I haven’t been posting much lately as much of my time is spent dealing with the estate of my late step-dad, Ken Keller. Donna and I traveled up to his house to box stuff up for donation. We met my brother, Eddie and his wife, Rachel, there last Saturday and got much done. The house is in escrow and the buyer wants to close quickly, but also wants to negotiate along the way. I’ve made a couple of concessions, but now it’s time to move forward.

I was stymied for a while because I didn’t have the certified death certificates. The funeral home that ordered them for me from Riverside County just put them in an envelope and dropped them in the mail with regular postage. No tracking or priority. If I’d known they were going to do that, I would have gladly paid the $8 or so for a trackable Priority Mail delivery. After 10 days, they finally agreed that these documents were lost in the mail. They ordered four more certificates.

They called me on Tuesday and said they had the certificates and were sending them via courier to their San Diego County location in east El Cajon. I drove there on Wednesday and finally had the certificates in hand. Now I could move forward.

I had an Affidavit of Death of Trustee drawn up to allow me, as successor trustee, to handle the sale of the house. I couldn’t file the affidavit without a certified death certificate. Here’s what I find a little crazy about that. The certified death certificates are issued (at a cost to the estate) by Riverside County. The affidavit needs to be filed and registered by Riverside County. So, I pay them to issue me the certificate, then I submit an affidavit with the certificate back to them and they register it for another fee. Typical government racket.

Next I had to go to Wells Fargo Bank where Ken had his account. Again, I needed a certified death certificate to take over the trust bank account. This was a lengthy process and I spent nearly two hours with a banker. With that done, I can fund the trust with the proceeds from the sale of the house. Hopefully, things will get simpler from this point.

I also took care of a couple of projects over the past week. I mentioned before about the alternator on Midget-San overcharging the battery. The alternator is internally regulated, so it had to be replaced. Parts for the Nissan A15 engine in our Midget are easy to find and relatively cheap. I was surprised to find an AC-Delco remanufactured (in the USA) alternator at RockAuto for only $36!

The alternator charges the battery while the engine is running. The charging voltage will vary depending on the state of charge of the battery. As the battery becomes fully charged, the internal resistance of the battery rises and the charging voltage will drop. The old alternator was charging between 15.5-volts and 16.0 volts. This is too high regardless of the state of the battery charge. The new alternator charges between 13.6-volts and 14.5-volts. Much better.

The other project was something that only required me to write a check. The front side windows on our coach were fogged. These are double-pane windows. When the seal between the glass panes is compromised, moisture can condense between the panes. When the windows warm in the sun, fog forms and obstructs the view through the glass. A company called Auto Glass Boss came out to our site here at Mission Bay RV Resort and resealed the glass. They removed the windows, separated the panes, cleaned the glass thoroughly and installed new sealant. The glass is so clear now, it looks like there’s no glass there at all!

We had a major change in the weather here. On Tuesday night, rain moved in with a cold front. We had a blustery day Wednesday with periods of rain all day. The temperature only reached 60 degrees. Yesterday was partly cloudy and cool – in the mid 60s. We should have clear skies and mid to upper 60s for the weekend, but more rain is forecast to arrive by Thanksgiving.

I’ll close this post with a couple of dinner plates Donna prepared. First up is a coconut curry salmon dish with cashews that she made last week. It was spicy and very good – a keeper for sure.

Last night, Donna made baked lemon chicken. It was a simple single sheet pan meal and very tasty.