Monday, April 1st

  Happy Birthday Phil.  We are so sorry we were so busy that we missed the facetime with you today.  It was a whirlwind of activity today, will try to make contact tomorrow.
  It was a beautiful day in the valley, very warm.  I think it was in the mid 80's today, although I never really looked.
  Very early in the day the news were reporting that many Fry's service stations were out of fuel and others were out of regular gasoline.  Yesterday the same was reported of some of the circle K convenience stores/gas bars.  This is probably something related to the snowbird migration.  Not  certain how many there are here, but they claim a million Canadians and for everyone of us there seems to be two or three from northern states like Minnesota, Colorado or the Dakotas.  Got a bit panicky, so I went out and filled up the truck.  I made the mistake of going to the local Chevron where they ran my card 3 times without success.  She wanted to try it again in a different mode, but I refused and just paid cash as I must have been getting close to the number where the credit card company shuts the card down.  Then I went to the hardware store to get some bubble insulation, tape and glue traps where I used the card.  Thankfully it worked fine, but I wanted to know if I had a problem before heading out on the highway.
  When I got back Marg was laundering the bedding so it would all be fresh for the fall.  We even turned our mattress, no small feat in the confines of this trailer.  She doesn't like packing dirty clothes unless she has no other choice.  The truck is pretty much full, but I think we will get it all in.  I got pretty much all the insulation in the windows.  Its that silver covered bubble stuff that we use every year.  Most of the task is to find out what goes where, so I wrote on it with a marking pen this year.  I also made some new pieces using the stuff I got at the hardware as some pieces were getting ratty and likely losing some of their insulation value.  Marg got pretty much all of the groceries dealt with except what we need tomorrow.  She wants to make supper for the Blanke's but I think that will be too much.
  We took a break and went for happy hour, well we went for a half hour.  It was a much smaller group today, I would estimate about a dozen or 15.  A nice change for anyone trying to hear or be heard.  Supper tonight was at 5 and easy, as it was Gary's burgers.  It was a clean up night so they had 90 burger patties after which anyone was out of luck.  The burgers were good  [as usual] and were mostly cheeseburgers, accompanied by chips, no not French fries, rather what you in England would call Crisps.  It appeared we were under 90 as I never observed anyone being turned away.
  After eating we went back to our place to continue our task.  We just got started when Marg's buddy Linda showed for a cocktail.  Well not just her, she had 3 other couples with her.  Then the couple across the road sensing some activity came over so that made 10.  Marg made a drink for the gals, something called a creamsicle.  It was orange flavoured to which she added ice cream in the blender.  It went over very big, well mostly as a few guys opted for beer instead.  They stayed for about an hour and a half or so.  Too late to do anything else, so the rest is for tomorrow.