January, 2006

January and we are still parked in the sunny Rio Grande Valley.

The big event of the month was Mary Jane flying to North Carolina to help her daughter Jessica watch the kids for 16 days. MJ's grandson William had a bad problem with a bowel and required two operations to correct it. He was in the hospital for 10 days starting on December 27th. MJ sure is a good grandma! In MJ's absense Randy just sort of hung out, played in some shuffleboard tournaments, and went to referee school. He is now an officially certified shuffleboard referee for the TSSA (Texas State Shuffleboard Association (link).

From our perspective the weather here has been perfect except for the many days with howling winds. It's been very warm, with temperatures typically running 10-20 degrees above average. The Valley really needs rain, and at this point we'd agree - a rainy day would be good. One thing we don't like here IS the wind. It is not uncommon to have days where the wind is blowing at 20 - 25 mph. Occasionally we've had gusts to 40 - 45 mph. Dust sure has a way of finding its way into the motor home!

We've been learning more about the food and cooking in the area, and have been writing a section of this web site dedicated to mexican cooking. Oh yes - I sold my old cooking web site - cookingindex.com - and that's the reason for this new site. So, recommend this site to all your friends. We make a couple bucks from ads on the site - helps us keep the rig on the road.