Mutant Eggs and Subatomic Particles - YUM!

The past couple of days have been relatively productive.  I have been doing more reorganizing, purging and food prep.  After being held captive in town all day Friday and a windy day on Saturday, I never got to deal with all the groceries I bought.  Not to worry, nothing went bad, I did toss the perishables in the cooler with ice, but that's all I did.

First, on Saturday I did some reorganizing in the van and tearbaby between wind gusts and buzzing ATV'ers.  I know I was in a big ATV riding area and it was the weekend, so I did expect to see and hear them constantly, but what I would have appreciated is that they didn't ride through my camp area!  Where I was camped was a HUGE open area with plenty of places for them to ride and stay away from my space.  The area is for everyone, and a little common courtesy and respect to others using it too would go a long way.  Oh well, I'll chalk it up to boondocking lessons learned.  Onward and upwards!

The beginning of many I'm afraid!

Sunday was actually eerily quiet from the constant roar of motors and the wind was pretty gentle so I decided to work on food prep, cooler set-up and kitchen reorganization.  First order of business was to hard boil my eggs (the ones I bought at the store!).  Not many cooking tasks can be simpler than this - put eggs in pot, cover with water, boil.  Two ingredients, 1 pot . . . easy peasey!  But I can't do it!  For the life of me, I just don't understand why I always fail at this obviously simple cooking task.  Out of 12 eggs, 3 peeled perfectly, 3 peeled almost perfectly, and I was left with 6 strange looking 'alienesk', roundish, white, mutilated blobs ready for the next zombie apocalypse.  Probably close to 1/4 of each of those blobs are still stuck to the shells in the garbage.  It also took me like 30 minutes to peel all 12 eggs!  I have tried various cooking times, let sit times, peeling methods, and nope, none seem to give me 12 perfectly peeled eggs.  My sister says it's the eggs' fault, not mine, and since she is younger and smarter than me, I'm going with her wisdom.   

My cooler.  If any of you looked back through my early posts you would have seen my dilemma about which cooler to buy and my addiction to plastic food storage containers.  As for my cooler, I ended up going with the Coleman Extreme 5 day 52 Qt.cooler.  I chose that size because I knew I'd need a lot of ice to keep my food cool and would still have space for the food, but I had been worried lately that it was going to be too big.  It does take up a LOT of room in my car.  I also ended up bringing a file box of plastic food storage containers as well, cuz you never know what size, shape or color you'll need for the job at hand.  Well, after buying two 10 lbs bags of ice for the cooler and some "need to keep cool" food (including my mutant eggs!), I realized yesterday as I attempted to organize it that it isn't too big (inside) for my needs at this time.  I also discovered that my plastic food containers may not be the best for use in the cooler after all, they take up space and are never quite the right size.  I found that zip-lock type baggies might be the way to go for items on top of a few plastic containers.  I also have a tray that sits along the inside top groove to hold veggies and stuff I don't want right down on the ice.  It seems to be working so far though I do foresee some challenges in my future with it however.  Time will tell as we get better acquainted.

My cooler in it's Alien Suit

Today is moving day.  I hitched up and left my first boondock this morning.  Sad to say good-bye but exciting to be off to explore new places.  First stop however was the library and their free electricity and wi-fi!  I am still sitting here, writing this and waiting for my slow computer to finish it's meal of delectable subatomic particles.  The wi-fi is nice too - saves my data - but it also allows me to try to figure out the Kindle Fire my dear friend gave me as a going away gift.  I have never used one before and I thought it would be pretty simple and self-explanatory, but I'm just not getting it.  I did manage to download some free ebooks today, but I thought I could download free movies to watch as well, but from what I can tell it will only allow me to stream those, unless I actually purchase the movie.  Can anyone out there shed some light on that for me?  

Ooo!  We are at 100%!!  FINALLY!  And it only took 4 hours.  We certainly give those lightning chargers a run for their money!  

Time to head out to find a new boondock!  

Fears

Fear.  We all have things we're afraid of.  Most of us probably suffer from the same handful of fears like: fear of finding yourself naked in front of an audience; fear of being stranded with a flat in some remote location without a spare tire (and no cell service); fear of being eaten by a ________ (shark, bear, spider, snake, killer white rabbit). Then we have our own "personal" fears.  Mine include fear of crowds (probably because I'm short), malls, falling (not heights, just the falling part), and fire.  [I won't make fun of your fears, so don't make fun of mine!]

I want to address the last one - fire.  Now, I'm not afraid of hanging out around a campfire or BBQ or anything like that.  My fear is in the lighting of said fire.  As a Girl Scout many years ago, one of the last badges I earned was my fire starting badge - NOT because I couldn't build a fire (that was easy), but I couldn't light the darn match.  With much time and moral support from my friend and neighbor (also a Girl Scout), I finally managed to do it and got my badge.  Today I can light a match and start a fire. . . I just couldn't light the stove in my tearbaby.  Yes - I am a wuss!  I had been afraid to light my stove since I got the tearbaby - something about blowing the trailer & myself up when I put match to stove.  I hate lighting gas stoves - they always make that exploding sound when they light and it scares the bejeebas out of me every time!  I think my fear lies in exposing explosive gas to flame.  Now, I'm not Einstein, but WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT??????   Explosive gas and fire to me is like worms and Tequila - just because we put them together doesn't mean they should go together.  (Then again, my one and only experience with Tequila proved that after drinking Tequila you just don't give a damn about the worm - "Worm?  What worm?").  But we are talking about my fear of lighting my stove not my night with Tequila.

So, I knew I had to get over this fear or live on PB &J sandwiches and cold showers for the next several years - not what I envisioned for my new life.  While camping with the Tear Jerker's group back in July, someone reminded me that my little stove was removable from the counter-top and could be set-up on top of a table.  Oh boy, a safe way to light the stove and NOT blow up the tearbaby!  Finally a solution.  So I decided that when I got home, I would take the stove out and set it up far away from the trailer and practice lighting it before my next camping trip. 

Stove in it's place in the counter

Stove removed for use on a table top

Jump ahead to this past weekend - I'm off on my next camping trip - has the stove been lit?  NOT!  But with much thanks to my camping neighbors for their moral support and the wife's volunteering her husband's assistance should I need it, I DID IT!  I LIT MY STOVE!!!  It wasn't scary at all - didn't even make a noise when I lit it!  No little explosion burst or anything!  What a perfect stove.  I LOVE IT!  I really like the versatility of it - that I can take it out of the counter-top and use on a picnic table if I want or leave it as is.  I'm going to have my dad make me a little cover for the hole for when I take the burner out - so I don't lose things down in the cupboard.  

Now the story doesn't end there.  You know how you often get yourself all worried into a tizzy the longer you put something off - and come to find out that you made it so much worse than it actually was? (mountain / mole hill scenario)  Well, I am an expert at that, so much so that I fail to see anything else.  All this time I was so afraid of lighting the stove for fear of it malfunctioning and blowing up the tearbaby that I hadn't thought about any other potential problems in regards to lighting it.  So here I am, stove all set up on the picnic table, stove instructions laid out in front of me (read over several times just to be sure!), and I reach for my lighter thingy to light the stove.

I pull on the trigger and nothing happens.  I try again and it doesn't move.  I go to the camper and pull out the package it came in and read the instructions - "Depress safety mechanism.  Depress trigger. Adjust flame". O.K. easy enough.  I depress safety mechanism (darn that is hard to depress and hold while depressing trigger), trigger is depressed - Look Flame!  Oh, flame goes out.  Couple more tries, realize must keep safety mechanism depressed to keep flame lit.  Hmmm.  One hand to hold down safety mechanism, one hand to depress trigger.  Oh look, I'm out of hands.  Now how the heck am I supposed to turn the knob on the stove?

By the way, dinner was delicious!