Monday. The home stretch of preparing for the trip has begun. We have mostly been ignoring the trip, up until now, trying not to think about all of the things that need to be done as there has not been a chance to have done them… until now. Now the panic sets in and we are racing to get everything done between today, tomorrow and a little bit of time on Wednesday.
Dominica ran out to Target and Academy to do some shopping early this morning and then packed and prepared to pack for much of the morning. Then in the very early afternoon we drove up to the Grices, dropped of Liesl and Luciana in exchange for Emily and set out running errands with Emily. The first thing that we needed to do and by far our key objective for the day was to find me a replacement head strap for my CPAP facemask as mine is nearly completely dead and being in Greece with it is going to be a bit risky.
We started by going to a CPAP dealing in Clear Lake that I had called this morning and they said that they were unlikely to have the exact part that I needed but that they could identify it and call their warehouse in Stafford to see if they had it there, which they assumed that they would. So since Clear Lake was close to League City, we started there.
They were right, they were able to identify the part and did not have it. They called up to their warehouse for me and got confirmation from the tech there that I could go up and buy the headstrap there. They had it available and even were able to give me the price. It’s a long drive out to Stafford but it needed to be done today so we raced straight over there getting up there around three thirty.
We had a bit of an adventure. The warehouse tried to pull a bait and switch on us, not realizing that I had an expired prescription and no matter what they did I could not buy a new face mask (straps can be sold in Texas, but masks cannot) and in an attempt to raise the price from $35 to $180 they ended up creating a situation where they were unable to sell me anything. It was all fake and Dominica figured out the failed logic, and I figured out the bait and switch and they caved and sold us the part, as promised in the end. It turns out that we bought the part from the same store that I got the CPAP from in 2010 or 2011. So while it was many hours and a bit of a fight to finally get them to sell it to us we have what we need and are good for the journey.
We returned to Bay Area and hit the DXL store there and picked up two belts for me. My old ones are all dead.
Back to the Grices around five thirty. Dinner was Mexican tonight, those amazing tuna fish tacos that I had a few weeks ago that were so amazing.
We hung out at the house until around nine then came home for an evening of packing. Lots to be done. We have Francesca’s big Toyota Sequoia tonight that we are going to use tomorrow to take a big load to the storage unit.
I remembered to check Origin tonight to get Dragon Age II downloaded for Dominica and discovered that the Game of the Year Edition of Dragon Age Inquisition had finally released and was in their holiday sale! So I grabbed that and got it downloading. Dominica is going to be so excited. Dragon Age Origin is her favourite video game of all time and now she has the entire trilogy to play. I’m never going to get to use our new gaming system now.