pryder

I took last Wednesday off of work to haul and winterize the power boat, because I was going to be busy the next several weekends, and I'm tired of winterizing it in late November when it's 30° and blowing a howling gale.

I had the usual trouble with everything. Starting with not being able to find the right socket that is needed for installing the hitch. Turned out we had a same size socket from a different set. It said it was an impact wrench socket but it fit on the extra large handle from the main socket set, and so even though it didn't stay on properly, I was able to make it work. Then I couldn't find the waders that I wanted to use. I only found the ones that are too small and the ones that leak. I made do with the ones that are too small. Eventually I got the boat out of the water without any further unexpected trouble (I always expect a little trouble trying to back up the trailer).

Then the winterizing job just takes forever. You have to drain the oil out of the lower unit and the main engine, and this takes a long time, even if you warm up the engine first so the oil is less viscous; the lower unit oil is very viscous. And then you have to try hard not to spill it anywhere. I was especially concerned because this is the first time our brand-new garage floor has been threatened with oil when I was draining it out of the oil pan into containers for taking to toxic waste next spring. I managed not to stain the floor. We have a special gadget for getting oil into the lower unit which is supposed to have less drippage, and I had notes from last time that said that the old one was starting to fail and so I bought a new one, and the new one is much worse and much less useful and I'm sad about that.

I got the neighbor to agree to take the extra gas from the tank and put it in one of his cars, since we no longer have any other gasoline burning vehicles.

Finally it was done and I got help to move to the other trailers out of the way (both of them had flat tires and had to be pumped up) and towed it into its winter home and covered it. The cover is getting kind of shabby, but the previous week I had tried patching some of the larger holes with iron on patches, which surprisingly worked and did not melt the material, mostly nylon I think. Some of my iron on patches were clearly from the 70s, based on the packaging. I did use one of those, and I think it's going to peel off. It proudly said it cost 29 cents!

Then over the weekend there was some beautiful waterskiing weather, and I had no boat. I knew that would happen, though. And I was pretty busy this weekend with No Kings Saturday and a game party Sunday.

I went to two protests, so I count them both. Ken wondered if I would get counted twice in the "5 million people across the country participated…" Of course there's not actually an accurate census of these things.

The local one was again at the shopping mall, picking up the Saturday morning shoppers starting at 9:30. This was less convenient for me, because it's further from the train station than the center of town, so I had to leave after only 20 minutes to catch the train into Boston. (I suppose if I hadn't bicycled I could have protested there for longer. But I felt like bicycling.) Unfortunately the train was inconveniently timed so I got to the Boston thing fairly early. On the other hand, then I got a good "seat" (standing location).

Lots of other people were on my train with signs, and lots more people were already on the Common when I arrived 40 minutes in advance of the start time, and tons of people were just streaming in from all directions. I will be interested to see a crowd estimate. It was enormous.

The MC had good energy. The music was some good, some mediocre, the speakers were "what you would expect at an event like this". There was a heckler who tried to interrupt Michelle Wu's speech. Michelle was very professional about it and completely ignored the guy, did not get distracted, made sure that she was right in the microphone so that her remarks were louder. She said various dramatic things that we were all supposed cheer after and so she paused at the right time and we cheered appropriately. So the heckler did not achieve his goals. The MC then talked about how "we don't all agree in this movement and that's okay, but we need to all be in the movement. We need to not be divided." Which was good and off-the-cuff and well spoken. A couple of other times he also had impromptu remarks on different topics.

I decided I was tired of standing around after 2 hours (more, including the time I was there early) and bailed to go catch the earlier train home. It's very confusing when you get walking directions and you're in the middle of the park which is full of people you have no idea what direction you're facing. So I walked for a while and saw if I was getting off the path and kind of wandered around until I found the path. Fortunately I allowed an extra 10 minutes for the walk to South Station, and I arrived early enough to be comfortable. Given the number of people on my train home holding signs, I was not the only one who thought that a three-hour rally was too long. On the walk back to South Station I did see some people coming towards the rally holding signs, so I guess we were the changing of the guard.

My stepsister managed to prevent me from knowing when the funeral was until it was too late. The obituary on the funeral home site (which I didn't find until too late) does not even list me as a survivor. It does list some people who are, in my opinion, more distantly related than me. Nor does it mention having been predeceased by his loving wife.

Some people are just too petty.

I did learn that he was buried rather than cremated and which cemetery he's in, so perhaps on my next trip to California I will take an extra day and go on a road trip and say goodbye.