We're Out!

On Thursday we moved out of our home of the past 25 years to temporary housing in Katy's parents' house in Falmouth.

 In spite of our best efforts, we still wound up moving a lot of stuff that we KNOW we won't keep, whether in long term storage, on the boat, or in Falmouth. So we're now in the throes of still more weeding and organizing.

Thursday was also the day Alison had her jaw surgery. It was on my mind all day, and has been pretty steadily since then. I'm so grateful that Owen, Margaret and David are all with her through this; it's a pretty hairy procedure with a long recovery time. The word this morning, though is that Alison is much improved from yesterday, so things are moving in the right direction.

There's still so much to do before we leave: pack up the pallet of stuff to ship to France, learn enough French to not TOTALLY behave like ugly Americans, organize all the stuff we are leaving at the Cape house, and -- say good-bye for now to all of our friends and relatives. There are moments when I can't really believe we are doing this.

Being at the Cape, though, is a welcome respite from the past few weeks in Cambridge. Having the house gradually become less and less livable was stressful and discouraging. Here, we are certainly still surrounded by chaos, but we have a table to eat on, a kitchen to cook in, and a peaceful view out the windows.

We're steadily checking off the many bureaucratic boxes to complete before we leave: completing my Medicare signup, changing our mailing address with a gazillion organizations, getting our long-stay visa from the French consulate, setting up a Euro-friendly debit card, and on and on. But the list has gotten a lot shorter.

So - farewell, Orchard Street. Hello, Falmouth, and soon hello, Cherbourg.

Killer Rabbit Redux

Long ago, in an Internet far, far, away  --  sometime in the early 2000s -- there were no images of the infamous encounter between President Jimmy Carter and a "killer rabbit". The story was, at the time it occurred (1979), a bit of a Rorschach test of one's opinion of the president, but the image itself remained safely locked away in the Jimmy Carter Library, as Al Gore had not yet invented the Internet.

This was also very early days for blogs, and at the time I was doing my own crude blogging, which consisted of putting up pages on my own web site, narsil.org. The site was then hosted on a Dell computer in my basement, which has since gone Tango Uniform; the content does live on in the Internet Wayback Machine. The current site is a much less expansive site, as I've moved my blogging here.

Anyway - for some reason, in April of 2004, the "killer rabbit" incident came up, and I went searching for the infamous photo. It was unobtainium. With little hope, I contacted the Jimmy Carter Library and asked about the image.

To my great surprise, I received a prompt and very polite response, advising me that the photo was, in fact, in their archives, and they could send me a disk (remember CDs?) containing the image for a modest fee. A few days later, I had it.

See also my original web page about this.

Why bring this up now? Well, as we prepare to move out of our house, I came across the original disk.

The Cuttyhunk trip, 2019

As I noted elsewhere, Katy and I sailed the Bonnie Lass to Cuttyhunk and back this summer. Here are two pictures from that trip. First, sailing downwind on the spinnaker. Katy took this from the Pudge, which we were towing behind us:

While trolling underway, Katy caught our supper:

We got our new, temporary "boat business cards"

I decided to get some temporary "boat business cards" for us, since I don't yet have the new address memorized, and this will help me.

I took that picture of the spinnaker two years ago, when Katy and I sailed the Bonnie Lass from Falmouth to Chatham and back.

The emptying of a home

Today some gentle giants came to our house and hauled away a truckload of life.

It's strange walking through the house and seeing all the empty spaces.

RuthAnne's room

Owen's room

the basement

Katy's sewing room shelves (the plastic boxes will be filled with more stuff to move out)

A few days ago I took the bulk of the vinyl over to Stereo Jack's, and my AR turntable to Rockin' Bob's.

The front parlor and dining room are still full of things to give away. 

It's a strange mix of feelings: relief, sadness, excitement that we're getting close to actually moving to the boat -- a swirl.

Saying Goodbye

Tomorrow we will close on the sale of our home of the past 25 years. It's an odd feeling. On the one hand, I am SO EAGER to be starting this next phase of our lives, and we've been preparing for this moment for over a year now. OTOH -- these walls resonate with the lives lived within them for the past quarter century.

Our daughter RuthAnne was up from D.C. this past weekend for a Gyro training. As I said goodbye to her on Monday morning, she noted that this was the LAST TIME she would ever leave this house. That must have been strange for her, and I'm sure it will be for me, too.

We've tagged much of the furniture and many other objects in the house with one of three colors of painter's tape: green for "give away", blue for "send to long term storage", and purple for "goes to the Cape at least temporarily". We have movers coming next Thursday to haul the first batch of stuff off to storage. It's all going very fast now.

"But I've loved these days."

I'm getting my Technician class ham radio license

Today I passed the exam to get my Technician class amateur radio license. This has been a dream of mine since I was a kid.

I should receive my call sign in about a week.

Next stop: my General license.

Update: I am now KC1MCS. Woot!

Things I learned today

I keep learning unrelated factoids.

• The ship station license that we get for our on-board VHF radio winds up being used for everything radio-like on the boat, including AIS.
• Once a boat has been documented as a U.S. flag vessel, that documentation number is used for the life of the boat. It's not particular to a specific owner.
• The one rollover per year rule for IRAs does not apply to 401(k)-to-IRA rollovers. 
• Vanguard's hold times can be terrible.
• A deep cleaning (AKA root scaling and planing) isn't really as terrible as I expected, at least not at Gentle Dental in Porter Square. (Thank you, Lea Fontanella!)
• Manning Publications has a very decent policy on books: if you purchase a paper book from them, they will give you the book in any of several digital forms for free.
• Hey, my Hayden duet concertina has been tuned by The Button Box, and I can start playing again soon!

Hey, I'm retiring!

Long time, no update. Well, much has happened.

Katy and I are about to move onto a 45' sailboat, a Garcia Exploration 45. We will be moving to France early next year, and begin sailing in late April or May.

More to follow, but to say the least, we're very excited!