Monday, December 22, 2008

Provincetown

Race Point

Here we are in P town, one of my favorite spots, freezing our asses off in 20 degrees with a 50 mph wind trying to plow me clean off the jetty I got out about 100 ft before turning back. Still it's absolutely beautiful, it just takes your breath away. The sea is dark blue and wild and frothy with white caps as far as you can see.
We go to Newport for Xmas with Joyce's family and then up to Jackman Me. for some serious snow. This is just the play stuff.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Check this out, CA and LA

muz refilling feeders

muz on phone (monitoring bird feeders)

lorenzo prepares to shovel driveway


newport, saturday a.m.

Typical winter day in New England: wake, eat cookies, wait for snow plow to come by. Lorenzo shovels front steps wearing flipflops. Jas arrives, tries to plow driveway with car. Jas and L resume shoveling car and driveway. Sufficient driveway cleared to drive for COFFEE. Drive slowly to coffee. Drive slowly to market. Return home; snow plow comes while we are blocking driveway. More shoveling ensues. Drive slowly to ymca: bad timing, children in pool. Drive to Marty and Nancy's in Boston, slowly. Nancy outside in snow gear, clearing a parking space for us. All empty spaces are occupied by lawn chairs- ie, no parking signs. Since yesterday around 2 pm, it's never actually stopped snowing.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

boat news

So we've gotten a lot done in the past few weeks, mostly repairs on the steel bottom, cutting out portions of the bottom steel that were suspect and welding in new plate. The new keel coolers, 3 inch pipes on the outside of the hull that cool the engines radiator water have been installed and all is ready to be sand blasted down to white metal and primed twice and painted. All of this is being done on a fixed price basis which is far less stressful. Joyce and I have been down in the engine room chipping rust off the steel with pneumatic chisels and needle guns, an incredibly nasty job, but we're just about done. We've just about finished fabricating the new doors and windows and they're ready to be sent out to be glazed. Hopefully when we get back from Boston in early Jan we can put the boat back in the water and move it to it's new spot a couple of hundred yards away and I'll be able to work on it by myself. I'm hoping the guy that sold me the engine will come up and put my engine room together and set up the hydraulics and controls. The list of things to do goes on and on. I keep laughing at myself for thinking I was going to retire from work and just hang out on a boat. We may have to move to a part of the world where you can still buy slaves. I hear the average monthly wage in Cuba is 20 dollars.

Monday, December 1, 2008

New Orleans for Thanksgiving

with David's family in Baton Rouge-


David's sister Louise, with Tracy and Anna


Rhoda, Rose, and Grace


In the Quarter


Art show