{"id":33,"date":"2014-07-04T22:46:41","date_gmt":"2014-07-04T22:46:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/?p=33"},"modified":"2014-07-25T19:49:54","modified_gmt":"2014-07-25T19:49:54","slug":"independence-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/?p=33","title":{"rendered":"Independence Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"indepenDay1\"<\/a>
\nIt\u2019s been a week of celebrations here, big and small. The biggest (of course!) was my birthday last Wednesday, which really started on Tuesday evening Australia time, so I got to celebrate for 38 hours! It was very special to hear from both my wonderful boys, Nick and Rob, and to receive so many lovely birthday messages from family and friends, including a skype video call with our Mandurah \u2018family\u2019, Chris, Heidi, Kieran and Drina. Modern technology really does help to make us feel as if we\u2019re only just around the corner instead of half way round the world.<\/p>\n

It also happened to be one of the hottest days we\u2019ve had here, with humidity to match, so there was nothing for it but to escape to the movies for the afternoon to see \u2018Jersey Boys\u2019 and then continue the air-conditioned luxury with a meal at the Boat-shed Bar & Grill. Unfortunately I didn\u2019t get to sample the famous Maryland crabs \u2013 apparently they\u2019re so famous that at this time of year it\u2019s impossible to get a table at the most sought-after crab houses, which are veritable tourist traps we\u2019re told.\u00a0 So we\u2019ll wait until we can get the boat off the dock and find a more authentic crab house further down the bay. (I\u2019m secretly not convinced that they\u2019ll be any better than the Blue Manna\u2019s we caught and steamed in Mandurah!)<\/p>\n

And Friday was 4th\u00a0July, so we joined the rest of America in taking the day off work and went to watch the parade\"indepenDay2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There was a small contingent of Yankee Doodle Dandier\u2019s and historical floats, but the remainder of the (very long) parade consisted of just about every conceivable local interest group plus the inevitable political candidates for the upcoming local elections. Considering the Naval Academy is right here in Annapolis I was surprised there wasn\u2019t more of a naval presence. But not as surprised as seeing the rather large float representing the Islamic Society \u2013 now that\u2019s a gutsy move we thought. Not too much cheering as that one went past\u2026. but good to see that multiculturalism is alive and well in Annapolis.\u00a0 At the end of evening, feeling we needed to embrace the whole experience, we ate hot dogs on the back deck washed down with beer, and watched the fireworks over Annapolis harbour. God Bless America!<\/p>\n

We also had an independence day of our own. Finally the nice man from Yamaha came and fixed our outboard motor, so we now have transport! A little bit excited that we\u2019ll be able to dinghy in to the city dock for essential things like ice cream and beer.\u00a0 We\u2019ve also taken a couple of trips around Spa Creek (just because we can) \u2013 it\u2019s a very pretty area with some very swanky large waterfront homes, one of which belongs to Barry Levinson (he of \u201cRain Man\u201d and \u201cGood Morning Vietnam\u201d fame). Maybe if we pay him enough compliments he\u2019ll invite us in to share his air-conditioning?<\/p>\n

Despite the couple of days lolly-gagging around, the remainder of the week has passed at a frenetic pace. Bruce has installed four new deck hatches for the cabins, the AIS and the HF radio (almost), whilst I\u2019ve painted three out of four cabins (have run out of paint so will have to wait until we can get back to the hardware store). The netting for the trampoline, new deck hardware and materials for the stack pack and mattress covers are on their way.\u00a0 But the to-do list is starting to resemble the Hydra \u2013 cut off one head and another one pops up. We discovered that the oven works to a degree, in fact to precisely 200 degrees Fahrenheit. At that rate it would take about 12 hours of gas to cook anything. We toyed with the idea of trying to get it repaired, but it\u2019s in such a state of general disrepair that we\u2019ve thrown caution to the wind and ordered a new one. Oh well, just one more installation. (Terrific as Bruce\u2019s skills are, I think we might need outside assistance for that one.) Tomorrow we\u2019ll hire a car for a couple of days so that we can go and do a whole heap more errands. No wonder we\u2019re in bed early each night!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been a week of celebrations here, big and small. The biggest (of course!) was my birthday last Wednesday, which really started on Tuesday evening Australia time, so I got to celebrate for 38 hours! It was very special to hear from both my wonderful boys, Nick and Rob, and to receive so many lovely … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Independence Day”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-svtoucan"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6B46t-x","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":108,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions\/108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/svtoucan.com\/svtblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}