Summer (spring, too) was unusual this year. No boat. Well, yes we still have it, we're just not aboard anymore.
My last blog post indicated it might be the last. It isn't. The boat did not sell so we will return to it, head south to Marathon and continue to try to sell her while enjoying the winter in the Keys. As write this we are a few days away from heading to Europe to take a river cruise on the Danube, Main and Rhine Rivers. A separate blog will be written about that 50th wedding anniversary trip. So this entry is just to summarize the events since we left the boat in Georgia for the summer.
We drove our not quite truck load of boat stuff north without incident. About 3 days of driving. We filled Heather's garage with boxes of stuff.
We then started shopping for a home in Connecticut. We made a couple of trips looking at homes we researched on the internet. Long drives to eastern CT and back to Long Island but we stayed at a cousin's home in Old Saybrook overnight a couple of times to break up the round trips. We eventually settled on a home in Mystic, CT in a new neighborhood that was added onto an older neighborhood.
We chose a new home in the hopes of not having older home repair/maintenance issues. We'll see. We moved in near the end of May. A quick closing due to no need for financing arrangements. While still in Massapequa, Long Island we took a trip to the City to the Natural History Museum with the kids.
Very nice. Except for getting Covid. 1st time. Carol got it first and passed to all but the grandkids within a few days. Maybe from the train. Maybe from the crowds in the City. Who knows? Miserable for one day and Paxlovid helped with the rest of the experience. No long term (we hope) affects. So far.
June consisted of building furniture for our new home. Every piece of furniture. We had nothing, having sold our last dirt-based home more than a dozen years earlier. Dining table, bed, sofas, chairs, desk, more beds (for guests), bureaus, shelves and a TV/stereo case with a fireplace. Yes, a fireplace. Under the TV. After complaining about the physical pain of boat maintenance, I spent a month on my hands and knees building kit furniture. Pains in back, knees and hands. Sigh. What fun!
I restarted working at Mystic Seaport Museum again. Just a little later than years past. One of the reasons to volunteer besides talking to folks about history is getting a number of learning and other experiences. This year these included cooking in our ancestral home, the Buckingham House, and a downriver cruise on the Sabino. I am a distant relation to a family of early settlers of the Connecticut Colony in what's now known as Old Saybrook. The home had to be moved to our Museum in the early 1950s to make way for I-95. A grandchild of the builder/owner became Governor of CT in the 1860s. Nobody famous in the family since then. Now in a brief dry spell.
We also spent a week in July on Martha's Vineyard with the kids and grandkids. Oak Bluffs this year. Some beach time but way less for me than all the others. Good weather anyway.
I also flew to Savannah for 4 nights in August to check on the boat and to do some minor maintenance. It was very hot and humid. Very tough to do any actual work while I made puddles on the cabin floor from my sweat. A reason we don't do summer in the south.
As the summer winds down and we head into a September of boating in Europe, we prepare for more changes in our lives. Back to our boat for a while then more land living probably. Change is good. I guess. Maybe. Some things. Still in remission and don't want that to change. But not much changes after you're buried or cremated so welcoming changes until then.
