From home

The past week has been scary busy- sometimes scary, often busy.

    I'm still at home, and since my wife has a new living room set that sucked up my beer money (and lunch money, and fun money, too), I am home early on a Thursday night, when normally I would escape the double dose of Brazilian soaps that are on tv... but here I am at my desk instead, and there's a loaf of beer bread about 2/3 done in the oven. Not bad.
      When I was relieve at work, I had shipped my family down to New York by train and met them there, and we played tourist for a few days. New York is not my cup of tea, but I was very proud of not having a panic attack in the middle of Times Square this time... I have a thing about crowds and being lost. At any rate, we took a carriage ride through Central Park, took hundreds of photos, and generally ran down the savings account.
    Turns out, New York is expensive when you're there with family, and when you're cheap, and they're not.  I realized after coming home that I could have taken the fam to Aruba for a week for the same price that I spent for 3 days in NY. And maybe I could have avoided the 10 (!) hour ride home. Seriously, 10 hours. It took 5 hours to move the first 3 miles on 95 alone. I was ready to kill, plus we were crammed into my truck, which I bought when I was a fisherman, many years anon, and certainly is nothing near as comfortable as the mom-mobile my wife drives. So that sucked too.

    The scary part came after, when there was talk of breaking up my crew. This was going to happen, despite much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and I spent the day in a major funk. No more tomato garden, no more beautifully-decorated house, no more being completely and utterly certain that whoever is on watch can handle safely whatever may come. I was destined to go to an old, not-particularly-well-cared-for floating septic tank with a house that was made to support one Oompa-Loompa, not two and three 6-foot plus men.
    Glory of glories, it didn't happen. Ruined a couple of days, though. I had no idea how much I would miss my floating Pickle Barrel until threatened with losing it. I will be returning to HAWSEPIPER's same-'ol same- 'ol afloat global HQ/floating fort of awesomeness, where everyone aboard can still sing the words to "Detroit Rock City."
     Afterwards, basking in the glow of a near-miss, Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife convinced me to buy a new living room set made, apparently, out of dead cow skin and pieces of the True Cross, going by what I paid. She's happy, anyhow. We also looked at our first house together, but that's a good story in itself, for another day. IN the meanwhile, I'm almost 1/2 way through this time off, and it's going fast!