Provisioning

I've been busy stocking up on non-perishables, especially Trader Joe's soups and chilis and Indian boil-the-packet meals. These are valuable because they will fill in on days when we're sailing offshore and can't find a floating grocery store in the ocean, as well as days when we just don't feel like cooking. They are, in other words, for times of fatigue or need. Regular foodstuffs, like things requiring refrigeration, we'll find easily enough in marina towns.

Also, I am spending most of my time now with close friends and family. It doesn't feel like I won't be seeing them for a long time, but I must be registering this fact nevertheless, because I have done more talking and eating over the past 96 hours with my favorite people than in whole weeks of regular life. I just can't seem to soak up enough of them. I'm sure that I will meet plenty of people on our sailing journey and, hopefully, make some interesting friendships and acquaintances. But it will be refreshing and comforting, too, at times, to have this great store of old laughs, stories and affection that I'm accumulating now.

New developments at the marina today: a crab leg on dock and a new kitty joins the marina cats.

Dockside amusement

The marina has two stray cats who like to hang out on this one grassy patch near the parking lot. Since Susie is at doggie camp and isn't home to greet me these days, I have latched onto these cats ever since they came out of hiding yesterday to watch Evan and me playing petanque. They go everywhere together, and they even move the same. We'll find out if that becomes the case with Evan and me after a few months...