New Books and other ramblings

We have our cabinets for the kitchen now.  They are stacked semi neatly in the dining room.  Part of one of the false walls that enclose the kitchen has been taken down and only the header is still kind of attached to the wall to keep the other false wall made out of the old cabinets from falling completely over and killing us.  We started this project about six months ago simply so I could rebuild the kitchen.  Got new hard wood floors, new carpet and pad in the bedrooms, a new electrical panel, and while getting a new roof we also got rid of a number of mold colonies that had taken up residence in our attic space, damn illegals.  Also added 14" of new blown in attic insulation, bought a hot tub as well as creating a deck to put it on.  Now the thing I wanted from the start, a new kitchen.  Along the way I have found I am a lousy manual laborer.  If I was being paid piece work on this particular job I would have starved to death long ago.  Anyway we stowed a number of items from the pantry that I moved last year when we ripped it out of it's normal place in order to put our new fridge in place.  And yes ripped is the correct word.  After partially rebuilding it I moved it across the kitchen and gingerly settled it next to a wall hoping it wouldn't return to kit form in a spectacular explosion of frosted mini-wheats and rice grains.  Anyway I am hard at work taking up the old tile squares, well actually I am waiting for my battery to recharge for my battery run tool of maximum destruction.  As soon as I finish this little piece of procrastination I will rig out my other tool of maximum destruction, the one that you plug into the wall.  I was hoping Betty had forgotten I owned this tool, as a dead battery is always a great excuse for some down time with my favorite time suck, Zuma.  If you have never played this game all I can tell is just don't, for the sake of your marriage just ignore that link on Facebook completely.  Anyway I digress as I usually do.

Books I have read lately that I recommend.

Sailing:




























I read "Chasing the Horizon" yesterday.  This guy grabs you pretty quickly and keeps you engrossed.  I read "Red Sea..." this morning and was not disappointed.  In conjunction with "Bumfuzzle..." I have decided that I don't plan on ever trying to sail a boat through the Suez Canal at any time in the future.  At least until I win the lottery and can afford to be completely and constantly ripped off by the government and everyone else there.

Fiction:














A good yarn particularly as it deals with supposed Navy types well into the future.  And a pretty bleak picture as well.  But the story it told was engaging and I enjoyed it, well up until the last 50 pages or so.  Evidently the book wasn't quite long enough so he had to add some extra weirdness just to get the page count higher.

Ok enough procrastinating.  Back to chipping the deck.

Just ignoring this space

Greetings my seven followers!  Hail and welcome!

I have been ignoring this space for quite awhile now as we rebuild the house. I had a couple months of work back at the beginning of the year and really thought I would do pretty well this year, however reality came crashing in on top of my head as is usual in this dismal economy.  I purchased an iPod2 with the proceeds of one of my jobs, paid some bills, ate out a lot and generally enjoyed being back to work while it lasted.  I discovered kindle for iPad and have spent many, many, many, many days reading way to many books and ignoring everything else around me.  So the house is still a genial wreck.  Although I did get the house and two of the decks steam cleaned a week or so ago which makes a huge difference in how the house looks.  As an experiment I stained the small deck off the dinning room, looks like it could use another coat.  Not terribly happy with the color, wasn't aware that cedar was so orange.  But it needed sealing and waterproofing.  And because I am a glutton for punishment I sanded the handrails of the back deck, the poop deck if you will :), and going to see what they look like with some 50 bazillion coats of Helm Spar Varnish.  

Anyway this is supposed to be a sailing blog but I rather lost interest when we sunk all our money into this place and decided we weren't going to get a boat this year after all.  Somebody, the somebody that actually has a job in this family, who works from home, was just not really thrilled with taking a dinghy in a driving wind and snow storm in the middle of winter as the first part of her commute really wanted a house.  So in the interest of family harmony we got a house.

I had done some reading previously and expected that with the years of experience it looked like we needed, the boatload and a half of spares and knowledge of what to do with those spares, before we could reasonably even think of going anywhere I despaired of ever really having a boat.  And even if we did manage to get one of never being able to go anywhere.  Because really I have sailed out into the Bay and back, and that is just boring.  But then again just about everything I have read about sailing indicates it is boring as well.  Add that to my years of cruising long distance on various aircraft carriers courtesy of our government, and I can tell you cruising is boring.  And you want it to stay boring as well.  Excitement means you planned wrong and are now stuck in such horrible weather that the resulting excitement just might kill you.  Anyway I digress, while poking through a listing of Kindle books under "Sailing" I stumbled across Bumfuzzle - Just Out Looking For Pirates, a really interesting account of a circumnavigation made by a couple, Pat and Ali Schulte, that are completely unconventional.  

Pat was a commodities broker, trader kind of guy and I am not sure what Ali did, but they simply decided to go sailing around around the world over a few beers, bought what they thought was great catamaran that ended up to be a POS, but still really looks nice.  Took that as lesson one.  They had about 8 hours of initial instruction, taught themselves what they needed to know while enroute and caused all sorts of consternation on various sailing forums whilst sailing around the world.  They also have kept up a blog of their adventures and daily lives.  But really just read the book.  I am sure Pat and Ali could use the $1.00 they get from the proceeds of the sale.  Beer in Mexico, while cheap ain't free after all.

This gave me some hope for our plans after all.  It is just sailing after all, it ain't brain surgery. Think it though and you'll do okay.  I even already have the little scruffy beard that Pat detests so much. Although it isn't grey all the way yet.

Anyway those are just my thoughts whatever they are worth.  People like to talk about them, good and bad since they made their plans known a few years ago and just took off.  Read the book and blog because they are fun.  Take what you want and ignore the rest.