Home Again!!! (posted from home)
(this post covers 20-24 September)

Sunday, 24 September-
I spent the morning and early afternoon trying to get the fridge to restart but to no avail. We’ll have to call in a pro later this week.
I spent the late afternoon on the web and Labashi continues her tornado-ing around the house, getting everything back in order after our long absence.
That evening we watched “Once Upon a Time in the West”, a late-Sixties Sergio Leone movie with Charles Bronson and Jason Robards. Labashi picked this one out of the Westerns section of the video store. She had seen parts of it several times but never the entire movie. Good flick.

Saturday, 23 September-
We spent the day cleaning up the fridge. What a mess. Unfortunately, after the cleanup the fridge would not re-start. I had noticed the fridge did not start up when we started cleanup but hadn’t thought much of it; we unplugged it before we got too far into the process. It had run long enough to re-freeze the freezer but must have failed sometime in the night.
That evening we watched a very interesting movie. We rented “The Talent Given Us” at our local video rental shop. This one is remarkable and highly recommended as an offbeat comedy. Incredibly, it stars the mother, father, and two sisters of the producer/director, none of whom had acting experience. It was a hit at Sundance and in New York and L.A and has a two-thumbs-up rating from Ebert and Roper. The behind-the-scenes story is also excellent.



Friday, 22 September-
We headed for home today. We started a little late and our 500-mile drive put us into our home area about 1830, just in time for supper at one of our favorite local restaurants, a little welcome-home celebration after 55 days of travel. As we pulled into our driveway I wondered why there were no lights on. After unlocking the door and trying a light switch, we found the house had no power. How long had that been going on?
One look in the fridge confirmed that power had been off a LONG time. We called the power company and had someone onsite within an hour of our call. A fuse had blown on the transformer on the power pole in front of our house. The entire problem-assessment and repair took only ten minutes.
We spent the rest of the evening unloading the van and checking out anything electrical in the house. But for the fridge all we did was confirm it was running; we’ll tackle that tomorrow.


Thursday, 21 September-
This morning I left Mom and Dad's house early and drove over to the local Starbucks for a coffee and to read the papers. I went back to the local Panera for an internet hookup to find a local source for a replacement inverter for my laptop in Mocha Joe. That led me to a Camping World outlet in Canton and a West Marine in Dearborn. I didn’t find the inverter model I wanted but did find some hard-to-find butane canisters for our cookstove. I also did a quick wand-wash of Mocha Joe along the way. That evening we joined Mom and Dad for supper at ‘El Nibble Nook’, an oddly-named but good Mexican restaurant.


Wednesday, 20 September-
It’s very nice to be in a house once again. I’ve been surprised how easy it has been for us to live in the small space of Mocha Joe for almost two months. But we had the great advantage of having good weather almost the entire time.
We spent much of today catching up with Labashi’s Mom and Dad and enjoyed a great meal with them. I found a local Panera Bread Company and used their free wi-fi hotspot to get email and update the blog.