November 30

Monday, November 30

Aaaaaaagghhhhh!   It's already the end of November!!! We are NEVER getting out of here!!!  We should just plant trees around us and move in next door to the Captain!!

The battery in the car has died twice now. Luckily, the second time it was a minor glitch and a bit of charge turned it back on. Rick will disconnect it when we leave so it will charge up when we get back.

BUT our battery issue is back to haunt us. Don't know if it's because we have been running purely on solar power and no engine, but the specific gravity is down again. Any battery acid geniuses out there???? It has been cloudy for the last week and it is RAINING AGAIN today but that should only affect the charge in the batteries, not the acid levels.  Oh, what do I know? I'm just a girl and anyway, electricity is magic, isn't it?

So we went to see the last Hunger Games, and now I can read the books one more time to "let it go". Part of me is trying to find an excuse to stay here until Dec. 18 so I can go see Star Wars...not going to happen. I need to find out if there is a theatre anywhere near Georgetown...probably not. And it's the kind of movie you need to see on a big screen. Our little 19 inch TV won't do it justice when we get it on DVD next year or the year after.  There are disadvantages to living in paradise...not that we are there yet. Sigh.

Rick sent an email about the batteries, but I don't trust those people to do anything about them. We are almost up on our one-year warranty.  I know what I'D like to do!!

I met a woman at the bathroom from Chicago. We were caught in the rain, [oh, no!] trying to go back to our boats. She told me about waking up at 5:30 am and scrambling to get the cardboard boxes off the deck and out of the rain, because the weather had forecast a 0% chance of rain overnight. Her comment was "...but a bad day in Florida is better than a good day in Chicago!"

Yeah, ok, I guess so. It's just that I realized that it's easy to live in a boatyard where you share the bathroom with hundreds of people, some of whom do not know how to flush a toilet, and cook a meal with one frying pan and two small pots every day; or boil water to do the dishes, wash your face. All it takes is lowering your expectations, and, projecting that to the greater world, I understand homelessness now.

OK Barb, before you freak out on me, I am not saying I am there. I am saying that if you actually live in certain conditions, you can understand how they can deteriorate and how you can deal with it. The trick is to keep up certain habits to a standard that you have to push for, and you can maintain a level of living conditions that sustain your needs.  Whoa ...enough philosophy!

There are fish around the boat here that are beating us up. Every morning there are fish about 10-15 inches long that bash the boat trying to catch smaller fish. They sound huge  but we have watched them and they charge into a little school of fish trapping them against the dock walls then grab what they can.  Smart eh?

Okay, gotta go... last laundry run before taking off. Ugh! And some small grocery items. They have this great snack down here; it's a squeeze tube like yogurt tubes but its chia seeds and fruit mush, gelatinized with lots of good energy. There are a dozen in a box for $3.00.  Banana & strawberry or Banana and Kale Yum!

ttyl