Kaimusailing

I turned on the blower to clear any gasoline fumes prior to attempting to start the Atomic 4 engine, also called the Atomic Bomb. No noise from the blower fan motor. Maybe a fuse. Just did not want to blow myself and a good portion of the marina to hell.
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I am allergic to gasoline. I play games on my phone and on the computer, itching my scalp, must be gasoline, pondering how to proceed. Maybe I’m procrastinating. But I have lived as long as I have by being so.
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The big thing in my life right now is, after so many years, my NFL team, the NY Jets, may have a good quarterback in Zach Wilson. They will play in London at 9:30 am Eastern time on Sunday. I could watch any NFL game at the American Legion, but they are not open at 9:30 AM on Sunday.
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The boater’s lounge where I watched a few football games had been disassembled. I didn’t know why. Malcolm, who works a couple days for the marina, and who lives on a trawler with his lovely wife Nancy, engages me in conversation from time to time. We are the same same age, same involvement with boats. He says another marina worker had started to disassemble the lounge because the TV wasn’t working.
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I thought I might take a stab at it. I’m a retired broadcast engineer. I had been riding my bike down around the city dock, then returned to the boater’s lounge. The TV seemed to be all right, turned on and the screen said there was nothing at HDMI1. An input.
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If I had a remote I could work the TV and confirm the set up and eliminate that as part of the problem. There was no remote. There were buttons on the back of the set, but without my reading glasses I couldn’t see what they were. Retiree.
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It wasn’t too hard to go back to Sunsplash and get my reading glasses and a pen and notepad. I took note of the buttons on the back of the set. Channel up and down, Volume up and down, reset, input, and power.
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I went into the menu function and reset a few of the obvious settings that were off the scale. At some point I thought the TV was functioning normally, but the cable box was sending a signal that resulted in a small image on the TV. I pulled the power plug on the box and restarted it. I had to hit its power button again. Bingo, I had full screen high definition TV. I was elated. I could watch the Jets on Sunday morning.
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It was another grilled tuna night at the Legion. I biked there early and had a merlot, took a picture of it and sent it out. The response was Cuddily arriving by car. Eve, the artist, said she could be there at around 6. Cuddily and I commiserated over glasses of wine. Eve showed up and we ordered our tuna steaks. It was late and we ate in the dark. My tuna, which I ordered plain, medium rare, was overly salted and peppered. The teriyaki sauce was salty, too much soy, and the wasabi was volcanic, explosive. Fortunately the roasted potatoes could absorb a lot of this saltiness and fire. It was a good dinner.
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When we went to the bar to pay our bills, this place has no wait service, Cuddily seemed to be unsteady, paid her bill with cash, and Mitchell the chef quickly came to her rescue and drove her home, nearby on the waterfront, he was back in just a few minutes while I paid my bill.
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I woke up around 9:30 and procrastinated about getting up and about. I had a sudoku challenge kind of game on my phone and I could spend all day on that. I got a text from Eve, the artist, about aligning her chop saw. I had downloaded the user’s manual and it was a tedious procedure.
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I didn’t shower and was going slow. I went to the boaters lounge and watched some of the Maryland Terrapins football game. The Terps. 42-10 at halftime against Ohio State. Yeah, I don’t care about that game either.
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I cycled up Cove Street to Eve’s house and we went into her basement. The chop saw was there. She was afraid to use it, the lower blade guard had exploded, plastic, gone. No guard. Not really a problem unless you shove your hands into the saw. The alignment needed some right angle squares and some allen wrenches. The saw itself had a problem, there is a pivot bearing that can screw everything up if it is not sound. It was kind of sloppy. This is a precision saw and needs the basic elements to stay in place, no play, or else any alignment is going to be compromised.
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The saw probably should have been rebuilt to take any slop out of all of its pivoting actions. I just did the alignments delicately allowing that the saw did have a tendency to fall into a certain place no matter what you asked it to do.
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She had to check in a guest to her AirB&B and came back. I was done with adjustments, let’s cut miter joints. I think we cut 3 miter joints and she reacted to the noise of the saw, the whirring bare blade, with a suggestion that maybe we should go upstairs and have a glass of wine.
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There was a game of throwing the ball with her beautiful black lab bitch Kahlua. Inside in the kitchen we debated to go out to eat or make some food. I didn’t care how I looked. I wasn’t too funky but I had a long sleeved pullover with a hole near my waist, my wallet was on the boat, I needed to wash my hands. She contacted her friends to see what was happening and we decided to have some spaghetti and bolognese sauce. She had canned tomato sauce in her pantry and got two jars out.
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I prepped one red hot pepper. I would have loved to have done more. This woman is a wonder in the kitchen. She knows what to do and does it, get out of her way. I got to try to saute some frozen beef while she attacked a bunch of vegetables for salad. I added some of the ingredients to the meat in the sautee pan, mushrooms, 2 jars of marinara, and continued to try to separate the meat from itself. Garlic that she had prepped went in. Wonderful aroma coming up from the sauce, but let it simmer. Lets go outside and play with the dog some more.
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I didn’t offer to throw the dog’s ball, wet with dog spit, Eve uses an old glove to do it, I can’t stand it, she says. Back inside the water for the pasta is already starting to boil. The pasta goes in, just enough for two. The salad is there as if by magic, she had made two salad bowls and concocted blue cheese dressing in both of them. We are helping each other bring the salads out to the art studio along with utensils, napkins, and our wines.
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I use a fork to try the pasta, it is too al dente, needs another a minute or two. I shred parmesan from a block. The odor from the cheese rises and I form a pile of it. That’s enough. I scoop up pasta from the pot onto my plate and grab a bunch of the shredded parmesan. Mix the hot pasta with the shredded cheese. Takes a while. Get 5 scoops of the bolognese meat sauce and continue mixing. The heat melts the cheese.
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We go out to the rocking chairs in the studio with our plates of pasta. Our wines are already there. The salads are already there. Kahlua is very interested in our food and Eve says no, lay down. Very nice meal.
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Afterwards Eve wanted me to return a mason jar that Nancy and Malcolm had sent up some of their delectable sauerkraut. We had extra bolognese sauce. She put it in the jar. I would take it back to the marina and return the jar and the sauce to them.
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While I was in the boaters lounge earlier, watching an awful Maryland football game, Malcolm stopped in and I could show him how I fixed the TV. He wanted me to fill in for him this winter, if I were staying around, also if I needed extra money, there was part time work in the marina.
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My time in Crisfield is coming to an end in the next few weeks. Can’t ask for a better place for a boater who is out on the water to come to rest and recuperate. Anyplace I go will not have the friendship opportunities that are here. The place that has nothing has a whole lot.
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Cornelia Marie had the pizza oven in her basement and her house was locked up tight. She was spending more time with Wilbur, her tennis partner, and it looked like I might not get the oven back and I wanted to have Pizza Night someday. It all worked out splendidly, CM brought the oven to Eve’s house, we planned pizza night for that night. I had to shower, get picked up by Eve, go get pizza ingredients at the Food Lion, and get some liquor at the drive through liquor store.
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We did the usual, raising dough, having some wine, malbec, it goes well with pizza. I didn’t want to eat in the dark so insisted that we get things going at about 5. Cuddily showed up. Wine. I began making a pie. Eve didn’t want to eat so early. CM and Wilbur showed up with Nori, the wonder dog. The dogs raced around the yard. I closed the gate to keep them in. I finished making a margarita pie and shoved it into the oven. That’ll be our hors d'oeuvre's Eve said.
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I began to realize we all were highly charged personalities with lots of stuff to remonstrate about. We had to take our turns. My pie came out of the oven and I took the first slice, too salty. Edible. CM made a pie and it went in. Eve made a pie and it went in. CM and Wilbur made a pie. It went in. In between we drained the wine bottles and considered the strange weather, clouds from the North, winds blowing things off the table now and then. Dogs pleading for some pizza pie or anything edible. It was not the Bad Crowd that is so raucous, it was a different sort of crowd. I think we all hated to end the evening. There was terrible flooding in Crisfield and on my way back to the marina I was in deep water at times.
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The next day we had to stow away the pizza gear and Eve helped me bring a heavy package to the marina, it was a 30 amp power cable for the boat. I left it in a dock cart and we headed to the Legion for wine and cheesesteak sandwiches. Cuddily joined us and we chatted a while. When I returned to the marina my package was gone. In the morning I checked with the marina hoping they had brought the package to the office as a lost and found item. Malcolm who was working security the evening when the package disappeared said he saw it in the cart at 7:30 but didn’t look at the shipping label or do anything with it. I was on board Sunsplash by 8:30, so we have pinpointed the time, within an hour, when the package was taken. I ordered a replacement.
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The image is of a glass of merlot, incorrectly overpoured by the bartender at the Legion, I won’t correct them.