We have to walk to see this:

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Our son granted us his driveway, again, so we could work on RV Panoply. He coordinated a painter to finish sealing nearly every sealable surface in the rig, including inside the cabinets, so Leon could concentrate on earning a living.

Sealing most of the materials that off gas really helped! (More info in a separate post.) We left the dinette booths and the floors for us to seal.

Leon cut the rear facing one down first. A pain because he cut it in place since it is secured from the outside, beneath the aluminum RV frame. We wanted to keep the integrity of that anchoring system. It took power saw and hand saw, much twisting and turning. Just need to add angle irons or wood blocks to anchor the side to the back and front. Then the ragged edges of panels will be tucked tightly beneath trim.

It is as I wanted it. YAY! (Yes, I am aware I lost storage. I may regret it in the future, but that just gives me an opportunity to scheme again. (Don’t tell Leon I said that, please. He is about to his limit of my schemes after 35 plus years of being the one to tweak and build them.)

Cut into two pieces:

Our new one person booth seat:

The seat itself is 24″ plus the side piece. It was supposed to be 25″, but we changed which pieces interlocked with which- just as he began cutting – and forgot to allow for the difference it would make.

What is that rule? Measure twice, cut once….

It is actually an inch plus larger than the cab seats, though.

We should not have done that one first. Why? Because when we pulled up the piece of carpet beneath the other, 31″ booth that is made to expand to seat two, we discovered an electrical junction box that would have been in the walkway had we cut it back. Not only that, but the way the booth is made because it slides, they would not have been identical and I completely dislike symmetry gone awry – unless it is obvious asymmetry. What to do?

Redesign table to give a ‘reason’ for the disparate booth widths, of course! Done. In our heads, that is, but completion of the table will come last.

Coming up: First safety items purchased for our RV; sink replacement; new Flexsteel cab seats; AM solar to be installed in Florida; portable macerator; sofas/beds to match the one at home; flooring; EyeTV 250 Plus; desk; food pantry; skinny pantry; car decision; and more.

On the one hand this is not a great thing, but on the other, it means I embrace change. An important attribute to survive our daily lives as we have little control over so many things. (Sounds good on paper.)

Shelly’s Only the Good Friday gives us a further excuse to start our year out right. In our family, we have practiced asking each other for “one nice thought” periodically, though, in honestly, it has traditionally been me who does the asking. It has proved effective, though some days the responses were more on the lines of, “We had macaroni and cheese for dinner.”

Now I do not like the word, “nice”! So, I’ve decided to reword it to, one reason to smile. So, since I did not go back to doing Wordless Wednesday, I am thinking about making Wednesdays a day to give one reason to smile.

Ulterior motive? Yep. One reason to smile allows me to choose words or pictures or both! I’m learning. Our reason to smile over Christmas, our son’s sweet old dame, Bella, was a joy to be with.

Now, what is your Only the Good Friday thought? Surely you have one. While you are thinking, why not head on over to This Eclectic Life and check out her Only the Good Friday post and then follow the links to others who took the time to post their good! And then, ask your family what their reason to smile is today. They just might surprise you.

The Space Needle from afar. Seeing it against the blue sky is not as infrequent as one would expect from ‘gray’ Seattle. It is always a treat to see. (I say is, for me, was, as we were only in that area three years, sigh.

But, there is peace in view, even when driving on the busy interstates. Leon never got over rounding a corner to see it. Neither did I. This is the calming magic of Seatlle, I think.

I hope you enjoyed these. Every time we view them, our resolve to work in Florida twelve months a year, instead of six or seven, lessens.

We will be back Seattle. We almost signed up to volunteer in Alaska next summer, with you in mind. Maybe in a year or two. For now, the winds are blowing here – and that makes me happy.

Visit the hundreds of other Wordless Wednesday participants!

We met with the Condo board of the condo we are renting, this morning, two members of it, actually. Went fine.

The lobby and grounds are as beautiful as we remembered from our initial walk through. They are redoing the walkway to the pool, so the water area that wraps around the walkway is drained on the West side of the lobby. (What do you call it? A concrete water area that weaves through the center of the grounds- but squared off edges – so not “natural” — but quite striking with the plantings around it.) Beautiful even drained.

The one thing I noticed that made me smile: in spite of a huge building blocking the ocean breeze (in theory) — the center grounds had wind from somewhere!

Have a few perks we were not aware of — especially concerning if we take a vacation — feel more secure knowing someone is checking on the condo — and emptying the refrigerator should power be uncooperative.

So, time to pack a little faster, file a little more — and HOPE the new small amount of congestion that has hit us both is just from all the dust we kicked up that this ac pulls in from other units while moving stuff and packing – we are both allergic to dust mites. We were not going to make the move final until we returned from his family reunion – but now that we have had to close windows because of the heat — the dust is coming back as badly as it did before we started opening windows – I would never have made this winter here had it not been for nice weather and open windows… This will be the first time we haven’t done the clean out when we have moved ourselves!

Choice — DUST filled air or newly painted walls with normal paints (sigh, we didn’t see the listing until they had painted — we would have bought no VOC paints…)

We could bring in the plants that NASA shows clears the air of chemicals, but it also said one plant per 100 square feet — that is over 90 plants — where on earth would I put them all?

Birds, hawks, I think, coming into view from behind a mid-rise condo, then hovering on the winds and drifting slowly South. At several points in time there were as many as 43 in my view, never less than 20. I tried to capture it with my iPhone camera. (I really need to get my other camera fixed, because I let frustration in not having it to take a good photo or video interfere with my awe for a few moments.) Yes, it was awe, for I had never seen that quantity down here of a larger bird before. I’m posting a couple of the many photos I took, but you must use your imagination to feel my reality: a breezy day, not long after dawn, the sky growing brighter, the drone of cars flying by to work or school breaking the silence, the ocean breaking on the sand not competing for attention, but grabbing my awareness, nevertheless, and a never ending supply of birds coming up from behind the condos.

I looked out the window again 45 minutes later and still saw a few out there when Leon called. He had seen them all up and down the beach over the condos when he left. Nature is truly amazing.

I think if you have your glasses on, a magnifying glass, and the ability to see what the camera doesn’t, realize it went on and on — and click on the last photo, you might get why I was so excited this morning. If not, keep your eyes on the skies.