That was a rough one.

 Did I have a mental health crisis yesterday?

 Damn, I was utterly miserable last night. Yes, 3 days of rain and the beginnings of diaper rash happened. It's been brutally hot and wet and busy with weird oil blends we're mixing in the cargo tanks, so I'm getting vapors blasted in my face while peering down into the tanks looking at a measuring tape. Yes I'm on a diet. And for some reason I had low energy, and everything just seemed miserable and unhappy.  A confluence of events, maybe, but it was the shittiest night I've had in years... and everything went fine, which is the weirdest part.

 Well, today seems better. The rain stopped, at least, and while it's still dark and gloomy, tonight we have dog watches, shortened, so that I will rotate onto working days and take over the show. 

 I dunno. Yesterday I was feeling like a dog in God's hot car. Today seems better, but it hasn't really started yet. 

 I guess I better put pants on, and see what the good Lord has for me today. 

Happy 250!

 Happy Independence Day, everyone. 

      We've been hanging out mostly over in Newark since I got back aboard the HQ.  The powers that be don't want undesirables like working mariners to infect their view of the tall ships and navy fleet, while admirals and generals have their crab salad, so we're ordered by NY harbor traffic control to stay away from The Quality. 

 Well, in the meanwhile commerce continues. While I'm only 5-6 miles from the parade and the airshow, it might as well be mars. 

 Eh, the stuff on TV was cool. I'm a little assmad that we were ordered to stay aboard our vessels and above all else, not be seen by our betters and get kicked off the waters they depend on us to work.

 Still, 250 years, I'm not so much a wet blanket as to not have enjoyed seeing the festivities. It's nice to see who actually loves our nation and who hates it but for some fuckin reason, refuses to leave. 

...and nothing got done

 Well, I'm headed to bed in a few minutes. Flying out to work on the first flight of the day tomorrow. 

 

   I had a very enjoyable time off this time.  Almost nothing important got done. In fact this may be the least productive time home I've had in the past 5 or so years, if not more. 

 It was great.  

Go to a rodeo

 So Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife and I went to a rodeo last night. It was AWESOME. Start to finish an absolute blast. You should go. 

        I absolutely had an 'oh wow' moment, too, along with lots of fun. At the intro, the MC came out, warmed the crowd up, then led a prayer, after, when all the riders and participants take the field, there was a troupe of female trick riders, all decked out, carrying huge American flags, while Lee Greenwood's 'Proud to be an American' blasted out. I looked over to see my wife fairly misty. She hadn't seen a lot of overt shows of patriotism and appreciation for our country, an as someone who isn't from here, she knows better than most why we should be so proud of our nation. 

 Anyways, it was a blast, from the bull riding, barrel racing, roping and the kids events too. Seeing a bunch of 5 year olds riding bucking sheep was cute AF, and the pre-teen girls competing in barrel racing was amazing- those kids were skilled as hell. Seeing such tiny people showing off crazy skill like that is impressive as hell. 

Pressure

 

Sore spot

Oh man I sure pissed off a scifi author I really like. 

That's a bummer for me. As I said, I like the guy. Good writer, excellent essayist, fun AF.

 No, it's not Larry Correia, thank God. Guy's famously brutal to people he doesn't like. 

    ...So I have highly specialized knowledge of a really limited number of really narrow fields. History is NOT one of them. The guy in question is a history buff. Has forgotten more than I know. 

   About the only part of American history that I know in detail is the lives of the pilgrims at Plymouth MA. They sucked up ALL the history oxygen growing up, as my town was where lots of them settled, and my neighborhood was also an indian camp and later, battlefield.

 So said battle was a big deal in my hometown, and also to the local tribes' descendents even today.

 The author in question got REALLY upset when I pointed out that Massasoit, the indian chief, pushed the pilgrims really hard to make war on all tribes but the Wampanoag, but in failing that, when the pilgrims later signed the mutual defense treaty the year after their arrival, Massasoit lied and successfully was able to get the pilgrims to massacre the indians at Wessagusett.

     It's always possible I was fed propaganda, too. Perhaps the author was right?

 Well, turns out the tribes' web site also acknowledged that Massasoit 'probably' lied to make the massacre happen. His son, King Philip, used that massacre many years later as part of the justification for the war he kicked off. 

 Like I said, I don't know much. It was kinda cool how with all the revisionist history that we get over anything involving the indians, the story remains consistent whether the tribes or the pilgrims' writings tell it. None of them covered themselves in glory, for damn sure. I am glad that on verification, I wasn't wrong. 

 Still, the whole thing's weird for me. Getting called names by someone I respect just sucks. I'm not good at people I guess... and this is something that happened over 400 years ago. Why in the world did feelings get hurt that hard? 

 Eh, oh well I guess. I don't see a question of history being worth the nuclear level of assmad that happened. 

 Glad I go home soon. Last watch tomorrow. 

The Lord Provides

I have the night off here on the HQ. No cargo tonight. We're at our good lay berth in Brooklyn, hanging in until tomorrow after lunch. 

 I'm on nights, this being my final week of the tour, so I woke up at 2pm, and at 3 I went out forna walk, it being forecast to rain later. 95 degrees out, high humidity, sunny. Not great conditions for a walk but I got it in. 

         It's Puerto Rican day on Sunday here in NY, NY having more Puerto Ricans than Puerto Rico. Of course, being who they are, by 4pm there were ghetto sleds driving around w/speakers blasting their shitty music at retarded volumes all throughout Red Hook, which isn't nearly as latin as the rest of the city, and these shitbox cars are modded specifically to blast music OUT away from the fuckin' car, to fuck with everyone. 

     Honestly, and people wonder why all the goodwill towards immigrants has dried up? 

       So, the rain I was talking about came fast when it came. The sky got that ohshit gray of clouds churning, with a 5 minute warning and the heavens opened up.  One of those downpours where the viz drops to about 300 feet. 

 And now, with the storm passed... silence. Just a few birds, the odd duck quack, and the drone of my generator. 

 Peace. 

Young, old, black, white

  Dock talk yesterday: 

    So B and I were standing on the dock with 7 other tankermen who were off the berths nearby.  We spent about 30 mins talking and eventually there were 2 conversations going. The guys under 40 were talking about supplements and who got fired so far this year, and us old farts were talking about medications and who died so far this year. 

     True story. 

 Tankermen are much like seagulls: we make a lot of noise, will eat out of a trash can, and absolutely will shit on anyone in the area.

 It wasn't long until the good natured insults were flying. But wow, zoomers are easily shocked. Puritanical when it comes to foul humor regarding race and sexual orientation. Poor kids. Seeing friends who are of completely different colors insult each other using stereotypes is a minefield for them. Super uncomfortable. 

I've been friends with the two worst offenders for almost 20 years.  One guy, O, used to be my 2nd man. They happen to be black and I mean, I'm a ginger, well, strawberry blond I guess, but still, I am the whitest white guy ever. 

 I could see at least one of the younger guys was getting anxious about the put-downs and humor. The two guys I was talking about? O was with me when I was coming to grips with my mom's passing. The other guy, we talked for months through the death of his marriage. History, you know? 

 The zoomer generation has never really experienced real fellowship between men, and that's a tragedy. They're so isolated, the poor bastards. I make fun of their fragility as a class, but it's starting to feel cruel. I wasn't about to go into a whole exposition and explain myself to them, but I hope that they'll get to experience not being so God-damned alone. In the meanwhile, I got caught up with friends, got my genitals mocked, accused O of stealing everyone's bicycles, and B and I left smiling.  And maybe the younger guys will try to build something similar with shipmates for when they're no longer the younger guys. 

'Must Be Nice'

 Well, I am happy to be back on board the HQ. 

    I returned Wednesday and found it good. A few days away somewhere shitty and it made our home away from home look and feel that much better. 

       We had some visitors come aboard yesterday. Newer hires, an old friend, all moored at the same lay berth as the HQ.

  All who came politely mentioned how nice the quarters are here on the HQ. I only got one 'must be nice' from one of the new hires. He's been on a barge with dirty, shitty quarters for about 6 months. 

  'Must be nice' is one of those phrases that can set me off. The guy being new, maybe with just a year here, I was polite and chose not to be vocal about it. 

 It IS nice.  And anyone who wants nice quarters can have them... the company will absolutely buy galley furniture, quality chairs, paint, brasso, ceiling tiles, shelving, appliances, even new antifatigue deck tiles and new cabinets... for guys who they know and who will put in the labor to intall all that in their free time. 

 Thing is, the HQ's pleasant interior was done by us. DIY.  Spearhead the project, do the labor, plan it out with the shoreside guys to budget it, etc, but the salient point here is that our HQ's quarters was a dump when we got here, as B and I replaced two dirty old bachelors who ruled the roost like Oscar The Grouch... and now, it's nice inside. Gleaming black decks, tasteful hardware, homey. Functional and workmanlike, but painted a classy colonial blue with gray cabinets and varnished wood trim. Soothing. 

 Must be nice. Yeah, it is. I have at least 100 hours of unpaid labor in it myself, and big E and B have some too. 

   That's the sand in my vaseline, the discounting of effort and exercise of will. Easier to complain I guess, than to put your head down and work. 

Ganked!

 Well, here I am. 

     So it's been a minute since I got the dread phone call of 'we need you to cover so-and-so on (insert vessel name) for a few days,' which some of us call 'getting ganked.' 

   I got ganked the other day. It's Sunday morning and I am not on the HQ. I'm in fact rafted up TO the HQ, tied alongside the HQ, but I'm master after God on a chartered barge my company is using. I got called in to do what I think is the last job while it's in my company's possession. It's a nasty, not well looked after thing. Think of a ghetto mechanic's loaner car and you'll know what I mean. Is it legal? Yes. Registered/ insured? Safe? Yah, pretty much. Yup. Is it clean? No. Is it quiet, smooth and tidy at least? Lol. Is there a risk of tetanus, impetigo, scabies? Oh, mais oui.

      I'm also getting a little Hard Lying pay for my trouble , to soothe the burn. I offered to give it to my port captain in exchange for not sending me over here, but no go. 

       It came down to the job we were doing yesterday. For reasons of us being old, reliable and most of all, available, my company, one of our charterers and a cruise ship company all for some reason like using B, Big E, and myself to bunker their latest class of cruise ship when it visits NY. Not that others can't do it; they do the job at times, but we get buttered up and battered and presented freshly washed, powdered and in Sunday best, when needed. Which, I mean, is mostly our shoreside staff patting our heads and telling us to run along, but hell, it's nice to be told you matter every once in a while. By which I mean, the first time in the  17 years I've been with my employer. 

     But yeah, to return to the matter at hand, it's weird. I don't like being ganked. Nobody does of course, but I find it particularly galling, even knowing it was the company's absolute right to get some work out of me, as the HQ hasn't been super busy. Still doesn't make it nice. 

          So I get told I'll be here for 3 days. Today is day 2. Tomorrow in theory will be my last day and as soon as I wake up the day after tomorrow I'll be free to head back to the HQ. In theory, anyhow. 

        In a very true way, this is also good for me. It makes me appreciate the hard work we've done to make the HQ a good place to live and work. 

    Unfortunately, my company also sent some old foreign guy to camp out on the HQ while I was away, just in case the HQ got a job assignment while I am away. Big E, B, and myself are all senior, and normally you'd just have 1 master aboard to be the big cheese, the PIC, da boss. The 3 of us together are a bit of a talent sink to have on one vessel, but OTOH our record is impeccable, and we can do the weird shit as needed, the jobs that have managed risks. Plus, I already told the office years ago that if they split up B and I, I'd be leaving the company shortly after. I can be unhappy anywhere, after all, and bitching aside, I'm happy where I am most of the time. I know too many guys who always look hollowed out; dead eyed, exhausted, drawn and pale, listless, depressed and anxious- guys who jump 8 inches off the ground when someone drops a book on the floor... so it goes when you can't trust your shipmates to not fuck the dog (screw up) when you're asleep, which means sleep is an elevated risk activity, which means quality sleep is elusive.  

 No.

       Everyone, EVERYONE at my job, screws up at times. Makes small mistakes. These days, it's a bigger deal to get a date wrong on a form than it is to damage a dock by hitting it hard, at least according to the bellyaching of the office workers who buzz around our heads like flies around a cow pie. On the HQ we each have our strengths and weaknesses. B is an observer- the guy sees EVERYTHING. Doesn't miss a thing out on deck, or on paper. He's a detail guy, but he also doesn't pick up a wrench unless he has to. Me, I'm the seamanship guy, and I have the deep bench when it comes to math, legal compliance and fixing shit myself. I also miss the details. I'm the guy most likely to not dot the i or to leave a rag in the toolbox. Big E is the logistics guy and morale officer He's got the inventory, supply list, and chain of custody stuff, and of the three of us, works hardest on the intangible things to keep us positive and proactive mentally. Of course we all can do the job, which is to sling oil. So, with two of the three of us always on board together, we have a near zero incident rate beyond the occasional act of God. So when I go to bed, I can rest easy that Big E or B Has Got It. If I get the dreaded knock on the door at 2am, it means that someone needs a hand, not a handholder. 

 Sometimes it takes a ganking to remember all that. 

Back at it

 Well, I'm back aboard the HQ. My first watch is a busy one, though we're presently waiting for a thunderstorm to pass before we head from the loading terminal to a ship waiting for us at anchor nearby. 

  My time home was just FULL. I'm not complaining, either. It was pretty much days of hard work interspersed with a lot of fun. I worked too much, ate too much, drank too much, got too much sun, swam too much... just all the too muches. 

   I bought a heavy gas powered pressure washer, which led to me discovering just how much deeper it cleans than the dinky electric one I had before, so while I expected that pressure washing the driveway, pool deck and the house itself was going to be a faster job, it actually took much longer than I expected, but the results were great. So that sucked up 3 full days. 

    I got some custom cabinet doors made to replace some in my kitchen that no longer fit after I installed a big stainless farm sink. Learning how to mill out for european hinges and get the alignment right was a giant pain in the butt but I got it right, thank God. 

 So, some befores and afters, now that it's all done. 

 Now I know why builders charge so damn much. Oof. 

    Not shown is that I also redid the laundry room, a guest bathroom, and the informal living room. Oh, and the dining room. 

 No before pictures, and it's not fully decorated yet, but my part other than furniture moving and paying-for, is done. 

 The downside of DIY'ing home things is that by the time you're done, you're just now getting better at doing them. 

 So yeah, all in all it was a satisfying time home. I'm really pleased with how the house looks, and if we didn't get to do all the going out and being social things, my brother came by a few times, we had a little party, met some new neighbors, and generally had good times. I'm gad in a way for a few weeks of 'freehab' aboard the HQ, w/ no booze, healthy eating, and a chance to exercise some muscles and rest my liver. 

 Back to work. 

Everything broke, but it's getting fixed

  Well I'm home and I'm running around like a cat trying to bury a turd under a marble floor. 

     Still, it's been good. A lot of little stuff is getting done. Home renovations are about all done. My kid has been in the yard flinging dirt and doing yeoman service getting shit done. It already looks so much better.  I pressure washed the driveway, pool decks, and the house itself but had to buy a new pressure washer as the old one broke. A pallet of sod had to get put in too, the front yard being bad enough to offend the HOA. The irrigation controller died. Pool vacuum is dying now. 

I gotta go back to work before anything else dies. This shit is getting expensive. 

 Still, it's been days of labor, and evenings of swimming and drinking w/the Mrs.  Good times. 

I'm tired, boss

 Workload's been pretty light. Seasonably slow, which has been good as we caught up on things on here, hosted the coast guard for our annual dog-and-pony show, etc. 

 I got ashore a few times. Got 5 mile walks in every time. 

 It's tonight and 2 more watches and I can go home. 

   The light workload undid some of the butthurt on my part given the musical chairs we're playing this month personnel-wise. 

 Really, all is well enough, just haint been in a writing mood. 

Blasphemy?

An odd thing. 

  Today we're loaded deep, alongside a really gaudily painted cruise ship. Graffiti-style hull murals for some tacky reason have become oh so de la mode for regular shore people. 

 This one today is particularly gaudy.

   Cruise ships generally don't have a good way for bunker vessels to moor alongside. There's never enough Panama Canal Chocks (recessed reinforced bitts in the hull to hang a hawser on, used also for Panama Canal transits, hence the name). 

  Today's ship was painted so eye-searingly chaotically, I couldn't see all the chocks at a distance, as some are painted over by the graffiti. 

      I had 2 inexperienced young deckands with me, both broccoli-headed Gen Z'ers. Nice kids, green. While I was talking with our two tugboats as we moved alongside, I was pretty frustrated about not being able to see the damn mooring points, and finally said something like 'Hey, we gotta get closer before I can figure out where to put her; this fuckin' paint is like Gay Camouflage.' 

 The tug captains laughed. The deckhands both got pie eyed, before studying their feet, visibly uncomfortable. 

      Now, my wife's gayest cousin is also the cousin I'm closest to. I really don't give a shit about what tickles anyone's pickle, but we have no sacred cows out here and everything is fair game for humor. 

 The kids will be fine. They're figuring it out. Maritime work isn't for the thin-skinned and this, along with not belching into the VHF microphone unless someone you like is talking, is all part of the process. 

Workflow

 My partner B came in on time by Wednesday and it was good to have him back on the HQ. The new guy was wearing thin. Not a bad guy at all, just... not a compatible personality and not a 'Can Do' guy workwise, which is what our people are on here. 

 Big E is home now for a few weeks, and it'll be my turn next month. 

 We were pretty quick to settle into routine, which felt good. Today I finished loading us deep; tonight and tomorrow we'll be discharging and hopefully Sunday will be free. 

    As far as ship traffic goes, it's been seasonable. Home heating oil season in the northeast is winding down, and  April/May isn't usually unduly busy, so I can't see any impact from world events from my micro perspective, so you'd have to ask someone else for the macro. 

I pickled stuff

 Yesterday I was so free at work that I made marinated mushrooms and 2 jars of dill pickles.

      We're experiencing a lull in demand for bunker fuels here in NY harbor. There's plenty of traffic, don't get me wrong, but it's mostly ships with onboard exhaust gas scrubbers, so they can buy the cheaper shitty oil and burn it, whereas the HQ carries the good shit (Very Low Sulfur Heavy Fuel Oil) and also the best shit, Ultra Low Sulfur Fuel Oil, the hi-test, which is just retardedly expensive right now.  And diesel, which most ships use to fuel their generators in port. 

   Well, with the fill-in guy having figured out that I'm not a talker, and free time, yesterday after some morning logkeeping and my weekly environmental hazard inspection (looking for signs of leaks in pipelines and joints, cracks in welds, examining anything that has oil in it, and inventorying the spill cleanup lockers, deployable oil booms, etc etc...),  went for a 5 mile walk through Brooklyn, stopping to go to church-good for the body, good for the soul, and also got some groceries (bad for the wallet, holy shit), then returned to the HQ, where I made a big stir fry for lunch, smoking out the galley with my giant ass wok. After lunch I pulled out my spices, some herbs I bought, and a jug of vinegar and made marinated mushrooms and dill pickles. 

 I put too much flaked red pepper in the mushrooms. Just a pinch adds a subtle pepper taste, but a pinch and a half was too much, but too late. Gonna feel that. 

If you know, you know. 

 And today? The same, just moreso. Gonna walk again and maybe spend the afternoon in the generator house for spring cleaning. It's too hot in there in summer to work if I don't have to, so now's a good time. 

In which I quit my bitching (for a minute)

 Oof, what a week. For everyone else. Me? I'm doing fine. Oh, I was feeling put-upon earlier, but... perspective arrives and I need to be grateful when I looknat what others go through vs what I went through and cried about. 

      So, me first: the fill-in guy hasn't woken me up once to answer questions in the dark. He's not my cup of tea, personally, but that's no big deal. I'm sure now that he's a decent human being. He can load and discharge with direction and independently solve some basic problems. He maybe lacks initative, but appears to have been trained to not change anything as a visitor, to the point where he won't touch anything he does not have to,  but he's also not familiar with the layout here, as the HQ is a simple beast, if heavily modified. He works on a floating Swiss Army knife (capable of more things, but awkward and uncomfortable for the user).  

        So, for all my bitching, beyond that he talks too much, isn't looking to up his game and doesn't seem comfortable with companionable silence, it'll be fine. My first impression of him was brutally bad; but he seems ok. 

    Given that, I can't cry too loud because relative to what some others are going through, in my network, I've got it good, and I got reminded of that several times.  One of my friends out here, also one of my favorite tugboat captains to work with, and just 3-4 years older than me, had a stroke while in his room about 2 weeks ago. He's alive, and facing a long recovery I think. Insanely high stress life, not enough exercise, and carrying too much weight. Also the family breadwinner, so this won't help. 

 Blogfriend BCE lost his job and his estranged stepdaughter took her own life (in front of her mom, who was trying to help her) as a final eff you) on the same day, while I was bemoaning my lot in life a few days ago. Jesus, I gotta quit my bitchin. People have real problems and I'm getting all cunty about things not being perfectly ideal here in my self-chosen oasis of... well, this fuckin' place. 

 One of my brothers is partially disabled, with a severe back injury that limits his mobility, but he works full time at a job that physically pushes him to (and past) his limits regularly. 

My sister has early-onset rheumatoid arthritis, and a weird ass massive seizure last year that came out of nowhere, and may or may not have had a mini-stroke chaser, had to move back to Sodom Boston to live with her daughter. 

   I feel (and see) tragedy all around me, and I know everyone can look and see people worse off around them, but as things pile up on others, I see myself, and I am ashamed to not be more grateful. I know my time will come. I think I had better start reminding myself that I need to be more grateful and positive. 

   Also, today is Sunday, and while it's rainy and dark, we tied up in Brooklyn at a dock with shore access, around 2am, and are free for the day, maybe. If the rain holds off, I will go for a walk, maybe go to mass up at the church about a 30 min walk from this pier.  Feel like I might need it.

Me and my big f*ckin' mouth (part MMMIX)

 Dammit, I jinxed myself. 

 We had a guy elsewhere who had a health emergency, and Big E has to get off here tomorrow for the last week of his rotation. 

 I didn't want to go as the barge in question has a trainee aboard and, having tiny quarters, isn't made for the extra body. No bribe is worth having a trainee up my ass for a week. I just don't have that in me anymore. We have vessels with larger accomodations and space to make a trainee a pleasant addition, but this isn't one of them and so I declined. 

    I've met the guy who's coming over to be my bitch... girl Friday  helper and I... well better to say his introduction to me was me, a stranger, climbing up his pigeonholes yelling the whole while, and then cussing him out at length for not standing a proper watch and causing damage to equipment. 

      So while I'm not thrilled to have a possible crewman good only for ballast, he's going to be even less happy. Still, in the name of peace and managed blood pressure, I'm absolutely ready to see if he learned how to do his job in the interval between then and now. 

 He yelled at Big E's, stepson, who, like Big E himself, is a hard worker and a genuinely good person, though. Abusing deckhands is a no-no. 

 Well, we'll see what's up. I shoulda kept my mouth shut about how good it's been with E and me this week. 

 

 

 

Routine

 It's been good to gwt back into the routine. I didn't mind the chaos of my time home but the weather's been decent here, the workload is about average and Big E and I have been making time to exercise and eat right, and working together in the afternoons to up our fitness game. Yesterday, for example, was a combo of body weight exercises and plain old walking to keep the heart rate down, as we were alternating walk-out burpees, flutter kicks and air squats every lap around the HQ. 

    I'm feeling good, though. Being over 50 now, and still trying to feel my way around avoiding joint pain as it pops up, exercise isn't an intense thing if I want it to last more than a while. Plus, I haven't done any in ages, so I'm pretty creaky. 

           Workwise, the job's the job. My days don't change much, and when they do, I don't like it anyhow, the extra training I've done in the past 6 months aside. 

      It's nice to be in long-sleeve T-shirt weather, anyhow. 

I need a break from my vacation

 Well, travel day today. I'm at my local airport, waiting to board my plane. 

 It's been busy. So busy in fact, odds are I'll actually be slowing down by heading back to work.

   I got to fly out of JFK airport in NY 2 weeks ago, on the peak day of delays at the TSA gates during the shutdown.  I picked up a flu as a result of being packed in an 80+ degree ayrium with 6,000 or so people packed butts-to-nuts for several hours. 

 I got a cold AND 2 flus this winter. I really gotta stop that shit. 

  My first week, visiting friends and family, even if I couldn't see everyone on account of being sick, was a great time but it was still good to arrive home for my 2nd week. 

  The house was a disaster. Dirty, dusty and projects half-done with construction. What was supposed to be 5 days to replace my kitchen,dining room and sunroom floors and countertops turned into 6 weeks of chaos. They finished while we were in Boston.

... for values of finished, anyhow. A miscommunication resulted in me needing to replace and resize 2 cabinet doors under the new kitchen sink, and a poorly-timed stagger by one of the guys who was moving the countertops in, led to my silverwave drawer front face being stove in. I was able to match the styles and order replacements, which required hunting down matches for 25 year old cabinets and getting them milled. They'll arrive in a few weeks and I'll have to spray them and drill out the recesses for hinges, etc. 

 So that and trimming out the baseboards and cove bases kept me and my chop saw busy, and in between I sanded and sprayed a guest bathroom vanity, remounted the sink and swapped out the faucets, showerhead, mixing valve and lights, touching up paint elsewhere. 

 The dust and grime was just retarded. It was absolutely everywhere on both floors in every room, despite our best efforts. 

 While we were in Boston my wife resigned from one of her work commitments, as she's self-employed, which had become a 7-days a week grind and was making her (and me, as a result) miserable. So while I was tackling the labor she went to work with cleaning the house, moving the furniture, rugs, and throwing away a mountain of shit.

 Easter dinner was a quiet affair, just us and one of my brothers, but I got a hold of a prime rib and got my chance to break in the new kitchen. 

  I lament that my cul-de-sac does not have piped in gas. One of my only beefs with where I live. I have to cook with electric, like a savage. My new oven has a damn touchscreen menu. It's a pain but it did do a good cook. 

 And oh man, the new floors are like shuffling across silk. A far cry from the cupped and cracked hardwood. South FL is no place for hardwood floors. 

 Doing 50/50 DIY and contracted labor was probably a mistake in terms of lost time and stress, and all the little things that were left to do to tie it all together, but I figure I saved about $20,000 in doing so. I am not a tile guy and the 24×48" floor tiles were enormously unforgiving, and even with the tile guys the backsplash in the kitchen was apparently a giant pain in the balls...and it's not like I could do a stone countertop myself. So I guess it's for the best. My kid will be painting while I'm at work and he's got a punch list to peck away at while I'm getting vaped out of my trees by fine hydrocarbons.

   Time to fly. I got an empty seat next to me, so I'm pretty happy with that. 

Quiet night

 Well I've been in Boston for about 4 days a d I've seen a bunch of the people I wanted to see. 

...but not everyone, as I've got another Goddamned flu again. Whodaguessedit, turns out stuffing 8000 people at shoulder-brushing density in a hot ass airport atrium is a recipe for disease. 

 I waa about 2 1/2 hrs in line even with Precheck at JFK airport. The flu hit me today, I woke up with congestion, aches and a fever. I was able to see some family but today I was supposed to see my oldest brother and his family, which really sucks as one niece is pregnant and wouldn't thank me for rolling in like a fireship and wiping the place out. 

Instead Inappropriately Hot Foreign wife and I spent the day together went for a long drive in the Irish Riviera, the South Of Boston seacoast, stopping occasionally for a pint of Guiness or a Shepherd's pie to split at a pub. 

 So I feel like ass but we made a day of it and as we often do, we had a great.day despite challenges. 

 I'm hoping tomorrow I might be miraculously cured. 

Send zen

 Well, last watch tonight and unfortunately it puts us far from the office, which normally isn't an issue but for a confluence of shitty circumstances. 

   I'm flying to Boston tomorrow from NY and Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife is flying in at the same time. 

      The airport hell made by our leaders' refusal to do their fucking jobs, coupled with the potential for a late arrival at the airport given my distance from the office means I will risk missing my flight.  

 And I don't care about me, I can get there but I don't like the idea of leaving my wife stuck for hours at baggage claim with her suitcase and mine too, containing my shoregoing clothes. 

 Not a crisis, just a pain in my balls I guess. . Seriously, while I blame the left for trying to cherrypick funding, I blame the right too, as it's their fucking job to not let this shit happen. 

 Fuck 'em all. 

Few more to go

 

 I'm down to my last few watches.  It's been fine. Nothing exciting to report. 

.

Oh, construction at home required us to pile the contents of the first floor in the great room, so nobody could use the front entrance to the house.  With the work now about finished, and furniture moved back, my wife spotted something in one of the flower wreath she keeps on the doors. 

 Momma bird has since returned and settled in. 

My wife enjoys having her there.  And, I mean, it's a mourning dove, fairly inoffensive as far as birds go. 

Happy St. Patrick's Day

 Well, I missed Irish Christmas this year and here I am sober as a judge, but God and Mary and Patrick be with you today. 

 ...and remember if you do have Irish ancestry, be a good ambassador for our people by carrying yourself with dignity on this feast day, like I am. 

Sunrise 2026

 I watched the sun rise this morning. 

 Man, I haven't done that in ages. 

 It wasn't a particularly nice one- the sun came up from behind a Fedex warehouse, and the light reflected across the mouth of the Gowanus canal, which I believe to still be the most polluted waterway in America. 

 Ah, New York. 

        Still, it was a good moment.  Even Brooklyn, the place the tube will go in when the world needs an enema, was peaceful at that moment. 

   The air barely smelled of the trash from the three processing stations within a mile of here, and the nearby streets don't yet smell of fermented dog piss as they do in the warm weather. 

 I can't hear the muslim call to prayer from here, which is nice. The nearest street-mounted speakers are up closer to the stadium where the Brooklyn Nets play, in the neighborhood where the Sharia Police drive around in NYPD cop cars with 'Muslim Community Patrol' on them. 

  Not even joking. 

So that's a blessing. I don't have to hear that. 

 Man, fuck this place. 

 My point, though, was that this was a pretty good moment for a place I look down upon from the relatively olympian height of someone from a civilized place. 

For values of good, anyhow.  

 You know, this post started out as me wanting to share a Moment of Zen, but it turned dark quick. I had planned on only mentioning that it seems tough some days to find a good, positive moment but the post sort of wrote itself. 

 Well, 12 more days and I can unass from here. 

Halfway day

 Well, it's halfway day today, where I am exactly half way through this tour aboard the HQ. 

 It's been uneventful. First week was pretty light, this past week was nonstop until today. 

 I was getting a bit frazzled there yesterday. Nothing's wrong, per se, but after 5 or 6 days of not being able to use the bathroom without the phone or VHF radio going off and someone needing something, it wears on you. Think on this: how much more difficult would it be to have a nice day if there is no ease to be found on the seat of ease? 

     Yesterday I was determined to eat my breakfast sitting down as the 2 days prior I had been eating all my meals standing and generally with one hand.  Well, yesterday I was gonna have 2 eggs, bacon, a piece of chicken sausage and some pico de gallo over flatbread and damned if I wasn't going to eat it with a knife and fork like a Christian, even if it meant forcing people to wait for me. 

 Turns out that wasn't necessary. The oil terminal we were loading at sent a young demotivated dockman who moved glacially, so I had time to cook AND eat while he was fussing with cargo hoses and valves on his dock. I immediately felt better after for having been able to sit and eat. 

 Yesterday was like that, though. Busy but with timely short breaks in the action. Very sustainable pace, and when it was done, it was done.  Around midnight B tied up the HQ for the night and here we are in Brooklyn the next day. 

      I have the watch off, oh frabjous day. I want nothing but to sit on my ass, which isn't gonna happen.  

 I need to go to the store and stock up on greenstuff, and I have a couple of hours of maintenance to do on deck, but I had my breakfast sitting down, and did nothing of value whatsoever for almost 2 hours. It was great. 

 Back to work. 

I'm not crying, I have a sniffle

 Well, one of the tile guys who was working on my house missed work last Wednesday as his daughter had been sick. He got sick himself over that weekend. 

 I got back to work on Friday, 2 days late, as a result of all the snow that hit NY. By the time I was aboard the HQ it was already 2 hours into my watch and I took over still in my street clothes, standing watch from about 1930 to 0530 Thursday. 

 By 2300 my  throat was itching and my nose was starting to run. I picked up the damn bug from the tile guy and his kid. 

  I already had a brutal cold/flu this past January. This seems unfair. 

        Thing is, this appears to be a garden-variety cold. Compared to the misery of the last one, I can handle this.  It's annoying, sure, but nowhere near as bad as my recent memories. 

 My wife and kid came down with it about 8 hours after I did. So they're not super happy either. 

    As for me, I'm moved in and at work. Funny that just 2 extra days off from my normal rotstion and I feel like I've been away for a lot longer. I find myself more calm and zen. 

 The weather has been moderate too, which helps a lot. 

hooky

 Well, I won't pretend to be sad that my flight back to work got cancelled since NY got a shockingly normal (for the 1980's and 1990's) amount of snow and shitty weather. 

 I was supposed to fly out tomorrow. It's such a shit show between the bad weather, and DHS being held hostage by that trashbag sodomite Schumer and his flying sacks of shit friends so Fast Finger Freddie and the TSA boys aren't getting paid to perform security kabuki, causing cancellations on their own prior to the weather being bad. 

      I'm finding life to be more rewarding by disengaging some from politics especially online... but this is some bullshit. 

 That being said, it may be bullshit, but regardless, the first flight to NY I can get is on Friday so I'm getting an impromptu extension to my vacation.  I am... not sad about this, though I also of course am not getting paid, either, maritime companies in general subscribing to St. Paul's  "He who will not work, nor shall he eat." to paraphrase. 

    It'd be cooler if my house wasn't a dump. Renovations are at peak impingement of my day-to-day, with no appliances in the kitchen, no furniture on the 1st floor, and my fridge in my garage, which doesn't sound bad but OTOH I cooked breakfast this morning on an ironing board in my bedroom and the toaster is on my nightstand. 

   I'm not a TV watcher, but I kinda wish I could watch my TV even so, but then again, I'd be sitting on a box to do so even if it was on the wall rather than behind a Jenga style stack of 3 sections of my couch stacked vertically about 10 feet tall. 

   I bitch, but it's starting to come back together. The floor guys arrive tomorrow for tiling and it's lovely outside here, cold for Florida, meaning 60's in the day and 50's at night so I have been enjoying the sun and the not sweating, but not as much as I enjoy the not freezing my balls off of being at work this time of year. 

       So, tomorrow, when normally I'd be on the plane at 6am, I'll be asleep in bed. This is better, and in a few days I'll be up north anyhow, with plenty of time to enjoy the brown dirty snow and wet, cold feet and wet,cold people. 

It has its moments

 I'm home, I'm warm, I'm sleeping better.

     All good.  Renovations at my house have started, which is disruptive. New kitchen countertops and new floors on most of my first floor meant that  after arriving home I had to disconnect the bathroom vanity's water connections, pull fhe vanity, the washer and dryer, the furniture, lamps and sundries and the refrigerator and stow them elsewhere. And then I could go to bed.  So we're camping out in my house for the next week. 

  Of course it wasn't withiut some hiccups. Oneof the shut off valves for the washing machine was leaking by, as was one of the ones for the laundry sink. No matter what I did I couldn't get them to not leak by, so we did without water overnight and I had to make a couple of trips to Home Depot because of course one was a friction fit and the other was threaded. 

    Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife had never heard a jackhammer before, so having one working 10 feet away behind some plastic sheeting to keep the dust down was a bit of a shock. Luckily we all have good earpro, being a house of shooters, so going about our business in the mostly-empty kitchen as best we can at 150dB is workable. 

 Anyhow, I have some family visiting Disney a couple of hours to the north so it's a great time to go say hi. 

 In the meanwhile we went to a waterfront bar laat night and had fried shrimp and mahi mahi and a couple of drinks, which is bad for the waistline but good for the soul. 

   It's good to not be at work even if I have to go in the living room to see what's in the fridge. 

Winter

 Well, the cold is back. 

 It's presently a relatively balmy 10 degrees F. Gonna be 1 tonight, but it's blowing 40kts, gusting close to 60. Frostbite risk tonight for sure. 

   Unfortunately we also have a complex discharge tonight that will require me to spend a lot of time outside on deck... We loaded three different feedstocks to make a Very Low Sulfur heavy Fuel Oil  (VLSFO, a clean burning residual (#6) fuel oil)  destined for a powerplant in the Bronx tonight. The first feedstock was ultra dense and viscous, and the terminal we loaded from, in their great wisdom, kept the oil in a tank with a tiny pipeline that is uninsulated in parts... this is an oil (HAFO, Highly Aromatic Fuel Oil, basically an oil that has a nasty habit of shedding nasty (mostly nonflammable under normal conditions)) molecules into gas form. Stinky stuff. Smells like sulfur and really cheap shitty perfume... But energy dense like you wouldn't believe.  So, we laid down a thin layer of that stuff in our tanks, which should hsve tanken an hour but took 24,  and by the time it got to us it had partially resolidified into a molasses-in-the-refrigerator texture... then we used two types of 'cutter stock,' oils similar to clean diesel, thst will dilute and thin the heavy crap... but the terminal's pumps are ridiculously slow. 40 hours to load what would take just 4 hours elsewhere. The bummer being that in order to blend products of wildly different densities and/or temperatures, you need mechanical agitation, otherwise the oils just stratify and don't blend... and the little transfer pumps the terminal is using, well, the oil moves, but not fast enough to agitate anything. Just a slow, smooth movement. 

 I bitch but I have a point... now, this stuff is destined for a standby power plant's fuel tank. It will get pumped into that one big, empty tank and when we're done the oil will be heated and recirculated in the tank, blending it nicely.

 The idea is to blend it in my tanks first, so the heavy stuff doesn't turn solid in my tanks and become unpumpable, which heavy oil does at low temps.  The HQ doesn't have steam lines or volcanic cargo heaters, as we don't do long voyages, but in winter, oil needs to go in hot and not be in our tanks longer than 3 days. 

  Well, small, slow pumps, cold uninsulated pipelines, the oil's only a little above 90 degrees in the middle of my heavy oil tanks, so it's substantially cooler at the bottom.  Luckily we should be starting to pump it off less than 10 hours from when we finished loading.

    My point here is that there will be oil of a marshmallow-like consistancy to deal with in the bottom of my tanks. Ever try sucking a really thick chocolate shake through a soda straw?  I have to be on the scene to make sure I don't bake the pump impellers, overload the cargo engines and blow out the stuffing boxes (packing glands) of the pump shafts... and it's the damn stuffing boxes that are the ones to watch. 

      Pulling massive vacuum suction to get viscous oil to flow, means we'll be at a huge vacuum on the suction side of the pump, but on the discharge side we'll be pushing 100psi of force to get the oil into my discharge piping and to the cargo hoses going ashore.  All that force will be exerted on the seals of the pump shafts, and viscous oil at 100psi puts ENORMOUS force on the seals, which absolutely will leak by slightly so as not to blow out... so there will be solid oil oozing out over the pump well sides and making an enormous mess that is almost impossible to clean up between November and April... so I want zero mess, obviously, and I don't want to barbecue all my pump equipment in the process, so I'll be there watching, putting my hands on things (gauges freeze sometimes, so I can't trust 'em) and generally trying to be a good do-bee. 

 Which would be fine except for it being 3 degrees and blowing a gale. 

  Still, every winter has to have a 'coldest night of the year' in it.  So not a big deal, just has to be dealt with. 

Edit:  Too much wind, not enough cargo. As we're lightly loaded and the wind is just retarded strong, the office made the call to delay our sailing. We're only lightly loaded, so the HQ's hull presents a LOT of sail area for the wind to bite on, and we'd be brawling trying to tie up and maneuver at low speeds. 

 Good call, IMO. Had we been fully loaded with more hull underwater, we could deal with the wind grabbing our topsides and superstructure, maybe crabbing us a bit. But I am happy the People In Ties chose to let me live to fight another day. 

An Anal-ogy

 Going on Instagram and X is like looking in the hole of a porta-potty. 

 God damn the mob. I may not go back on land. Ever. 

Fun by the bucketload

 Well... shit.

     Still got running water. We're iced in pretty good at the moment here close to Brooklyn Bridge Park. A tugboat will be able to get us out of here with a little throttle I'm sure but man, it's been YEARS since we had this much ice screwing with us. 

 I'm grateful we have running water, but sadly the black water piping and the MSD (ye olde poop tank) froze up yesterday so we got a 2 ton shitcicle downstairs... so, while we can still wash and such, peeing over the side is called for, as is pooping in a bucket once again. 

 And with all the ice around us, there's no hiding exactly where the buckets' contents go over the side. 

     If you're a Patrick O'Brien fan, you'll know what I mean when I say Admiral Brown is close by. 

 I'm getting too old for this shit.

My everything is sore

 

     Well. 

            It's been unpleasant.  Single digit temps at night, everything is frozen, and 2 days of shoveling followed by 2 days of constantly slipping on deck and catching myself has my back screaming. 

    We're busy. Yesterday was nonstop and a crewing snafu led to me being mostly on deck from 5 am to midnight. The warm oil we were carrying melted some of the snow on deck, which refroze into ice rink- grade smooth ice on the bare patches that have appeared where shoveling was really aggressive.

    My feet hurt like hell too, from being cold for so long and my boots being uninsulated, as those boots have the best treads for ice. 

        I did put on a pair of slip on steel cleats on my boots when we were making up to the assist tug.  Their push cables are heavy, usually put about 100-150lbs of force on us to drag onto a bitt, and standing close to a deck edge coated in ice... no. I want a good grip. Those cleats are uncomfortable too, but for 10 minutes at a time they're fine. 

Panic!

 So it's gonna snow I guess. 

 It's snow.   Calm down. Worst case, stay home a little extra. Oh My God! 

 Now, guys in Texas and the gulf coast have a reason to panic. They're not set up for a big storm. Here in the northeast, it's been 10-12 years since we got a serious snowstorm.  10-12 years since we got a REGULAR WEATHER EVENT. 

      Granted, all the many, many new foreigners and some of the youngest of the young idiots behind the wheel are absolutely going to kill themselves and those around them this weekend as they drive like fucking idiots on a good day, and there won't be good days for the next week or so. 

       For most of the rest of us?  Inconvenience.  The media's flipping out over inconvenience.

 Well, even so, I hear that Bread and Milk are sold out. Snow's coming, gotta get the bread and milk. Don't ask why, just get it. Bring a knife, gun or a baseball bat. Might need it.

   Now, I come from New England and the only difference between a large snow storm and a cold day without snow is whether or not you put on the regular winter Coat or your Big Coat.          Maybe I'm biased. I'm on the water and with Condition Whisky declared (ports remain open, gales expected, vessels must be prepared for heavy weather and  high winds, and must declare intent to the Coast Guard to arrive or leave port) after 12 days of nonstop work locally, we're starting a 2-lull coincidentally, and lashed up at a lay berth in Brooklyn Bridge Park. No shore access, which is sad, but we're rafted up against a big ATB (Articulated Tug-barge) twice our size, which means we don't have to contend with tides, and just need to tend our mooring lines and hopefully keep 'em static. 

         Stay warm out there.  I got like an acre or more of deck to shovel.  Gotta limber up. 

One week in: Report

 Week two begins with dog watches, where over the course of 24 hours we work shorter watches until we are switched, so I went from nights to days. 

    It's busy, as Winter is here. Nonstop more or less, but I got enough time off and a berth yesterday to get groceries, and armed with what I need my morale is reasonable despite working mostly nonstop. 

        It's cold. Approached zero a couple of times, we had snow and 2 ice storms, two days in a row that made trouble. Soaking rain gets between pipe flanges, where 2 pipes are bolted together, freezes into ice, and expands, opening up the pipe join, causing a leak. 

 That, and the damn rain got into the hydraulic valve for the boom (arm up/arm down) control for my port deck crane and it freezes periodically, locking the control and requiring a hammer to break loose, which isn't good for the lever... 

   ...but we're holding

. My teeth are wiped and my ass is minty clean as the fresh water hasn't frozen, which makes a *huge* difference in morale aboard. 

    It's cold. Uncomfortable, and I slip on the ice on deck at times, but we're holding.  Work gets done, maintenance too, though the occasional annoying non-routine task now becomes something arduous given the temps.

 But we're holding. 

     We're between gales today. Days where tye wind is under 25kts are a treat. Gales twice a week minimum. 

But we're holding. 

And then, work

 Welp, back to work. 

      I got back to NY tuesday afternoon for crew change bright and early on Wednesday.  It being my first week back to work, I'm on nights, covering 6pm-6am, and as God was kind, there was no work tonight, my first night back. So, after loading up on vegetables and diet soda (I loaded up our deep freeze with chicken and meat just before I went home and we always have a mountain of good eggs on hand for protein), I came aboard yesterday morning, got caught up on gossip and current events aboard, unpacked my stuff and immediately took a nap. 

 On the night before crew change I try to get 5 good hours of sleep, so I give myself about 7 hours of rack time, as being in NY there is always traffic noises and EXTREMELY loud and rude foreigners yelling in the hallways of every single hotel here, this being NY and absolutely infested with loud obnoxious foreigners who like yelling and talking on speakerphone in hotel hallways as a habit.  

 Asking your average hotelgoing mong to behave or at least be quiet is like asking a dog not to piss on a tree... You need to shoot the beast with a bb gun in the pecker once or twice before it learns to respect boundaries. 

       There are domestic hoodboogers who do the same, don't get me wrong. I'm sure there is PWT who does this also, but I haven't seen much of it.

        At any rate I got moved in, caught a 3 hour nap, and with the prospect of a night off, I did some PM's like topping off the fogging oil for the air starters on the cargo pumps, checking lubes, and doing my meal preps for the next few weeks. 

          As part of having a metabolism that has turned into absolute dogshit with my dead thyroid, I practice intermittant fasting at work , eating in just a 6 hour daily window, and I weigh my portions and keep to a caloric limit. After a couple of days of this, I think it sets my insulin levels right and lets me burn off some of the glycogen stores in my liver, as I don't get hunger cramps too much and I get better at efficiently burning my food.  Plus, I don't eat processed food except for good bacon, so eating clean helps. I do put on weight FAST now if I eat more than 1900-2000 calories, but at 1200-1300 cals a day I will lose 1- 1.5lbs/week.  When I was at 300lbs, last year at this time, I could lose 5lbs a week easily. 

 At home, home cooking, eating out at least once a week, and of course booze all contribute to me not losing weight there.

 Well, anyhow I spent about 4 hours portioning chicken and meat, cooking rice and portioning it out into 120g bags and freezing it, and I made feijoada (the national dish of Brazil, and my favorite) in a slow cooker, which will be done tomorrow night.

   Oh, fun fact: if you freeze cooked white rice for more than 24 hours , it converts some of the starch in the rice into an indigestible form, cutting the calories by about half. 

 No bullshit, it actually works. Freezing rice makes the starch molecules change their structure slightly, forming a 'resistant starch' that acts like fiber, becoming more difficult to digest and cutting the rice's glycemic index significantly. Without the big blood sugar spike caused by eating most carbs, the digestible portion of the rice gives a slower, sustained metabolic burn, reducing hunger pain onset and intensity, and delivering more steady energy.

      I eat a little under 120g of cooked rice about 5x a week to round out my calories and get some carbs. I did the whole boom/bust cycle of keto dieting and found it unsustainable over time.   What I'm doing now, setting calorie limits and focusing on high quality protein and veggies, well, it works better for me. But after the excesses of the holidays, I'm looking forward to getting back on track. 

      So, we're elbow-deep in winter now, and this has been out busiest time of year for the past few years. I'm not expecting to have much free time, which was already in a terrible decline this past year, but considering that last year I spent half the work days all winter without running water, this year, armed with a generally freshly-washed ass, my tolerance for life's little headaches at work seems to have rebounded somewhat. 

 We'll see what the 2nd half of January does for that I guess. 

       

At home

 I've been home for a while now, and enjoying it.  In the meanwhile, something very cool is in the works, workwise, but it's still in process so I am told it's best I keep my mouth shut for the now. 

Please enjoy this low-hanging fruit

 From Daddy Warpig, 

     This is a Russian DJ dressed as an American aerobics instructor from the late 80's. 

      Leave me to my memories.  We are not what we once were, as a people.