Adventures in Paradise

Not Completely Gone

I had a post almost entirely written and then Firefox quit on me, completely losing everything. Someday I will learn to save after I post photos or get more than a paragraph written. So...instead of showing you ship pictures, I'll just show you the one...

Salt Water + Steel = Rust. Rust = lots of corrosion control and preservation work. This was six weeks ago...it doesn't look like this anymore.

And while I'm not spending much time at home, I am getting some long overdue stuff done, like this quilt the front of which was done last June.

I started quilting with a dark blue thread, but I wasn't happy with it, so I tried a few other colors, then settled on something completely different - I quilted each square with it's own color, so the blocks are echoed on the back.

 

I do really love the Brown Bear, Brown Bear backing with the wildly colored animals. There's a great story on NPR this week about Eric Carle and his animal art.  Lorri, if you still like it, it's Pipsqueak's.

Next up, I'm trying out this stack of colors.

The color scheme is inspired by a 9 patch I saw on Pinterest but can no longer find. Needless to say, it was pink and purple with pops of green. This is for the second daughter of a friend of mine - baby #1 got this quilt last year. When I asked about color schemes for this one, I was told that since I did such a great job with the first one (which was a fat quarter bundle, so I can't take credit) that they'd leave the colors up to me. They really loved the vibrant colors of the first one and the white in the waves really toned things down. I'm torn between doing a similar pattern - maybe a zig-zag style or going completely different with the nine patch that inspired the colors. I'd use white sashing again to tone down the brightness of the colors.

And on the list of dangerous things, I just downloaded Wendy's lace book onto my Kindle app for my iPad. It's not the lace part that's dangerous, it's the idea of knitting books available whenever I'm connected to the internet. The weather's getting cooler, which bodes well for knitting.

Wow

Way too long since I posted last. It's somewhere between too busy and too boring compared to the previous nine or so months.  I've been mostly home for the last couple of weeks, but which I mean, in and out over the past couple of weeks. We came back from Alaska, then had two weeks of serious maintenance in preparation to enter the shipyard next month week (how did that happen?) and a week moving ammo. My holds now have lots of holes.

And my yards are a little bit of a mess, overgrown with weeds and the grass dead.

Why did the grass die and the weeds keep growing happily? And is it wrong to leave it that way since obviously the weeds are the natural flora of the area?

 
The beastie is happily settled back into the San Diego place (I'd like to buy new furniture but it seems pointless while I live with Ms. Pointy Claws who is uninterested in actual scratching posts/pads/anything but my furniture and Persian Rugs.)

I haven't done much knitting because the house is warm, but I have broken out the sewing machine. Then managed to foul something up horribly that's going to require ripping out dozens of seams. Ah well, that's what I get for rushing things, isn't it?

Bookish

As some people noted - books expand to overfill the available space. I try to impose some organization, but have failed for the most part, with a couple of exceptions...

I do have a bookshelf of cookbooks and books about food. Actually, I know there are some missing because I only see on of Ruhlman's books and I have the trio. So I need to do more sorting. I'll probably get rid of a few of the more esoteric books, like the one I got when I moved into my Texas house. Not really my style. And it's not like I use cookbooks as anything more than inspiration anyway. (Though baking is a different story and I just realized my Dorie Greenspan baking book isn't there.  Must find that.)

In the office/second bedroom there's making books...18+ years of collected creativity, inspiration and instruction. There are pattern books for quilting, sewing, knitting and crocheting. Guide books for spinning, weaving and dyeing. General instruction for all sorts of sewing and needlework from practical clothing to fancy embroidery. Style and design. I just realized there's a book about spices hidden in there, which needs to move to the dining room. Eventually I will sort these so that they cover all six shelves (I know there are more lurking about) and put pretty things in to break up the books. I will probably move another bookshelf into here, but that's a project for a later date and it will probably hold yarn and fabric rather than books.

Some of my other books. I started out with a couple of shelves of children's books, in the top right, and planned a shelf or two of Navy and other military reading. Then I realized that the nautical fiction (yup, every one of the Aubrey-Maturin books (plus a few duplicates), the Hornblower books and the Naval History filled several shelves on their own - and I still have shelves worth of other histories, strategy and random think tank publications about nanotechnology and unmanned vehicles. So, it expanded from three shelves to being scattered all over the house. But at least I know where all the O'Brien books are so I don't have to go hunting to re-read them!

And for those of you who think I'm an overachiever when it comes to putting stuff away - until my excess furniture gets picked up (on Thursday) this place will continue to look like this. In fact, the odds of me doing anything substantive to this space in 12 or so hours between furniture pick-up and my getting underway are nil. Though I may be willing to pull an all-nighter if my essentially compulsive nature takes over. After all, there are still books to be put away, but they're going into those built-ins and right now I can't actually get to them!

When JOs and Cameras Mix

On Friday, one of my JOs came and asked to borrow my camera to use for the awards ceremony we were about to have for the outgoing Chief Engineer. He claimed that it was just because the quality of photo my camera produces is so much better than the wardroom camera, which actually means either the battery was dead or they can't find the camera. I got the camera back with 80+ pictures on it...so here is what happens behind the scenes when I'm not around...

Waiting for everyone to gather, which is kind of boring, so...

One of the few guys onboard older than me.

Two of the many who are much younger than me.

When saying goodbye and offloading a week's worth of trash collide, it can apparently turn into a game of London Bridge.

 

Novelty

I've never had a front loading washing maching before.  Still, I didn't think too much of it until I inadvertently left the door to the laundry area open the other day. Stormy the cat is fascinated!

This was taken moments before the spin cycle shifted directions, which was enough to startle her into running away before being drawn back in to watch.

House-Shape

Another before pic, this time of the office/second bedroom.

This particular room is fairly original in form - the walls, shades and even rug are from the previous owners. (Yes, I bought again...apparently my most recent collection is coming in the form of real estate.)

Two after pictures...

This is more of an interim "after" picture for a couple of reasons. First, because after finishing here,  I moved on to the living and dining rooms and much of the stuff in there ended up in here - yarn and fabric bins, that sort of thing.  Not quite out of sight out of mind, but at least not out in a public room. Second, They didn't bring all my stuff. The rest of it, including my big green chest and a sofa table that I think will both end up in here won't show up until probably July since after today I'm going to be unavailable to take delivery.

Bedroom, nearly final iteration. This room had a lot of adjustments made thanks to my mom. It started out a weird green/khaki color that I hated. I had already ordered this blue and white bedroom set, and had it sent to my mom, so she took a pillow sham and found the perfect paint color. She had the place painted out and the shades made while I was on my last leg of the deployment. (Pretty amazing, huh?) I finally have the blue bedroom of my dreams AND blackout shades which are a wonderful thing.

The kitchen, bathroom, dining and living rooms are all pretty much acceptable, but won't be done for a long time since also not included in my shipment were the majority of my bookshelves. Right now the entryway is stacked about three feet deep in books...

Let The Battle Begin

I took the weekend off and headed north with my mom to pick up the car and the cat and to spend some time with my siblings and their brood. I had a great time despite wrestling with a decompression headache the size of Texas.  (Did you know you can carry so much stress in your jaw that it impinges on the nerves of your teeth?  Yup. And I have since November. It's starting to go away now.)

Today was a full workday at a conference, but that's not a bad way to reintegrate into life in home port. I got to see some old friends, listen to some good information and not do too much actual work. On the other hand, my self-control got a full workout as I restrained myself from squashing one guy like a bug when he came up to me to "explain" a concept I understood perfectly well. XO says I behaved myself well, so that's something. On the other hand, when I off-handedly mentioned to a senior officer who heard the conversation that "I really didn't mean to be belligerent there," he laughed and said "Of course you did, you've always been that way." Which isn't entirely true, I'm onyl belligerent now when I'm right. Otherwise it gets awkward.  Still, I can deal with the jerk when the view outside the conference is this:

Guns!

So, one of the greatest things about having Tigers onboard is the chance to show off a little of our firepower...we did some shooting with the main battery and then moved on to the small arms.

While I love shooting any weapon, any time (my guys know that telling me we don't have the allowance to shoot is never the right answer), I had particular fun this time because I let myself get talked into showing how quickly we can go through ammo when the weapon is fully automatic.

They linked everything up at once and hand fed, just to really give a good show.

I always love the way the deck looks after a good gun shoot!

And my Tigers got to help clean the guns after the fact, which made everyone happy, including the Gunners!

G is for...

Guam! Our first step on American soil in over six months. It's not quite home, but it will do.

And with only a day in port, what adventure did I find?

Dinner at the local mall food court and a movie. Then again, there are very few mainland mall food courts that serve good dim sum, so I didn't miss out too much. And the movie was good.

With this I'll be caught up with the Alphabet-Along, but I may be off a bit in my postings. I am either allergic to Guam or it's just a coincidence that I've gotten sick after both visits.

Next up will be more Thailand pictures. I'm close to being done there, but you all want a whole post of monkey pictures, I'm sure.

A Small At Sea Interlude

It took us a few days to get from India to Thailand and there were a few nights of amazing sunsets...

And beautiful post-sunset skies...

And tropical rainstorms...