Highlight: Spring has given Serendipity Farmhouse a wake up call. It’s time to shift gears from the reflective and peaceful calm afforded by Winter to the active and physical preparation of SFH for yard and building maintenance, gardening, canning, and RV touring. So, here’s a day-by-day list of just a few of things we accomplished this past week.

01 APR – ECDM TV/DVD: El Camino Del Monte (ECDM), our Class-C RV suffered some casualties caused by an unfortunate “over voltage” mishap. Today, UPS delivered a new 32-inch TV/DVD combination to replace the old unit that was “fried” by the over voltage. Yours truly, assisted by my beautiful spouse, removed the old unit and installed the new one. The new unit cost less than the original and has several added features. We’ve determined that the unit works fine, but we have to do more thorough testing to ensure we know how to make the most out of the new features.

02 APR: – ECDM Microwave Oven: The microwave oven, a highly important part of the, soon to be world famous, SFH Test Kitchen Mobile Unit, mounted on ECDM, was also a victim of the over voltage. On schedule, UPS delivered a replacement unit to our doorstep today. Once again, with an excellent assist from dear wife, your humble author, overcame several physical obstacles and successfully removed the old microwave unit and replaced it with an identical unit. So far, it seems to be operating as designed.

03 APR – Earning a Living: This was a heavy work day with a nearly 180 mile commute. After stops to get a haircut, which in my case, due to a diminished amount of hair, doesn’t amount to much, and to pick up groceries, there wasn’t much left to the day.

04 APR – Routine SFH Chores: Much of this day was spent catching up with routine SFH chores and various family matters.

05 APR – Ailing Spouse: It was a damp, cold, dark, rainy day. No outside work or chores could be done. Meanwhile, dear sweet wife was suffering severely from some miserable ailment. Rather than letting the situation further degrade, we elected to take the suffering victim to a local urgent care clinic. Fortunately, we found that, although she was feeling poorly, it was not caused by flu or strep. The remainder of the day was spent ensuring that dear wife was comfortable and on the road to recovery.

06 APR – ECDM Water System: A quick stop at the RV section of a nearby Walmart provided the opportunity to purchase an RV water filter for ECDM. With that needed piece of equipment in hand, I was able to hook up to an SFH water spigot and run an RV-quality hose to ECDM. The purpose of all this was to flush out the water system on ECDM and remove the antifreeze that was injected into the system as part of the winterizing process. As part of today’s procedure, I had to replace the infamous hot water heater drain plug. Today, I had the correct tools and a brand new plug. Although it is still not the most easy of processes, it was accomplished with far more grace and aplomb than on that fateful day at the RV camp last year. (See El Camino Del Monte; Water Works? or Waterworks?) My wondrous wife, assisted and is becoming quite adept at helping me find screws that I managed to drop during any simple equipment installations.

SFH WX Station Report: Following are the weather statistics for the last week. For the most part, it has been dry with seasonal temperatures. April 5th was an all-day rain event, and the trusty SFH Weather Station recorded 0.95 inches of rain.

Due to technical difficulties, I was unable to provide the weather summary for the period 25-31 March last week. The difficulties have been overcome and I can now provide you the statistics for that period.