Sunday Struggles

No posts for the A to Z challenge on Sundays. Good thing, cause my internet is still not working right and drops off constantly. At least it’s coming on now and then. It’s been completely gone for the last 4 days. Now I only have to wait for the new modem to show up (3-5 business days- no overnight delivery!), set it up correctly and then MAYBE I can get my internet working properly again after almost a month!

I’ve been trying to download Open Office for the last 8 hours and STILL can’t get it to go all the way til the end! Same thing for Adobe Lightroom.

I finally got my computer back from the shop on Friday and hoping to have everything working correctly. I knew I was going to have to download and re-install all the programs I use, since they can’t be moved from the old hard drive to the new one. I didn’t figure it would be that big of a problem.

Today was my first chance to try it out and nope. I’ve lost ALL of my pictures! I hope to hell they’re still on the old hard drive, but that still means I’ll have to take the computer back to the shop so they can take it all apart again to reinstall the old hard drive and copy those pictures over. Jeeze!

It seems that for everything I TRY to do, there are 15 roadblocks thrown in my way. I hate to be so negative on here all the time, but this is the only outlet I have, other than screaming at the walls and throwing my computer across the room.

All I am trying to do is to get a working computer in the house! I have 5 of them! I am only trying to get ONE of them to the point where I can write, research and edit my photographs. It really shouldn’t be so hard.

 

A to Z: Beyond the Sea

Here’s my second post for today (I had to skip yesterday due to having no internet) for the A to Z Challenge. We’re to post for 26 days straight, one for each letter of the alphabet.

Beyond the Sea by Bobby Darin is a real classic. It was one of the first songs I chose for my Songs of the Sea series (check out the rest if you get a chance).

I remember when I was growing up, my father used to love this song. He would sing along or dance around the house to the music. I always liked it too.

I was surprised to hear the mate really getting into it out on the Ocean Alliance last time I was on there. He had the whole bridge team (including me) singing along and really getting into it! (Thanks A.)!!

I really like it too. I hope you all will enjoy it as much as I did. 🙂

Here are the lyrics so you can sing along. 😉

Beyond the Sea”
Somewhere beyond the sea
Somewhere waiting for me
My lover stands on golden sands
And watches the ships that go sailing

Somewhere beyond the sea
She’s there watching for me
If I could fly like birds on high
Then straight to her arms
I’d go sailing

It’s far beyond the stars
It’s near beyond the moon
I know beyond a doubt
My heart will lead me there soon

We’ll meet beyond the shore
We’ll kiss just as before
Happy we’ll be beyond the sea
And never again I’ll go sailing

I know beyond a doubt
My heart will lead me there soon
We’ll meet (I know we’ll meet) beyond the shore
We’ll kiss just as before
Happy we’ll be beyond the sea
And never again I’ll go sailing

No more sailing
So long sailing
Bye, bye sailing…

A to Z: Arribada

I’ve joined in the A to Z Challenge, where the challenge is to post something every day for 26 days in April, using the letters of the alphabet. I’m going to try to post twice today, since I had to miss yesterday. I’ve been having so many problems with my computers. The internet has been completely out for 3 days now. Today, it’s back to shutting off at unpredictable intervals so I’m hoping I can catch up…

I was lucky enough to see the arribada last year when I was in Nicaragua. So sorry, I wasn’t able to get any good photos since it was night, it was very dark, and tho they passed out little red lights, they warned us not to shine them at the turtles. It might upset them enough to make them stop laying their eggs. I don’t know why they don’t go see them in the daytime, I never got a straight answer to that question. I hope one day to see them in the daylight. 🙂

I did take a few photos anyway. It was such an amazing experience, I soon gave up messing with the camera. There were dozens of turtles (olive ridleys) coming and going up and down the beach. Like all sea turtles, the olive ridleys are endangered, it was thrilling to see so many of them at once. It was hard to see them, but you could hear them coming and you’d better get out of their way cause they weren’t moving out of your way!

We went as a group (I signed up for a tour at a hostel- Casa Oro– in San Juan del Sur), we all watched a movie before we left and our guide explained everything for us. She even scooped out the sand behind the turtle as it was laying, so we could all see the eggs being deposited.

I’d like to go back someday, it was a fantastic experience. If you ever get the chance to see it, you should! 🙂

No Internet

Sorry All,

My good computer is still in the shop. My internet at home has been going off and on for the last 2-3 weeks. Some days it shuts off altogether and won’t come back on no matter how much I fiddle with the computer, modem, phone lines, etc.

Today has been another one of those days. 🙁

I spent another hour on the phone with tech support, (after doing the same last week for the same issue- which did nothing to help). They said they would have to investigate further and it would be another 2 days before I could expect them to get back to me. 🙁

I have a couple of friends staying with me. One of which is kind of a computer geek. He’s tried a few things to figure out what’s going on and his conclusion is there is something wrong with the modem. I concur.

Let’s  see if the internet provider finally figures that out and gets me back online.

I guess I’ll be spending a lot of time at McDonalds for the next couple of days. 🙁

Songs of the Sea: Swear Like a Sailor

Here’s one for my Songs of the Sea series. It’s a little different. I’ve never heard of the singer before. I probably never would have except he came up in my Google search. I kind of like the song. It’s nice and mellow. The video is nice too, even tho I’ve never been able to stand up on a surfboard for more than 2 seconds. 🙂

Swear Like a Sailor- Tep No

I had a thought running through my head
Now you’re gone, I don’t remember it
I had the life and then I see you
Now our love is all see-through
So, no worries, no worries, no worries now
‘Cause love just comes and goes
No worries, no worries
I swear like a sailor, sailor from my bad behavior

And if you come and go it won’t matter anymore,
It won’t matter anymore, no
And if you can’t stay slow, I’ll be waiting at the door,
I’ll be waiting at the door, oh
And if you come and go it won’t matter anymore,
It won’t matter anymore, no
And if you can’t stay slow, I’ll swear like a sailor,
Sailor from my bad behavior

I have a lover back in England,
She’s a star, she’s like Taylor Swift
I come home, don’t remember it
‘Cause she’s gone, she don’t exist.

So, no worries, no worries, no worries now
‘Cause love just comes and goes
No worries, no worries
I swear like a sailor, and say screw you Taylor Swift!
Screw you Taylor Swift!

And if you come and go it won’t matter anymore,
It won’t matter anymore, no
And if you can’t stay slow, I’ll be waiting at the door,
I’ll be waiting at the door, oh
And if you come and go it won’t matter anymore,
It won’t matter anymore, no
And if you can’t stay slow, I’ll swear like a sailor,
Sailor from my bad behavior

Color Your World: Robin Egg Blue

Here’s my entry for Jennifer’s Color Your World Challenge. Today’s color is Robin Egg Blue. I found a couple of photos from my travels that I think show this color pretty good.

The lagoon at Tarawa, Kiribati. While working as captain of a tuna boat, we frequently unloaded in Tarawa. One day we had a BBQ with some of the locals. This is the beach we went to. 🙂

Searching for the shipyards where they build the Pinisi Schooners, we passed through small villages of houses like this. I was just a couple of years too late to find a boat of my own there, the price had more than tripled since I had first heard about this place. 🙁

 

When Easter Eggs Hatch

Happy Easter. 😉

Color Your World: Red Violet

Here’s my entry for Jennifer’s Color Your World Challenge: Red Violet. I’m not sure this is a very good match, but it’s the best I could find in my stash (most of my photos are on my other computer which is still in the shop).

It’s a close up of a daylily. 🙂

More Computers

I know it must seem like I don’t do much but bitch about my computer, but it’s incredibly frustrating!

This morning I’ve already spent over 3 hours trying to complete a job that should take no more than 10 minutes!

My regular computer is in the shop. I was supposed to get it back 2 days ago. Yesterday they told me it wouldn’t be ready til (at least) Monday. That one does work slightly better than this one.

Since I can’t find any work offshore, pretty much everything I need to do is online. Look for a job, edit my photographs, upload photographs, write, research articles, research where and how to query articles, etc.

I’m so pissed off right now I feel like smashing the computer with the biggest hammer I can find!

Color Your World: Red-Orange

Here’s my entry for Jennifer’s Color Your World Challenge: Red-Orange.

I took this picture back in August. I had gone to Costa Rico for a blogging workshop. I spent a few extra weeks traveling around down there. This picture was taken in Nicaragua. Near San Juan del Sur. During the Arribada, where the sea turtles drag themselves up the beaches to lay their eggs. I highly recommend it. 🙂

Dance- Bali

Here’s another post for the Daily Post’s Weekly Photography Challenge (Dance).

I took this photo a couple of years ago in Ubud. I was on vacation in Bali (Indonesia) and spent a couple of weeks checking out the beautiful island. The people are so friendly and the island itself is gorgeous. It’s small, so easy to get around. There are volcanoes to hike, whitewater rivers to raft, perfect waves for surfing, great wrecks for SCUBA diving, and the art scene is fantastic!

I was told that it’s part of their religion there on Bali to make something more beautiful every day. I saw that they really took that to heart. Their temples are amazing, and the people practice music and dance to perform in the temple ceremonies. They have entire villages where the people just make one type of art: stone cutters, woodcarvers, painters, silversmiths, batik, etc. You could spend months there finding something new every day. 🙂

Donna The Buffalo: Positive Friction

Just for the hell of it. Here’s some good music from Donna the Buffalo. Another of my favorites. 🙂

Computers

My regular computer is in the shop. Still!

I have all my pictures on there and also my photo editing software. I haven’t been able to do any work on my photos because of that. I have thousands and thousands of photos on that computer and at least a few hundred of them have already been edited.

It’s a lot of work to fix them up the way I’d like them to look (and I don’t really do much to them). I was so upset when those hackers stole my photos and blackmailed me over them. I called the police and even the FBI. The police said they couldn’t help and the FBI wasn’t even nice enough to TRY- or to tell me that they just weren’t interested. I couldn’t figure out how to get the money to the bastards in time so I just had to get over losing almost my entire trip to Nicaragua. Thousands of fantastic photos- gone forever! 🙁

Thank god they only corrupted my thumb drive! If they had got everything on my computer  I think I would have done something really stupid like throw the computer against the wall and then light it on fire! How could someone NOT be frustrated and MAD AS HELL?

I was going to work on uploading to the internet this week since I’m still not working. I hope they’ll finish with my computer tomorrow!

I have a feeling it’s going to take me a while to get everything back in order. They had to put in a new (larger) hard drive and move everything over. I just hope everything is still THERE.

Busy Tuesdays

Tuesdays are always the busiest days of the week for me. Today was no exception. I woke up early (0430). I had to leave the house by 0530 to get to the training center on time. It’s all the way up in NW Houston, it takes me about an hour and a half if there’s traffic.

I spent the morning role playing for one of the training sessions. We have more and more of these required courses every year. This one was to assess how the trainee would handle emergency situations at work.

As a role player, I act the part of one of the bridge team. Today my job was to keep track of what was done as things progressed. I had to make note of the times certain things were done, for example: what time did the incident start, what time did they call for muster, was anybody missing, who, was help called, when, were the fire pumps started, etc.

It’s actually a pretty interesting ‘job’. I enjoy it. It will definitely help me when it’s my turn to take the class.

I stopped on the way home to get rid of some of my books at the Half Price Books store. Hard to believe, but they only offered me $6 for 9 (very good condition and great to read) books! I took 2 of them back after that. I’ll donate them to the library.

I got home in time to make a few phone calls (check to see if any news on the job that was supposed to start on March 4th, figure out why the pharmacy gave me the wrong prescription yesterday, call and message about another possible job). No satisfaction on any of them, I’ll have to try again tomorrow.

I went for my daily walk. The weather is still really nice and cool. I wish it lasted longer. We’re supposed to have another cold front come through tomorrow so it might last a few days more. 🙂

I checked out my plants. My lemon tree is blooming like crazy and is already making tiny little lemons. A bunch of them got blown off in the wind today. The lime tree didn’t have so much damage, but it’s right up next to the house. I’ve got 4-5 strawberries that look like they’ll be ready for picking in a few more days. I’ll have to keep a close eye out to get them before the birds do.

Came in and tried to check my email, in between the internet dropping off every few minutes. Nothing too important in the mail (nothing about work).

Off to the weekly Campaign for Liberty meeting for our usual political discussion. Last week we had a new guy show up. He had some interesting things to say. He sounded pretty hard core socialist to me, but we did agree on a lot of things (corporations have too much power, GMO labeling, fiat money, sky high debt levels). I have to admire him for sticking around for the entire meeting and holding his own when everybody else was on the opposite side on a lot of issues. Sorry to say, he didn’t come back tonight. 🙁

Too bad. We really need to work together to find a way to fix what’s wrong. We really all do agree on a lot of issues but it seems like we just can never focus on that. We always wind up fighting over the few little things we disagree on. We’ll never win the real fight if we can’t figure out that we should not be fighting each other, we need to concentrate on the real enemy.

We’re going to try again to get the word out about our weekly meetings and to inform people about some of the concerns we have. It’s hard. We’re still a very small group and everybody is always so busy. Nobody really has any time to concentrate on this stuff and we have a lot of things we’re involved in (community garden, radios, GMOs, etc).

I promised to make a Facebook page. I hope I can remember how to do that. 😉

I hope to heck I’ll be at work next Tuesday! If not, I’ll go to painting class instead of role playing, they don’t have anything else scheduled up there til April 11th. I hope I don’t have to wait that long to go to work again.

Dance- New Orleans

Here’s a photo I took in New Orleans. I think it’s a good one for this challenge (Dance) from the Daily Post. I loved watching this couple dance and listen to the band play in the street. New Orleans is really great for this kind of thing. 🙂

The couple was really dancing up a storm (swing, jitterbug, etc.), the musicians were all tapping their toes and swaying to the music and everyone was having a great time.

Dance

Here’s a photo for the Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge: Dance. 

I took this photo one Friday night at the Fiesta Mexicana in Old Puerto Vallarta.

I was down there for a month getting certified to teach English as a foreign language (TEFL). Every Friday night there were dance shows downtown by the beach. I never got there early enough to get a good seat, it was always packed at least a half hour before the show started. It was a real challenge to get any decent pictures.

This is one of my favorites. The show started with Spanish dances. 🙂

Friday Night

Is everybody out for Friday night? It’s awful quiet around here today! What’s everybody up to?

My good computer has been in the shop since Monday. I had to go and drop off programs to reload this afternoon. Hoped to have it back today, but nope. It will be Monday (I hope).

I took a ride down to the beach after I finished at the computer shop. It was dead down there too. It was really a beautiful day (a little warm), sunny and bright, but nobody was out enjoying it.

I came home early so as not to get busted crossing the bridge. I’m hoping to have a quiet night at home and catch up on sleep. 🙂

The Call

I saw this post on Facebook today and thought to myself “yep, that’s about right.”

I never thought I’d be this upset about being out of work, I’ve been through a couple of busts in the oilfield before and prepared for this one as best I could. I’m a lot better off than most people who’ve been laid off over the last year. But after 6 months without even a couple of days offshore, the stress is getting to me. It’s hard to think straight when financial pressure is always nagging at the back of your mind.

I think we’d ALL feel about like this guy when we get the call. 🙂

How to Write A Bucket List

I got an email today from Caz at ytravelblog.com. I’ve been following for a while. It’s a very interesting and inspiring blog. Her email today about how she wound up with free tickets to watch a surfing event she really wanted to see was pretty cool. Here’s what she had to say…

…It sounded so exotic and fun and I made the decision that is was something I was one day going to do.

It made my bucket list and I just put it away.

When we moved to Burleigh, I knew we’d be here when the Quiksilver Pro was on at Snapper Rocks – my favourite spot along the East Coast of Australia (sunsets here are magical).

Bucket list done. We made the decision to head down to the rocks and jostle for space among the crowds to watch. I was committed and fully immersed in the joy the ocean and surfing brings me.

Then, on Friday Woody, one of my best friends and part of our old surfie crowd – someone who I’ve checked off a lot of bucket list moments with, and who makes me laugh so much – phoned to say she had VIP tickets to the Quikky Pro and if I wanted to go with her!!

I train my Money Cleansers to not look at the world through the eyes of co-incidence, but magic and the miracle of possibilities. These tickets arrived on the day we happened to be in town, in between two trips away. The comp finished early so we wouldn’t have made it at all otherwise, even on the rocks.

And they came only a few days after I announced in this update sharing Kathmandu’s competition that if I could take one trip with a friend, I’d hike Maccu Piccu with Woody because travel has been at the core of our friendship, we laugh so much together, and afterwards there’d be many drinks to celebrate.

Well, we didn’t get Maccu Piccu, but we got front row seats high above the waves at my dream event. We got to see our two fave Aussie chick surfers (sadly the men were cancelled – No Kelly or Mick Fanning!), we had Coronas flowing all day, and we laughed and laughed and laughed. (Photos on Instagram)…

 

I think a lot of what she had to say makes sense. She says it works for her. It goes along with what my stepmother Irene always insisted on (and it worked for her too). When I would worry about all the things that could go wrong, she would tell me “don’t worry- the universe is in divine order.”

It definitely worked for her. She always did pretty much whatever she wanted. I remember she was so excited to go skydiving for her 70th birthday. 🙂

I’ve never made a formal bucket list. I have so many things I still want to do, the list would go on forever! Here are just a few of the things I would put on mine (if I had one). In no particular order…hike Mt Kilimanjaro, cruise to Antarctica, African safari, explore India, play piano well, play saxophone well, SCUBA dive Yap, sail around the world, volunteer with Cross Cultural Solutions, volunteer with Earthwatch, write a book, sing in a band, learn to play the fiddle, cruise the inland passage to Alaska, see the Northern lights, ski the Alps, sail the Barque Europa, sail the Picton Castle, learn to speak Spanish well, …, find a home base where I can live free! Get the idea? It’s really, reeeeaaally long!

Do you already have a bucket list? What’s on it? If you don’t have one already and want to make one, this is how to do it according to Caz…

  • Dream
  • Write it out
  • Commit to it
  • Immerse yourself in the joy and love of it
  • Take some sort of action
  • Let go of control
  • Allow for the miracle of possibilities

 

Hello

This song by Adele has been pretty popular for a while now. I like it, but I think this parody (SNL did one too) is pretty good. I like their sense of humor. Really silly. 😉

No Green Beer

I went to the St Patrick’s Day Parade at Surfside Beach yesterday. There were plenty of Jello Shots going around, but no green beer this year. 🙁

I went home early, too paranoid to stick around. Going over the bridge after dark is much too dangerous for me now. I can’t deal with the cops!

I got a lot of good photos (look for them here soon as I can get them uploaded). The weather turned out to be beautiful! Sunny, temps around 80, and a little breezy. I stopped on the way home to take pictures of the wildflowers just starting to come out. Texas is just gorgeous this time of year!

Thanks

Thanks to everyone who tried to help me figure out what’s going on with my subscribe/follow/like buttons.

I will follow up on some of your suggestions when I can and hopefully will find a solution soon. 🙂

Subscribing

I learned something today.

About my blog.

My blog has been screwed up since I moved it to this paid (or self hosted) website- Captainjillsjourneys.com. I really had no problems while I was blogging on the free wordpress site- captjillsjourneys.wordpress.com. The only issue there was that I couldn’t find any way to ‘monetize’ it.

I’m still trying to figure out how to do that, but since I’ve moved I’ve had to pretty much start over from scratch and have been slowly (VERY slowly) building up an audience here again.

For a while I thought I had lost ALL my online friends and followers, but after about 3 months I found some of them were still hanging around on my old site. Thanks for sticking it out guys!!

Today, I was talking to a friend (he’s one of my first followers) on the phone and asked him to see if he could subscribe to the new site (this one). NO, he could not! He tried a few times and could get nowhere. He tried ‘liking’ a post and could not do that either. He had no trouble commenting.

Since talking to him, I’ve gone through and re-checked all my settings on my dashboard. I don’t see anything that should prevent anyone from liking or following me here. I’ve got the same settings here as on the old blog which still has no problems.

I next went to my Mailchimp account which is one of the big reasons to move- so I own my mailing list instead of wordpress- and found out I only have 5 subscribers. WTF? Even on my dashboard here it shows me that I have about 600.

I thought before today that there was something screwy with the widget that has the ‘form’ where you can enter your email to follow me. Now I KNOW that there is something messed up between that widget and the Mailchimp email list.

I wish there was someone here local so we could just sit down together and go over all this. I’m sure if I could meet up with some computer geek, I could have this problem fixed without too much trouble.

Does anybody out there have any suggestions for me based on what I’ve just described? Or know anybody around Freeport TX that can help?

Contrasts

I saw Cee’s latest post in her Compose Yourself challenge. This is for #18: Contrasting Colors. Here’s her instructions…

For your assignment I would like to see at least 4-6 photos showing contrasting photos and which colors each photo represents.  Please describe what you learned in this lesson as well.

So, OK, here goes…

Purple and yellow: day lily, door, orchid, bagels (they were yummy). 🙂

Red and green: red bowl full of cilantro and limes, Christmas outfits, red decked ship on the green water, Christmas ornaments.

Blue and orange: fishing fleet against the blue background, African containers (for what?), orange helicopter in the blue sky, orange sunset and blue ocean.

orange chopper in a blue sky

OK, that should be enough pictures. Now for the hard part. What did I learn? I think the more clear I can get the contrast, the better. When the opposite colors are just standing alone, without distractions, they really do POP! Even the colors that are just close to being opposite on the color wheel go really great together (blue and yellow or gold instead of orange for example).

Thanks for the challenge, Cee! It made me think, I always like that. 😉

Bee

Here’s my entry for Jennifer’s One Word Photo Challenge. Today’s prompt is: bee.

There are plenty of bees out on my trees all day now, the lemon trees are blooming all over. They smell so good. The little (orange) limes are just about ready to pop open their buds too. I love this time of year in Texas. Everything’s in bloom. 🙂

 

Pacific Blue

Here’s another one for Jennifer’s Color Your World challenge. Today’s color is: pacific blue.

OK, it’s a little different. I took this when I was working onboard the Pacific Santa Ana drillship a couple of years ago (boy do I miss those days of being able to work now).

In honor of the challenge, the sign is blue and it says “Pacific”, so it qualifies as Pacific Blue, right? 😉

Hanbada

Here’s a post for Jennifer’s Color Your World challenge. Today’s color is: pacific blue. 

This was a really hard color for me to find. I was surprised I didn’t have more pacific blue pictures. It’s actually just about a perfect match for some of the old Detroit Diesel engines. Here’s a picture of one (from google).

I ought to have more photos of engines, but since I quit working in the engine room and decided to stay on deck, I just don’t get down there too much any more.

Here’s a photo I took onboard the Korea Maritime Academy training ship “Hanbada” in Busan. It shows part of the engine room and looks like a pretty good match for Pacific Blue. 🙂

I met a nice lady online in a Facebook group when I was headed to Korea for a travel writing workshop. She is a ships officer like me. She was nice enough to show me around her ship and introduce me to some of the cadets that were studying there.

I had a great time there and was really grateful that she was willing to spend so much time with me. It made my trip to Korea just that much better. 🙂

 

Motivation

Hmmm. How to get motivated when you’re not?

I just realized it’s been a few days since I posted here. It seems like the days flew by. Not that I’ve been all that busy. I haven’t been. In fact, I’ve been dragging around like a lump on a log trying to get motivated to do something.

Anything!

I was supposed to go to work last Friday. I didn’t. I finally got ahold of the guy I’ve been talking to about work yesterday and he told me that now he has ‘no idea’ when this job might really start. 🙁

Since then I’ve been trying to figure out how in the hell I’m going to be able to make my finances last. I’ve been blasting through my savings and I can’t even figure out where the money is going!

Anybody have any suggestions?

Another Neon Carrot

I haven’t had time to get into this challenge much lately. It’s been going on for a while and still has a while to go yet. Check it out at Jennifer’s Color Your World Challenge.

Today’s post is for “Neon Carrot“.

Nemo

Nemo

 

Neon Carrot

I haven’t had time to get into this challenge much lately. It’s been going on for a while and still has a while to go yet. Check it out at Jennifer’s Color Your World Challenge.

Today’s post is for “Neon Carrot“.

I took these photos a few years ago on a trip to Argentina. We went to Puerto Rawson to catch the zodiacs to take us out looking for the ‘toninos’. If you look closely at my gravatar, you’ll see one. 🙂

They call them the ‘pandas of the sea” (click on the link- his post shows a lot more of what we saw down there and he got much better pictures than I did!) . They’re really fast little black and white dolphins (Commerson’s dolphins) and a real blast to watch.