The Live-Aboard Life...and Updates!

We are settled in to the Bay Area!  We paid our LAST rent check to Miami last month and just got the news that we would be getting back most of our deposit, which was surprising because the management company sent us the checklist saying we'd be charged like, $300 for pet cleaning, etc.  And they're only keeping about $85 bucks.  So we're stoked.  We're thrilled not to be paying money for an apartment we're not using anymore and we're stoked that we can catch up on a few things around here, start a couple projects on the boat, and not have $2K a month just going out the window!  It's awesome.  And it's time for an update!  

Kris is digging in at his new job, working with two new hires and settling in with his coworkers, been given a few projects and next week he starts being on-call to monitor the systems after hours from home should any alerts find him.  He's gotten some updates from friends of ours in Lugano who have moved on to better positions and we're so happy to hear some news from there from time to time.  My laptop crashed and had to be rebooted with Ubuntu and hopefully that's the last of that problem.  Kris put not the most current but the more stable version as he's been having issues with the most current version he updated his personal laptop with so we're trying to make sure mine doesn't have the same issues as well, which is nice. :)  He also downgraded himself to a cane after about 7 months on crutches and having to travel with them when he went back for work training in WI for a couple weeks.  His leg has been doing really well even though he's turned into more of a human barometer than me and my knees when a low-pressure front comes through, but that's to be expected.  Otherwise, he's walking pretty well.  We'll eventually go get another set of x-rays to get the official word but considering how many months of his life he's spent on crutches he's got a pretty good idea of when he can start using it more.  We're planning to find a pool so we can both get back to swimming and getting back in shape.

As for me, after seeing a few quotes I've liked lately, and looking around inside the salon of our boat, I've decided that life is terribly uncomplicated when you live on a boat.  The interior/exterior home repairs take the same amount of time, money, and planning.  You have just enough room for the basics, and the basics are all you need, really, and we're doing pretty good getting by with them, for the most part.  I do admit to missing my crock pot but since our fridge isn't big enough to hold all the leftovers that come from cooking in a crock pot, and not to mention I have no clue where I'd store it when not using it, or the amount of power it would suck up, the problem sorted itself out.  Not to worry, I'm still pinning all sorts of delicious sounding crock pot recipes to my Pinterest page for when we eventually do get around to getting a small apartment and cooking for the holidays.  Try as I might, I cannot imagine a turkey stuffed into our little galley oven!  I went to the storage space yesterday to retrieve a handful of things, shorts, bathing suits (as it's getting particularly gorgeous in Alameda) and, more specifically, our big saucepan.  I found it and so I threw out the cheap frying pan we bought when we first landed in Miami in the trash.  It was one of those sets that work in a pinch but that tend to scorch and warp after a long period of use and it served us well, but was too small for homemade spaghetti sauce and barely big enough for a big quesadilla so it needs to go.  It will also replace the current need for a bigger saucepan as we can actually cook more than one serving of pasta in it without boiling over and it will actually fit where the current pan one is residing.  Plus, I really just missed it and I can justify it's presence on the boat over the crock pot.  It's the big non-stick saucepan I bought at Safeway when I first moved out of my parent's house and I've loved it ever since, and it's been serving me well.  That's right, it moved from Monterey to Switzerland to Miami and back home to California.  It's a well-traveled pan.  I don't know too many people who can say that their kitchen utensils have made two ocean crossings.  I'm looking forward to having it back in my arsenal of cooking weapons as I figured out long ago that I can make a whole entree in it, one pot style, depending on the ingredients, and even rice, if I pay attention, so I love it.  

We went to Costco a couple weeks bag and stocked up with our usual snack foods and then soups, pasta sauces, tortillas, Mac and Cheese, canned chicken.  I made the decision a few weeks ago to just go ahead and turn on our fridge, so we've got that handy place for our butter and milk for Mac, cheese for tortillas, refrigeration for when I make chicken salad (honestly, what better way is there of covering up that canned chicken taste than smothering it with mayo and spices?), and the promise of putting a few more fresh veggies back into our meals.  We've been eating WAY too much fast food while resettling in a new city and not having a full kitchen to cook with.  While I love just grabbing a pizza, my stomach has been having an issue with it and we need to cook more at home and have more food options on the boat that aren't all processed or can be be made from a box or can but healthier.  We'd initially worried that it would have too big an effect on the house batteries but after having it up and running for an hour it figured out it's power cycle and everything else we've had plugged in doesn't seem to be bothered by it so I think we're good.  Our neighbor suggested that we could just hit up the ice machine in the laundry room every couple of days and put enough ice in the fridge to keep it cold so we could not turn it on but the thought of taking everything back out to re-do the ice every couple of days honestly makes me lazy.  It's small enough that if we set the bucket of ice on the shelf, it would cut down our refrigeration room by quite a bit so it would have to just be poured into the space under the shelf...thus not wanting to take everything out and put it all back in again all the time when not rearranging for a carton of eggs.  That's all you need, right?  Eggs, quesadilla supplies (all of which, when mixed together give you the most simple of breakfast burritos) and bacon. There's always room for bacon : )  And the occasional six-pack of cider.  I'm pretty sure, to everyone in line with us at the grocery store, we look like college students when we're not re-supplying our fruits and veggies.  Eggs, shredded cheese, Ramen noodles, three bags of chips and alcohol.  Yeah.  I'd look at us funny, too. :)

Weekends when we haven't made any plans we wake up, get bagels for breakfast and sit out in the sun reading away to our hearts content.  We're currently reading the Dresden Files series.  If you've seen the show but not read the books, I'd highly recommend it!  I'm also a serious chunk into the second book of the Game of Thrones series so I'm slightly behind the new season but as Kris says, I read faster than he does.  No worries here.  We've done a couple more sailing runs, in and around the estuary but we need to repair a back-stay so that might have precedence over the next trip out.  Every few weeks we get down to Monterey and see Kirby and my folks.  When Kris was in WI I spent tons of time with my mom, got my hair re-done red and chopped it all off (which I'm happy about now that the sun is out in full force) and saw my brother and his girlfriend for dinner one night with my Dad, which was good.  At Christmas, Dad bought  us all gift certificates to the shooting range and ammo for our particular guns so we need to plan a weekend where we can all meet up and go hunt some pesky clay pigeons.  We're making boat neighbor friends, Chloe's charming everyone and their dogs around the marina and the currently the bathrooms at our gate are going to be shut down for renovation starting Monday.  They're bringing in those trailers with the showers and nicer portable bathrooms and the main gate bathroom will still be open, as they're rotating their renovation schedule, but it's going to make parking fun.  And this just in!  Our friend Carla from Miami is visiting San Fran next month and we look forward to spending some time with her.  Wish we could get back to Miami for a visit but it won't be any time soon, for sure, and so it'll be nice to see her.  And our friend Bethany, from Lugano, is back home and about a half an hour away from us and it's ridiculous that we haven't seen her yet, but we're making plans.  She grew up in the same town as my parents and actually vaguely knows my cousins, as my aunt and uncle are still there, which was a fun thing to learn when we met her halfway around the world in SW.  And the annual Oakland Boat expo and seminars are kicking  off here pretty quickly.  This was were we did the Offshore Sailing seminar a couple years ago and I was told by one our neighbors this morning that there are a handful of free seminars you can sit in on so we might have to go look those up and see what's going on.  

People to catch up with and spaghetti to cook!  (A few recipes I've found including eggs cooked in tomato sauce and served over noodles...Yum!)
What are you catching up on this month?
Happy Plannings!

Enjoy,
Allie H.

2013 Edition of Firsts!

So I tried this last year, keeping track of all my "firsts" for the year and I'm going to keep it up, and expand my list!  So far, notably, we're starting with the obvious:
1. Living on a boat full time, with live-aboard status at one harbor!
2. Indian food!  I've had some before but specifically, tonight, we ordered Lamb Palak, which is lamb in special creamy spinach sauce. I don't know what makes it special but I'm going to find out when it's delivered :) A few weeks ago we had Tikka Marsala and I believe I've tried that before but I'm trying new things!  
3. Boat repairs! We had a couple electrical shorts over the last couple weeks, separately, and the first time it happened overnight during the week and so spent the day without power.  Luckily, our neighbor, who is a contractor and had redone his entire boat, was around in the morning as we were leaving for work and was around well in time to help me make the repairs before I had to go pick up Kris.  He took a look at the electrical panel and figured out where the problem was, and we went to the hardware store where he has a discount code and we got what we needed.  He showed me how to strip a wire and crimp it to a new connector to stick it back on the bus bar.  Voila!  We plugged everything back in to shore power and gave it a try, and it worked!  The next time it happened we were able to borrow his tools but we pretty much knew what we needed to do.  Go me!  I have a feeling there's going to be a lot of these firsts because we have an ongoing list of boat repairs that need to be done, including replacing the head (toilet, for you landlubbers), replacing the curtains, repairing the cushions in the salon, fixing the stove/oven so we can cook more effectively on the boat...you get my drift. Lots o'stuff needs our attention!  As well as eventually rewiring the whole boat.  
4.  Okay, I don't have a four yet.  But we just bought an electric one-burner hot plate last night so I imagine cooking an omelet on a boat is in the near future :)  We've been trying to do well in our eating as our only cooking facilities on the boat has been a gas grill, but now, we will be able to get a few more homemade meals in, which would be awesome.  We also grabbed a plastic measuring cup as I've been not wanting to have the pyrex aboard the boat for it to shake loose from a cupboard and possibly break while tacking out on the bay.  I love my pyrex measures so I'd like to keep them intact! I've had cooking utensils on the boat for stirring instant mashed potatoes and such so we're ready to make more meals at home, which I'm looking forward to.  
Next week's adventure is going to be spending some time with my folks!  Kris is being sent to WI for training for his work for two weeks and so it's time to take the next wander around my hometown.  Oddly enough, everyone keeps asking if I'm going with him, but it's two weeks, in snowy cold weather, in the middle of WI, where I'm not going to know anyone or have anything to do while Kris is training, so no: I'm staying where it's nice and sunny and fairly warm!  I'm going to hang out with my mom, watch Skyfall with my dad (because we just watched it and oh, I'm so willing to watch it again for him), possibly get my hair re-dyed by my Jovita, maybe go visit some of my favorite high school teachers as I've missed doing while traveling the world, maybe sail with my dad, maybe sew something with my mom, who's going to help with my sewing machine as last time I used it, it was having some bobbin tension issues like it frequently enjoys having with me.  (I have a tote bag strap to repair, so this might be the time.)  Things to do, people to see!  And maybe another first.  We'll see.
Keep checking, and I'll keep updating!
Happy Plans, Everyone!
Enjoy,

Allie H.