Wow.
I’m sitting at the kitchen table on the 43’ yacht we’re renting for the next two weeks. The new Verizon broadband access card is plugged into my new Sony SZ240 notebook, and I’m online on the water. Amazing.
I was expecting this to be spectacularly unsuccessful, because today has not been a good technology day—from the Garmin GPS unit in our car inexplicably going dead to the home printer refusing to print Google maps to the Pharos GPS unit that I got with MIcrosoft Streets & Trips once again refusing to talk to my computer.
But Gerald, who has been incredibly, outrageously wonderful all week—handling every detail of packing, cleaning, and prepping to leave—sent us on our way at midday, and once we cleared the city (not so much fun waiting for a ferry on the Friday before the 4th of July…) things started looking up.
The boat is lovely, with enough space to comfortable house us for the next two weeks, and a lovely breeze even though it’s a pretty warm day. Gerald’s bringing fans when he arrives tonight, so I think we’ll be comfortable even without A/C.
We’ll be setting up a wifi network on the boat by plugging the Verizon card into my Powerbook and then sharing the signal over the Airport card—which means no fighting between the kids (or the mom) as to who gets to be online when we get tired of sunning, swimming, boating, and soaking (in the hot tub on the top deck).
That sound you hear? It’s all the stress rushing out of me as I slowly come to the realization that I am on vacation. Ahhhhhhhhh.
It was a hard day for our family today. Moving is always stressful, and saying goodbye to a house that you’ve come to think of as home is particularly hard for kids. Add to that the fact that we took our hedgehog, Cecil, back to the pet store today, and that I can’t get the internet connection sharing to work properly yet (the pc sees the network and can join it, but doesn’t get an IP), and that the lighting on the boat is really poor, and that the boys didn’t get nearly enough sleep last night. So tonight has been rough.
The boat is lovely during the day…lots of deck space to hang out on, and room to wander outside. But as it grew darker tonight, it became clear that the lighting on the boat leaves much to be desired. We can’t find any light at all in the bathrooms, and the few lights we have found are dim and depressing. It’s rather like camping out…which is not so good for me or Lane, since both of us dislike camping :)
Tomorrow, when the sun’s out again, we’ll see what we can do about improving the internal lighting. We need to locate the few outlets, perhaps procure some extension cords, and head into Port Townsend or Port Angeles to see if we can find an inexpensive lamp or two to brighten up our evenings a bit. We’ll pick up some DVDs for the boys to watch on their computers, too. As I told Lane, everything will seem easier and less depressing in the morning. I hope I was right…
www.flickr.com
|
