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!