The deer wandered by earlier this morning and set off the motion detectors.

I was up and watched. They're not shy about it and don't spook when the lights go on.

It's snowy and damned cold out and the furnace is constantly running. I have been told it is going to get colder. Ouch!

Today is a day to put on warm jammies and sit at home drinking cocoa. Of course, a grouch like me does not own a set of warm jammies and the closest thing is a set of sweats and heavy wool socks. 

Still, I have things to do so I donned my basic uniform of jeans and a warm shirt. Close enough. 

I'll start the pickup and warm it up just to keep it ready for an errand or two. 

Later today I'm going to either have an Elmer over to teach me JT- 65 or another neighbor over to handload some ammunition for him. Either way I'll be busy and inside.

I just passed by my map of the world that is pretty full of pins, each representing an overseas contact. The map looks pretty full.

I don't put a pin in for every single contact, just each country. The map would never hold them all. Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe are chockablock full and when you look at Asia it looks kind of sparse. Still, the bulk of Russia gets only two pins, China gets one. 

This radio business has given me one hell of a geography lesson. I just looked up Kaleningrad the other day as it is a part of Russia that is separated from the mother country. It is surrounded by Lithuania, Poland and the Baltic Sea. It reminds me of Point Roberts, a part of Washington state and a pretty good place to party.

Point Roberts is surrounded on three sides by water and the top part is connected to British Colombia. We got it because the border line clipped it. I pulled into it in mid to late October '86 in my sailboat and tied up to the fuel pier. 

While I went ashore looking for someone to pump fuel, someone from the marina came down and shook my shipmate down for some bogus tie-up fee. You are supposed to be able to tie up for fuel free of charge.

Shaking my crew member down proved to be a mistake as we instantly went ashore, got plastered and started tearing the place apart. They sent down some big guy to settle us down and my shipmate promptly threw him off the dock. Note I said threw him.

He simply picked him up and threw him off the dock.

It was the second time I had watched my crewman throw a human being, the first being when he broke up a brawl in Petersburg, Alaska. There he picked up a pretty good sized fisherman and threw him at another one. We fled and went straight down the Wrangell Narrows to Wrangell where we were welcomed because Wrangell didn't like Petersburg for some reason. Likely because every time a person from Wrangell stopped in Petersburg he got the daylights beat out of him.

I digress. 

Anyway, when the big guy wound up in the drink they called the state police. The Washington state police had to drive to Blaine and cross into Canada and over to Point Roberts. Generally when they did this someone went to jail.

Of course, we instantly set sail for Victoria, British Colombia where we were out of the jurisdiction of the Washington State Police and holed up for a while until we deemed it safe to re-enter the States.

When we got to Friday Harbor the harbormaster had a look in his eye about something and asked us a few pointed questions. He said that if we misbehaved in HIS town he'd have our asses.

A couple days later he came down and apologized for our initial greeting and asked us a few questions and been told to keep his eyes open for a couple troublemakers that had torn up Point Roberts a few days earlier.

The following day he saw me stump into a tavern, followed me in and bought me a beer. Then he asked my why the pair of us had torn up Point Roberts.  Admitting to nothing, I suggested it might have been the way we were treated.

He said he had figured it was something like that because he had gotten reports from other mariners about the nickel-diming of visitors by the marina people. Then he said that it was why he gave us a break until he checked us out. 

We made ourselves useful on the docks for the time we spent there and when it came time to settle up he diddled with the books a little and charged us a pittance. He actually said he was sad to see us leave.






To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY