Thoughts from Crow Cottage (My Main Blog.)

crowbelle's Diaryland Diary

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Working Through the Winter

WORKING THROUGH THE WINTER

OK.

I'm taking your advice and making an entry in Notepad, before I even get online with Diaryland. This way, if I screw it up, I can save it from flying off into the netherworld of wherever entries go when they disappear off the face of my monitor.

The only trouble is that I've never used "Notepad" before.

Oh, I see I have to click on "Format" and then "Word Wrap" for it to wrap. Duh.

I am pushing 60, I've been a secretary/office manager/transcriptionist for just about 40 of those 60 years, and I have never used "Notepad" before today.

I usually just open a Word file and type like I normally do for work.

I'm not sure how Notepad works. Does this file stay here for me to save? I've just named it, so hopefully it will stay.

There is so much to this computer stuff that I've never learned. I really haven't had the time to learn, actually. I'm usually too busy trying to beat the clock and get all my required typing done and then over to the office before the early rush hour traffic hits Salem, so I never have time to just sit here and play/experiment with the computer.

Plus, before now, I had an older computer (2001 is old?) and it would give me fits doing the simplest things. With my new computer, using Microsoft XP, and having more storage space than I could hope to fill up in a decade, there are so many more things I can do, but I still don't really have the time for it.

Right now, I'm just taking a break from work. It's Sunday, at around 12:15 p.m. I've been sitting here working since 9 o'clock. Paul has been painting lobster buoys down 2 flights, in the basement, but the fumes are wafting up thru the heating ducts and making me slightly nauseated. The dogs aren't too happy with the smells, either. I can tell. They are both sacked out on the bed in my office, with their long collie snouts dug into the thick duvet cover on the bed, probably trying to filter out those awful marine-paint fumes that Paul uses for the lobster buoys.

That stuff is tough. It's almost like painting a coat of plastic on the buoys! It has to be tough to withstand the rigors of living in the Atlantic Ocean for 9 months out of the year. But every winter, when he brings in the majority of his traps, he has to do maintenance work to the buoys and to the lobster traps. It's a full time job in the wintertime.

The buoys are covered in seaweed, first of all, so that all needs to be scraped off with a knife. After that, they are washed in a bleach solution to get any remaining algae off them. Then they are strung together with rope, and put outside to dry thoroughly in the sun, or whatever weather we happen to be having at the time.

Once they are all washed, scraped, and dry, then one bunch at a time (and I'd say the bunches have about 15 or 20 buoys all looped together with rope) is brought into the basement and the painting process begins.

He has three colors to paint. The bottom 2/3rds of the buoy is one color, there is a 1 inch stripe of a second color at the top of the first color, and the top is painted a 3rd color. Two coats of all that paint is put on each and every buoy, each and every single winter.

All by hand.


Of course, there are also the oddball buoys that he finds floating loose in the ocean, some are all cut up from being in storms, or getting caught up in the motor of some passing boat. He saves them all, refurbishes the ones that can be saved, and cleans and repaints them. Oh, he also has to burn his numbers into every single buoy, too.

With a huge burning tool.

This all takes great amounts of time.

And that's not even half of it.

He also builds new lobster traps every year. Usually about 100 of them, to replace the ones he's had to discard due to old age or just ocean wear and tear. And rather than buy brand new, already built traps, he buys the materials and makes them himself. Saves a ton of money, and since he's home anyway in the wintertime, this is what he does.

He can build a trap slightly differently, sometimes, too. He's always thinking of how to "build a better lobster trap" - one that will work so much better to lure in those poor hapless bottom dwellers of the sea. And then not allow them to escape again! That's the trick. How to make the "rooms" in the trap just the right size and configuration to allow the larger (legal) sizes lobsters to get trapped, but will also allow the smaller little guys (illegal) to get out again.

I swear sometimes he lies awake nights pondering over this conundrum.

He did invent such a trap last year, and built a sample one...it is bigger than the usual traps, and is constructed a bit differently. I don't know the outcome of that trap, whether or not it fished more "bugs" (as they call the lobsters).

Unless I ask, he doesn't tell me.

Oh, the fumes are getting to me. Think I'll really take a break now and go downstairs and rustle up some lunch, before getting stuck into my work for the afternoon.

We are NOT football fans here (although Paul has been known to watch a Superbowl game now and again - on HIS TV, not mine!), but not me. I'm hoping PBS will have something good on at 9 for Masterpiece Theatre. If not, I'll just get to bed early and get rested up for the work week ahead.

Whichever team you are rooting for, I hope you win! (I know...that's not possible for everyone!)

There is a radio programme I really love, on the BBC on NPR radio. It is only 15 minutes long, and it airs each week (usually) at 10:30 p.m. It's called "MY WORD." It's a little group of literary Brits (2 men and 2 women) who have a moderator, and a live audience.

The moderator gives them little quizzes and they keep score. The 2 men are very very good at writing/speaking and generally making up stories. So each week they are given a short phrase for a topic and during the time of the show, in between answering all the regular questions, they each have to think up a story that will end in that phrase, usually somewhat distorted, as if a play on the words. It's very good, and their stories are always fabulous. The audience claps and that determines the winner!

It's so old fashioned, and I've been listening to that every Sunday night for many years now.

Cheers,

Bex

12:27 pm - 04 February 2007

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