Six Months and Counting

  Yes, we left St. Louis six months ago. It doesn't seem that long ago for us, so that's a sign that we must be enjoying the experience and it's true.
  On Tuesday Gary took me to the auto parts store and we picked up our six Optima Marine batteries and by late afternoon I had the old batteries out and the new ones installed. We had also gone by the Sea and Shore store here in Cape Coral and had some cables made up due to the fact that we were adding 50% more battery capacity in the form of six inverter batteries instead of four. Four feet worth of cables and eight shrink wrapped ends with rings attached, that'll be 100 smackers please. No wonder thieves are taking copper from anyplace they can get it.
  On Tuesday night we went out with Gary and Judy and their neighbor Denny, also from St. Louis, to get chicken at the local Elks hall. The chicken was tasty, but we declined after dinner cocktails due to my being tired out from wrestling with 360 pounds worth of batteries.
  Yesterday started out very good with the news that our president had been re-elected. That, plus the closing on our condo was scheduled for mid morning, was normally good reason to be optimistic, but the sour grapes reaction from some of our friends on Facebook who didn't back our candidate put a pall on our good moods.
  When the stock market opened and we could see the trend beginning for a whopper of a losing day, it didn't help matters at all. As we waited for a phone call from the title company in regard to our condo closing, I checked the activity on our investment portfolio and when I found a discrepancy in our outgoing "advisory fees", my mood began to really darken.
  Rosie would insist here that I include the explanation that it's hard to tell when I'm not in a bad mood. My default expression is one we could call "adverse neutrality". I'm happy on the inside, but my face doesn't usually show it. I can't help what I look like. If I had a lobotomy, I would be smiling all the time.
  We set up an appointment for early next week with our financial planner. Lucy...you got some 'splainin' to do.
  Just after noon, when we expected a call from the title company representing us in our condo closing, we got the call. Yes, but the financial institution providing the funds to our buyer made a mistake, and long story short, we wouldn't be closing until the following day. Our title company representative asked if she could "fax or email" some papers for us to sign and send back. Unluckily for her, I answered the phone because Rosie was on my phone with our selling agent discussing the snafu. I said, as patiently as I could, "Let's forever take the term 'fax' from future conversations. We live on a boat, and fax is something we don't have, plus I think fax should have gone the way of the telegraph years ago." Well, she laughed and agreed, but I said I would, in her best interest, transfer her over to Rosie as I wasn't having my best day. We spent the rest of the afternoon receiving emails, signing documents, and scanning said documents and sending them back. Nice that we didn't have to visit the title company down here in Cape Coral again.
  While we were in the middle of all this, the wind had picked up as I had expected it to, and our anchor started slipping. When we had returned to our normal spot here in the basin after picking up the batteries on Tuesday, another sailboat had anchored nearby and I didn't put out our normal length of scope. I should have adjusted our ground tackle when the boat left on Wednesday morning but it slipped my mind. The good thing was we were on the boat and could react accordingly.
  In between our email business, I put out a fishing line and tried to fish. Gary had also called and said some other friends were down from St. Louis and did we want to come over, but we had to decline due to the business we had going on with the title company and the wind whipping Swing Set around. Denny and Reggie will be in the area until the weekend, so maybe we can see them later.
  We also had tentative plans to see some "friends of friends" that live here in Cape Coral. They had called late on Tuesday and wanted to meet at a local bar on Wednesday night. We didn't want to leave the boat in such windy conditions, so we had to call them and see if we couldn't reschedule. You wouldn't think we would have all of these social engagements, living alone on a boat and all.
  Things started to settle down and Rosie jumped in the shower. I put a few ice cubes in a glass and added a smidgen of Captain Morgan. I was starting to enjoy my cocktail when I heard our boat neighbor approaching in her dinghy. When she hailed "Hello, hello!", I mustered up all the good nature I had in me and went out to ask what was up. Kim decided that Holly's problem was that she wasn't being able to get to shore to do her business, and that was the source of her bladder maladies. She offered to take Holly in her dinghy, along with her own dog, over to the park to let her run and go potty. I didn't even need to take a look at the nearly sinking dinghy, her flea and mange infested dog, nor the prospect of Holly being whisked away by pirates over at the park, to politely as I could, decline her offer. As if.
I think people may think I'm becoming anti-social.
  Even though I had avoided Facebook all day, it didn't keep Rosie from checking in occasionally. The bright spot of our day was finding out that our friends attending the boat races in Key West had taken photos of us, cut them out, and mounted them on sticks to carry around and take photos with and post them on Facebook.

  We kept getting posts from them in which various other friends posed with our cut-outs as they made their way from one Key West venue to the next. We knew that they missed us in Key West and the gesture nearly made Rosie cry.

    Here's Rick hauling us around in his beer filled back pack, one of the pictures we could actually show here on the blog. I noticed they had a cut out of Rosie attired in her skimpiest bikini and we warned them to not rub her picture nefariously on any of their body parts. Christa asked us how we knew that they were doing that, and I told Rosie to reply that we don't have faith in much, be we do have faith in human nature. There are some things you just know is gonna happen in certain situations. I sent a note this morning warning them that I better not find out that my stick was swished around in the toilet bowl late last night.
  Yesterday turned out to be a good day after all, thanks to the gang down there in Key Weird, you know who you are.