Living the Dream with Joyce

Monday, January 21st to Saturday, Jan. 26th: Monday was laundry day - washing all my cruise clothes; Tuesday I pulled all my clothes out of my cupboards and did another sweep - getting rid of more clothes. (At the Boot Camp in Livingston, I was introduced to a time-honoured RV practice: if you buy new clothes, you have to get rid of the same number. Remarkably wise, for obvious reasons, when one is living in a small space!)
Wednesday I went out with Rob & Helen, JB & Jan, to the Ocean Star. This was once a functioning oil rig, which has been turned into a museum - fascinating! On any given day, if you look out across the ocean from the seawall in Galveston, you can see the oil rigs anchored out there - so if was great to actually see the inside of one. We had lunch at Joe's Crab Shack, then went to "The Great Storm", a movie (well, actually, a compilation of slides from 1900) depicting the hurricane of 1900 which innundated the island. I found it really interesting, although Helen, JB and Jan went to sleep . . . In 2008, Hurricane Ike swept over Galveston, although the devastation was nothing compared to that caused by the 1900 storm. By that time, pretty much all of the houses were on stilts - but one result of Ike was that all houses built thereafter had, by law, to be built on stilts 12 feet high. (I think I said, in an earlier post, that 20 feet was the height - that was erroneous!) The seawall did its job of taking the oomph out of the storm surge, although standing floods literally drowned hundreds of red oak trees. Miraculously, Dora and Ron's RV park sustained little damage, with quickly receding flood waters of 23 inches only. They spent a lot of time running free bbq meals for other not so lucky residents around the area. Those two are just awesome human beings!
Thursday I didn't feel very well (think it was the shrimp at Joe's Crab Shack), so I stayed inside all day, watching tv shows on Netflix. Rob & Helen dropped by twice to check on me.
Friday morning I went to the office to pay my rent and was accosted by Ron, Dora, Harold and Eileen, who were concerned because I hadn't been at the pot luck the previous night. (Dora saved me a piece of lemon meringue pie made by Virginia, who insisted that I would like to have one.) I spent most of the afternoon and evening at Lorna's, exchanging cruise photos on our flashdrives.
Saturday morning at breakfast in the clubhouse, more people came to ask how I was - since I had effectively disappeared the previous day, too. What a community this is!
Saturday afternoon I walked over to the ocean for a while, then to the grocery store for staples. In the evening, Rob, Helen, JB, Jan and I went out for dinner. They had been told about a restaurant "down the road a piece" in the west end of the island (Galveston is at the east end). Well, we drove for about 40 minutes before giving up. The GPS took us to a bushy piece of land with no buildings at all on it. We turned around, Helen checked the name and location on her phone, and we found it - about 10 minutes from the RV park. It really was "down the road a piece"! It was a good restaurant, right on the water - which would have been great if we'd been there before the sun set! Ah well, it was an adventure . . .