Thursday, 27 October 2016 - I had seen a building over near Bonita Bill's that houses a small marine ecology museum and educational center and finally got around to checking it out today. It is for children of all ages, so that includes me. Pretty interesting, I thought. I happened to be the only visitor at the time so I got the deluxe tour. Did you know that horseshoe crabs have seven eyes spread around the top of their shell, some of which are compound and others that are not, that they've been in the oceans for 450 million years, and that, even though they are crustaceans their closest relatives are spiders and scorpions. The latter can easily be imagined if you turn one over on its back to look at it.

Friday, 28 October - I spent about two hours searching the boat for the brown sugar that I will need for preparing the baked beans once my birthday present from my brother arrives. Apparently, I don't have any, but that lead to my doing inventory on a couple more storage spaces on the boat. Later, I missed my communication with Steve for the evening's entertainment, but, since I knew where I'd probably be able to rendezvous with him, I went to dinner at Mr. Tequila Mexican Restaurant, then found him, as I'd suspected, at the Mermaid Bar. What I didn't expect, however, was that he'd have a beautiful blond with him. We had a couple of drinks there, then went to the Tiki Bar for one drink, then back to our respective boats.

Saturday, 29 October - In anticipation of receiving a package of barbeque from my brother in the mail, which was left at Moss Marina yesterday, I needed to go to the grocery store. I called Steve Monaghan to see if he needed to go, too, and he said "No, but I'll take you." I couldn't refuse an offer like that, so we took his car off island to Wally World. I had intended to merely get fixin's for baked beans, but since we had the car instead of my dinghy or bicycle, I bought much more. We returned and I took my purchases to the boat, then brewed up my version of the beans. By the time I got that done, it was time to return to the marina to get the BBQ before they closed for the day. I didn't want my BBQ locked up inside while we were ready to party. The package from Mike contained a HUGE chunk of meat, about 7 lb., I'd guess, vacuum packed and already cooked from our families favorite and world famous BBQ house in Fort Worth, Angelo's Bar-B-Que (their spelling, so it must be right) on White Settlement Road. It is so well known that it is one of the destinations that the tour buses in Ft. Worth stop at. All we had to do was warm the meat up. Steve had had the marina leave their BBQ cooker out for us and I cranked it up and threw the meat on. Four of us, Steve, Judy, a nurse friend of Steve's, Mark, a full-time professional treasure hunter (think metal detectors), and I all had a great dinner of BBQ, Baked Beans, Chips and Dip, Salad, and several "liquid refreshments." A great dinner and evening.

Sunday, 30 October - My Birthday! I relaxed, talked on the phone to several long-time friends and my brother, and did some reading and correspondence and finished my year's journey around the sun. That's 68 times now. That's 39,712,000,000 miles. I'm well traveled, but I've only been out of the country 3 times!

Monday, 31 October - I was woken up this morning by porpoises surfacing to breathe just feet from my bed in the aft of my sailboat. Not a bad way to awaken. After breakfast, I started preparing to climb my mast to the spreaders to reattach a piece of hose to the spreaders that protects my mainsail from abrasion at that point. Just as I was about to start up, Leon Moyer, my next door neighbor here in the bay came by in his dinghy and offered to help. I'm sure that made it much easier than me pulling myself up, and safer, too. I attached the hose with cable ties, then came down and spent some time trying to identify some of the many spare light bulbs I have on the boat and trying to determine what lights the go into. I didn't finish before it was time to clean up and head over to Bonita Bill's for dinner, music and trivia. Halloween, so there were costumes. The little witch is a little local lady that frequents the bar. She's 104 years young. I won a bandana for knowing which 1960 one-hit-wonder California group had a hit with "Alley Oop"... The Hollywood Argyles. Actually, it wasn't a "group" at all, just a bunch of studio musicians and friends of the singer, Gary Paxton. The recording studio was on Argyle Street in Hollywood next to Lawrence Welk's Palladium.

Tuesday and Wednesday, 1 & 2 November - Most of both of these days were spent trying to make some sense out of all the lightbulbs that I have onboard. Trying to determine which ones I really need and which I don't, which bulbs fit it which device, which ones are good and which not, what are the part numbers for each one in case I need to order replacements. I have some that I think may have been onboard that the device they go in has been replaced, but, since I may not have found all the lights that are onboard, I dare not get rid of them. I just found some hidden lights in the galley the other day that I didn't know were there. There are also lights on the mast that I have no idea what the lamps are. There are also bulbs that I think may have, at some time in the past, been purchased incorrectly, they may look the same, but the voltage or amperage is wrong. Anyway, it's a mess that I've been trying to sort through. The biggest problem has been trying to cross-reference several bulbs that are made by different manufacturers and identifying some bulbs that have no identifying marks on them at all.
                  Barbecue for dinner tonight!
                  How many ways are there to spell BBQ - Barbecue - Barbeque - Bar-B-Que, others?