As a new commitment to walk every day, instead of driving, we walked into town to do the shopping.
I checked the water heater and found the part that had failed. It was the water turbine that drives the igniter. It has a plastic body which had split where it fitted to the brass fitting on the cold water inlet. I assume it was a heavy frost which caused the failure. I rang Elgas from whom we had bought the heater but they said i would have to buy a replacement from the Bosch agent in Tamworth. I rang them and organised for them to order one in. I will have to devise some way of frost proofing the thing for next winter. Perhaps I will have to fit a new valve and drain the heater every night when a severe frost is expected.
I rang the guy who had made the new bench top for the kitchen to arrange for it to be delivered to Barraba. They told me that they had put a hold on the job when we went away in February and it will be finished next week.
We had appointments at the doctors to have the regular blood tests so we had to fast until after ten o'clock. On the way home, Jean visited the library. We took the opportunity to have an indulgence breakfast at the the Country Cafe which was really nice.
I spent some time trying to repair the broken part from the water heater. I think the repaired thing will leak so I will have to buy a replacement.
We made appointments for Jean to have a CT scan for her pain in the leg. I was amazed that the earliest available appointment was tomorrow.
I also got in touch with the plumbing people to arrange for the ordering of the part needed to repair the water heater. They promised that it would be in the mail today.
We were made very happy by a phone call from a very dear old friend from college days who is visiting Australia from Sri Lanka. He had emailed us asking for our phone number so that we can arrange to meet up while they are in Australia. He told us that they would be in Sydney for a few days the weekend after next. We said that we would certainly make it to Sydney. We had to cancel several dates in Barraba but seeing a dear friend from 40 years ago while they are in Australia takes precedence over everything. We decided to take the Motley down to Narrabeen so that we would still be "at home" while we are in Sydney. We had got fairly settled in the house and I will have to set up the Motley for another trip but that wont be a bother. It's so good to still be able to go where ever we want . The life of a grey nomad is surely the best life one can have in retirement.
It started to rain early and the very light rain continued all day.
We went to Tamworth to get Jean's CT scan. I called in at the plumber to get some advice about installing the new part in the water heater. The tech was very helpful. I also took the electric heater to the repairer and he said that he would investigate the failure as he had parts to fix some of the common problems. We went back on the way home and he told me that he had to get a new control board from Bosch so he would ring when the repair was done. All this is covered by the warranty. We did some shopping at Woolworths and Big W and had coffee at the Muffin Break before going to the radiology centre. The scan only took a few minutes so we were home by three o'clock.
The weather was better today and the overnight temperature was well above zero.
I had got some new software so I had to do the MacOSX 10.4.10 upgrade, While I was about it I upgraded iTunes. I found that several of my CDs have tracks missing in the library so I will have to get the box of CDs out to rip them again.
I had found that my iTunes library didn't have all my CDs in it so I spent several hours ripping CDs. I now have 17 GB of music on the MacBook. I had to make a selection to get 8GB of it onto the iPod.
We have started to move stuff back into the Motley in preparation for the next trip.
It was a miserable drizzly day but the overnight minimum temperature was a more pleasant 5°C(41°F).
I managed to move some more stuff to the Motley in between showers. Jean asked if I knew where Rachel's wedding album was because she wanted to take it with us to Sydney. I said yes but it took a fair bit of searching to lay my hands on it.
It rained on an off but we got some more stuff moved to the Motley.
We went to see Dr Sanji to get the results of the blood tests and Jean's CT scan. Jean's blood test was good except for the Hba1c which was a bit high. As we had worked out that our diet while we were away was a bit high in sugar and we hadn't done a lot of walking, Dr Sanji agreed that we should try harder and see how the next test in November turns out. The CT scan had shown that one of the discs in the lower back had collapsed and the nerve duct was narrowed which would explain the sciatic pains which occur infrequently. The scan also showed some arthritis in the spine. The decision was to get some physiotherapy and see how it goes.
My blood test was an improvement all round since the last test and my blood pressure was back to normal so I seem to be fit and well.
We moved the rest of the stuff to the Motley and moved into the Motley to check that all was well before we head off tomorrow. Happily the weather has warmed up and we were pretty comfortable.