Saturday 01/07/2023
Yesterday, I forgot to note, I ran the numbers for the year in finance. That is, I filled in the December column on the spreadsheet where I keep track of The Nest Egg, and started the sheet for 2023. Looking back — a long way back! — I created this spreadsheet on Day 31, New Year’s Day 2019, to continue one that Marian first created in 1997. I noted then that the Nest Egg was down about 7% on that year (2018). Well this year it is down just over 8% over 2022. In between it has been up a couple times. So it is still about where it was then. In any case the bottom line is enough money to keep me in crack and hookers for a very long time, especially since I actually consume zero of those.
Alright, that was in poor taste. Whose blog is this, again?
I follow several YouTube channels. Mostly “makers”, people who create stuff. One of the best is Sampson Boat Company, about Leo who is reconstructing a 100-year-old sailing yacht. Leo does the work at a boat yard in Port Townsend WA, and in the latest episode he films a Christmas day trip from Port Townsend to Bellingham to pick up some newly-made diesel tanks.
I was completely blind-sided by the emotional impact of this episode. After some discussion of how the tanks were made, Leo shows the ferry ride across the sound and later, driving across the Deception Pass bridge. As soon as I started watching that ferry-boarding footage I teared up big-time. From 2000 through 2016, Marian and I went up to San Juan Island every summer. Paul and Katie’s farm was an integral part of our lives. The Washington State ferries were part of that; you were checking the ferry schedule all the time, and rode them anytime you had to get off or on the island.
And that’s all gone now. Paul died of brain cancer in 2017. Katie suffers from early-onset alzheimer’s and lives in a care facility. And of course Marian’s gone. Somehow that ferry-riding video just brought all that back in a rush.
I took a short walk up to Ace Hardware. Then at 1pm I headed out to lead a tour at CHM. I’ve been thinking of a couple of tweaks to my talk, but one of them requires there to be at least a few older people in the group. Today it was about 30 people who looked like they ranged from 20 to 35 years. Anyway, they mostly stuck with me and seemed to enjoy themselves.
Codgerville 