Leaving California ...

Pen is back in Florida, while I'm in California at my townhouse, which my daughter Lisa and her husband Matt are leasing from me.  My first task here is to take care of their three cats while they are in Japan for a week with students from Matt's Japanese language program at Silver Creek High School in San Jose.  This is not so bad a task, although Obi, the black cat and the oldest, is a bit of a paranoid-schizophrenic creature.  The other two, Phoenix (the orange cat) and B.J. (a long hair), are very well behaved, and I hardly even see them.  But Obi is always under foot, it seems ... well, now he's just curled up on the couch sleeping, but this is truly an exception, for usually he is stalking me or howling at shadows.

Other tasks here are to put Dog Days on the market and arrange to ship all the stuff I have in storage out to Florida.  I went up to Marina Village in Alameda yesterday, took a lot of stuff off of Dog Days, discovered the batteries were not charging, arranged for my friend Rob Bastress to trouble shoot the problem and signed a contract with my friend Klaus Kutz at Passage Yachts to broker the boat.  Meanwhile, Laurie Elliot, who I'd talked to on the phone a few days ago, had already gotten a couple of pieces of the exterior canvas covers to make repairs.  I may have a local fellow wax Dog Days, but I am reluctant to put too much money into her, and she looks nice and clean.  Klaus said he was most impressed by her when he went by to see her a week ago.  I'll go up again on Friday and finish getting stuff off her, possibly have to get new batteries and decide whether to have her waxed.

This is one of my favorite sailing photos, on the Petaluma River

Whoever buys Dog Days also gets an added bonus: Pup, a one-off wooden tender.  My boat-builder friend John Tuma designed and built Pup especially for Dog Days five years ago.  She's a gorgeous little rowing pram that will take two people around the anchorage easily, stows on the foredeck and tows nicely behind Dog Days.  If I could use her in Florida, I'd definitely take her, but she really belongs with her master. 

I thought getting my things in storage shipped east was going to be a big task, because there are three or four items I'd rather not ship and would just as well sell or donate out here.  The problem is that they are buried at the back of the storage unit.  Initially, I thought I'd hire a couple of day laborers to help me take everything out and pull these items to the front, but I've finally decided that that's a waste of energy and it's just as easy to ship them out with everything else and then decide what to do with the items in Florida, and it certainly won't add that much to the overall moving cost.  So, today I met with an estimator from one van line at the storage unit, and signed a contract, stuff to be picked up on July 8th and delivered in DeLand between the 15th and 21st.  Glad that is set up.  Now I just have a paintings to pack in mirror boxes and the contents of some file cabinet drawers to put in boxes. 

I'm also trying to finish up a book review and get the bulk of my paper for my summer history of technology conference written on this trip.  At least I should have the review done and a good start on the paper, but it's not all work.  I've had a chance to visit with a couple of old friends ... my old history colleague at De Anza, Ben Kline and his wife Julie; Bob and Laura Miller, who I've known for 40 years; and Lisa's mom Sandi.  Batu Berkok, with whom I took sailing lessons back in 1999, had sushi last night at my favorite sushi restaurant, Akane, and Saturday I am driving up to Vallejo to crew on Bruce Sinclair's little Gary Mull designed boat, Pretty Penny, in the Vallejo Yacht Club's two-bridges race.  That will be great fun!