10/30

Windows and door primed:

Audrey now takes Teach Your Child to Read to bed.

10/28/12

Yup, she's definitely bored with these first couple lessons.  This is going to involve a little more effort on my part to figure out how to fast forward to the more interesting lessons without skipping anything that we need to build on to get there.  And then again, maybe this just isn't what she wants to do right now.  We'll see.

We have our babysitter confirmed for our first aid class in December so that's looking good.

I'm working my way through the School of Pipsology.

Audrey routinely swims unassisted these days, while Lorelei spent her whole bath floating on her back in the tub today.

Terry over at East Street Garage called this afternoon to tell me he got the power-steering leak fixed on the Jeep and fixed the squeaky belt for $120.  Hurray!  Now I can try again at the emissions station.

The windows and door project is on hold until warmer weather returns.  June, maybe.

We read the second chapter from It's Your Boat Too.  It was really good stuff on taking control of your outlook and attitude, and April commented that it could have been the first chapter from any of several books she uses in therapy with clients.

-12.2

10/27

Audrey and I did the first lesson from Teach Your Child to Read.  She was pretty bored by the whole thing.  Or so I thought.  I drew her some learning-to-write paper for the writing part of the lesson.  You know the kind where the solid lines are spaced an inch and a half apart and have a dashed line between them?  Well anyway, 10 minutes after we wrapped the lesson up, she was sitting at the table drawing herself some writing paper with solid and dashed lines.  Funny kid.

Lew Rockwell reminded me of something that needs to go on our todo list to be taken care of ASAP: We need to get our passports squared away.  It's not going to be getting any easier to get passports any time soon.

We finished The Capable Cruiser.  Next up: It's Your Boat Too.

-11.5

10/25

We're making headway in The Capable Cruiser, Teach Your Child to Read, and technical trading.

I realized what a natural progression applied finance is from an education in economics. I have no idea if I can actually make any money at it but even if not, it's been a gigantic gap in my ability to apply what I know to reality. And if I can figure it out, then it will be a great way to make money wherever we happen to find ourselves and without needing to worry about work permits.

-12.7

Our Harvest

We finally got around to planting a garden this year. We have been planning one since we moved to this house (6 years ago). We planted raspberries, onions, carrots, broccoli, lettuce, squash and bell peppers.  The very first week the chipmunks ate most everything above ground. I was given advice to wait until the freeze to harvest our onions and carrots. I sort of spaced about that until yesterday. When I finally dug it all up this was it.

that's our one carrot on the right

Audrey ate the mini carrot and liked it. I tried to make a yummy vegetable curry with the onions, but unfortunately I screwed something up and it was inedible. I definitely DO NOT have a green thumb!

Audrey, my mom, my cousin Zack and I went to see the ballet of Sleeping Beauty at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House. I like ballet, and this one was put on by the Colorado Ballet Company, so it was very fancy shmancy with gorgeous sets and costumes and amazing dancing. The main reason I like to go though, is to watch Audrey. She loves ballet! She was really into it, and during the first intermission she arabesqued and chassed all the way to the bathroom. I got a deal for the tickets though, so we went to the 7:30p show and she fell asleep during the last act. I'm already looking for the next show to take her to. She will be putting on her own tap and ballet recital at the Nederland Community Center with the Nederland Mountain Movers on November 15th. I can't wait! 

Her 1st Shirley Temple during the intermission

It was a very busy weekend, besides the ballet we also had a dinner party on Saturday night, and took the girls to Sunflower Farm for pony rides, hayrides to a pumpkin patch, feeding goats and playing in the hay maze. I could really use a day or two off after that! It was a fun weekend though.

Lorelei riding Cookie

Audrey riding Little Girl

10/21

Dinner with Matt and Whitney was great.  They were really great with the girls.  Whitney sat right down on the floor with them and did whatever crafty little thing Audrey brought her, and Lorelei wanted to sit in Matt's lap for dessert.  

They're gluten and dairy free so we had our first experience of an entire meal without either.  It really was pretty do-able.  April made salmon, quinoa, salad, and dressing of her own invention with olive oil, honey, mustard seeds, and whole orange all mixed up in the Ninja.  She wrapped it all up with gluten-free brownies and coconut milk ice cream.  

They provided lots of encouragement, knowledge and materials for homeschooling, and we're both feeling really excited about it.  All in all, it was a resounding success and a great visit.

I got the hardening treatment and wood filling done on the doors and windows.  It was 70 degrees today and will be down to 1 degree by Friday.  Yes, 1 degree.  So not a moment to spare.  Anyway, here's the product I'm using (though "rotted" seems like a strong word for the condition of my wood).  

Here's what it looks like when it goes on.

 And here's what it looks like dry.  

It's basically extra-drippy Elmer's glue.  

Good times!

-11.5

10/19

Another welcome day off to make up for working the weekend a couple weeks back.  What a luxury.

I taped up  the windows and door, all ready for wood-hardener and then paint. Here's what it looks like now.

Lorelei, Sweetpea and I came across a couple moose in the gully on our walk this afternoon.  Lorelei was offering them sticks, but got no takers.  I guess they're not that much like Labrador Retrievers after all.

We sold the other nordic setup today and a CD shelf.  Woo hoo!

Amazon says our order has shipped, so we're looking forward to that eagerly.

And finally, after much rescheduling and postponing, our evening with Matt and Whitney, my homeschooling, technical trading, Rothbard-reading, an-cap pals is back on for tomorrow evening.  They are bringing us a bunch of home-schooling materials and knowledge from their many years of homeschooling their 16- and 18-year-old daughters.  

Good night.

-10.8

10/18

April sold a pair of our nordic skis, poles, and boots.

We finished the chapter on writing in The Capable Cruiser.  Pretty interesting stuff.  Seems like the bottom line is, no, you can't fund a cruising lifestyle on writing.  At least not starting out.  But it might still be worthwhile for a variety of other reasons.

I've been stuck on the window project, as the next steps require 24 hours above 50.  Hopefully that happens again at some point before June.

We ordered Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.


-10.2

We had Audrey's teacher/parent conferences tonight and I am such a proud mama! Her teacher talked about how smart, imaginative and kind she is. I guess at school she is known for taking younger kids under her wing, organizing imagination games, and being a big helper. The only thing to work on is her ability to focus, which I see at home too. She does get a little wound up quickly. We will be working hard on learning to take deep breaths and internal reminders of the task at hand. During the conference we discussed how outgoing Audrey is, and again it made me worry a little about the cruising lifestyle stifling that in her. I do think she will enjoy meeting new friends while at sea though, and I'm hopeful that we will meet other cruising families that she can have ongoing relationships with. 

Lorelei joined us for the conference too, and was able to play while we talked. She was so excited to be there! I can't believe that she is almost old enough for preschool! 

Lorelei and her buddy Michael in music class

 Nederland is again the very windy little town we know and love. Thankfully it has been warm and sunny the last few days so the wind is not as overwhelming as it can sometimes be. Jacob and I are fantasizing about the tropics lately! I will miss Nederland very much, but I am looking forward to a change!

10/16/2012

Man, these little furry critters are going to drive me insane.  I guess I still have a hole to find.

Here's a random tidbit from Ian's book, apropos of nothing:  the last pension payment to a survivor of a veteran of the War Between the States was made in 1999 to a soldier's widow.  Doesn't that blow your mind?  134 years after the end of the war, productive individuals were expropriated under threat of mortal violence, in order that a woman should be paid for having married an elderly veteran.

Well, we're nearly done with The Capable Cruiser and will move on to The Cost-Conscious Cruiser next for some concrete ideas on finding the right old boat for us and developing strategies to sustain a low-income, low-budget cruising lifestyle.

Sometimes it all seems so incredibly far off that it's challenging to continue to push toward the goal, but we continue to take steps day-by-day.

Here are some cool old boats I've been eyeing.

• Whitby 45
• Brewer 45
• Hudson Seawolf 44
• Reliance 44
• Beneteau Oceanis 430
• Gulfstar 43
• Wauquiez Amphitrite 43
• Tayana Vancouver 42

-10.3

10/14

April made great headway today excavating kid clothes to unload.

We're going to try again with the first aid class on 12/8.  Babysitting fell through last time.

We went out this evening with our good friends Valerie and Ian and I picked his brain a little on technical trading, which I've been investigating as one possible component of sustaining.  BTW, here's his brand new book.  Very interesting stuff...

Audrey's getting good with the learning to read primers GranMiri has been sending.  Thanks GranMiri!

-8.4

Back to work I care about.

Alright, we got through that audit at work.  I think.  So now I get to get back to working on things I care about.  Like the windows and door project, which I really only care about as a means to selling the house, which I only care about as a means to buying a boat and sailing away.  I guess for that matter working at work is only one step further removed from what I actually care about than the windows and door project.  But anyway, I think I'm finally ready to do some filling and hardening, hopefully to be following shortly by some priming and painting.

-9.0

I'm exhausted! Jacob has been working non-stop for the last 10 days, and I have been on single-handed parenting duty. It is really hard being a single parent. I don't know how people do this all the time. I love my babies, and we have been having fun together, but at the end of the day I'm so tired I can barely move (for example, this post has taken me an hour to write, and it's only 4 sentences so far :).

When ever I fantasize about cruising, one of the most appealing parts is all of the quality time we will spend as a family!

Here are some recent pictures:

10/10/2012

Hopefully we've done enough at work to save the company.  Lots of hours the past week and weekend.  It will definitely help out a lot with the cruising plan to keep my job.  Hopefully I can get back to some of the house projects in the evenings now.

Pardey time.

j: -9.2

10/7

Well it's the end of a weekend that wasn't. We have done some reading in spite of it though. We read the chapter on "Murder in Turtle Bay" and on calibrating your compass for the northern or southern hemisphere. Good stuff.

10/3, 10/4/2012

More critter mitigation today.  Lots of window work yesterday.

I was looking at some pages on boat metrics and ratios.  These were interesting:
www.sponbergyachtdesign.com/THE DESIGN%20RATIOS.pdf
www.tedbrewer.com/yachtdesign.html

I may have to put things on hold for a few weeks to focus on continued employment.  Long story.

After we met with the realtor I'm actually feeling a little less overwhelmed by selling the house. She didn't tell us we were ready to put it on the market now, but she did help us make a manageable list of priorities. She walked through the entire house, garage and yard with us.

Here is our list:
1. de-clutter every room - she originally recommended that we just pack it all up and stack it in the garage, but since we are selling everything eventually anyway, we will just try to get that done before we put it on the market
2. fix up the kitchen - oil our cabinets, install mechanisms to keep our cabinets closed, change our vinyl flooring, change the overhead light fixture, buy a matching stainless stove hood.
3. fix up the upstairs bath - retile the shower, fix the towel bar, add a mirror
4. change the fixtures in the downstairs bathroom
5. repair the laundry room doors
6. re-paint the walls
7. install new smoke and CO alarms
8. sand and repaint window frames and sills
9. replace the upstairs door

Looking at it in this orderly list makes it feel very doable! The scariest part of this adventure for me has just been moved way down the list.

10/1/2012

More window work today.  I got the caulk off the glass with this this cool razor scaper deal.

Here's how the windows look now.

So it's coming along...

theboatgalley.com looks like a really neat site on cooking and provisioning.

I came across this discussion today with some really neat points about what makes a blue-water boat.  denverd0n makes the point:

[D]on't forget that the Atlantic has been crossed many times in boats less than 20' long, including open boats and rowboats. Or that Captain Bligh sailed more than 3,500 miles across the South Pacific in an open, 23' boat overloaded with 18 men. That was clearly a "blue water" voyage, but hardly comfortable cruising. So the answer really depends--to a HUGE extent--on what you consider important, what you are willing to put up with, and what you are willing to trade off. And only you can answer those questions.

Zanshin adds:

[W]hat really makes a vessel bluewater capable is the crew and skipper. Usually the boats are built to withstand more than the crew can; and an only partially "bluewater capable" boat according to ... other criteria with a competant crew will hold up better than the finest bluewater boat with a less than adequate crew. 

In days past a boat needed to be built like a tank in order to withstand whatever the seas could throw at it and odds were good that it would at some time come in contact with such extremely heavy weather. With today's access to weather and passage information, the odds of encountering such bad conditions for extended periods of time have gone down, and thus boats can be built differently. 

You have 2 competing goals - as a liveaboard vessel you want lots of light and space and freedom of movement aboard. These are "bad" features in the classical defniition of a bluewater boat. The list of diametrically opposed features twixt a liveaboard and bluewater boat goes on; as is often said "Every boat design is a compromise".