We'll Always Have Florida!

SHIP'S LOG:

     A couple of years ago at this time of the year, when I was cruising down the ICW down through Florida, it was as cold there as it is here right now! I can remember spending a week in Jacksonville installing a new raw water pimp and the temperature never got about 30 degrees! I had to try to sleep aboard cover with just about every piece of clothing that I had with me and that included two, count'em, two sleeping bags, two blankets and a comforter. I was warm enough but I couldn't remain under that pile all day. Just getting up to use the head was like tracking to the North Pole and sitting on the toilet itself, well, I was always grateful that I didn't get stuck to the seat.

     Technically, winter is still 5 days away, astronomical winter that is, but winter, as in cold weather and ice and snow is here now.  I was a bit lucky over the weekend as the temperature did rise above freezing but it dropped at night turning the melted snow in to rock hard ice. It should be cold, very cold, extremely cold, single digit cold tonight and there is more snow coming tomorrow.

    Of course there was that two month span (February & March) in 2010 when it never got below 75 at night. It was so hot and humid that I spent more time over-board than on-board!OH, those were the days. While I suppose that I could have made the journey South again, when the time came to make the decision, I just couldn't summon up the "gumption"  to make the trip.  So now I am paying for it with the cold winter weather and a jury-duty summons. Yup,after 5 years, I have been called to "judge my fellow man" again. The last time, I showed up and killed a whole day waiting, only to be told that the "perp" made a deal and that there would be no trial.  I am hoping that such will be the case again, though I suspect that If I am chosen and am "acceptable" to both the prosecution and the defense, that I will spend the few days before Christmas in a court room jury box. Perhaps it will even extend to the other side of the Christmas recess and so begin the new year in court. Perhaps I should wear that T-shirt  got at the Folger Shakespeare Museum in DC, the one bearing the quote, "The first thing we do is to kill all the lawyers." Probably not as it would actually be in bad taste and would probably get me in trouble. It probably not get me off of jury duty anyway.

     Speaking of hot-summer-weather-in-winter, I am getting whole bunches of email ads touting the joy of chartering sailboats in the Caribbean, as well as the real estate market situation in the American Virgin Island. If I wasn't already stuck with a condo up here that I am trying to unload, that little bungalow in St. Thomas for a mere $12,000 would be interesting. But not right now. Now it is just time to throw another log on the fire and pull the blanket a little tighter and hope for the January thaw to start now and last until March!