Day 328, Year 5 Just Another Day in the Life
Date: Sunday, September 19, 2010
Weather: Another Beautiful, Sunny Day
Location: Nosy Sakatia, NW Madagascar
It was another free and easy day. We went snorkeling at 8am to catch the low tide and then came back to the boat and baked bread, granola, brownies, and did laundry. Mark spent a great part of the day sewing, making four more pirogue sails for the Rotary Club. Late in the afternoon we talked to Heather, Jed, Jonah, and Sam. Heather just completed her first full-time five-day work week and all went as well as can be expected. Jonah is getting used to life without a full-time mommy and Sam seems to be taking everything in stride. So all is well on Cape Cod in the Goldstone household. We also talked to Jo, but Justin and Ziggy were not home. Justin and Ziggy were in Albuquerque picking up a friend of Jo’s from England that will travel with them on their music tour and take care of Ziggy when Justin and Jo are performing. They leave in the morning headed for Reno, then San Francisco, and then north to Portland. Things are a bit frenzied since they have only been home from England for a week, but Jo thinks they will be ready to go in the morning. They will return to New Mexico about the time we reach South Africa. We wish them safe travels.
And my really good news of the day came in an email from my sister. Her daughter Jennifer had a mastectomy in mid-August and she has been waiting for the pathology reports from surrounding tissue for a month. She got the good news this past week. The tissue samples put here in the below four per cent rate for a recurrence. Her doctor has only seen this low recurrence rate projection in two other patients and feels that this is truly good news for Jennifer.
We went up to the Sakatia Towers deck for sundowners with John’s Aunt Marianne and Uncle Gerald who have become good friends of ours in a very short time. We had to say our farewells tonight as they leave in the morning, but we made promises to call them when we get to South Africa and we will definitely visit when we are in the Port Elizabeth area. John’s wife, Heidi, flew in from South Africa last night so we got to see her tonight as well. She and John will be away for a couple of days so we will have to wean ourselves from visiting the deck every evening. We will leave here on Tuesday morning and go to Hell-ville to reprovision for our trip south and then we will return by Thursday night to have one last full-moon in the Sakatia anchorage. Tonight John suggested that we have a full-moon party out on the boats so I’ll spend some time trying to organize this during the week.
