by Judy Handley | Feb 5, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 36: Shadow’s Special Day
Date: Friday, February 5, 2021
Weather: Overcast with Some Light Rain; High 45, Low 30 Degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Once every six to eight weeks, Shadow gets to go to the groomer to get a fancy hair cut. He has a cross between a curly wool coat like a poodle which needs to be groomed and a fleece textured coat that is soft like an Angora goat with a spiraling curly look.
I have not been able to convince Shadow that he should let me comb out the tangles in his curls, so I take him to a groomer who does so. On days like today when he is not home, I am constantly looking around to check on him. The house feels so very empty without him. In just a couple of hours, I begin to feel so alone. But when he is here, we have our battles. Shadow will sit and stay for me with very stern insistence, but that is about all that he will for me. He delights in snitching a sock or a glove that I have not ‘secured’ properly and it is almost impossible to get him to let loose. But his worst behaviors are jumping on up on other people and not coming when he is called. I love to take him outside to play fetch, but more and more he refuses to come when it is time to go inside. I feel like a parent who just can’t control the bad behaviors of their child and it makes me feel totally incompetent. And it is not that I haven’t tried. This dog just seems to be particularly energetic and strong willed. He doesn’t just run, he runs faster than any dog I have ever seen. And when any of the Goldstones are around, he is constantly bounding and jumping. They keep waiting for him to get older and calmer, but that is not happening. I failed my People Training for Good Dogs course and now I wonder if I am going to have to resort to a shock collar to control the bounding and jumping on others. But I hate to punish him for what I have not been able to train him to do. Still, I wouldn’t know what to do without him. So, exhausting as it is, I shall persist.
I got up early and walked Shadow before taking him to the groomer. On the way home, I went by Heather and Jed’s and put in what is becoming my weekly Friday laundry load and then I came home and wrote and edited, wrote and edited, and wrote some more. I hope to finish Chapter 4 tomorrow morning and move on to Chapter 5 which tells the story of finally leaving Norfolk and heading to the Caribbean. Chapter 4 is entitled A Rough Start. Chapter 5 is the sequel and should be called A Rough Start II. But I will try to be more creative and think of a different title.
At 3 pm I had to stop writing, go pick up Ollie and take him home, put my washer load in the dryer, drive the 25 minutes north to pick up Shadow, and then come back to pick up my laundry. I continued writing when I got home and finally quit at 8 pm to fix dinner. I get so immersed in the story I am telling that I just don’t want to stop writing.
This afternoon I asked Jed if they are going to have a Super Bowl party on Sunday. They are not football fans and Heather has suggested having an anti-Super Bowl party where you only watch the commercials and the halftime show. I smiled as I know the boys won’t allow that. And I have to watch this game just to see the battle of the quarterbacks. Like many New Englanders, it is going to be painful to watch ‘our’ Tom Brady play for another team. It felt almost treasonous when he left the Patriots. But even if he did desert us, I can’t help but cheer him on. He is almost old enough to be the father of the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback, but he still is at the top of his game. He just stays there. I loved the Kate McKinnon skit on SNL last week. She was posing the question “What Still Works” in American society. Government? No. Stock Market? No. Social Media? No. Vaccine Roll-out? No. Tom Brady? Well, yes. But unfortunately, he is a “weird Trump guy.” I guess I must forgive him for that as well.
by Judy Handley | Feb 4, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 35: Blood Test, Writing, Tech Tips Class
Date: Thursday, February 4, 2021
Weather: Icy Precip Overnight, Overcast All Day; High 41, Low 28 Degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
Yesterday I realized that my annual physical that was cancelled in September is coming up on Monday. I had not gotten a reminder and had not gone in for the blood test that is part of the physical. So, I called this morning to confirm the appointment and then headed to the Quest Lab for the blood test. I was really taken back by the number of people in the small reception area. It was one of the first times in the past year that I have felt unsafe. But as long as I was already inside, I went ahead and checked in. The young man doing the check in was extremely efficient and he had me checked, blood drawn, and out the door in about five minutes. I then returned home to walk with Shadow and settled into my writing project. I’ll also mention here that after picking Ollie up after school, I rushed home to catch the last half of a monthly Tech Tips Zoom class. I missed most of the refresher on using Google Drive, but enjoyed the second half of the class giving an overview of using Ancestry.com.
Now to today’s Voyage of Windbird writing progress. I continued working on the chapter entitled, A Rough Start. Not only did we have extreme weather, we lost our transmission. This was not so dangerous as long as we were at sea, but when we had to come into the Delaware Bay with heavy cargo ship traffic, it became very dangerous. We could use the engine, but we had to pour transmission fluid in continuously to keep it going. The more I wrote about this today, the more I realized just how much we didn’t know when we left Boston in 2005. But more than that, I realized just how very rough and dangerous those first few days of the Voyage of Windbird really were. I’m amazed that we just didn’t turn around and come home, but I am so glad that we didn’t.
It was our lack of knowledge of the weather, coupled with insanely complex weather systems, and then the loss of our transmission that made the situation so dire. We were getting daily weather faxes via our Ham radio, but did we really know how to read them to get a full picture of the weather? In hindsight, I don’t think so. We left Boston on October 18, three days after a tropical depression formed in the Caribbean near Jamaica. But it was headed westward, so we dismissed it as a problem. On October 17, it intensified to tropical storm status, turned southward, and was named Wilma. Still, it was not headed our way, so on October 18, we left Boston. On that day, Wilma intensified again and became Hurricane Wilma. Due to weather, we pulled into Quissett Harbor and stayed there an extra day to wait for the strong south winds to abate. When Windbird left Quissett Harbor on October 20, Hurricane Wilma was crossing the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, still headed to the west. No problem, right? But, then she immediately did an about face and headed northeast just north of the Florida Keys, crossed the state of Florida exiting near Jupiter, entered the Atlantic Ocean, intensified again as she passed north of the Bahamas, absorbed a smaller Tropical Storm named Alpha to the east, and then headed offshore up the East Coast. Wilma finally transitioned to an extratropical cyclone on October 26 just south of Nova Scotia.
Hurricane Wilma was the sixth major hurricane of the 2005 season which included Rita and Katrina. Now I know it was the most intense tropical cyclone every recorded in the Atlantic basin and the second most-intense tropical cyclone recorded in the Western Hemisphere. I also realize that neither Mark nor I had any idea of the strength of the storm or of all the associated weather systems that had impacted us from the time we exited the Boston Harbor. It took my breath away to read about this today and then write about our experiences during that time. I got a bit side-tracked while researching information on Hurricane Wilma, but I still made good progress.
I will continue tomorrow morning after I drop Shadow at the groomer for what I think of as his beauty shop appointment every six to eight weeks. I then have to run a few errands, come home and write, and then go back and pick up Shadow just before I pick Ollie up after school. I won’t finish the chapter tomorrow, but hopefully I will come close.
Photo By Supportstorm – Created by Supportstorm using WikiProject Tropical cyclones/Tracks. The background image is from NASA. Tracking data is from the National Hurricane Center, Public Domain.
by Judy Handley | Feb 3, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 34: Battle of Life Mantras
Date: Wednesday, February 3, 2021
Weather: Overcast; High 34, Low 28 Degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
I love my dear friend Lynn Kirwin who is currently living in New Zealand. I love her for many reasons, but one of them is her life mantra, “You make plans, then life happens.” When we were sailing with Ed and Lynn in the Indian Ocean, she often reminded me that all of my planning might not work out. I knew that, but the mantra that guides my life comes from educator Harry Wong. “If you don’t have a plan, you’re planning to fail.” What I have learned is that these two mantras are not in opposition. It is fine to plan. In fact, if you don’t, you have nothing to guide you. But you do have to realize that things might not always go as planned and you need to be flexible about that. You also need to make plans that are within the realm of possibility. Unfortunately, hard as I try, I tend to be over zealous and make plans that are just not realistic. That brings me to today. I had planned to write ALL day, but that didn’t happen. First, I overslept. Shadow is on a new schedule where he gets up at 5:30 am. We go out in the dark for that first morning potty break and by the time I get back in bed, it takes a while to get back to sleep. And then I ignore the alarm. By the time I got up this morning, did my exercises, took a shower, got dressed, and took Shadow for his Morning Mile walk, it was almost noon with no writing done. So much for ALL day. In the afternoon I had to do some research on how to get help my 87 year-old sister gain some weight. She weighs only 75 pounds now. I actually found some snacks that are allowed in her current diet to combat IBS that are available on Amazon. So, I was able to order those for her. Then I got part of Chapter Four of The Voyage of Windbird written, but probably have two more days of work to complete that chapter. We’ll see if that is a ‘doable’ plan. And I didn’t get to try out the dictation mode in Word. Much of Chapter Four comes directly from the daily logs I wrote at the time. Therefore, much of the writing is really editing out the parts of the logs that are not needed to tell the story. I will continue on tomorrow and at some point I’ll get to check out the dictation mode.
This evening I joined a call about the coronavirus vaccine roll-out on Cape Cod. It was organized by local politicians and 13,000 joined the call. So far, sign up for getting a vaccine here has to be online, but so many older people don’t have computer access or can’t figure out the sign up procedures even if they do. I loved the technology that allowed anyone on the phone conversation tonight to just press 1 on their phone and their number was entered into a data base of those who have no online access. About 600 people on the call tonight were identified. Another 100 were identified that will need transportation to a vaccination site. I found that impressive. Personally, I found Sean O’Brien, our Barnstable County Department of Health and the Environment Director, the most helpful. He very succinctly outlined how the roll-out has gone so far and how he perceives it will go forward from this point. If I understood him correctly, anyone can log onto the county Department of Health website and sign-up to get a notification when it is time for your designated age group to make an appointment. I’ll try that tomorrow. But even if everything goes perfectly, those of us on the Cape that are in the 65 to 74 year-old age group won’t be able to start making appointments until sometime in March. My sister that ives in Tennessee is in the 85 and over age group. She got her first vaccine today and has a follow-up appointment on March 3rd for the second vaccine. She had to go to a location about 30 minutes from where she lives and wait in a car line for two hours. She was surprised at just how many cars went through during those two hours. She said the people giving the vaccines were actually running most of the time to keep things moving along. People are working hard on this roll out, and slowly, but surely, everyone who wants a vaccine will get one. Let’s just hope that is at least 80 percent of the population.
by Judy Handley | Feb 2, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 33: Ant-Man and Arctic Meltdown
Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2021
Weather: Overcast and Misty; High 35, Low 27 Degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
The day started with Punxsutawney Phil seeing his shadow. So . . . six more weeks of winter are predicted. I think we would have at least six more weeks of winter anyway. But hats off to the ground hog for letting us know.
Now to Ant-Man and the Arctic Meltdown. These two things are, of course, not related. One is a video involving quantum space and the other is the title of a New Bedford Whaling Museum Zoom presentation I attended tonight. I’ll begin with Ant-Man. I picked Ollie and Jonah up just after noon due to a school Early Release Day. I invited them here for a video afternoon and we watched Ant-Man and the Wasp, a superhero film based on the Marvel Comics characters. I enjoyed it more than I anticipated and actually want to go back and watch the original Ant-Man. Jonah and Ollie promised they would return to watch it with me. By the time I took them home, made a second trip to take Ollie his Chromebook that he forgot, and returned home to take Shadow for a twilight walk, it was time to eat dinner and get ready for the 7 pm Zoom presentation. Susie Klein, a good sailing friend, emailed me this morning inviting me to join her and her husband Jim tonight for a New Bedford Science Café Zoom presentation on arctic meltdown. The New Bedford Science Café series is sponsored by the New Bedford Whaling Museum and tonight’s presentation was made by Jennifer Francis, a Senior Scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center where Heather works. And Jennifer Francis is a friend of Susie and her husband Jim. So, I accepted the invitation and very much enjoyed it. Jennifer Francis was on her sailboat in the Virgin Islands which made me very jealous, but it also caused a few technical problems. Thankfully, those got worked out quickly and the show went on. Her presentation brought together global warming, sea-level rise, tropical storm, and extreme weather events and how they are all connected to the rapidly warming (and melting) Arctic. I loved the way Jennifer Francis used real life examples showing the impact each of us makes on this global crisis. My favorite example was one that claims that just one person flying from the East Coast to Europe is responsible for the melting of a piece of Arctic ice the size of a dining room table. That doesn’t seem like much until you add up the number of people traveling around the world. Our choices make a huge difference.
I made no progress on my writing project today, but I got a call from friend Alan Kanegsberg tonight with a tip that might speed up the project significantly. He suggested that I might make use of the dictation part of Word. I tried it and it works beautifully. I just press a button, speak, and my words appear in the document. I will try this tomorrow morning as I launch into the writing of Chapter 4 of The Voyage of Windbird and report tomorrow night on how it works for me.
by Judy Handley | Feb 1, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 32: Writing Through the Stormy Weather
Date: Monday, February 1, 2021
Weather: Rain, Snow, and Winds NE 25-30; High 35, Low 32 Degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
It is dark outside and I have never heard so many bangs and clangs as the wind is blowing whatever around the cottage. We got more snow this morning than I expected, but then it started raining and snowing at the same time, so the ground is just covered in slush. The wind tonight is wicked and I am not looking forward to my next trip outside with Shadow. It will be a quick one! We did walk about a half mile this morning, maybe a little more, but then I headed back home because we were getting so wet. I picked Ollie up at noon due to an early release due to the weather, and once I took him home, I spent the rest of the afternoon writing. I got Chapter Three of the Voyage of Windbird written and will start the editing process tomorrow morning. There is another school early release tomorrow, this a planned one, so I will hope to edit in the morning, and start Chapter 4 in the afternoon. Either that, or I will ‘steal’ Jonah and Ollie and we will come here and have a movie afternoon while the wind continues to blow and the rain or snow continues to fall.
I spent an hour and half this morning attending a Lifetime Learning class on Zoom offered by the Friends of Snow Library in Orleans. Orleans is located in the ‘elbow’ of Cape Cod on the Outer Cape. Today was their first class of the winter season and the topic was “The Supreme Court in the Era of Its Conservative Majority.” I signed up for the class just to see how things were structured. I am presenting a ‘class’ for them on the Voyage of Windbird in late March. I enjoyed the lecture this morning and found that the structure is no different from other presentations I have made. So, I can now relax and wait for March 26 to roll around.
by Judy Handley | Jan 31, 2021 | 2021 Life Logs |
2021 Life Logs, Day 31: Sam’s Birthday Party
Date: Sunday, January 31, 2021
Weather: Sunny, Warming Up a Bit; High 27, Low 23 Degrees F
Location: At Home in The Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
One of the positive things that has come out of the coronavirus pandemic is that we have all gotten more creative about how to get together with friends outside . . . even in frigid weather. Sam’s birthday was on the 21st and we had a family gathering, but the party with friends was today. Jed got permission to use the Trotting Park soccer field as the location for a rocket shoot. Sam loves shooting off model rockets and three of his best friends joined him today. We were all dressed for the weather and all masked. Because of the danger, Jed has to be the one setting the rockets on the launch pads, but the boys got to push the launch button. The first rocket was launched and retrieved and then the second rocket that was rated to go much higher was launched. We heard it blast off but almost immediately all of us lost sight of it. We searched the sky and searched the ground, but it was just GONE. Jed had planned on using that rocket for multiple launches, so a third rocket had to be built on the spot. Eventually we lost that rocket as well and everyone was getting cold, so the boys headed off to walk home along the powerline trail. Heather and Jed drove home to start a fire in the fire pit in the back yard and I headed off to check on Shadow and then pick up pizzas for the boys. I dropped the pizzas off at 5 pm and they had been outside since 2:00. Even with the fire, they were getting cold, but the plan was for parents to pick them up at 6 pm. I headed home with a smile on my face. If you had told me a year ago we would be having a four hour long birthday party outside with temps in the 20’s, I would have thought you were crazy. It is amazing what we can do when we imagine differently.
I hear there is snow storm barreling up the Eastern Seaboard but we are mostly going to have rain. The deep freeze we have been in for the past few days is thawing and we are going to get rain for the next two days. There might be some snow flurries overnight tonight, but by noon tomorrow it looks like it is just going to be wet. Sounds like perfect weather to stay inside and write. At least that’s my plan.
