A day for Chris... Boat chores!....Bitching about the internet connection!
27 January 2009
• Gulfport, Florida
by Mike
I am convinced that Gulfport is ready to see the back of us. Every time that we sign on to the internet, we just get on and it kicks us off after we have started to do something and have keyed in all the information. We have been trying to help the marina management get this sorted out but at this point I think that the only thing that will work with this service provider is fire them and go with someone else. We have heard that there is a member of city council who wants to get rid of the marina and turn it into a bunch of condos. She happens to be a real estate developer. Can you spell "conflict of interest"? I am beginning to wonder if she might not have hired someone to deliberately mess with the WiFi link. Sometimes if we leave it on the site for a while it seems to stabilize so we have been able to hang out the blog postings.
Chris and Taunya went into the Fresh Market this morning with Barb and me, their one and only chance to visit it as next Tuesday Chris will be leaving in the early afternoon and I'm sure that he and Taunya will have other things on their mind. I expect that Barb and I will make the run while they do their packing.
I'm watching the economic situation here in the US with a lot of interest. It's very interesting to see the traditional American attitude towards government involvement in the day to day lives of the population. Traditional Americanism wants as little interference from the government as possible, which is one reason that they don't have socialized medicine or Medicare. However, for some reason it's OK to pour trillions of dollars into saving the auto industry or the banking industry or home mortgages. From an outsider's perspective it would appear that if you have a big enough lobby group or if you pay enough money into the right campaign fund you get government help if you need it or can get it denied if you don't want it. If it's otherwise, I sure wish someone could explain it to me. On the other hand it sure seems like creeping Canadianism. We are slowly taking over and they don't even know it. Hee, hee, hee.....
Chris and I went out to a store that sells COP toys - belt webbing, flashlights, batons, boots etc. He bought a bunch of stuff that isn't available back in Canada including some stuff to give away to friends on the force plus some frisking gloves that will protect him from cuts or punctures from inmate's weapons or needles. I even bought a few things - a really nice flashlight and a baton so I won't have to trust the quarter staff/walking stick that I have for that purpose now. We also have a catalogue in case we need to get more. The flashlight, for instance, uses really different batteries that are quite expensive in the local drug stores but relatively cheap through the store we were at this morning.
Barb got us e-tickets for Busch Gardens and printed them off for us to use, probably tomorrow. This sounds like a small undertaking but given the state of the internet WiFi connection here it was quite involved. She also did some jewellery repairs and preparation for dinner.
Taunya spent the morning working on tidy up and on a nice shade of brown. If I wouldn't be accused of being some kind of stalker, I'd have a picture up on the site. Suffice to say, she is a much better tanner than anyone else on the boat. Chris, for example, insists that his sunburn is going to magically turn brown and refuses my sunscreen. I show him my melanoma scar to no effect. I guess that he'll have to learn about UV rays and genetics the hard way as I did.
Anyway, back at Nelleke we finally were able to get the fuel filter system installed but not hooked up. Damn, that was a major undertaking! One of the issues with a smaller boat is finding space to put things, and then as time goes by and there are more and more things and a diminishing number of places to put them, still finding places to put things. This was one of those situations. Not only did we have to find a spot to install it which was in large part governed by the demands of the fuel system, but once found, we had to be able to access it both for the actual install but also to be able to change the filters and actually hook up the fuel line. None of it is easy, but it is attached to the boat.
By that time it was somewhere around four thirty which translates to Margaritaville time or Miller time or something like that, so we sat in the cockpit and drank some Buds and watched the sunset and told lies and other stories until it was time to go out for dinner. We took the gruesome twosome out to Pia's for Italian tonight and showed them what nightlife in Gulfport was like. The picture accompanying this post show the famous handbag.
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