Getting ready for school and Rusty is jumping at the rail of the patio, growling, whining with a ridge of hair standing on end. It's squirrel time -- about the only entertainment the environment provides Rusty at the condo. (Rusty much prefers the boat, where he has fore and aft perches, from which he can survey all -- boats, birds, people etc. At the condo it's just the little patio, a short span of shrubbery and a tall fence -- which this squirrel uses as a raceway a couple of times a day.

Spent yesterday -- Memorial Day -- thinking about Dad, and working on DE, running tests on all the batteries: engine start, genset start, house batts, bow-thruster boost batts, with a conductance tester loaned to me by my electrical instructor at SMA. Unfortunately the test (which is designed for automotive batteries) really didn't like the 6V house batts which are connected in series/pairs (to make 12V batts -- why, because these things are very heavy, and much easier to manuever at 6V) and couldn't give me meaningful readings on the batteries I am most wish to have some kind of objective diagnostic. The cool thing is, due to the classes I've been taking, I have much more confidence about what I'm doing when I dig into these projects, even if I don't always get it right the first time.

Tomorrow morning 0-dark-30, we'll head south for a 16+ hour drive to Sebastopol for grand-daughter Jordanne's high school graduation! We're very excited about this. We've also arranged to meet up for a few hours in San Francisco with our friends Warren & Heather, boat neighbors from Hong Kong, who are doing a bit of touristing in CA. Back up to Seattle next Monday for classes on Tues; one more week of school after that.