Hallowe'en & the hooligans are out in the House

The goblins are out in force in the House of Commons today. The speaker looks a little frustrated.

Its been a while since I wrote anything here - lots of things have happened. We are scrambling to get ready to leave for Mexico. Today I pointed out to Marilyn that 5 weeks from tonight we should be sleeping in Mi Casa campground in Nogales.

Last week I got all the airbags in the bus changed. It had been leaking somewhere for over a year now. A few weeks ago we had it in Saskatoon & I got the STC shop to diagnose the leak. It was in the two front airbags on the driver's side and it seemed to me that, if they were both leaking then the rest probably weren't far behind. I hired a tire shop in town to change the bags but in hindsight I could probably have done it myself. There's a lot of these heavy duty mechanic jobs that I am nervous to tackle for the first time but, once I've seen it done, I wouldn't hesitate to do it the next time. In this case we changed the shocks at the same time but the tire shop didn't want to tackle two of them. I ended up changing them myself with remarkably little incident (translation: I didn't lose much bark off my hands in the process!)

Marilyn is hurrying to finish up the projects that she needs to have completed before we leave and I am doing likewise. I have 3 farm business assessments on the go that have to be completed before we leave. I also have a 4th one on the go but it can be completed in February so I intend to do the writing while we are away. And yesterday I landed about a week's worth from CAAR that doesn't need to be done until we are on the road and can be sent back electronically so it is starting to come together. I'd still like to find about another 2 weeks worth of work that can be done on the road.

At the same time I have a list of must-do projects on the bus to get it ready for more full-time occupancy. We put a multi-function printer in the bar cabinet this fall and wired that area with network connections but it still needs some printer cabling to give us easier access to the printer & I want to put some shelves under the printer for paper storage. This weekend I am going to put some drawers under the foot of the bed to facilitate easier access to that space. I'm also overdue for an oil change on the generator and I need to get all the yard equipment put away for the winter before it decides to snow here.

Last Saturday we left really early in the morning for Medicine Hat, watched Marlan win a football game that started at noon, went to his windup banquet that evening and then drove home again, arriving back here almost exactly 24 hours after we had left. I'd like to get down to Saskatoon to watch another Huskies game but the way they are playing they may be done playing in Saskatoon.