North America

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A Bang In the Night

Around 2:30 a.m., a loud bang that shook the rig thrust me out of deep sleep. WTF?! I then noticed that the awful winds had returned. I clambered out of the loft to investigate, the noise having been way too loud to ignore.

I stumbled into the kitchen, found a light, and the sight that greeted me was so unexpected that it took a moment for my sleep addled brain to grasp it. My front door had blown open and I had belongings strewn down the stairwell onto the beach. Outside, the winds of Hades whipped about and icy pellets of rain were falling loudly.

After Tabitha’s great escape, I make checking the door the last part of my evening routine. Had I done that before bed? I was so out of my senses that I couldn’t even remember. I picked up everything and tried to close the door. It wouldn’t catch. I tried again.

After a few attempts, I noticed that the deadbolt was on and that it wouldn’t turn off from inside. I tried with a key and succeeded. I still couldn’t close the door. Holy moly, the door had opened so violently that the secondary lock, that I never use, had activated! Where was a key for it? Oh, right.

I grabbed a spare set of keys that had the secondary lock key on it and fumbled to get the dang thing functional. The wind was blowing so hard that I knew I had no hope of getting the door properly shut from inside. I forced it shut from outside and reentered through the cab.

By this time, I was slightly more awake and I realised I had to do a headcount. Tabitha was cowering in the study. Neelix was AWOL.

I went back out into the maelstrom with a flashlight, calling his name quietly, knowing that the sound of my voice wouldn’t carry to the neighbours over the roar of the wind. I started by checking under Miranda and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a tail go by.

It was impossible to track the passage of time, but it didn’t seem to take that long to coax him out from under Miranda to under Moya to him finally letting me grab him. But once we were inside and I checked the time, more than an hour had passed since the big bang.

The night that followed was interminable. The cats were jittery. I managed to stab myself in the chin with a nail and had to get back out of bed to find paper towels to stop the bleeding. My dreams were incredibly vivid.

At 7:00, I got up to put the computer on charge in the truck and then decided to try to get another couple hours of sleep. After an hour and a half, I gave up.

The winds are still roaring, but there is quite a bit of blue sky and sun this morning. Perhaps I should give that goat to the wind gods?

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It’s… Green

I don’t know if it’s the weather or the fact that you can only walk around the beach so many times, but tonight I was hit with a case of cabin fever bad enough that I actually considered driving an hour to Victoria to catch a movie! Instead, I decided to go to Port Lavaca and have another meal at La antigua to get a firm grip on whether I really like it or not.

I’ve been criticized in the past for posting about restaurant outings, being told by folks that if they wanted to read a food blog, they would read a food blog. But to me, food and travel are intimately linked. And I think that a post about local cuisine and its effects on me will never be off topic.

Tonight, I decided to try something new, ‘enchiladas verdes’ with ‘green sauce.’ I asked the server what tornatillo was, not realising it was a typographical error on the menu and actually tomatillo (r + n does look like m). Her response of, “It’s green” would be hilarious to any classic Star Trek fan. She was able to confirm that it was not a very spicy dish. All right, let’s see if my taste buds do a happy dance.

The enchiladas were made with corn tortillas (which I am starting to really enjoy) filled with ‘fajita chicken’ and topped with green sauce, sour cream, and sliced avocado.

Well… the green sauce was full of chopped cilantro, which does not agree with me and which I think tastes vile. But cilantro is so trendy nowadays that it is in everything and I have more tolerance to it. Mixed with the tomatillos and other spices, I didn’t find the herb offensive at all. I didn’t scrape my plate clean of green sauce, but I would most certainly order this dish again. What a breakthrough!

But that’s not what made the meal so special for me though. I took one bite of the plain avocado topping my meal and I swear I heard angels sing. I finally understand what the fuss is all about! Wow! I would have gladly had just that fresh sweet avocado to cool the heat of my meal instead of the heavy sour cream, and I adore sour cream! I’ve always found avocado to be bland. I think it’s just because I’ve never had truly fresh locally grown avocado. This wasn’t bland at all. I should have stopped for avocados on the way home because I am going to be craving them in the next few days!

Yup, I like La antigua and I will have to go back at least one more time for green enchiladas!

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The Goat is Safe!

Whew! I was really starting to worry that I would have to sacrifice a goat to the sun gods!

The sky was BC-low again for most of today, but we finally got patches of blue sky in late afternoon. The promised sun for tomorrow now feels like a possibility.

Thanks to my battery monitor, I am riding this out nicely, but it will be nice to actually be able to use power again instead of just conserving it!

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A Bump On the Head

I think we all have projects on our lists that we tend to forget about until it would have been great to have them done, but it’s now not the right time to do them.

One such project for me was to get the hand cream and soap off of the vanity counter. It’s been four and a half years and at every departure I put the damn bottles in the sink and bemoan my not having taken the time to come up with a better storage system for them. Four and a half years! I know, I’m a moron!

I opened an overhead cabinet in the study this morning that I apparently haven’t opened in a while because the contents had shifted. I was promptly hit over the head with a wire door organizer. Gah, why do I even still have that thing?! It’s always falling on my head! I had bought a three-pack, but ended up only using two in the kitchen.

Waitaminute… I really am a moron. How many times have I moved that organizer and kicked myself for not just donating it already? Not nearly as many times as I have kicked myself for not securing the stuff on the vanity, but a lot. And the solution was to merge the two annoyances, like so:

IMGP5820

As for the bowl and cup on the counter, I’m just about out of water on the on board tank, so I keep the bowl filled from a large jug I replenish in the beach’s public bathroom and then use the cup as a dipper.

Yes, I could probably pull out and find water somewhere, but why bother? The only reason to have running water in my opinion is to have hot running water. I have a 10-gallon water heater and am not taking showers, so heating that much water would be stupid. Ergo the bowl. For doing the dishes, I have a large pot that I can fill with water and heat on the stove.

It’s no hardship and it actually makes it easier for me to be conservative with my water use as I know exactly how much I’m using in a day, which is about a gallon (4L). I could surely reduce that more, but I like to have really clean dishes, so no just washing them in a cup of water when I can haul all the water I want.

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Warm In the Truck

BLECH. The day’s weather just keeps getting worse. It is so damp and chilly. I put the computers in the truck to charge them and then realised that I might as well join them so that I can enjoy the HEAT.

This was an afternoon for curling up with a good movie, so I put on the mini-series True Women, which I mentioned after my trip to Goliad.

The mini-series starts just before the Goliad Massacre and ends after the Civil War. It is the story of strong, brave Texan women pioneers and is very honest about the harsh reality of life on the frontier. The Dana Delaney character in particular is remarkable. I really do have to read the book on which the series is based.

My new favourite line from the series is, “I’m glad I came to Texas.”

Indeed.