bobanddenisewanderlust

Saturday- We were off early to the South Bend Farmers Market. This is a huge, indoor, year long, Famers Market. It is open T-TH-F-SA. Needless to say it was crowded. Lots of food(meats, vegetables, fruits, nuts, popcorn, candy, bakery items, salsas, jelly/jams), jewelry, plants, vitamins etc. There were 69 booths.

We easily found street parking and walked over. Outside there were pony rides and interestingly, camel rides. The camel did not seem happy about the job!

The prices were very good so we bought some nice thick, low salt, lower fat bacon for breakfast tomorrow, apples, bananas, red bell pepper, cucumbers, cherry salsa, and watermelon. Of course we stopped  at the bakery stand and each had a bakery item which were so fresh they melted in our mouths! Yum!! We left there and returned home, ate lunch, and took a nice nap. Dinner was at home.

Sunday- Pretty much everything is closed on Sunday, so we had a quiet day at home. At 4:15, we left and went back to South Bend to meet with Blake Hackett, the grad student that we are renting the apartment from. We met him in the parking garage and he showed us around the building and we visited the apartment. We are only supposed to have one bedroom of furniture, but Blake has not  yet been able to sell his bedroom set, so both bedrooms have furniture in them. We will be picking up the keys and parking pass from Chris on Friday. Blake is leaving tomorrow and Cory is leaving on Wednesday, so we can move some stuff in starting on Friday. Our lease starts on Saturday.

It was dinner time, so we stopped at JW Chang Chinese Restaurant. The J stands for June, the owner. She came over and sat with us, getting to know us. She was very nice. One of her first questions was about food allergies. Smart lady! She sent a free almond shrimp appetizer over to the table, which was very good. The food was excellent and lived up to the reviews on Yelp. We will be eating there again. Bob had the Empress Chicken and I had Cashew Chicken. We both took half home for tomorrow’s dinner. We returned home and settled in for the night.

Monday- We hung out until after lunch, then went to Napanee. Our plan was to stop at the Verizon store to look at phones. We arrived at the store right on Main Street and found that they are closed until the 10th. So we looked for chairs at two different Amish furniture stores. We want to replace our dining chairs. We need to do some more looking. We also stopped at Ace Hardware to drop of a flag for burning on Flag Day in June. Outside was this Amish horse and buggy.

We then drove north to the Verizon store in Elkhart. We buy our phones from a company who specialize in RV’ers at the RV rallies, but since we chose not to attend the Escapade this year, we still need to obtain new phones. Bob’s battery is not keeping a charge for longer than 4-8 hours, depending upon what he is doing. It has been two years, so we are due!  I had called the RV phone guys and they are still trying to figure out who is going to be at the Escapade in Goshen, so they could not schedule to meet with us while they are in the area. But, they will mail the phones to us and they  suggested two phones, so we went to look at them. The sales guy at the Verizon store, Jason, is a cop who was working his second job. A really nice, helpful guy! He showed us the two phones and checked the account. We are eligible for phones, but he could not help us and immediately told us so. He said that he would have to change our plan. We really appreciated his honesty. If we upgrade at the Verizon store, we have to change plans. We don’t want to do that because we have unlimited data and do not want to lose our current plan. So we said good-bye to Jason, who had given us his personal cell number, and told us a lot of info about South Bend. He also said we are staying in the nicest, safest area in South Bend. Good to know!

We returned home to call the RV phone guy who is able to upgrade the phone without us losing our data plan, since they are Verizon contractors, not a Verizon store. They do some finagling and manage for us to keep our plan. We don’t understand it, but they have saved us a lot of money!

We settled in for the evening, taking a very short nap, ate Chinese leftovers, and watched the ‘24’ mini-series. We have missed Jack Bauer!

Tuesday- We were finally able to update our budget. There had been an internet issue with our bank, and we could not download into Quicken. It was fixed today, so we were able to update our budget.

We left around 11 to go to another Amish furniture store. We found a nice chair, so we ordered two for our dining room table. Hopefully, they will come in before we leave. They were going to try to get them to us. We have our fingers crossed!

The store is owned by some Mennonites and the owner was going to put a rush on the chairs. They do not make the furniture themselves, they have suppliers.  Good thing we no longer have a house or I would have bought the place out. They had beautiful oak furniture!

We returned to the motor home, ate lunch and Bob did some fixing of items. At around 2, Megan and PJ came over to measure the floors and to discuss the renovation. Also to collect a check for 50% of the cost. We deleted and added items so pricing changed a bit. We of course had a list of questions.

We ate dinner, watched TV and went to bed.

Wednesday-  We stopped by McMillers and saw another Afla being finished. They lent us a cart to use for moving this weekend. We went to Goshen Flooring, per their suggestion, but they did not have the flooring we are looking for. We purchased antimicrobial padding from them though. We stopped in at the Menards, and they had the laminate we want, still on sale, so the McMillers are going to pick it up for us. Then we went to Shipshewana. First we stopped at the Flea Market Restaurant for lunch. Bob had the ham loaf sandwich and I had the Ham and Bean with a side of cornbread and gas. LOL.

We walked around the flea market until we found a grocery cart to purchase. We are going to need it for moving and for bringing groceries into the apartment. We returned home and relaxed.

Thursday- We packed boxes and took our first load to the apartment. Cory was moving out today and had just dropped off the keys with Chris. Our mail had arrived, so we picked that up( mail and our new phones) and emptied out the car. We also cleaned up a bit.  While doing that, we re-arranged the furniture. We are brining our our Sleep Number mattress, so we moved Cory’s mattress onto Blake’s bed. We would prefer the room connected directly to the bathroom, but he has a king sleigh bed, and it is just too big and heavy to move. And, it is for sale. The guys had a cleaning lady come in on Tuesday, but Cory evidently had a large shedding dog.

We returned home to happy dogs, who are concerned that we are packing up ‘stuff’’.

Friday-  We made two trips to the apartment. Thank goodness we have the two carts. It is a long walk from the car to the apartment, 150 steps. During the first trip, it was raining so we had to park inside on the 3rd floor and take the elevator up to the fourth floor, where our apartment is located.

We were exhausted by the time we got home at 4:30, after the second trip. It is a 45 minute drive each way, plus unpacking. We also discovered that Cory must have had a feather pillow or duvet which exploded, as there was dog hair and feathers under and behind the bed, so we had to move all the bedroom furniture and vacuum behind and under everything.  We ate dinner, watched, TV and both fell asleep.

Filed under: Uncategorized |