How much do your shoes weigh?

I know, I'm slacking.  Been down with a rather nasty cold/sinus infection.  I'm pretty much over it today, finally.  Yesterday, last night and this morning were marred by the longest running headache I've ever had, but I feel pretty damn good tonight, just a little snotty.   PW tossed a package of venison steaks in some Italian dressing, mushrooms and onions this morning.  Tonight I fried those puppies up, shrooms and onions sauted in butter, with nice, big salads.  Damn fine feast.  The oldest boy popped in after work and polished off the last two steaks.  I'm toying with the idea of baking chocolate chip cookies while I knock out some more of the never-ending pile o laundry.

I've not posted much this break and really haven't done much, either.  I've had a somewhat hectic life the last year and I'm just plain tired.  So, this time at home has been very low-key.  I've not even taken up much wine, other than a six-bottle marathon two weeks ago.  PW is finally sans business this break, my oldest son choosing to attend my alma mater in the fall and purchasing a new cell phone and laptop for work and that about sums up this break. 

My little corner of the world finally has a cell provider that offers an international roaming plan and I picked up a plan and new phone last week.  I picked out an LG CU515 and I already prefer it to my old Razor V3 and thankfully, it was pretty damn cheap.  For the laptop, I chose the smaller, 14.1" version of the HP Pavilion I bought a couple years ago.  Amazing how the price of computers just keeps dropping.  I've got 3 times the RAM, 3 times the hard drive, not to mention dual 2.2 Ghz processors, from a single 1.8.  All that for about a hundred bones less than the last machine:)

The last box is still a wonderful laptop and absolutely the best mobile home theatre a pirate could want, but at 10 pounds, it was too heavy and the DVD player just crapped out.  Rather than spend the 250 bucks to replace the drive and still not be able to take underwear to work, I bit the bullet and got a new one.  At 5.2 pounds I can actually take a few pair of underwear and maybe a couple of pairs of socks.  It hasn't been an issue for the last two years, but starting next week I'm going back to helicopter crew-x's and am limited to no more than 25 pounds total luggage weight and they enforce that rule very harshly in some places.  Tough to fit 5-6 weeks of your life into a 25 pound bag.  For instance, my tennis shoes weigh 1.2 pounds and a bottle of shampoo, 1 pound.  Since I have headphones, toothbrush, optical mouse, mp3 player, camera and alarm clock that all run off batteries, I need to use rechargeable batteries and let me tell you-a battery charger weighs the same as a pair of jeans.  So, I crotch the charger and batteries when I weigh in my luggage...

Actually, last trip I left my charger onboard-I knew with slightly more than 50% certainty that I would return to the same ship.  I left a couple of t-shirts and some socks, too.  Not too much since you really never know in this business.  I have a box of shit on, let me see, about 9 different ships.  Someday, I hope to return to one of them and reunite with my old t-shirts and whatnot.  Someday.