Catching our breath

We are in a weather-imposed holding pattern on the project list -- it's been pouring down rain here since we got back from dinner last night, and the weather alert has gone off every 20 minutes or so with flood warnings, tornado watches, and small craft advisories. Rain fade has our Internet in yo-yo mode, and even posting this is challenging. The radar says we'll be in this the rest of the day.

That means I probably won't get the wetsuits back to Sports Authority or the circuit breaker installed until tomorrow sometime. Our friend Steve also asked me to come over tomorrow to help him with his anchor windlass, and between all that and packing I think that will kill the rest of the time we have before our cruise.

When we get back, we will only have a day to recover before we head off to the bus conversion rally in Arcadia, wrapping up what will have amounted to over a month here in south Florida. Notwithstanding plans to relax, take it easy, and get a few things done while we were here, it seems like we were overtaken by events (a technical term used to describe, among other things, why airplanes crash or nuclear reactors have disasters). We've been booked every night since returning from the Keys; I think Louise and I had only a single night out just the two of us.

I'm not complaining -- it's been great, and we've enjoyed almost everything we've done here (not counting the brake job and the compressor failure). But I know we have some readers here in the area that wanted to meet up, and we did not get to that, nor did I get to my backlog of computer-related projects.

At this writing, however, it is looking favorable for our return here in the later half of January. As I wrote here ten days ago, our plans had been to leave Florida for parts unknown but west of here after the Stuart boat show mid-January. However, there is a good possibility that we will need to be back in Florida at the end of February for a conference. If that comes to fruition, it will make little sense for us to stray too far in the interim, and so we will likely remain here, although that will mean missing our cherished annual pilgrimage to Death Valley on Presidents Day.

At this point, our plans are pretty firm through mid-January. When we return from our holiday cruise, we will head to Arcadia for the Bussin' 2010 rally, which runs through New Year's day. We have friends in Port Charlotte that we will visit immediately afterward, and then we'll return to Arcadia where I am scheduled to teach about hydronic heating systems and possibly other topics at the first "BYOB" (Bring Your Own Bus) workshop which runs the 4^th through the 8^th. That will give us a week to make our way to Stuart for the boat show and Cruise Expo, which runs the 15^th through the 17^th.

After that, the crystal ball becomes cloudy. If we commit to the late February conference, then we will register for TrawlerFest right here in Fort Lauderdale, which runs January 29^th through 31^st. As long as we're doing that, we might as well also hang around for at least the first day or two of the Miami Boat Show, which runs February 11^th through the 15^th. That plan would have us here in the Fort Lauderdale area from the 1^st through the 10^th with little agenda, in which case we can tackle some more of the project list as well as get in some of the visits we missed in the last few weeks.

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I will start packing for the cruise, one of the few things I can do today while pinned down by the rain.