Kaimusailing

I had begun a blog post but it was mostly about the NFL, which I am excited about. So I deleted it. Now it is the hottest day of the year here in Crisfield, but I have been adequately inured to hot humid weather in the swamps of Georgia. This is a day to not exert, plan and order stainless steel screws for a future picnic table at the house on Cove Street. It’s something we can leap up upon when the inevitable flooding happens.
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I’m still waiting for a usable high power wifi adapter to show up. The first one is in limbo, I have been refunded, but I wanted the seller to send me it to the correct address. The second one seemed to work, but its data throughput is very slow, it is not going to work. The next one is on the way. My fear is that it might be a chip set that isn’t recognized by my linux operating system. Otherwise, third time’s the charm.
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For a while I had turned off the radio and the 107.3 station. I slept better. After a couple days I missed it and turned it on again. That’s the way it is with a lot of things.
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Finerworks.com announced a 40% off sale on canvas prints, like the kind I was getting a while ago. I ordered 4 prints. They would cost each about $15 unmounted. Then after more wine I ordered 4 more. One I will keep. I like the quality of the Artisinal Archive Canvas. So a 25 dollar print is more like 15 dollars. I’ll buy that.
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I thought I had accidentally ordered a print of my phone’s background. I did want a print of the photo that became my phone’s background, but the Galaxy phone has a function that automatically saves a screen shot of the phone when you press the power off button and the audio decrease button. They are opposite each other, so often when powering down the phone a screen shot gets saved to the pictures folder, the gallery. I was afraid I had selected one of those instead of the original photo. Now I’ve looked at my images at finerworks.com and conclude I sent the original, even though I was imbibed with cheap wine.
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I’m not sure how I will frame them. I ordered the 12X18 format, which is a medium size, but I have no frames yet. I like frames that are simple but not cheap looking. That leaves out the frames from Walmart, but maybe I will have to go there. Why do picture frames cost so much? Take something to a framing shop and get your checkbook out.
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Ordering stainless steel deck screws for the future picnic table wasn’t a piece of cake. The local hardware store, which would be a dreadful slog on the bike on a humid hot day like today, said over the phone that they didn’t carry stainless steel deck screws. Bummer. They did have titanium screws. That intrigued me. I had never heard of titanium deck screws. Well, we’re close to Wallops Island, where the rocket people carry on their business. Titanium. The store was talking about titanium coated screws.
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I searched the local home improvement stores. We needed just under 100 screws. Online you can order a pack of 100 from some of the places I have dealt with happily in the past. But the delivery would take a while and maybe we want to put this thing together this weekend, in just a few days. The buy in store options mostly meant a pound of screws. It took a while to find out the screw count in a pound of #10 2 ½ inch stainless steel deck screws, but it mostly came out to 80 or so. One brand was count of 88, we could live with that.
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None of the stores on the peninsula stocked these screws, but a couple in Baltimore had them, and one right on the way down here had them in Severna, Maryland. I tried to entice Cornelia Marie to stop there on her way down this weekend, but she countered with an Amazon order of the same screws that, with her enhanced account, could be delivered on Friday, Friday the 13th. Hoo Boy. Go ahead I said. Do you know where Friday the 13th comes from? It’s the day the Knights Templar were ambushed by the pope and the French king many years ago. Very unlucky.
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As much as I am aghast at the various misinformation campaigns and conspiracy theories that are working against all of us with the coronavirus, I am intrigued by the conspiracy theories about Oak Island. Well, Oak Island is that development on the ocean side of the ICW near Southport, NC, but it is also a mysterious island off of Nova Scotia. Some think the Knights Templar hid their vast fortune there after their demise in France. It has spawned a tv series on the Discovery Channel. The money spent on digging for the treasure on the island would be a fortune in itself. The dig is called, “The Money Pit”.
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I got a call from Rough Rider Lynn, asking about tablets, the computer kind. They had returned to the boatyard from their cruise with a tattered sail. She said it was the swells and flogging that ruined the sail. The Panasonic CF-C1 that I had prepared for them had failed also. I would look at it, but she was in Pennsylvania.
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Today is the “Have a Seat” auction by the Arts Council, they sell off decorated chairs and benches to benefit the Council and local artists. I planned to attend, but in my sweaty indolent state I didn’t go out. The fellow from the marina, Malcolm, and his wife, were keen on getting a rocking chair for a grandchild. I had helped them locate the gallery, in the old library, on East Main Street. They also have art displays there.
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The next day was equally hot, but I’m coping with it well. A bike ride to the store killed me on the way back with the heat and humidity and a headwind, South of course. I stopped at the gazebo at the Crisfield Municipal Park and drank water I had just bought. After a while I was good to go again. A young lady walked up the sidewalk and wisely headed to the gazebo. I was packing up my shopping and took off. At the marina I stopped in the air conditioned boater’s lounge and watched some NFL and PGA. I wanted to see if it was subscribed to the NFL channel, yes. Tonight is Thursday Night Football.
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When I returned to the lounge later a bathing beauty in a red bathing suit and a tiara upon her head was walking by. I asked if I could take her picture. Then as I was watching the overly hyped beginning of the NFL preseason I noticed other bathing beauties wandering outside, what the heck is going on? A couple of photographers were with them taking shots here and there. Large SUV’s were driving them to locations in the marina. A drone began flying around overhead. I guess I will learn what was transpiring after the fact, like always.
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The preseason games on NFL Thursday Night Football were not teams I particularly wanted to watch. Steelers vs Eagles, Patriots vs Washington Football Team, formerly the Redskins, who I did a lot of work for prior to my retirement almost 11 years ago. Of interest were the various quarterbacks who were competing for their jobs. The most impressive was Dwayne Haskins, who was a first round pick a while back. Also aging Joe Flacco, now playing for the Eagles as the veteran backup to Jalen Hurts. He played well. Hurts had trouble moving the team. Flacco threw the longest touchdown pass I’ve seen recently. It didn’t watch past halftime. The teams I’m most interested in are the Jets, Jaguars, and Panthers. NFL offers Game Pass, a phone app that allows watching games on any device, it only costs $99 for the season. I’m content with watching whatever games are on tap and highlights on YouTube.
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CM had purchased most of the lumber needed for the picnic table and also a smaller piece of 2X12 for a back porch step that was falling apart. We put the lumber on a pair of sawhorses and I measured the exact length of the step and cut the lumber to fit. Now it would be a quick job to remove the step and nail down the new step. Not so fast. The old step was rotting and falling apart in places, and screwed down with old rusty deck screws. The torx bit would not grab. I tried to pry the step up but it held tenaciously. I went to the boat and got my portapower but it also failed. Later we tried using the torx bit in a right angle ratchet screwdriver. I had to leave to attend to a few tasks at the boat.
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One task was laundry, I was out of clean clothes. Also my high power wifi adapters came in and I wanted to test them out. I was eager to test them out. What I found was linux recognized them, but they failed to pick up the wifi signal from the Red Shell Shanty. Bummer.
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The image is of the bathing beauty with tiara, it was a photo shoot for the upcoming Hard Crab Derby, and you are looking at Miss Crustacean. Can’t make this stuff up.