Still not dead, but closer than

It's a small thing, but I can't remember being this comfortable on a plane before.

 It's the tween season here in FL, where I'll be for the next 5-10 mins until my plane takes off. The snow Jews aren't here yet, and the business Jews and I are not filling up the plane.

 There's some advantage for parts of the year to live in a Jewish-heavy community in FL... The Snow Jews make up an enormously rude, selfish and inconsiderate bloc, and they'll be a plague all winter, but still better than the flying housing projects that hoodboogers infest in discount airlines... but for early AM flights from June-October, me n' the business Jews practice politeness. Not a speakerphone or an arguement with the flight attendants in sight.

     I'm really pleased by how much more comfortable the seating is on my plane with all the weight loss I've managed this year. My ass fits great in the seat now, but sadly my shoulders fit better too. Age and a calorie-limited diet appropriate to someone with a marginally functional thyroid and the resultant metabolic slowdown from that has cost me some strength and muscle mass. From my reading, I am going to have to get into an exercise routine to get some of that back. I've been improving my joint flexibility while waiting for some chronic pain to scale back (tennis elbow, of all things, recently. Not that I play tennis). But it got me into daily stretching and flexibility exercises while waiting and I think I can start picking up weights now, at least lightly, try to get my shit moving.  

      I arrived home 2 weeks ago with an ambitious agenda for catching up on maintenance and projects at home.  Despite combining both the longest voyage away AND the shortest turnaround interval after an extended trip I've done, I was feeling very well- patient, mentally focused, etc. Surprisingly so.

  ...But at home I couldn't get motivated. I felt distracted and my usual pleasure in puttering around outside failed to materialize. Oh, I had a wonderful time with my family, mind, at least my nuclear family- I wanted to hang out with my brother more, but even there I pretty much found myself making excuses and just keeping my wife and kid within handhold distance. 

 Sure, I kept my shit together in those 4 months. Turns out I wasn't entirely unaffected by it, and after a couple of half-assed projects I dragged my ass through, Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife set me aside and told me to quit pushing myself and feeling guilty, as I was not making the most of my time off to decompress... and after that I just focused more on trying to enjoy the days... and I semi-succeeded. I never got entirely over not doing much in terms of productivity, but I'm trying to cut myself some slack. 

 And it's a moot point now, as I'm 35,000 ft in the air and headed back north to work. No overtime, though. I'm going home as soon as my time is done. I do have a lot of shit to do. 

      

I'm not dead yet!

 But I am at home. So, turns out that despite being in a good headspace for the 4 months I was at work, being home showed me that I was beat up, metaphorically.

 Better now.  Enjoying my last few days here.  

The longest taxi ride ever

 I'm at the airport. And I am alive. I don't know if it was worth living through what just happened. 

 Taxi from Bayonne New Jersey (The Paris of New Jersey, lol.) to JFK airport, Queens. Across New York. During rush hour.

 It took a while, obviously. But that wasn't the issue.  My driver was an old middle eastern man. And he... his breakfast was not digesting well, shall we say. 

        Yeah, the old guy had the hot death farts. I don't know what he ate but it went down fighting.

  And it was pouring rain so I couldn't open the window much and got immediately soaked for doing so. 

        And he kept doing it!  Like every 6-7 minutes, like a fucking metronome.   I swear, the temperature shot up 10 degrees in the car every time he ripped ass too. I'd feel the desert heat of araby, and then... I don't want to live on this planet anymore. God is not here. 

 For two hours. Two. Hours. TWO HOURS! 

 I got... marinated. God help me. It's in my clothes, probably. 

 Anyhow, I am at the airport and have a glass of whisky.  Washing the taste out of my mouth. Out of my soul. 

 

Last watch

 Halfway through my last watch. Home tomorrow.  Channel Fever finally hit me full on. I'm ready to GTFO. 

Night watch

 Well, I'm on nights now. Thus far it hasn't worked to my advantage-  virtually all of our active moves have followed me, seemingly regardless of which watch I'm standing. 

.   Since we have 2 HMFIC's on here at all times (myself and B, or myself and Big E, and B and Big E when I am at home), we din't have a master/mate hierarchy. Instead, we stand 12 hour watches, Day (0600-1800) and Night (1800 to 0600). Guys just coming aboard or getting ready to go home stand nights), and the day guy gets to be Head MF'er In Charge.  In this way, someone ALWAYS knows what's going on, and oncoming/outgoing guys have time to get caught up on what's going on. Daytime is when the people who wear ties to work generally are scheming and plotting and calling and bothering and business is done. Nights are usually just for things that people who do not wear ties to work get done. We're a 24/7 operation but the ties and suits are not.  Generally at night we have cargo or not but regardless the phone doesn't ring and emails ding near as much. It's a great time to get shit done like maintenance, paperwork, etc. 

    And that's the rub; just dumb luck that what free time there is, by chance, isn't falling on the night watch.   I mean it's fine, I'm not being pressed or overburdened but my own little honey-do list of things I want to get done is not as free as I'd maybe wish in terms of time to devote to the task. 

         Edit: ask and ye shall receive.  Prior to my posting this, the people who wear ties to work (long may they live; long may they continue to shit light on the heads of the damned) corrected an earlier error made on my schedule: turns out I will have half a watch off, which is good, as I need to put together a parts list and service a generator, and will even have time for a proper dinner. 

Channel fever

 Well, I finally am starting to disengage here on the HQ I guess, and thoughts of home are kicking in intrusively in my mind during the day. 

'Channel Fever' is the distemper that causes unrest when a sailor becomes absolutely with child to get ashore.

       I've almost doubled my record for time spent at work since leaving blue water work. The shorter much more intense days of working in-harbor and coastwise don't lend themselves to long hitches... and yet here I am somewhere past 110 days on here. I've lost count. 

     It was done purposefully for more than one reason, which may be why it hasn't been a slog. We're still throwing every spare penny at construction and outfitting now at the house in Brazil. 2 of the 4 buildings are structurally done and at the tail end of the cosmetic finishing stages. 2 to go, then landscaping and furniture. 

Fuck. 

Still, progress. And I can't do more OT this year as the War Department says so. She wants me home, and as I will have been gone for 10 months in 2025, I damn well need to listen. The house will wait. In the meanwhile, home in 9 days. Single digits. Feels good. 

 I find it hard to focus on plans while I am at home. While I need to cater to my wife's well deserved need to go out and be social as a couple, I also will need some days to putter around. 

In 2 days I switch to working nights, to let B get into the practice of being the swinging dick with Kick Me signs written on his forehead and ass.  The night guy is the 40 in the 60/40 leadership we run under as HMF'sIC. 

Say hello to the bad guy

 I caused some serious traffic snarls in Brooklyn the other day and I would hereby like to apologize FOR NOTHING. 

            The other day we took on a half-load of VLSFO (Very Low Sulfur Fuel Oil, a blend of #6 heavy fuel oil and ULS-MGO,  Ultra Low Sulfur Marine Gasoil, basically an ultraclean burning diesel-esque type fuel.  Thick goopy stuff, but the good stuff. 

   We took a half-load because we went waaaaayyy up a navigable but shallow creek near Brooklyn , Manhattan AND Queens. All told between us and our tug we squeaked in with 1 foot of UKC (Under-Keel Clearance) at low tide -we went in at high tide so we had 8 feet of UKC, but we also got to pumping off just 2 hours after tying up, so 12 1/2 hours later we left again at high tide, this time riding high and empty. 

   I'd never been there before, just knew it by name and that the creek is famously narrow, shallow and tricky, our equipment being larger than the tugboats and  oil, rock and scrap steel scows that work the canals and creeks. 

         Getting to the little storage tank farm we were going to, we had to pass under a drawbridge. We went through at night, so it wasn't too disruptive. 

     BUT, to leave, we had to sail, go under a different drawbridge

make a couple of twists and turns through narrow passages, old shitty pleasureboats rafted up, and rock and steel scrap barges rafted up against docks on either side, at times having to pass with just 10-15 feet on a side OR LESS to squeeze through... and after that, finally, a turning basin, a wide area, where we could do a 180, and 30 mins later, go under the SAME drawbridge but heading downstream and make a bunch of turns in narrow spots until the creek widened out where a bunch of derelict boats were stacked

Bro we could do SO MUCH METH on those

        And then go under yet another drawbridge, this one with a lovely view of the mile-long traffic jam we made, it being 10am, ON BOTH SIDES. 

    This bridge connects Brooklyn and Queens. And we fucked traffic all up. 

           Tight squeeze.  The HQ got them birthin' hips. 

      Still, it wasn't but another mile or twomand we were entering the Hudson river.  We passed summat' close abeam of the UN

 and a seaplane took off right next to us, which was something I don't see every day. 

  So,  cool little run. It's been a while since I saw something new here, for which I'm grateful.  We left Manhattan in our wake and went straight  to our usual loading terminal for the next cargo.