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.