Lori and I both may have forgotten our 18th wedding anniversary back in September, but Lori never seems to forget my birthday. I think she likes the time period from Nov 12th to Dec 17th when our age difference is technically one year less, but just how many years I shouldn't say (2*3) +1 for you math wizards out there, so this Dec 17th will be a B-day milestone or millstone, depending on how you look at it. The only reason I can be so brave with this post is that I'm hundreds of miles away from home at the moment working into the night in San Diego on my birthday. I could say that my boss is a slave driver but I know him well enough to know his real motivations, which along with getting the kids out of high school without a tattoo or body piercing, revolves around building up the retirement kitty and getting back to Mexico before the "collapse". The joke with the kids is that if they ever come home from school and see the boat gone they can take the bus down and meet us in La Paz!

The latest good news is that Jason survived his freshman year of high school football without breaking any bones or tearing any ligaments. Now if Amy can survive her frist season of water polo we can call this year a success. Water polo practice starts on Tuesday and I sure hope she doesn't see a sign like this on the team practice pool. In fact, seeing this sign makes me think I need to upgrade my out of town hotel choices here in Escondido because this is an actual sign that is mounted on the gate to the hotel swimming pool!



Life aboard has generally been no different than life in a house on land: work, driving the kids all around town, more work, more schedules, and more craziness. We might not have a yard to maintain but with my broken foot we hired a diver to clean the bottom of the boat ($). I installed a new solar controller ($$), I installed a new larger waste holding tank ($$$) and I've bought all the pieces necessary to plumb a water loop through our diesel heater to our hot water heater so that we will have plenty of hot water this winter while the heater is running to save run time on our trusty Honda generator (still more $$$$). Then there was the Honda CR-V Engine, transmission, front end, and back end rebuild (unbelievably more $$$$$). So with all the outgoing cash flow it sure is a good thing that this is our busy season at work and we can't keep up with water maker sales, which is why I'm working down in San Diego on my birthday after all.