May 3, 2021 - May 17, 2021
The big news from the last two weeks is that I was able to visit Jessica (my oldest daughter) and her husband Joe in Johnstown, PA. I left the marina on Wednesday, May, 5th and returned on Monday the 10th. Jess, Joe, and I haven’t been together since last September and it was so good to see them. Since I arrived on Cinco de Mayo Joe and I met Jessica and a few of her colleagues at a local restaurant for happy hour. The special drink for the evening was a pineapple margarita which looked delicious, but I opted for my usual - Titos vodka and club soda. We had some appetizers and the best one was the roasted brussels sprouts - so yummy. Even though Joe and Jess had to work during the day I was able to use Jess’s sewing room to cut out several garments I have been anxious to sew up. As you can imagine, sewing on the boat works well, but there just isn’t a big enough flat surface to cut anything out. One day Jess worked from home for the morning and we went out to lunch. I went to her office to help her with a few chores after lunch. I also, went to the nearby Staples to print all of the games for the baby shower I am hosting for my second daughter, Rachel. I purchased the boxes for shipping the refreshments and the games and put everything together to ship out the next day (another job that would have been difficult on the boat). In the evenings we had great dinners and just chilled. On the weekend we attended two woodwind quartet concerts and a youth orchestra concert. It was wonderful seeing live music again. On Saturday night Jess invited all of the musicians in the quartet and their spouses to her house for some snacks, wine, and beer. It was fun preparing for the get together and even more fun meeting and chatting with some very interesting people. What a great visit and I actually got to spend Mother’s Day with one of my children for a change.
Back at the Marina Bob had started on some boat projects. The big one was painting the bottom of the dingy. Since the weather prediction was for clear skies and no rain we wanted to take advantage of the great weather and complete the painting. Bob had painted the heavy wear areas while I was gone so the first day we applied the first full coat. The following day we planned to apply the second full coat, but ran out of paint. Unfortunately, Bob hasn’t been able to find any more of the paint so we called the job done.
The attempt we made to remove the leaking auxiliary fuel tank turned into a big fiasco. The tank is under the Nav station seat and as usual with indoor projects it seemed like the whole boat was torn up while we were working on the removal. After disconnecting all of the hoses and other connections (about 2.5 hours of work) the tank would not budge. Apparently, the tank was calked on the bottom and nothing Bob and I tried moved it a bit. Finally Bob decided to close everything back up and skip the removal and repair of the tank. Bob usually fixes anything that is broken on the boat no matter how difficult but, since we probably won’t be needing the tank anytime soon he decided to let it go.
The weather has been delightful. I think cold weather is behind us. I have been able to walk almost everyday along the Cross Island Trail and now that the CDC has relaxed the mask requirements I am free to walk without a mask outside. I’m loving it!
This coming week I am driving a 10 foot UHaul truck to Oak Park IL to take some family furniture and other items that have been in our storage locker to Rachel. I’ll make an overnight stop at my sister Becky’s house in Pittsburgh. I haven’t seen her since last summer. I’ll also be with Rachel for the baby shower I am hosting for her. That will all be in my next blog post.
Thank you for reading my blog. I promise I’ll have some pictures in my next post.
