Self-inflicted Silence

Time flies when you’re having fun.

Or, as is more usual in my case, when you’re sitting around on your sailboat waiting for someone to remedy some stupid thing you’ve done that has cut you off from your computer so you can get around to writing your blog again.

Remote operations

At the height of our recently completed trip to Southern New Jersey to visit my brother Andy and his family, we stayed in a beautifully set but rather isolated marina that left us without the RF bars needed to communicate reliably with the outside world. And since my trip planning and blog posting activities rely on those bars, Andy picked me up one evening after work and drove me forty minutes to the better connected family home to work through the evening and spend the night.

Sure, it’s pretty, but where’s the wifi?

With me were a laptop and its key accessories. I also had a set of charts, loosely laid in an elegantly conceived kitchen trash bag to protect against dirt while mitigating creasing. And finally, to determine distances and compass headings on the charts, I had transported a divider and a parallel rule in the same trash bag.

Well, I had the divider anyway. At the dining room table, I discovered that I had apparently left the parallel rule on the boat, leaving me a step short of completing my navigational task.

But at least I got a blog post off.

Unforced errors

The next afternoon, my sister-in-law Brenda returned me to Meander, and I sat down that evening to finish my trip planning.

That’s when I found out my parallel rule was not on the boat after all.

“Ah ha,” I said, “I knew I brought it to their house! It’s probably just sitting around somewhere unexpected, maybe in Brenda’s kitchen! But that kitchen is forty minutes away, by gum! I can’t ask her to drive it to me! But we’re starting our return trip to Cambridge first thing tomorrow morning, darn it! That’s OK, though! I know what I’ll do! First, I’ll stop talking to myself in all these italics and exclamation points, golly gee whiz! Then, I’ll email Brenda and ask her to ship the parallel rule back to our Cambridge address.”

I hope he doesn’t leave me somewhere by accident, unless it’s in a room with open bags of endless kibble.

As I opened the laptop’s email client, however, I was interrupted by a popup screen that informed me, “Your battery is down to 7%. Please recharge.”

And that’s when I found out that my laptop’s power cord and charger weren’t on the boat either.

A helping hand

One phone call later, Brenda found the power cord and charger sitting on her dining room table. . . you know, right where I left them. But the parallel rule’s recovery had to wait for the return of daylight. Brenda found it the next morning out in the driveway, where it had slid from my trash bag the previous evening as I’d gotten out of the truck.

And since the morning in question was a Saturday morning, the post office in their rural hometown was closed, delaying shipment for two days.

But the following Monday, Brenda promptly got them into the mail, and I received them three days thereafter. And as a result, I’m now head-over-heels in love with my sister-in-law.

My wife gets it completely, but please don’t tell my brother.

I can keep silent. For a price.

Something Wagging

So my laptop sat in its bag this past week, completely inoperative with a 7% charge remaining in its battery.

And, noting my second prolonged blogging silence in three weeks, many in my readership would have had to wonder if I finally managed to send Meander down to Davy Jones’ locker, carrying us and Honey the golden retriever with her, if they didn’t know that my wife Pamela has a blog, too.

I mentioned the blog, Something Wagging This Way Comes, in my last post, although I forgot in my haste to provide a link to it. Pam has been writing it consistently now for more than five years. And although it revolves around Honey (and, by extension, all dogs and the people who love them) rather than Meander, the fact that Honey now lives on Meander means Pam’s dog-oriented blog often more reliably portrays aspects of our boat life than my boat-oriented blog does.

When the gloves come off, they’ll keep you posted.

So if my occasional lapses on Bimini Dream ever leave you in doubt about Meander, please drop in on Something Wagging or its Facebook page and take a look around. There’s a reasonable chance that Pam will have left recent clues about what’s going on here. (Also, the pictures are cuter.)

In the meantime, I’ll still be on board here, probably continuing to try to recover the things I keep losing.

Things like my competence. And my sanity.

________

PHOTO CREDITS
Honey licking her chops: Pamela Webster.
All other photos: Mike Webster.