4 May 2025 - Baseball and RV Projects

 

On International Firefighters Day, we pause to honor the brave men and women who risk their lives daily to keep our communities safe. This day is a tribute to firefighters worldwide, past and present, for their unwavering dedication and service. “. My flag flies at half staff today in their honor.  

This is done via my Hubitat home automation hub and software that reads my Google Calendar and reacts to events I have scheduled.  Known events where the flag is lowered to half staff have been entered on the calendar in advance recurring annually, such as this one.  Those unscheduled events where the president or governor orders flag flown at half staff are entered as they occur on the calendar and the Hubitat then reacts to those Google calendar events also.  Hubitat communicates with my flag pole control box which I designed and built, via Zwave, a communications protocol live WiFi or Zigbee. That's how a retired comm geek keeps the brain cells active!

 

Today we again traveled to Grimes IA to watch Calvin and his Ankeny Titans baseball team play.  Unfortunately they came up short on the first game and today was "one and done".  Calvin was disappointed but I reminded him there are better days ahead!  

We headed back to the campground and started in on some of my scheduled projects.  The first one involved replacing the toilet, and that went very smoothly.  It looks and works very well!

Next I replaced the analog thermostats with digital ones that can be controlled remotely via WiFi.  The advantage of this is they will notify us if temperature limits are hit.  I can also change modes remotely.  (heat to cool, for instance).  

Later we delivered the big ol' brown truck to Dewey RAM Dodge Jeep for some service work.  My appointment is Monday at 0800 hrs but this way we don't have to get up early and take it in the morning.

At our sticks and bricks Doreen did some laundry and while that was going on we went to the grocery store to replenish the pantry and fridge.  

Tomorrow I will work on some more projects around the RV and head into town and mow.  This time of year the grass is going crazy and needs mowed every few days.  Grandson Daniel is mowing while we are gone, but he is especially busy right now as high school baseball season starts to he has those practices to attend also.  So I will take care of this mowing.

That is it for today.  No touring or scenery and there will be more days like this until we get on the road again a week from Monday.