Ship's Blog: June, 2007

My dream world is very rich; I tend to have long, complicated dreams that, if I take the time to write them down, fill pages. Thank goodness I don't always remember the entire dreams or I'd spend my mornings distracted by the plots. As it is, I usually remember just portions, knowing that they are part of a much larger whole.

The other day, I awakened from one of those lengthy, twisty dreams to remember one distinctive highlight: I married Johnny Depp.  Read more »

I have officially become a hypochondriac.

Yesterday, while heading home after the movies and a couple of errands, I was going to swing into Trader Joe's to get some dinner fixings. Only, I had a pain in that little divot behind my earlobe that was really distracted me. It had started an hour earlier when I was at Target and it just kept hurting more and more. It felt strange and it made me think too much about blood flow. Could that be a major artery or something? What on earth could go wrong there? It's behind my earlobe, for goodness' sake!  Read more »

The San Francisco Bay Area, like many U.S. metropolitan areas, offers traffic information for travelers via telephone, using voice recognition technology. It's pretty cool stuff: you call 511, tell it what kind of information you want and for what area, and the voice tells you what kind of traffic conditions to expect.

The trouble is, due no doubt to funky phone connections, the speaker's ability to articulate, and the phase of the moon, the traffic guy - whom I've named Kevin - doesn't always understand what you're saying. Sometimes the misunderstanding is understandable and predictable. When Kathy lived in Pinole, this would be her conversation:

Kevin: "Say your ending point."  Read more »

The other day, I was talking to a vet about how I'm having trouble giving Tilly her medicine. I have to wash her chin with antibacterial soap and then apply some refrigerated medicine with my fingertip. The vet said, "She runs and hides when you go to get her?"

Oh, if only that were it! Unfortunately, Tilly is wise to my ways long before I reach out to pick her up. In fact, she will run under the bed if I do any of the following:  Read more »

"You never work hard enough; if you don't apply yourself more, you won't get anywhere." "You should have done that the other way. Now this looks shoddy, see?" "Why on earth did you use blue for that? Blue will never work."  Read more »

Who is this voice? A critical parent or a harsh teacher? No, it's the voice in my head that plays too much of the time...and perhaps, the voice that sometimes plays in your head, too. You know the one, the voice that is never happy with what you do, the one that says you are too this or too that, suggesting that all your problems come from not listening to him or her. Some call this voice your Inner Critic. I, however, know it best as my Inner Commodore.

When most people think of a pirate flag, they think of the Jolly Roger (also known as the Skull and Crossbones). But, as my pirate-educated readers well know, Edward England's Jolly Roger is just one example of an historical pirate flag. There are many more.  Read more »

My mother was a voracious reader; as long as I knew her, she was constantly checking out books from the library and trolling bookstores for new releases. Her favorites were romances and mystery/spy thrillers. She read quickly, and as a result, there were always piles of books next to her bed and on the bed, as well as grocery bags full of paperbacks to take to the used bookstore for credit.  Read more »

Where arrr y'goin'? No, where arrr y'goin'?

Yesterday morning, we headed to the 1^st Annual NorCal Pirate Festival. As we drove across the Benicia bridge on our way to Vallejo, we were flanked by a motorcycle pirate in a poufy linen shirt and a big black SUV with a Jolly Roger flapping wildly from the roof. Clearly, we were headed in the right direction.  Read more »

While going through my photos to find those pictures for my graduation post, I came across another portrait that I wanted to share. This is one of my sister's two daughters, which I took during a long photo session in 1994:  Read more »

These two precious little girls graduated high school yesterday:

 Read more »

San Francisco Bay Area residents - this weekend (June 16 & 17, 2007) marks the first Northern California Pirate Festival, held at the Vallejo waterfront. Running from 10 to dusk on Saturday, 10-6 on Sunday, the festival features performers, contests, plenty of treasure sold by pirate vendors, the kind of good food you can only get in port, and more. They say:

Whether you love nautical music, swordfighting, sailing, cannon-battles, theater, maritime crafts, food and drink, or just shopping fer' pirate booty...there's something here for YOU!

Good enough, mate! You can check out the details yerself at the NorCal Pirate Festival site.  Read more »

Today I stopped by a clothing store to try to find an outfit to wear to a graduation event. Actually, a dressy blouse would do - something classic and understated. Unfortunately, though, it is not classic and understated season. It is Summer, when bright colors, short sleeves, and wrinkled faux linen abound. I could shop all I wanted; there was nothing suitable.  Read more »

Cranky at my lack of success, I decided to see if I could find a new bra, since I was already there. When you've been rotating through four bras as you wear them around the clock for 54 days in a row (AND YES, I'm keeping track) you tend to discover all the deficiencies of your bra wardrobe.

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to spend the day in one of Michael deMeng's classes at Stamper's Warehouse. Michael is an assemblage artist who creates shrines and other relics from all sorts of things, such as electrical outlets, light bulbs, Pez dispensers, and Hot Wheels cars. When he is done with them, you can barely tell what the source object started life out as. The depth of color and texture in his work is particularly intriguing to me. I loved what  Read more »

When I was ten years old, my mother went through chemotherapy for breast cancer. I don't have a lot of clear memories of this time; they all come in flashes. Mostly, they are flashes of her feeling very sick, or doing arm exercises for lymphaedema, or wearing her wig and trying to stay upright, taking care of everything that needed to be taken care of.

One more coherent memory that I have, though, is later, when her hair grew back. As with most people, her hair came back gray and white. She hated it and bought hair color to fix it. But, she couldn't lift her left arm over her head to apply it, so she asked me if I would please help her color her hair.  Read more »

The world of sports is a mystery to me, one that I do not in any way try to solve. I neither understand sports nor am I drawn to watching them. Kathy, however, likes to watch games. Baseball is her favorite, but she also watches football and basketball (and perhaps some others) all while seemingly knowing what is going on.

Though she is very considerate about not commandeering the TV for a game (if there is something I want to watch) I think it is only fair that she have adequate big TV time, so I try to encourage her to watch games in the living room. It's no big deal for me because I am trained at how to live with a sports fan.  Read more »

Lately, I've been feeling terribly sad that I've made it this far in life without learning to swordfight. I started "signing up for" fencing classes as early as my teenage years, but my commitment (more like my state of physical fitness!) has never taken me beyond a few sessions. On Monday, I resolved that I must address this ASAP, because what if I died without knowing how to swordfight? My god, what could be sadder than that?

It's pretty gosh-darn convenient that I would decide this at a time when my sword arm is definitely out of service. Months of shoulder pain have brought me to a point where it is hard to unfasten my seat belt, much less draw a sword from my side in a sweeping flourish! I know, I know, learn to do it with your left arm, not your right, but I'm not trying to be the Dread Pirate Roberts. So, yesterday I brought my sword arm to my orthopaedic surgeon to have him take a look-see.  Read more »

Last Sunday, Kathy and I went out to lunch at a diner-style restaurant. She ordered soup which came with the requisite packet of Saltines. She didn't eat them. Before the waiter came to take her empty soup bowl away, I snaked out my hand to grab the crackers and tuck them into my handbag. "In case I get hungry at the movie," I explained.  Read more »

And there it is: I've become my mother, gathering up uneaten food at the table to take home.

Warning: Extreme Feline Cuteness to Follow

Ever tried to by a play structure or bed for your cat? Then you know how hard they are to please. Oh, it's easy to thrill them with a cardboard box and a twist-tie, but when you invest your hard-earned cash on something explicitly designed to be both safe and intriguing for the feline set, you're usually setting yourself up for disappointment.

That's why I was surprised to find that Target, of all places, has been consistently hitting home runs with just about anything we buy from their cat accessories section. Target? A source of safe, compelling, and affordable cat toys? Apparently so!  Read more »

Given my ease with all things high-tech, it might be surprising to learn that I can be strongly resistant to advances in household technology designed to save time in daily life.

This first became evident back in the dark ages when speed dial came out. Initially, I resisted it because it was a phone service feature that you had to pay for and I was cheap. But later, when it became integrated into the physical phones, I resisted it for another reason. I was sure that if all I had to do was press a single button to call friends and family, I would forget all of their phone numbers.  Read more »

You know what would happen next.