Getting closer...

... but not there yet.

The mattress topper from Sam's Club arrived a day early and we had it on the bed of our 2016 Vegas the same day. After I finished the morning dishes I headed across the street to trim off the suggested 2" from the bottom of the foam pad but the Admiral already had it done. Excellent.

I had to wrestle the now-trimmed foam pad into the covering that would make it into a topper. I imagine it was very much like wrestling a very large 'possum that's playing dead- flop one way then it lies there lifeless; flop it the other way and more of the same. In spite of the adage that doing the same thing over and over expecting different results being a sign of insanity, persistence paid off and the 'possum was eventually where it needed to be. Or maybe it pays to be insane if you own an RV. The jury is still out.

The sheets & bedding took both of us to get it done. With the just-washed Kokopelli comforter on top as a bed spread it looks good enough to sleep on:

Not exactly what would meet the demands of my drill instructor but Corporal Palmer is probably 98 years old now with no teeth and not able to kick my ass, so we two RVers are happy enough!

Also tried brewing coffee with the Clever Coffee Drippers I bought from Sweet Maria's. I had been putting it off cuz I couldn't imagine how I'd keep track of how much water was added to each Dripper. When I finally did it instead of imagining it there was no problem: water doesn't run out till the Dripper is set atop the cup after brewing.

I used the same process except I timed it-

• add some water to wet the grinds, then
  
• wait 1 minute;
• add the rest of the water (going back and forth between the 2 to get the volume equal)
• at 4 minutes (per Clever Dripper instructions), then
• set each Dripper on a cup and they started pouring.

My worries about overfilling were apparently unfounded: when the cup was full the Dripper stopped pouring and I removed it. Easy-peasey. 

It's going to take a few little tweaks but I think this is going to work. For one thing I neglected to do was to set the grinder a little coarser. A too-fine grind tends to be over-extracted (I thought the coffee tasted a tiny bit bitter though the Admiral said it taste great).

So we're probably to the point we can take a few drives to deal with things rattling or doors opening or whatever. A few more things and we can do a couple overniters to work out what we need that we forgot. 

Getting closer indeed.