Hello Everyone,
We aren't having many adventures lately but I'd hate to not send an update, just because we are living a rather dull life these days. It'll change soon. (VERY Soon...) Between the two of us, we are doing a GREAT job of being slugs. We might win an all time championship of slug-ness if we could be bothered to enter the competition (or even find a competition).
The boat is a few days away from Bermuda. We get calls from the crew every other day or so. They are apparently having a great time, the weather has been warm and relatively dry. The captain says "this boat likes to sail". No word about the meatballs... He is a man of few words which might be good because of how pricey it is to make calls.
We are in Galveston (mostly) and just enjoying being really warm (80's and 90's). (Actually we are enjoying the air conditioner more than the outdoors but I would never admit that.) Tonight I am forcing us to have a picnic on the beach at sunset, just to get us outside. (It *is* Date Night after all.)
Thorsten's back is doing better but isn't there yet... His back gives him rather painful sciatica when he tries to walk or stand much. The MRI discovered that he has a misshapen disk between the fourth and fifth vertebrae (basically at the base of his spine). (I could turn this into a metaphor but will restrain myself.) He was given some exercises to do on his own but will start some physical therapy soon because they aren't seeming to do the trick.
I am large and I feel great. I look like I'm packing a watermelon in my shirt. (I wish I was, I love watermelon.) I have about 6 weeks left to go. I'm enjoying many naps and hate to be too far from my comfy bed. Sometimes for entertainment I watch the little guy wiggling around in my belly. (I find this vastly entertaining.) My most recent purchase for the baby was a doggy bed (we got this idea from Brian S.) that the baby will sleep in when he arrives. It's portable, washable, and comfy. I'm going to make a cover for it because it's fleecy and sheds. We can remove the pillow and put a regular pillow case on it for sheets. We think it'll work well till we figure something else out on the boat. (Please restrain yourselves from making metaphors here too.)
Most of our adventures these days center around the appliances in our apartment. The microwave in the apartment is getting old and tired. When we first moved in it worked ok. A few days later, the #1 button stopped working. OK, I can work around not having a #1 button, I just get creative with how many seconds I punch to get the right amount of time (ex: 1.5 mins = 90 seconds). A week went by and the #4 button stopped working. It is a bit challenging to live without either #1 or #4, but with my Berkeley education, I manage to do that too. Another week went by and the button that allows me to choose the temperature stopped working, This is harder to work with. I find it entertaining to wonder what will break next, Thorsten is rather disgusted with the whole thing.
We have gone on a couple of trips (New Orleans and California) probably because my wonderful husband recognizes that if we stay in the apartment for weeks on end, I'll go stir crazy and do something really drastic. Or, maybe he wants to distract me from my belly- nobody will ever know.
I truly LOVE New Orleans so we drove there (360ish miles). I planned a 4 day trip to hit what I think are the high spots. We drove in on a Thursday afternoon and that night we had dinner at Emeril's. Friday afternoon we took a tour in a private car of the Quarter, some graveyards, the garden district, the boatyard (of course), and several public restrooms. Friday night we went to an Elis Marsalis jazz concert. We had prime seats, about 10 feet above the piano, wow can that man play! Saturday afternoon we went on Swamp Tour where we saw gators, birds, squatters, billions beautiful lavender lilies and best of all it was conducted by boat. Saturday night we sat in the casual jazz dining room at Arnaud's and ate like pigs and listened to Dixieland style jazz. We had the bananas foster for dessert (another first for Thorsten) and rolled on home. Sunday we had brunch at Brennans (with more bananas Foster) and wandered around the French quarter enjoying the French Quarter festival. Sunday night we stayed home and read our books and got room service for dinner. Monday morning we drove back to Galveston. (For those of you who care about such things, not all Texas rest stops have bathrooms. Sigh.)
Because the midwife told me that air travel is not a grand idea in the last 4 weeks of pregnancy, we fit in a trip to CA before we hit that window. We managed to see many many people but not everyone we hold near and dear. I don't think I'll ever be able to reconstruct the whirlwind of family and friends that we saw. If we missed you, my deepest apologies. We didn't do anything but visit people and go to Fry's. It was lovely to see everyone. A high point for me was seeing my sister Fran who is about as pregnant as I am. My Dad took a picture and you can see it if you look on the web edition of this message.
Speaking of the web edition... You can find it at www.sigmasoft.com/~tholo/bluemoon. We put pictures up of our travels there. You can see pics of the boat, the apartment, me and my sister, and other rather boring stuff.
For those of you who don't get this message directly and if I've told you I'd add you to the list... Even if you've told me before, please tell me where I should be sending it (again). I don't mean to leave you out, I promise. (This means you, Ryan! I swear you're on the list this time.) If you want to be on the mailing list and aren't, just send me a message with your email address and I'll add you.
Heather and Thorsten (a.k.a. Slug and Slug)
PS The next message will be sent after the baby and will hopefully be more interesting than this one...