Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Sunshine (& Sailing)

Woke up this morning to the sound of no rain, and a very lovely sunny light coming in through the window!  It's been raining pretty much non-stop for the past five days and while I like the rain, I couldn't wait for a break in the weather to shake off the gray and gloomy!  It's been raining here, randomly, all summer long, and it looks like it's going to be a wet winter too...We had a cold snap for a while and it got a little rainy, then managed to hold out for Halloween, and then started pouring down.  Personally I'm hoping it stops all this rain crap and starts in with the snow.  That would be fine with me.  You can still have some nice sunny days during snowfall.  Chloe was down for the break in the rain, too...She's been dressed in her little sweater or in her raincoat every time we've taken her downstairs and today it was her super-light sweater and a walk over to the university lawns with one of her balls so she could run around a bit...she's so not good with bringing back the ball but if you chase her when she's got it, she keeps running.  Hoping the sun keeps up for the rest of the week so we can do a romp every day in between all her normal downstairs trips.  She got a chance to run around in dry grass and I got a chance to collect some of the fall leaves-all the trees around the neighborhood are changing leaf color and dropping them-found some pretty orange and red/yellow combo leaves and thinking of pressing them and sticking them into a journal or something similar.  


Have had an surge of acceleration in writing over the past week-a story I have hopes for has been growing-whereas a week ago I had a few summary notes and a couple pages, there are now fourteen pages.  I love it when progress happens!  I love the pattern of plunking down with my laptop, pondering, changing a word here or there, revising a sentence, stretching, getting up to make more hot water for tea, and getting back to it, all with Chloe hanging out by my side, hoping to nudge her way in the middle of it all for a spot on my lap (which she gets every now and then.)  I've decided to get back into the practice of carrying a small notebook with me to flesh out little ideas-my cell phone has a post-it note app but I can of course write by hand so much faster than I can type on the little digital keyboard : )  I hate thinking of an idea, not writing it out, and then forgetting it the next day.....I've also started reading Game of Thrones and every time I find a word I'm not familiar with, I look it up and if I think I can use it, I jot it down in an ongoing list I have so that I can use it as a writing prompt or try to work it into the appropriate place.  


Kris found a group here that teaches sailing, take trips down to the Mediterranean and other places, teaches technique, navigation, etc, and when we're done with the course, there's a test, and in passing the test you're given an international captain's license.  The course is, of course, in Italian, but we've got a bundle of sailing books here in English that I'm going to start up on, to refresh myself on everything I already know and to learn more,  and I only hope that half of the terminology is the same or very similar in Italian, which would help a whole lot.  The course would supremely boost our Italian language skills and of course, a captain's license for each of us would be the best!  We could go anywhere in the world with it and charter a boat, and of course, when we decide to buy a sailboat and sail the world for ourselves, we'll have the licenses already taken care of.  There's more that will go along with that eventually-at some point I'd like a first aid refresher course, swimming for exercise and skill, etc.  Looking forward to it all!  Will be tough at first, but worth the effort in the end.


Happy Wednesday!
Enjoy,


Allie H. 

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