about the same time as the brave dentist from America shot an almost tame lion, like he was some sort of hero; We got Harvey when we had a Harley; Bronski was given to Eddie by our daughter when he had leukemia in 1994. I am not sure why he is called Bronski. It was just the name Eddie thought of when he saw him; I found Lost Bear one day when I was biking to work and he was lying on the side of the road, looking quite forlorn. How could I not pick him up. Canada was given to us by a Canadian girl we had boarding with us many years ago. Eddie used to call her Canada as a bit of a nick name. He is a bald eagle

Cecil, Harvey, Bronski and Lost Bear

Canada

We still have Browning of course. He sits on a shelf beside the printer. His companion is a soft toy blood drop that I got one day when I was giving blood. I have asked that one of the shelves is moved so it looks more balanced (and Canada isn't on his own ha ha)

Eddie has also re organized the batteries in the front locker, so that there is more room and our Engel freezer is in there now. He made new batteries covers and that is where the little shelves came from as he had some left over wood.

The sides of the van are almost polished. He still has some of the slide out wall to do. We have had some gloomy days, so the wall has been too damp to polish. Very typical Waikato days with foggy mornings and not a lot of sun through the day.

The driveway is looking very pretty at the moment with the trees all changing colour. 

We have rain!

We actually had rain over night, which was nice. 

Eddie put the pipe into the water tank in anticipation of rain and the tank is full this morning. It was about 1/3 full before the rain. I think it holds 250 litres so that was a lot of rain.

Eddie has nearly finished polishing the caravan. He just has the wall with the slide outs to do. Because it is raining today he is giving that a rest today. There is a big radio speaker in the ceiling that has never worked, so that is his mission today.

As I write this, he has completed that mission, so I am not sure what he is going to do now. I am sure he will find something to do to pass the day.

The days go by quite well. One minute I am doing the breakfast dishes and the next it is tea time. We have slipped into retirement mode, with out the beach walks and the fishing.

Yesterday I hatched, matched and dispatched one of my Great Grandma Hale's sisters . I even remarried her husband after she died. I was really looking for Matilda's birth certificate to order, but she was either not registered or it hasn't been put on line. There are errors in the records. All her siblings have a certificate. Sigh.

We have a virtual queue at the supermarket now. You txt them and they let you know when you can go in. That way we wait in our car and not out in the weather. I will try it tomorrow morning. I am going to try and go early. I have got out of the habit of hurrying in the morning, so that plan might be a fail.

Not much else to tell you all today. I hope you are all taking care of yourselves and keeping safe.

A little news for today

Well the days are merging into one another now. I do believe it is Thursday today. The long weekend, we are all normally hanging out for is apon us, but I don't suppose it is going to make a lot of difference this year. I am glad the shop assistants are getting a break tomorrow.

We have actually had some rain today and yesterday. Eddie has rigged up a pipe from our roof to our water tank to collect the rain water. He has a barrel set up on the other side to collect it too.

Eddie  polished the door today. It is lovely and smooth to the touch. He is making progress around the van. I had to go and buy more polish yesterday. Luckily they had some at the garage down the road.

Today's  job is cleaning up the sealant in the shower. It was rather black and yukky looking. The glass part of the shower lifted off really easily, so Eddie is able to clean off all the old seal and start again with new.

I have discovered it is harder to get up to 10,000 steps a day when my main hobbies are genealogy, embroidery and learning a language. Not a lot of movement with any of those. I did go for a good walk this morning, so I might make it today for a change.

Does anyone know what day it is?

Well here we are at day something. I am having trouble remembering what day it is, let alone what lock down day it is.

The weather continues to be sunny, which is good for us all locked down and standing out in queues at the supermarket, but not so good for the farmers.

The inside is all done now and it looks lovely. We are very happy with the result. Eddie has begun to cut and polish the outside. He did the front yesterday. He put the step ladder into the tray of the truck to reach the top. It took some stretching, but he got it done. By the time he has finished we will be a shiny white thing on the road. As long as we don't cause accidents with our reflection all will be good.

I have been doing some genealogy and found the military records for Eddie's 2 x great grandfather, Richard Charman. The character description on his discharge wasn't very complimentary. It said he had been entered into the Regimental Defaulters book 5 times, but he hadn't been court martialed. I couldn't read why he had been entered into the book as the writing wasn't easy to decipher. He didn't get any good conduct medals either. No surprises there then. I remember  Eddie's father saying his mother had told him that her father wasn't a very nice man.

That's about it today. Not much to report when you don't go anywhere!