Antiques in Vienna and Anna, IL

Saturday, May 8, it is sunny and cool at 7:45 a.m. when I get up. It is 61 degrees inside the living room (I can tell by our thermostat in the hallway-still no indoor/outdoor thermometer.) After breakfast I take the laptop outside to see if I can get a signal. I'm go crazy with no Internet connection. Bill, our new neighbor curbside in a motorhome, comes out and says "good luck with that!" He's from Chicago and they travel several times a year. They are on their way to Bowling Green right now.

He says he had no connection last night with his new Sprint air card but he used a 'Y' cable or "Wi" cable (I wasn't sure how to spell it) that they gave him when his purchased his air card. He was nice enough to bring it our for us to try. Bob joined me by this time. We put our AT&T air card into one end and the two USB ports in the other end. We got 2 to 3 bars and actually connected but it was too slow to get my 10 email messages. It brought up my web pages, but slowly. It was nice of him to let us try it and it seemed to boost the power as we were getting nothing before.

He asked if we heard his dogs yesterday while they were gone. They have three (one is a new rescue dog) and they didn't know if she barked while they were gone or not. We never heard her. He says he can't get his Comcast phone in his own driveway or in his house in Chicago. He would love to full-time RV and seemed unspoken that his spouse would not.

Bob and I head south to Vienna. We eat lunch at Dolly's Restaurant-the only game in town. I have a blue gill sandwich that is excellent. Bob has the meatloaf special but it's nothing to write home about.

We found a small antique place on a hard to find town square off 46. There is nothing in it; we seem to be the only ones there all day. The gas station on the corner is temporarily closed for remodeling. We give up and take 46 west 20 miles to Anna and browse Memory Lane Collectibles. They have a lot of postcards and I find %40 worth and Bob finds two books. We get a paper at the gas station here-"The Southern Illinoisan.

Back home I toss out the last bit of the four-bean turkey soup that has been around too long. It is chilly and windy; the main reason we axed cycling for today. It's 5:10 p.m. and 71 degrees with 24% humidity. Yeah! Bob put the batteries in the thermometer and rehung the outside sensor. While he was at it he fixed the wheel chock on the RV. I return my Austin friend Holly's call. It's not to chat with her. She tells me about discovering Red Box movie rentals for $1.00.