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.