Catching up

Months have passed since our last post. We bought the boat, we collected more gear, we met more people, we moved into the new marina, we struggled to flesh out the near-nonexistent galley through many visits to Home Goods, Target & Home Depot. 

Our new podcast cover, by Level Five Graphics, Inc.

If only I'd taken pictures of us stuffing four chairs and a 4-foot-wide cabinet into our microscopic rental car! We made such a spectacle that concerned bystanders drove up and offered to take us home in their big truck. We demurred, and persisted, and got all the gear on the boat, only to find that the cabinet wouldn't go together and had to be returned. (100 pounds of particle board and screws back in the box, levered back out the cabin window, into the wheelbarrow onto the tippy finger pier, back in the car, etc.)

In other news: we have our project art! Courtesy of the talented Zina Deretsky at Level Five Graphics. She also did the artwork for Judy Irving's latest film, Cold Refuge. We are thrilled with it... and now the project feels real.

Then we headed back to Maine and began scrubbing and decluttering the house to get it ready for our tenant. That's 16 years of deferred organizing to manage in one summer. For extra credit, we get to empty the garage and boathouse, because after 3 years on a waiting list those projects came up on our contractor's punch list and we don't want to miss our chance. So there's a giant pod in the driveway holding all that stuff.

We have spent sleepless nights worrying about the dog and how to get her aboard. We have a couple of solutions in mind. Many crates and harnesses and crab pullers and nylon straps and ramps and block and tackle assemblies have gone back and forth in the mail as we work the problem.

I've also begun interviewing. More on that later.

We begin the drive to California, according to Mike, in 10 days. I think we might slip a day or two later, or seven. We'll see.