Thermostat Warranty at Dean's RV Superstore

Thursday, November 5, I had a restless night and finally had to resort to Aleve in order to get my back to quit hurting. I'm semi-allergic to the stuff in Aleve but it beats the pain. I took a walk before breakfast and stopped in the office to borrow the Yellow Pages. We're trying to find RV parts; a thermostat and sewer connections (we lost ours as we left Edwardsville.) I'm a bit disconcerted that my morning stretch does not make my back feel better--quite the opposite in fact. After breakfast I take an aspirin specially formulated for back pain. Aspirin does not like my stomach. But I do get rid of the pain for half a day.

I take another walk to return the Yellow Pages to the office. On the way out I meet Sandy (her husband Bill is mixing architectural concrete repair mixture in the back of his truck next to their Newmar motorcoach.) They live in SE Oklahoma, Marietta, and travel for business. Bought their coach last time they were here and took a drive up to Claremore. He would like to go full-time. She doesn't know about selling their house. I meet their Llapsa, Brandy. Adopted from a family on their street who turned her out.

Don, from behind us across the road in a Wildcat 5th wheel, stopped to say he had a dog just like her that travelled with him. He's here Mondays thru Fridays as he's in his 3rd week of treatments for prostate cancer and doesn't want to drive here every day from his small town in OK.

Sandy says she works the crosswords and sudoku. Today's sudoku is a '3' but too hard for her and she usually can do harder ones. I tell her I'll see how Bob does. I head back home and Bob and I leave for lunch at Ruby Tuesdays at Memorial and 71st. Love their salad bar--and today we add mini turkey burgers.

We take Hwy 169 to 21st Street and find Dean's RV Superstore. What a friendly, customer-oriented bunch of folks. The parts guy looks up our 'fancy', as he calls it, thermostat and says it's $169. We were hoping for around $50 and were bemoaning the fact that it is under warranty but we didn't want to drag our RV in here. He says lets go talk to the service guy. So Nick takes our VIN# and says he'll contact the manufacturer after Bob tells him he checked the voltage to make sure there is power to the thermostat. This would be GREAT if we could get this covered under warranty without having to pack up and move twice.

Bob found the sewer connections and hose kit he wanted and we were out of there. We stopped at 51st and Harvard for groceries at the Food Pyramid. On the way in a guy was signing people up for Tulsa World subscriptions and asked if we wanted a free newspaper. We said "Yes, but we're from out of town." No problem; he asked where we were from and when we said Austin he asked "What is the name of the paper there?" We said American-Statesman" and a lady walking in the store turned around and said "Are you from Austin?" She has been here in Tulsa two years after 29 years in Austin and was so shocked to hear "American-Statesman." She lived near 360 and in Lakeway for a while. She knew Jester Estates where we lived. Her name was Joy and you could tell she missed Austin, but not the traffic.

We found another bargain cake in the bakery and headed home in 3:00 p.m. traffic. As we were putting groceries away, Nick from Dean's called and asked for our model and serial numbers on the thermostat. We gave him every number we could find. He called back a few minutes later and said the 'furnace serial number' was the magic one. Our part has been approved by the warranty department. It's coming from Indiana so it might be five days or so. Hallelujah!

My brother Mike called. Dad is home from the hospital. I was just going to give my folks a call. So glad he got to come home.

After reading the paper I go for another walk in the interest of improving my back. I meet Lonnie (wife Rena) from British Columbia across the road. They are here for another week. Have two children and five grandchildren in Tulsa. Are on their way to Southern California for the winter. Told him about the bike trails here. He said he drove by Turkey Mountain trailhead just today.

World Series is over, those dang Yankees won. Tonight we watch The Mentalist and Flash Forward. It's 5:38 p.m. and I can't believe how dark it is. High 80, Low 81. Right now it is 74 degrees with 36% humidity. It doesn't get any better than this. I called Mom and Dad this evening. Both seem very glad to be home. Dad said "You won't believe what I got in the mail today--an MRwhatever, you know one of those pictures of my first great grandson! He will be my first great grandson you know. Megan sent it and said we'll get to see him at Travis' wedding!" He sure sounded like a proud great grandpa to be. I tried to call Megan but had to leave a voice message.