Post-Thanksgiving food and work

 Well now, Thanksgiving was pretty decent here on HAWSEPIPER's Afloat Global HW/ Center for practical Gule and Gluttony. 

    We were in between jobs during most of my watch yesterday, so I was able to cook a small turkey, along with making mashed brotatoes (spuds being my genetic birthright, I look upon them with love), stuffing, roasted carrots and green beans, gravy, cranberry sauce and pies.  As in plural pies. I made an apple crumb pie, and B, through a comms snafu, brought store bought pumpkin AND coconut cream pie. 

      All in all it was a great dinner, went together well, and as is tradition, the guy who cooks doesn't take part in cleaning, so that was nice. And now I shouldn't need to cook for the next 2 days, and Sunday will be turkey soup if I remember to boil the bones tomorrow night.  The timing worked out well. Our assist tug nosed up to us to move us to the next job about 45 minutes after I finished dessert, and I waddled out on deck to get the job started, and then it was back to work for us. 

             Altogether, this year was a bit disparate for the Florida branch of the B clan I think, which isn't how we like doing things, but so it goes some years.  Christmas I'll be home, and  I'll host for us, while my oldest brother will likely rinse and repeat with his massive get-togethers up in Boston. I'm pretty excited at the prospect of being home. My last scheduled Christmas home (I only get it off once every 3 years) got fucked up by bad weather, and I missed it. I'm thinking about trying my hand at a prime rib. My last one came out a little rare, which was AMAZING for me, but the rest of the fam are savages and like theirs medium.  For me, I like my cow just a few degrees off from still mooing. 

    I am grateful for many things, though I'm aware that this blog tends to be the toilet into which I crap out my negativity, and I may not appear a grateful person here... but I am, I think. If it weren't for that, the things that haven't gone right this past year, which were more numerous than on average, would be that much harder to tolerate. 

   The fiasco in Brazil comes to mind. We have a lawyer who appears to be thorough, and has taken the egregious nature of our case as something of an insult on the national reputation of Brazil, me being a dumb foreigner and all, and things are progressing. The local sheriff (a court officer there, I think, and who is somehow the investigative arm of both civil and criminal complainants, if I understand correctly) is now involved, and it is my hope to get the civil portion of the case moved to arbitration. There's a criminal aspect of well, of fraud, as my home builder has apparently spent money specifically presented to me as bills for administrative and municipal fees, licensing, permitting and tax... none of which got paid.  

   Whatever, I took it in the seat for sure, and maybe I'll get some of my money back, but I'm grateful that as much of a clusterfuck as this is, it isn't going to  threaten my household here in the US. Pisses me off, though.  To be honest, not having to dwell on this day in and day out has been kind of nice this past week.  Another thing to be grateful for. 

 So, 3 weeks to go before my Christmas break, and the weather is changing here now.  We had a gloriously temperate autumn, up until this past week, when the wind began to blow.    

         I still view working in NY/NJ through the lens of having grown up working outdoors around coastal Massachusetts. Though it's just 200 miles north, it might as well be further, considering how much more moderate the weather can be here in NY in comparison. 

     Boston has the US's most wind. True story. It has the highest average daily wind. 

   NY, though... the air is absolutely dead when it's warm out. I sweat my balls off in the stagnant hot air of summer. But, come November, the wind starts to blow here.  And son of a bitch if it doesn't stop blowing until May.  Shit gets tiresome after a while, the daily wind and the twice-a-week gales. 

    Anyhow, the wind brought the cold finally. I'm not even sure if they had a hard frost here yet, and here it is end of November... but it's coming this weekend and there's no more going outside without layers on already.  That time of year I guess. 

 On the upside, jacuzzi season is starting up back home. Shocking, I know, but I'm ok with being parboiled while upping my blood alcohol content for a couple of hours once or twice a week. 

 That's coming in 3 weeks too. 

    In the meanwhile, we loaded just 2 of our 10 cargo tanks last night while I was sleeping, and later today we'll give a couple hundred tons each of gogo juice  to some Frenchmen who're pulling into town.