Anodes and Hot Doggies

If you remember, I mentioned that I would take photos of the big ‘anode replacement procedure’ going down today. Well, most of it was done while I was with Donna in Belk’s exchanging a sweater. But here is a picture of the anode that was replaced.
The new one is 8 inches long and ¾ inch wide. It goes in down near that rusty place where you can see a shiny new nut.
That’s the new anode. Gary needed two helpers for this job: Ron with some Liquid Wrench and Terry with the right size socket. Between all three it took about ½ hour to drain, clean and replace the anode (after a run to Camping World for the right size). Yay, baby. Good job! He also cleaned all the windows (with no help).

Tonight we met some new Boomers whom Donna and Ron knew. We had finger food at Donna’s place. I made Hot Doggies to bring. It sounds really strange, but I had them 20 years ago at my son’s preschool picnic. Another mom brought them, and they were delicious. I wrote down the recipe and never made them, so I thought I’d look in my recipe box to see if I had even kept the recipe card. There it was, so I tried making one to see if I remembered correctly. Yes, they were delicious. The recipe is: cut the crusts off of white bread. Spread mayo on the bread. Cut dill slices into long slivers. Cut hotdogs on the diagonal. Heat them. Place a dog and two slices of pickle on the bread and roll up. Secure with a toothpick. Eat. Ewe, you say? Try it. You might like it.

We had fun talking about workamping. Bill and Carol had run a Christmas tree lot in Boca Raton, FL for four years. It took one year (30 days) to learn how to run it efficiently. They said they had a good time, but it was hard work. The main thing is location, location, location. Chris and Bob worked with COE (Corp of Engineers) in Cape Cod for three years. That is a bid job. You submit the lowest pay rate you will be willing to accept, and the COE lets you know if you’ve won. Donna and Ron have worked for See’s Candies twice (and never again unless they are not managers, just employees), gate guards for oil rig construction, employees at Disney and Dollywood – and they have only been fulltiming for 5 years. All different ways to make money on the road, not just work for a campsite. Oh, the wonderful decisions we will need to make…