Thom and Dar's Sabbatical Journal

I have a problem with hard boiled eggs (the ones that come from chickens, not the dear old folks who need Fox News to help them make sense of the world these days). Or would it be more accurate to say the eggs have a problem with me? Perhaps. But either way, this problem is really two problems. The first, correctly cooking the hard boiled egg.  The second, peeling the shell from the hard boiled egg. And, to make this even more complicated... I wouldn't be surprised if the cooking problem is related to the peeling problem. There are about as many formulas for cooking the perfect hard boiled egg as there are cooks. (Just look, they're scattered all over the internet... Google's 69th most popular search!!) I've tried many but just never quite found the one that works consistently for me. Sometimes the egg is overcooked and it's hard and rubbery. And often, if overcooked, there's this strange green-ish layer of some unknown substance around the yoke which recent

What I seem to have accomplished by promising weekly updates to this Journal is to reduce my writer's anxiety (deadline anxiety??) to just a few hours on Sunday... usually later on Sunday afternoon. I guess that's a good thing. But so little has happened this past week that even my heightened urgency has not helped me produce an entry tonight. My blogging tank is drained. We're fine... the weather's been fine... and I'm sure I'll have more to report next week.

And now, for this week, something completely different... If you're tuning in to get your usual dose of RV happy-blather, this might be a good time to step along to the next blog on your list. Instead, all I have to offer is a series of disjointed comments and observations... all of which were done during the Packers-Giants play-off game Sunday evening. Like I said above... something completely different. The Giants just opened up scoring in this big play-off game with a field goal. The Packer defense held them to 3 points after a nice drive. OK... game on! Names: So many people in our culture are fixated on fruit-cake "celebrities", most of whom are not normal people, to say the least. Proof? Well, here's a list of celebrity baby names (and their celeb parent) that have recently been reported in the popular press: Apple (Gwineth, of course) Pilot Inspektor (Jason Lee... whoever that is) Kal-El (Nic Cage) (Sounds like an airline, but it's not.) Track

St. Dominic Church, D'Hanis Texas  1853 "Howdy" from the Coastal Bend of Texas. Well, we had a quiet first week to kick off 2012. After making the move from Hondo to Rockport we settled in for the long haul... three months in one spot... and caught up with our friends and acquaintances at our Winter home away from home. For whatever reason, the RV park seems busier and more congested with big rigs than our memories from the past few years. Don't know why. It didn't take long for Dar to get fully involved in the medical world again. After a day to set up camp here at Sandollar, and another to finish up some paperwork and pick up her schedule at the hospital, she was back in nursing action on Wednesday... Thursday too. The good news is that there appears to be a little more staffing depth this year so she hopefully won't be pulling 80 hour weeks like last year... perhaps a little balance between work and leisure. And I'm reluctantly falling into

I'm going to try something different this winter during our extended stay in Rockport. Most of you know I have a problem coming up with interesting additions to the Journal while sitting for extended periods of time... periods like the next three months. During these times, we don't get out exploring much, and both mind and body are often otherwise occupied. The mental energy involved with puffing-up the mundane... spinning a trip to Walmart into an excursion to the South Pole... takes a toll on me. No more. In an effort to reduce both boring posts and the time I put into trying to come up with those boring posts, I'm going to move to a more defined schedule for new posts to our RV Sabbatical Journal. During this January, February, and March, I will update the Journal one time per week , on Monday morning. Of course, if we do get out for some substantial exploring, or if something really noteworthy happens, I reserve the right to post a "special edition" at

Yesterday, Dar and I said good-bye to the SKP Lone Star Corral RV Park near Hondo TX, our home for the past 16 days, and made the drive down to Sandollar Resort near Rockport TX. Sandollar has been our winter home for the past few years. This will be our third year of spending three months here. Like last year, Dar is going to put in a little time at the local hospital... exercising her RN nursing skills and making a little money to help offset the cost of health insurance. I've got a list of projects as long as my arm and will be brushing up on my domestic skills... cleaning, laundry, dishes, etc. in addition to my regular chores on the bus-house... washing, waxing, lubing, etc. There are no New Years resolutions here... just hope. I hope we all remain healthy, vibrant, and active. I hope our travels and explorations come off safely and without serious problems. I hope we can add a few days on the travel/explore side of the ledger while reducing a few days on the sitting side. And