July 8 & 9 Another Week Winding Down

July 8 – It was a long and tiring day. Once I got to the entrance station I started getting a real toothache. I’ve had some twinges for a week or so but was hoping it would stall off til we got home to my regular dentist. I called my dentist but he’s out camping in the woods someplace. Since he’s from Georgia I thought he might have a dentist friend here to refer me to. One of the rangers was going to the dentist today and recommended his dentist, so I called and they are going to let me know if they have a cancellation for Monday or Tuesday. They do accept our insurance and are just 2 islands over where the Wal-Mart is, so it’s pretty convenient, that is, if they can get me in. They are the #2 rated dental office in Savannah, so they must be pretty good. So I used some ibuprophen and aspirin to get through the day.

Ranger Patty received word that she finally got approval for her trip to England for a seminar that she applied for and was chosen but the Park Service was dragging its feet getting her travel arrangements and paperwork approved. She leaves tomorrow and actually most of the employees, as well as us volunteers, are joyful that she will be gone for 10 days. She has to be one of the moodiest people ever and it changes in minutes. No one can figure what triggers her but she gets nasty. I think she’s bi-polar.

Tonight was fish night. Bill was not excited but he likes tilapia about the best of any fish so I did lemon pepper panko on it and baked it and it was nice and flaky. I made some risotto with some leftover broccoli in it and asiago cheese. Yum! Then a nice salad. By then my tooth was hurting although I didn’t chew on that side at all. I didn’t feel all that good and was super tired so totally unlike me, I went to bed at 9:30.

July 9- Last workday of the week! I love this day. I slept pretty good and didn’t have any trouble with the tooth during the night. Even had my fruit and ham-cheese toast with no trouble but then the tooth woke up by the time I got to the fort. I put 2 aspirin on it and that seems to tame it for a while. We had a severe shortage of staff today. Two are normally off on Saturday, 1 is on vacation, 1 asked for the day off, 1 called in sick and Patty is now off for her trip, so we had to rob Peter to pay Paul to get lunches covered for the booth and the VC today.

The dentist office was able to get me an apt for Monday until she found out the problem is a molar and they don’t do root canals on molars there so they are going to see about getting me into an endodontist on Monday. Drats!

I had to close the booth today. My money count was right so I just put it all in the bag and headed for the VC to finish the paperwork as it was making some loud thundering north of us and I didn’t want to get caught in the rain in the golf cart. We had a slight discrepancy in the Senior passes sold. I sold 4 but apparently 2 of them did not pick them up in the VC. I described one family as I had told them we had a wheelchair available if they needed it and they borrowed it but didn’t pick up the pass. So I guess they will show me over for the day. I forgot to take the tape out of the register so Bill drove me out in the truck to get it and once I took it in we were headed home. It was late for us, after 6. Bill took Xena out and I changed clothes and we went to Tybee for dinner at the Sundae Café. It’s been written up and was highly recommended. It’s a small place in a strip plaza but very nice with white tablecloths and the waiters all in black. They were booked with reservations but we could order dinner at the bar, which ended up being the case for several other couples. Rather nuvo cuisine.

The prices would have been fine except my crab cakes were overcooked. You should not have to cut a crab cake with a knife. They did some with a nice tomato preserve relish and the low country risotto was excellent as were my mixed veggies. The bread with herbed olive oil was really tasty. The portions were perfect so there were no leftovers to take home. My tooth acted up a bit when I started eating the hot food but I quickly became more careful and ate really slow.

When we left it was raining a bit and we were tired and ready to get home.

July 7 - Huey but no Dewey or Louie

Huey

There was a little confusion this morning as there were two volunteers scheduled for the Entrance Station this morning.  Since I got there first, Patty sent me on up.  The other lady never did show up so we’re not sure what the story is there. I made my first “big” mistake on the register first thing as I was trying to hurry to take care of the first visitor and printed out the wrong totals for the start of the day and realized if after I rang up the couple and went to list my starting numbers on the balance sheet for the day.  Crap!  I hate making careless mistakes.  So I had to fess up to Patty and I don’t think this has ever happened and she told me to write down the number on the second tape, so when I traded off at lunchtime I was off the $10.  Poop!

They guys back on the ground

Nancy, the school teacher ranger, came out with me for about 1 ½ hours this morning to get better trained in the booth.  We ran out of tape on one side of the register and I put in a new roll and it wouldn’t print.  I tried every button, looked for the manual, put the tape in 3 –4 time but it still wouldn’t print.  I was dreading calling in to Patty to tell her.  But I did and she came out and couldn’t get it to work either.  She ended up calling Ron, our supervisor, who figured out we were using regular paper and it needed to be thermal paper.  For a while we had to write receipts by hand and they gave us the last roll of paper from the register inside so we could at least finish out the day til someone could go to Staples and get the right kind. 

Huey on the ground when the soldier let me photo him

I spent the afternoon in the VC and Nancy was there too, so we kinda took turns on the register there and she did other ranger stuff.  I had taken in the loaves of banana nut bread and zucchini bread that everyone enjoyed and she wants the recipes.  Will have to look up the one I used from on line for the zucchini and write it down for her tomorrow.  Patty let Bill and I leave 10 minutes early and as we pulled out of the parking lot I saw a big Huey helicopter.  It’s the kind that transports people and cargo and it looked like it was going to cross the island.  When we got to the maintenance shed near where we live, it started coming down to land behind the administration building, right across from our area.  Bill stopped and I took a couple of photos on my phone, then when it’s blades slowed down we drove on around it.  I ran in and got the video and still cameras and started taking photos.  It was doing rescue training in the Savannah river right where we were, so we went out to the river to watch.  It would drop guys in the river and they had to swim to rafts and get the rafts together in one spot, then the helicopter would hover over and drop a line and 7 guys would be picked up and then it flew back by us and would lower and let them down on the ground.  It was spectacular to watch.  Such precision.  It was super windy too.  Man, I was glad I had sunglasses on as it blasted us.  It blew limbs off the trees too.  They did the same routine 5 –6 times.  We had gone in to eat and thought they were done when we took Xena out to walk but they landed again.  Bill took Xena inside and I was standing in front of the RV taking photos and they saw me and one of the pilots got out and posed along the outside of the helicopter for me.  Then I waved to let him know I got it. So cool!

Then Bill and I went to town to get some pictures printed at Walgreens, and to Ace for bird seed and Publix for a few things.  When we got back there was a truck of white guys parked on the entry side of the bridge so we stopped a few feet out so they could get out but they didn’t move.  Then one of the guys came over and asked it we had access to the gate.  Well, they were the guys from the Army who were in the water and they thought the gate was stuck in the open position.  Bill told them to drive further out and let us in and we’d see if us going in would trip it to come down.  If not, I had a phone number for Ron, our supervisor, that I’d call and see what should be done.  We think they just didn’t pull forward enough because once we pulled in past the pass box, it was only a few second and it closed.  So, we got home in time for Bill to watch his show and me to download the helicopter photos and fold the laundry.

This was a super ending for my day!

July 6 - Oops! Banged Up and Bruised

When I got up I dreaded starting a new work week and the day pretty much went down hill from there.  No problems at home or getting to work on time, but when I got my bank bag out of the safe and counted it, they only gave me $20’s and $10’s to work with.  Since I only get $100 and everything is multiples of 5’s I normally have all 5’s.  I told the ranger in charge that I could not manage without any $5’s.  She told me to go to the bank for change since the bookstore didn’t have any that I could have either.  So I drove to Tybee to the bank and they wouldn’t give me a lousy $100 of 5’s because neither me nor Ft. Pulaski was a customer.   I could not believe it.  So I called Bill on the way back to see if they wanted me to open and use the 2 $5’s in my wallet while someone went to another bank or for me to go.  He said he’d ask and call me.  So I pulled in at the booth and waited and finally one of the rangers showed up with $5’s she got from the bookstore.

Re-creation of break in

So I was rushing to get the booth open since I was about 20 minutes late.   I always leave my keys on the counter there and take my safety cones and stop sign out and put them in place.  Well today the wind blew the door shut and there I was, locked out of the truck, the building, with no phone and no one coming or going.  I used a few choice words while I thought about whether I should wait for someone or to walk the half mile to the visitor center.  Then I remembered I had unlocked the window of the drive thru.  New problem:  I could reach the phone but didn’t know the number to call and could not see the bulletin board.  I was not tall enough or strong enough to hike my fat butt up and through the window.  Time to rethink my plan.  I walked around again and found one of the landscape rocks that was kinda big and set it on end and used it for a toe hold and then I managed to somehow hike up and grab the counter and the chair and pull myself in.  Thank God no one came or went when my butt was hanging out the window.  I knew immediately I was going to have some nasty bruising on my left leg and when I got home I had 3 big ones on my thigh and a swollen bruise on my left forearm.  It was kinda funny once I got back in and the panic was over.  I won’t leave my keys inside again, that’s for sure.

Later I heard a siren sound off from somewhere, and then Bill called to tell me it was the weather siren and was because of severe storms coming or a tornado and that we’d need to put the awning in at lunchtime.  Geez, all we needed would be a bad storm.  I only had the morning in the entrance today so after lunch we were both in the VC.  It was pretty slow and kinda boring.  I did finish the fort’s library book I was reading and got to visit some with Ian, one of our favorite rangers.  Well, at least there was no storm, so the day wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

For dinner I had leftover spaghetti and Bill had a brat, leftover potato salad and we both had salads.  Made lots of room in the fridge.  Bill wanted me to make banana bread with the bananas we just got that weren’t good so I made 2 loaves and also used one of the big zucchini from Jeff to make 3 loaves of zucchini bread while Bill walked Xena and did the dishes.  I will take 3 loaves to work tomorrow.  They will miss us when we’re gone!

July 5 - Dolphin Day

On the dolphin boat

The plan was to do some sightseeing today but first we found out the lighthouse is closed on Tuesday, so we changed plans and headed out to Skidaway State Park to check it out in general and in the event we want to come back to camp there.  It’s a pretty large park and has lots of pavilions for family/group gatherings.  There are 87 camp sites that they say will accommodate big rigs, but we drove around and there is no way we could get into all of them.  They are all pull thrus but the drives are curved and some are narrow with trees.  We do think we could camp in some but not all.

We talked about going to Wormsloe Historic Site but since we ended up needing to go in a different direction in order to check on my laptop we decided not to back track, so might go some other day.  It’s not as far out as the park was.  We think we might have been before but nothing was really looking familiar along the way.

They wanted me to sign for my laptop at no charge but I told them I was not leaving with it until I tried it out as I didn’t think they fixed if they could never get it to do what it was doing.  So I sat on the couch and started doing email and skyping and it went black, 3 times as a matter of fact, so the tech and the owner were both checking this and that and the tech came to the conclusion that it was the power switch shorting out, so I guess he’s going to check on that and we left Dell for another week.

The camera crew

Next stop was Best Buy to check on why they didn’t offer an extended warranty on the netbook.  We did get it taken care of and bought an SD card for the video camera for times when we fill the internal card and need more space til we can download the videos.  By then we were both getting hungry and the Sweet Potatoes was not far and we agreed to go there.  I had jerked chicken salad with a black eye pea salsa.  It was so good.  Bill had a meatloaf sandwich.  Now why would he do that when we have a huge chunk of meatloaf left in the fridge that he’s got to eat all week.  I guess he REALLY likes meatloaf.

Last stop was Super Wal-Mart for groceries.  It was there in the parking lot that we sat and listened live to the verdict reading of Casey Anthony and we were both shocked and appalled at the verdict.  We both understand that you might not be 100% convinced of reasonable doubt in the murder and manslaughter charges, but the neglect charge!  How could anyone not think she was neglectful when she either didn’t know where the child was or what had happened to her for 30 days before speaking up?  She’ll end up walking with timed served for the charges of lying.  Big frickin’ deal!  She’s going to end up making millions of dollars for her story at the public’s expense for murdering that child.

So time to move on!  Once we put the groceries away I called Mike’s Dolphin Tours and booked us for the 7:00 outing tonight.  So we had leftovers for dinner and left to be there about 6:50.  Bill thought it was at 7:30 and he was right so we were plenty early.  We took books and read some til the other passengers started arriving and Kathy.  Kathy works for the bookstore company at the fort and she’s the 1^st mate of the tour and does the safety talk and tells all about the dolphins, etc.  We left right on time and we went out to a shrimp boat as that’s where a lot of the dolphins gather and they were everywhere.  There were mothers and babies and some flipped their tails and some laid kinda on their backs with their heads up begging for shrimp.  The shrimpers throw the small catch over and the dolphins are ready and waiting to eat it.  Bill did the video and I tried to get some still photos of the dolphins.  After some time at the shrimp boat we headed out to the ocean and we were going to get a good view of the Tybee lighthouse.  Well, one of the passengers passed out and fell and they ended the tour, called the medics to meet us at the dock and cut our tour short.  They offered to refund all the tickets or reschedule another trip.  We agreed that we shouldn’t get a full refund as we did get out for 45 minutes. We really enjoyed the trip but will see how the photos turn out.

We got home in time for me to get my shower before White Collar came on.  Then we had a piece of pie.

July 4 - Disappointing 4TH

Happy Birthday America!  It was a rather lazy day for us.  We didn’t get up til about 9 and it was so nice.  I made a nice breakfast and we did some chores and watched old patriotic movies on TV.  After lunch we were getting antsy so we drove in to McDonald’s so Bill could do some email as he can only do what he can get on his phone.  We each enjoyed a mocha frappe while we worked.

We took Xena for a nice walk and checked the clearing on the other side of the woods from the back of our RV for the missing flip flop, but no luck.  I did scare up the fawn, well, I think she scared me as much as I scared her and boy did she run.  Dinner was pretty much ready since I had made the potato salad.  Bill grilled some burgers and brats and some zucchini and I nuked 2 ears of corn and sliced up some tomato.

Once we let the food settle a bit, we biked for 3 miles and counted deer.  Only 23 tonight.  We watched some TV til it was time to drive up to the bridge for the fireworks.  We did manage to get there before they started.  Actually we could see 5 –6  places from River St in Savannah to south of there where there were fireworks going off.  Although we were pretty far away, we could see all kinds but the ones on River Street were the best, especially the finale.  Bill called Carole and checked in while we watched and then I talked to her for a while.

Nothing of interest was on TV so we both read til bedtime, oh, that was after we had a piece of the homemade peach pie I made.  Bill said some whipped cream or ice cream was the only way it would have been better.

July 3 - Celebrating at Ft Pulaski

Sunday,  my blueberry pancake day!  I did some turkey bacon and Bill wanted easy over eggs so we each had fruit and shared the pancakes.  I didn’t want to eat too much since we were going to the cookout at noon.  We did some tidying up and I put a load of wash in and we showered and drove to Wilmington Island to get a newspaper.  The traffic back looked bad when we got back on 80 but moved along rather steady til our lanes started shifting back to one lane.  We had the desserts with us as we were told to have them at the fort by noon.  We timed it perfectly. 

Our pitcher, Tramus

Then we got to watch the cannons fire and try out the new video camera.  The Fort Jackson vs Fort Pulaski baseball game was to start at 12:30 but things were late as the Fort Jackson team must have been travelling in the method of the soldiers of 1862 and were late.  Really it was the terrible traffic of the beach goers.  Two of the rangers led the National Anthem prior to the game and one of the rangers explained to the crowd that some of the earliest known photos of the game of baseball were taken in our fort and he had big blow ups to pass around.  The rules were really different back then too.   He explained that the batter was called a striker and he could wait all day for a pitch, there was no count.  The ball could be caught in the air for an out or on the first bounce for an out.  That’s only a couple of the big differences.  We watched most of the game from the top of the fort.  When we finally got too hot and tired we gave up and went to see if lunch was ready.  It was tied 0 – 0 when we left and we think that’s how it ended.  It’s hard to score when they can use the bounced ball to make an out. 

Lunch was just about set up when we got to the ranger office so I had 1 hot dog covered in relish and mustard and a small serving of slaw.  Not much was homemade.  I wanted to save my points for a slice of my cake.  We got to chat some with the staff but thought it best to leave quickly as once all the photo ops were done the office would be packed with the rest of the ball team ready for lunch.

We came home and Bill read the paper and I printed some things and caught up on journaling.  Bill said the Tybee fireworks are tonight so guess we will bike or drive up to the bridge to watch from there unless we spot one of the rangers in the fort after hours.  Then Bill worked on putting the new inner tube in my rear tire.  He said he was getting 2 in case the other one went next.

For dinner I made meatloaf as Bill has been talking about meatloaf for days.  He had white potato, I had sweet potato, as is the norm.  I sautéed some onion and garlic from Jeff and added in some yellow and green squash and it was very yummy and a pleasant change from steamed squash.  After dinner we tested the new bike tire and it held up fine.  We did 3 miles and upped our deer count to 33 deer.  It was amazing.  There was a huge herd up by the Visitor Center and for the first time we saw the 2 senior bucks with full racks.  There was also a very tiny fawn, not even close in size to the fawn we see all the time.  It couldn’t have been more than 18 inches tall.  They moved away from us a bit but they didn’t make a real run for it.  They are not as used to bikes and vehicles as the two herds at our end of the island.

We rested at home for a bit then headed up to the bridge for the Tybee fireworks just before 9.  We didn’t agree on the time the paper said the fireworks started and ended up missing the main event.  Someone lit some off our bridge and we could see 2 sets over in Savannah and some arbitrary ones on Tybee and thought they just weren’t very good.  Then when we got home we really heard them and checked the paper and they didn’t start til 9:30.  We will try again tomorrow night when they do the Savannah ones at 9:20.

We watched TV and I read the paper and did my coupon clipping for the week.  I made potato salad for tomorrow with an borrowed egg from out neighbor, Eric, and the purple potatoes Jeff brought me.  And I made a small fresh peach pie.  Yum!

June 29 - July 2 Another Long 4 Days at Ft Pulaski

One of our regular visitors

June 29 – Back to work!  It was a great weekend so I really can't complain too much.  I was scheduled to be at the entrance station for the morning but one of the rangers was out for the day so ended up being there all day.  It's not bad when you have the laptop but I kinda waited too long to go to the bathroom and then it was starting to get really dark and thundering.  I called in and asked if someone could come and show me how to close out for the day as I really had to go to the bathroom and as ugly as it was getting I knew there wouldn't be any new visitors.  It was only about 15 minutes early.  So once we did the register tapes I headed up in the golf cart and he did the rest of the closing of the booth.  Then once we got inside the sky opened up.  Bill had gone to the truck thinking I would only be a few minutes but neither of the rangers left knew much about the end of day paperwork and it took over 45 minutes.  It would have been faster for me to just figure it out.  It was not rocket science, that is for sure.  They were making it much more difficult than it was. Next time I think I can handle it myself.

I ended up getting drenched getting to the truck and then again getting to the RV and opening the door.  To our surprise the tomato plant had not blown down.  It was more rain than wind and it kept up til after 7.  Bill finally had to don his rain jacket and take Xena out when there was a lull.  It was about stopped at 11 when we went to bed and I took Xena out for the night.

Good thing I had not planned anything fancy for dinner.  Just leftover roast beef in gravy, instant mashed potatoes and steamed zucchini.  I was pooped and had planned to do a load of wash but knew I couldn't get to the dryer without getting drenched again, so let it go til tomorrow.

We just watched some TV and I did some paperwork that Kerry sent me to work on.

June 30 -  Can't believe we are ending our first month.  It really has gone by pretty fast.  Now I am thinking we might not get to all the things we had planned to see and do.  I was in the Entrance Station for the morning and the VC for the afternoon.  Pretty hum drum day, not nearly as busy as yesterday was.

I heated some of the rotisserie chicken for dinner with corn on the cob and some slaw, then I headed to “town” for my Weight Watchers meeting, then stopped at Walgreens and Kroger on the way home.  We were totally out of fruit so I pretty much loaded up.  Bill called while I was at the grocery and said to stop at the bridge and ask the GA Power guys how long the power would be out.  We knew that they were getting ready to work on putting in new lines for the island.

The only guys I saw on the way in were in trucks so didn’t get to ask.  Eric, our neighbor, and Bill were sitting out at our place with no lights on and Bill had opened all the windows.  They said the  GA Power guy had stopped by and said the power would be out 2 – 3 hours. While the guys were sitting out a possum came and walked around under the steps of the RV and then it walked all around and never paid a bit of attention to them sitting there.

 At least with the propane the fridge and water heater stay operating, so I was able to get my evening shower.  However, the power was off about 5 hours and it was pretty warm sleeping.  Bill closed the windows early in the morning so it was nice the last couple of hours.  We didn’t do much but read.  Bill was bummed he didn’t get to watch “Burn Notice”.

July 1 -  The  power was still on when we got up, but after Bill showered it went off for about 20 minutes.  They are going to be working still on the lines today. We stopped by the admin office to take some mail we had to go out.  They aren’t terribly diligent to get pick up from the VC so if we want it to go Monday – Friday we need to take it on the way in the in the morning.

I spent my half day in the entrance station and it was pretty busy.  People were starting to come to the island for the holiday weekend.  It slowed down in the VC in the afternoon.  It really starts to drag.  I started reading a new book from the bookstore about two white and black boys with the same father just before the Civil War started.  I’ll read it when I work the VC and it’s not busy.

Since the tire on my bike is totally flat we can’t do any bike riding until we go get a new inner tube for it.  So after dinner of spaghetti we walked Xena, then we just settled in for the night.  I did a load of wash and we read and watched TV.

July 2 -  Yee ha, one more day and we have 3 days off!  Was scheduled in the entrance station all day and it was super busy until about 3:30.  The cannons were fired today at 11, 1 and 3 and after that things slowed down.  Also there was a really bad accident on 80 over the bridge in Tybee so I sat and watched the traffic at a dead standstill for a long time.  Then a Savannah police officer stopped as he received a dispatch of a vehicle break in some where on the island.  No one at the VC knew anything about it so I sent him to the Bar Pilot house since they have 12 guys on duty 24/7 and their cars are parked out there.  The officer showed me photos of 2 guys he was looking for who they have reported for break ins, but they didn’t look familiar to me.  I never heard if he found the car or the guy.

Patty sent Tramus out to relieve me around 4 as he was scheduled to be there anyway but she didn’t know that, so I went back to the VC and help price items for the bookstore.  The ladies who run it are really nice.  We get a 15% discount, which isn’t a lot but it’s better than paying full price for our Ft. Pulaski souvenirs.  We left at 5:30 for home.

Bill walked Xena and I changed and we left for dinner and some shopping.  We had planned to go to a place on Tybee but the traffic in that direction was still backed up so we went to Cancun Café again instead.  I tried the shrimp cocktail to compare it to Taquitos and I think it was better.  The tomatoes were chunkier and the shrimp were bigger.  It was so good.  I was stuffed.  We stopped at the post office to put a letter in the mail for Tuesday, then to Kroger, Wal-mart and Publix.  We got inner tubes for my bike and some things I needed to bake my desserts for the “cook out” at the fort tomorrow.  The traffic going back looked like it was going to be bad, but once we got over the bridge it wasn’t as bad as we expected. 

Bill took Xena for a longer walk and I put the groceries away and got to baking.  I made ginger cookies from a cookbook in the bookstore.  They were Eli Whitney’s favorites.  I wasn’t too thrilled with them.  Too blah for my tastes.  Bill liked them, so I foil covered a small box and put in 4 – 5 dozen for tomorrow.  Only kept about a dozen for Bill.   Then I put an almond cream cheese pound cake in the oven.  We watched some NCIS and Burlesque with Cher.  The cake was done and ready at just about bedtime so it timed out well.