Fulinn Around the Highways

Enjoying the day

2011-07-27T14:29:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I think I rush forward to fast, planning for the future while forgetting to enjoy the day. So while I take a short break today from working, I've taken a moment to sit out on my porch and enjoy the day.

Although I live in town, I'm lucky enough to enjoy a fair amount of wildlife right in my own front yard. Wild turkeys, red & grey foxes and many song birds fill my spare moments. Yesterday a pair of Eastern Bluebirds appeared at my feeder in the early evening it's simply amazing just how blue the male bird is. I was lucky to have here for about a half hour before they flew off to other places.

Birdwatching has been a wonderful hobby of mine for the last twenty years or so. Although I don't think I'll be able to continue feeding them once I'm on the road there are many birding conventions and conservation areas that I plan to attend.

So although you may think you need to leave things behind as you take to the road, with just a little planning you will simply learn to enjoy another point of view for a much loved activity.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Portsmouth NH

Fulinn Around the Highways

2011-07-26T09:12:00.003-04:00

It's been awhile, but I'm back with a new direction for my blog ---

This blog will be dedicated to my adventures as I take off into retirement in my RV, although it may wander into other topics now and then. Now you'll need to be patient with me cause my retirement will not occur for about another 8 years !

So you're in for a long ride with me ! I'm currently a Federal employee with the Dept. of Treasury. I've worked for them quite happily for the past 28 years ! Never thought I'd be employed by anyone for that long ... youth !!! The years flew by and I'm now close enough to retirement to start planning the next phase of my life.

I've always dreamed of owning an RV and taking off to explore the treasures of the United States. I really have no interest in traveling overseas, although if someone wants to pay my way I'd probably go! So I've spent a few afternoons over the past 20 years, wandering in and out of local RV dealerships oh'ing and ah'ing over the various units but always left empty handed.

I was raising my two young son's and there was never enough money, time or energy to think seriously about purchasing an RV. Those two young boys have now grown into wonderful teenagers ( yes, that's right I said wonderful teenagers ) while not perfect I couldn't ask for better kids ! I'm sure you'll be hearing all about them.

Time passes, and now I'm looking into my retirement years, crunching the numbers and hoping for the best. I'd love to have you join me as I get my finances in order, choose an RV and head out on the road !

Bonnie

Electronic Toys

2009-07-07T15:01:00.001-04:00

Well everyone knows that I am a lover of gadgets ! So
I enjoy getting new toys and getting them all set up just right. A week or so ago my son decided to buy an iTouch and during his "selling job" to me to allow him to spend his savings he converted me as well.

My cell phone contract with AT & T was up so I went ahead and got an upgrade to an apple Iphone. To date I've been very pleased with it. I was worried about it playing nice with my windows pc but the installation of iTunes went smoothly.

So for the last week I've been busy finding out all the pro's and con's from my point of view. I know that a ton of blogs are out there describing the Iphone. But let's face it I'm really mostly interested in how the Iphone works for me.

The only thing that I really miss from my windows mobile phone to the apple Iphone is the loss of Hulu. I didn't realize that apple did not have a flash player available to the iPhone. It's true that a lot of video is available in iTunes so I can enjoy my Stargate and Fringe episodes but really miss my Hulu

Personally I have no problems using iTunes or the app store. All of the software that I rely on such as eWallet and iBirds was available in apple apps. My calandar and contacts smoothly transferred to my new phone via google web. It amazes me the amount of free apps that are available !

So with the success of Alex iTouch and my iPhone my older son got an iTouch for his birthday to replace his aging zine mp3 player. He had a fair number of songs that did not auto convert from mp3 to aac format but he's still pleads with his gift.

-- I'm on the run again, so posting to you via my iPhone.

Weigh behind

2009-07-04T08:29:00.001-04:00

Well last year I was able to lose close to 30 pounds off this old body of mine. I sure feel better and it's wonderful to be two sizes smaller in clothes.

However, as often happens whenever I am able to lose some weight I get lazy and don't continue to keep my momentum going. Over the winter I was successful at maintaining my new weight and I'm grateful for that.

I'v been unhappy though that I'v made no progress in losing the next 10 pounds. I felt that 10 pounds was a reasonable goal and yet I've lost / gained nothing.

Well I'm hoping to change that ! I just love gadgets and just up graded my cell phone to an Iphone. There are a ton of fitness apps to help you reach you goals. I have two that I am using on a daily basis to help keep me on track. They are "Lose It" for tracking my food and exercise goals and "iMapMyWalk" to measure the time and distance that I walk or bike. The iMap software connects to my online account and is able to track both my walking and my bike riding.

So I'm hoping that love of gadgets will help me get a jump start on these ten pounds !

-- I'm on the run again, so posting to you via my iPhone.

Composting - first timer

2009-06-26T14:27:00.002-04:00

Well, I've decided to try composting our yard and kitchen wastes. Did my usual research on the web and decided to try out the "tumbling" type of composter. Bought one on e-bay and set it up.

Added a bunch of leaves and grass clippings to it today. I must say it filled the 25 gallon barrel much much quicker than I was expecting. Half a bag of clippings and maybe the same in "mulched leaves" and it was half full. I'm now going to add only kitchen scraps to the composter.

Hope to have finished "dirt" in a bout 3-4 weeks if all goes well.

Hummingbirds visit

2009-05-09T17:03:00.003-04:00

Oh, I'm sooo excited, I had my first Ruby-throated Hummingbird of the year visit my hummer feeder. Its a nice red feeder with commercial hummingbird mix in it with room for four birds at once. He stayed long enough to take drink from each of the feeder ports. I hope he goes on to tell all his friends of the free meal at my house.

I also have an Oriel feeder up. This is the first time I've offered a feeder for them, filled with raisins, grape jelly and orange slices. I've never seen an Oriel and hopefully they'll like what they see !

The Season of Mud has arrived in NH

2009-03-08T14:47:00.004-04:00

Wow what a lovely day today has been !!! Its actually 51 degree's today, the snow is melting and the birds are crowding around my feeders.

Alex has spring fever and has gotten out everyone's bikes for the season. Of course of the three bikes two of them had flat tires, and heaven forbid he be seen on a "girls" bike. He is showing his true 12 3/4 years attitude !

Today my neighbor gave me a call "lets go for a walk", so off we went. A quick trip around the block became a mile walk around the neighborhood as it was just to nice to stop walking and chatting. We took our little mini schnauzer with us and she was so happy to go !! She love to run and she one of those long auto leashes so she can really burn off that stored up energy.

Yesterday, Sydney got loose from me and took off down the road. Alex gave chase on his bike and caught up to her half way down the block when she stopped to smell the grass ! Lucky for us we caught up to her so quick, its so easy to lose a pet and we'd be heart broken.

Extra Cash in your pocket

2009-02-20T10:46:00.008-05:00

Like everyone else I know we all want to make a little extra money. Also like a lot of folks I know I don't really have the time and drive to go out and get a second job (or would that be a third job after being a mom (1) and Computer Programmer (2)?)
so I trolled through the Internet to see if there were any "work at home" jobs that seemed legitimate. I found plenty of "get rich quick" sites and schemes, but no real paying jobs.

However, I have found a few sites that pay you to read e-mail or try products that actually DO pay you real money or enough points to really get an item of value in a reasonable time frame. Below I've listed the links to the places that I recommend. Give them a try, you have nothing to lose and might be able to earn a few gifts / cash.

My Favorite site at the moment for "earning" points at is called Swagbucks. You use it as your default search engine. As you search you'll earn a swagbuck. You won't get one for each search but on aveage I get at least one out for completing five searches. Plus they have some fun games to play and earn swagbucks. You get great results as the search returns finds from google and ask.com so I figured if I'm searching for stuff anyhow, I might as well get prizes for it !!

So far I've won 48 swagbucks which is enough for a 5.00 gift certificate at Amazon.com. I'm going to save mine up towards Christmas gifts this coming year. 5.00 GC are great for a teens stocking stuffer !

SendMail -This one pays out each time you get to 30.00 in the "bank". I figure I'll get there once a year by just viewing e-mails. You build your balance quicker by joining different sites that they show you.

Inbox - Is a sister site of SendMail with the same setup. I enjoy them both and have had great luck with them.

As I find others I'll come back and post them with my thoughts !

Eastern Bluebirds and Cedar Waxwings

2009-02-20T10:31:00.002-05:00

It may be winter still here in New England but splashes of color can pop-up in the most unexpected places.

I was in Portsmouth Tuesday and leaving the office for my morning walk, as I stepped from the building I caught a glimpse of a bird in the bushes just in front of me. Looking closer I was so excited to identify my first ever Cedar Waxwing. What a beautiful bird he was sitting so still in the bush and in a perfect place to stop and admire him. Eventually, like always he flew off to the trees surrounding the courtyard and I followed his flight to a branch. Only to realize there were about 40 more Cedar Waxwings in the tree !

Today, after yet more snow fell overnight, I headed out to the front yard to clear the snow from my feeders and to refill the empty sunflower feeder. Finishing the job quickly as the chickadees and the titmouse's waited in the lilac bushes, I headed back inside.

From my kitchen the sliding glass doors provide me with a perfect view of my feeders and access to the screened in farmers porch. As I stood there watching all the birds jockeying for position I realized I had a new visitor to the feeder. Quickly grabbing my binoculars and I studied my new visitor. Three bright blue birds were perching on the poles waiting there turn to eat. watching for a few minutes I found that they were waiting for a turn at the suet feeder that was filled with a suet cake of fruit and berries. Picking up my field guide I identified my newest visitors as Eastern Bluebirds. Over the time they visited I had three males and one female.

Its such a pleasure to host these little splashes of color during the white of winter.

Wild birds

2009-01-17T09:46:00.003-05:00

I'm so excited today while watching my bird feeders a Northern or Common Flicker came to the suet cage. This is the first time that this bird has joined me for a meal. I get a great deal of enjoyment from feeding the birds, and yes the pesky squirrels in the winter get their share of seeds as well. Generally in the summer I have been successful at keep the squirrels at bay using a baffle however, with the high snow banks they simply jump from the bank top to the feeder pole, by passing the baffle all together !

I have many birds joining me at the feeder such as blue jays, cardinals, chickadees, nut hatches, hairy and downy woodpeckers, finches and hummingbirds. All of these different birds come to the five feeders I have hung from one pole. I feed a high quality mixed sunflower seed, shelled sunflower, suet, Niger seed and shelled peanuts. During the summer I also hang a hummingbird feeder, fresh fruit ( oranges and grapes ) as well as a small tray feeder of live meal worms.

The only thing I'm missing and will try to work on this year is a bird bath or water source for the birds. I can easily place a bath in the yard but must remember to keep it filled. I really would like to be able to run a hose of some sort to the bath to keep it auto filled with a nice heater for the winter and mister for the summer months. I'm still working on the details.

Also nice for the birds AND my yard would be a nice flower garden of native flowers. If done well this would be beautiful to look at and provide food and shelter for the birds in a more natural environment. Again something to work towards.

Moving from my HD to the NET

2009-01-07T17:40:00.003-05:00

Starting over the Christmas & New Years Holidays I began to look for ways to move my computer life onto the net. I've begun to do this so that when it comes time to replace this laptop, or if I'm working on one of the other computers in the household, all of my documents, music and pictures will be available to me. The one requirement I had was that the methods I used must be free as I can't spend a lot of money to put this new challenge into practice.

So the first thing I did was find a way to sync files among my three computers, so far the best method is by using Dropbox , which is installed on each of my computers. I can now save any file into the dropbox up to 2 gig of space and it is immediately available on each of my pc's and is available via the web. This service comes as both free and paid service.

Next, I needed to a find a way to back up my photo's and music collection. After reading around the tech blogs that I enjoy I came upon a highly recommended application called ADrive which offers a free backup software and 50 gig's of free backup space. I have been able to setup my "my documents" to backup at pre-determined times. I'm feeling better already knowing my pictures are safe.

Next up .. what to do with my calendar/contacts/tasks that I currently use MSOffice to keep my address and e-mail up-to-date. Again, many fine alternatives exist but I'm trying to move off my laptop and into the web, so options such as OpenOffice my favorite didn't fill the bill. I have been spending much of my time of late in Google, using google calendar, google reader and gmail. So far all of these have been working fine as my outlook replacements. I am using Remember the Milk to manage my tasks. Another need here was the ability to have all this information available to me via my Tilt Cell Phone. Google docs has also been working fine so far as my spreadsheet, document writer and presentation software. The only problem I've been having is that the Google reader does not format well on my cell phone and I miss my mobile Newsgator software for reading my RSS on the move.

My finances are now gathered for my review using Mint. Having all of my accounts in one place makes it so much simpler to create my budget and monitor my accounts.

If anyone has other suggestions for how to move from the local HD to the "Cloud" ( Net ) feel free to leave your thoughts.

Bonnie

Thoughtful budgets and goals

2009-01-04T14:06:00.005-05:00

I used to go the grocery store and spend around a 100.00 per trip to feed my family of three humans and two fur children (a dog and cat to the rest of you). Oddly enough I still ran out of things and we still ate at least 50% of our meals at a restaurant.

A personal goal this year is to gain control of my money, not stop spending it but just have control. I'm 45 this year and have a desire to retire from my job at 52. To this I must be debt free (except for my house) by the time I retire. This means I need to take action today to retire my debt before I can retire myself !!

So, I've put away all credit cards (what a shock that was ! ), I now use my debt card once a week to pull a pre-determined amount of money from the back and I stay away from my favorite on-line shopping sites. I am making a BIG effort to pay in cash for everyday expenses, I think this will give me a better feel for my spending. I'm also using a website called Mint to help me budget my expenses. This site gathers all of my transactions and displays them in one place, allowing me to categorize my expenses and help me to see what I'm doing with my income. The site is free with some advertising but it's not intrusive at all.

I'm on week one of a new plan to reduce my shopping expenses to 50.00 per week. I went shopping on Saturday and spent a total (Market Basket, CVS and Walgreen's) of 55.00 but purchased close to 100.00 worth of items. It took me some time, spent while watching TV, to plan out my shopping but by shopping the sales and using my coupons I was able to cut my bill by half !! I use these two forms to help me organize Weekly Shopping and Qrtly Savings from the Mommy Snacks.Net blog

I have a whole binder full of coupons which I gather from the newspaper, Internet and friends. Using the coupons and sales flyers I am able to plan ahead and using my account at Springboard I have all of my meals planned well ahead.

I love CVS the best, as they have the best sales, between manufacturers coupons and CVS loyalty program I can often get things for free or close to it. I highly recommend the CVS in Stratham as being for cooperative and pleasant to deal with.

Old Friends

2009-01-02T12:39:00.002-05:00

Meeting up with a friend for dinner tonight. We've been friends now for 30 plus years ! Oh how that makes me feel old !

I've been trying to help my 14 year son develop his circle of friends. He's learning sometimes painfully, that not all friends have your best interest at heart. Some friends are great fun, but at the end of the day you don't really know to much about them. Others, usually very few in number are friends for a life time. These are the friends that you've kept in touch with even when they lived on the other side of the country or even the world. As they traveled Europe and you raised a family still we've always come back together to share our lives..the end of a marriage, birth of a child or changes in employment.

He's just learning his friends are sometimes cruel, sometimes helpful and often times judgmental. He's going to follow some advise I gave him ( and no I didn't faint when he agreed) that having a wider circle of friends that weren't all "interconnected" might be a good idea. So he's going to try and find some out side interests to work on that don't include this group of kids so next time there's a big "ta do about nothing" he won't worry so much what they think.

Everyone wants to belong to a group, to be liked and respected...the trick is to find the right group.

Setting 2009 Goals - My 2009 New Years Resolutions

2009-01-01T13:37:00.005-05:00

Like half of America I set my "New Years Resolutions" each year only to have them fail shortly after I start out. My resolutions always seem to be - black or white - either pass or fail. So the
first time that I have a set back on one of my resolutions I feel like a failure and quit or forget about my resolutions altogether.

I happened on this site : Smart Goals which had some guidelines on setting goals instead of resolutions. This site recommends how to set your goals and make them attainable. Following their suggestions I have set the following goals for 2009 :

Pay off one of my Credit Cards ( I'm taking back control of my finances )

Save $600.00 for my emergency fund ( I set up a fund @ ING direct account), this fund will prevent me from needing to use a credit card for unexpected expenses (see frozen water pipe blog)

Lose another 12 pounds ( I lost 30 pounds last year, but have more to go ! However weight loss always slows down and I don't want to lose my momentum )

Each of these goals are attainable and measurable. I can know at a glance if my credit card balance is being reduced each month, I can watch my savings account grow and finally I can weigh myself and see if my weight is dropping. Each of these activities are flexible in that if I make a mistake or have a set back, I can quickly see this and make the necessary corrections.

With only three goals for the years, it is not overwhelming to me and each improves my general outlook on life. I'll be back over the following weeks to keep you up to date on my goals and how I'm doing.

Bonnie

Below Zero

2009-01-01T12:56:00.002-05:00

Well, I was so looking forward to a shower today, right up till I turned on the water to find NO water. I promptly yelp in panic and ran around opening all the faucets, to find no water in any of the taps. That warranted a colorful word or two, and then felt the tears start.

How was I going to pay to thaw the pipes and repair them ? Who could I call, I'm a single mom with little practical repair skills. As I've found in the past, a deep breath and a considered thought tend to be helpful. Since this is not my first winter, I grew up in VT and I've lived in NH for the past 20 or so years, I'm well aware of the necessity of heat tape on water pipes.

I dressed warmly and headed out to the back of my home to find the water pipes and survey the damage. I live in a relatively new double wide mobile home and the pipes are in the crawl space under the home. Luckily I know where the water enters the home and was able to find it quickly enough.

I had to take apart some of my skirting and then to my shock and discust I found that the heat tape was NOT even plugged in !! I was so angery with myself, I must of unplugged it to save a few bucks on the electricity and never made a note to double check it in the fall. So I plugged it back in and said a prayer that it'd be enough to get the water back on.

Coming back into the house, I warned my kids that we had no water so go easy on the flushes and no showers for the time being. To late of course as they'd gotten up while I was out fighting off the snow drifts to find the water access. Oh well, grin and bare it is the best you can do.

So I sat down at my laptop, thinking about plan B if the water didn't miraculous start to flow. There has never been a sweeter sound than that of flowing water in the kitchen ! I guess I was incredibly lucky that the freeze must of been slight and the heat tape was able to thaw it on its own.

So yet another disaster averted.

Bonnie

Having Fun with my kids

2008-12-26T12:49:00.004-05:00

Its a wonderful day when you can have an hours worth of fun your 12 year son.
He and I fired up our WII today to play with the WII Fit that I got for Christmas.
I really enjoyed all of the games included with the WII although the soccer ball one
is not one of my favorites. I got hit with all of the panda heads instead of the soccer
balls like I was supposed to.

I think my favorites are the Yoga and the Aerobic Step Game. My son and I were
a little competitive but kept it all in good fun. He often beat my scores but then he's
a lot younger than I am ! He did great at the hulu hoop competition as well as the
3 min run both of which I failed at but will be working on as I try to lose another
15 pounds in the next few months.

Child Exchanges on Christmas Day

2008-12-25T14:22:00.003-05:00

As I was sitting in the parking lot of McDonalds in Epping this afternoon, I observed that a number of the car's had a single adult's waiting for someone. Another car again with an adult in it and a child came into the lot parking near the first car. The children transfered from one car to another. A child exchange, on Christmas day has been completed.

I too was there for the same reason. My two kids were being "exchanged" from our home to their dads for the afternoon. My children have an advantage over some of their friends with divorced parents....my ex and I get along ok talking with each other and presenting a united front to the boys. The boys have never seen us fight or seriously disagree -- the divorce was an issue between adults and NOT our childern. I encourage the boys to respect and love their dad and their dad does the same for me.

Bonnie

Christmas Morning

2008-12-25T09:57:00.004-05:00

I find that Christmas is very different now that my children are teenagers at 12 (going on 21) and 14 they no longer wait for Santa to arrive and bring his glee. Instead they attend Christmas eve Church Service with me and girl friends sit with us. I know they are growing up but I miss the little boys who bothered me all day for their gifts and had to be watched around the tree.

Now the only danger to the tree is the cat who loves to climb it. I have to give Shifu credit as he climbs the branches carefully and not once knocked the tree over or broke an ornament.

As my kids head off to visit with their dad for the afternoon, I think I'll take the tree down. Its been up since Thanksgiving and its time to close the season. As I carefully take the decorations down, I pause to remember where I got it from, some the kids and I made together, some made by wonderful co-workers who've now moved on, but never forgotten and the most cherished of all are the Christmas balls handed down from generation to generation.

Merry Christmas !

Bonnie

Purchasing a Strom Radio

2008-12-24T21:18:00.003-05:00

During the recent Ice Storm we lost power for 46 hours. During this time it became apparent that I needed a good storm radio. However, what makes for a good radio during a storm ? Obviously the radio is a form of entertainment and news, so it needed to bring in AM/FM radio stations. Even more importantly it needs to provide emergency information on weather conditions and to accomplish this it needed to bring in NOAA weather channels and there alerts.

The other critical feature in my opinion was the available methods to charge the radio and keep it running through out the emergency. The more ways that the radio could be powered the better.

I began by doing some research via the internet and good old Google. Reading through the various survival preparedness sites I came across a radio that was moderately priced and included all of my required features plus a few I hadn't realized I needed/wanted.

In reading various reviews I narrowed down my selection to the Voyager KA500 by Kaito Electronics. This radio which cost $59.95 at most websites was in my price range. It is powered by 3 AA batteries, included rechargable batteries, solar power and hand crank. It also gave me the option to use an AC adapter (purchased seperatly) for power and charging as well. This was perfect as it provided me with multiple was to keep the unit charged and ready for use. An added bonus was the ability to charge the unit via an USB port but even better this same port could be used to charge my cell phone or my son's all important Zune MP3 player ! It was critical that my cell phone remain in service as my house phone died after 8 hours. I did not realize that having a cable based phone service would limited the access my corded phone would have to dial tone. However, it does as I learned, the cable modem ran for 8 hours on its backup battery and then died taking with it ability to use any of my "house phones". So my cell phone became my primary access to the world. I happen to have a PDA phone with unlimited web access so could use e-mail to keep in touch with family members.

My next requirement was the ability to stay informed during the emergency via the radio. This unit is able to bring in FM/AM stations, Short Wave Radio (for world wide broadcasts) and the all important NOAA stations. The NOAA stations are broadcast over 7 channels and its important to determine which one is your "local" channel. This radio also offered the "Alert" feature which when turned on, allows the alert to turn on the radio for the broadcast and then turns the radio off to conserve power.

Added features are an LED flashlight, a red flashing emergancy light and a 5 LED adjustable reading light, 5 charging tips for various cell phones.

After I selected this brand of radio, I found the best price at an internet survival store called "Midwest Native Skills Institute @ www.survivalschool.com. They were offering a "speacial" price of $54.95 and a free AC Adaptor ($7.99 ) was included. I placed my order on 12/21/08 and recieved it on the 24th. Thats darn good shipping during the Christmas season !!

I've spent the evening playing with the radio and found it to have great reception on the FM band, no problem finding the local NOAA channel and the lights all function as advertised. I have not played with the hand crank function as the rechargable batteries arrived pre-charged.

I'm very pleased with both the radio I choose to purchase and the company I purchased it from.

Bonnie

Storm Reflections

2008-12-24T20:58:00.003-05:00

It's Christmas Eve here in New Hampshire and its been a trying few weeks as I reflect back on current weather events. My family and I lost power for 46 hours during one of the worse Ice Storms on record here in the northeast. We lost power in the middle of the night but as day arrived it became evident that power would not be returning quickly.

A quick trip down the block to my 80 something mom's house found her without power and very cold. Luckily I was able to bring her home with me. My household was in many ways lucky, although we lost power we did keep city water pressure so we had drinking water and bathrooms available. For once I was happy with my gas hot water heater and stove they allowed us to have hot water and the ability to cook through out the storm.

My decorative fireplace was pressed into service to keep us all warm and it did a great job. The most frustrating thing was trying to find wood in times of crisis. I was able to find some at 5.00 a bundle and purchased all I could. The fact that we could only heat about a 10 foot radius around the fireplace necessitated a lot of family time !! We placed a hurricane lamp in the middle of the kitchen table and played board games all evening, it was actually rather fun, looking back on the evenings.

Looking back on the storm now I've learned a few lessons. We can survive in our house for a bout three days before I think we'd need to head to a shelter or hotel. We have a Cat and Dog who are just like family members and since most shelter won't accept them, we'd have tried for a hotel out of the immediate area. Cash is KING, I didn't have much in my wallet and my debit card was useless. From now on my emergency kit will include some cash. We did not have flashlight batteries...of course I had all kinds of batteries, just not the right size so now I've got the flashlight and batteries matched up. I need a stock of wood and kindling for three days. Finally I needed a good storm radio. We had to scramble for a way to keep our radio running and our cell phones charged

I'll post my experience with storm radio and my cell phone and house phone in my next post.

Bonnie