Welp, back to work. 

      I got back to NY tuesday afternoon for crew change bright and early on Wednesday.  It being my first week back to work, I'm on nights, covering 6pm-6am, and as God was kind, there was no work tonight, my first night back. So, after loading up on vegetables and diet soda (I loaded up our deep freeze with chicken and meat just before I went home and we always have a mountain of good eggs on hand for protein), I came aboard yesterday morning, got caught up on gossip and current events aboard, unpacked my stuff and immediately took a nap. 

 On the night before crew change I try to get 5 good hours of sleep, so I give myself about 7 hours of rack time, as being in NY there is always traffic noises and EXTREMELY loud and rude foreigners yelling in the hallways of every single hotel here, this being NY and absolutely infested with loud obnoxious foreigners who like yelling and talking on speakerphone in hotel hallways as a habit.  

 Asking your average hotelgoing mong to behave or at least be quiet is like asking a dog not to piss on a tree... You need to shoot the beast with a bb gun in the pecker once or twice before it learns to respect boundaries. 

       There are domestic hoodboogers who do the same, don't get me wrong. I'm sure there is PWT who does this also, but I haven't seen much of it.

        At any rate I got moved in, caught a 3 hour nap, and with the prospect of a night off, I did some PM's like topping off the fogging oil for the air starters on the cargo pumps, checking lubes, and doing my meal preps for the next few weeks. 

          As part of having a metabolism that has turned into absolute dogshit with my dead thyroid, I practice intermittant fasting at work , eating in just a 6 hour daily window, and I weigh my portions and keep to a caloric limit. After a couple of days of this, I think it sets my insulin levels right and lets me burn off some of the glycogen stores in my liver, as I don't get hunger cramps too much and I get better at efficiently burning my food.  Plus, I don't eat processed food except for good bacon, so eating clean helps. I do put on weight FAST now if I eat more than 1900-2000 calories, but at 1200-1300 cals a day I will lose 1- 1.5lbs/week.  When I was at 300lbs, last year at this time, I could lose 5lbs a week easily. 

 At home, home cooking, eating out at least once a week, and of course booze all contribute to me not losing weight there.

 Well, anyhow I spent about 4 hours portioning chicken and meat, cooking rice and portioning it out into 120g bags and freezing it, and I made feijoada (the national dish of Brazil, and my favorite) in a slow cooker, which will be done tomorrow night.

   Oh, fun fact: if you freeze cooked white rice for more than 24 hours , it converts some of the starch in the rice into an indigestible form, cutting the calories by about half. 

 No bullshit, it actually works. Freezing rice makes the starch molecules change their structure slightly, forming a 'resistant starch' that acts like fiber, becoming more difficult to digest and cutting the rice's glycemic index significantly. Without the big blood sugar spike caused by eating most carbs, the digestible portion of the rice gives a slower, sustained metabolic burn, reducing hunger pain onset and intensity, and delivering more steady energy.

      I eat a little under 120g of cooked rice about 5x a week to round out my calories and get some carbs. I did the whole boom/bust cycle of keto dieting and found it unsustainable over time.   What I'm doing now, setting calorie limits and focusing on high quality protein and veggies, well, it works better for me. But after the excesses of the holidays, I'm looking forward to getting back on track. 

      So, we're elbow-deep in winter now, and this has been out busiest time of year for the past few years. I'm not expecting to have much free time, which was already in a terrible decline this past year, but considering that last year I spent half the work days all winter without running water, this year, armed with a generally freshly-washed ass, my tolerance for life's little headaches at work seems to have rebounded somewhat. 

 We'll see what the 2nd half of January does for that I guess. 

 I've been home for a while now, and enjoying it.  In the meanwhile, something very cool is in the works, workwise, but it's still in process so I am told it's best I keep my mouth shut for the now. 

 From Daddy Warpig, 

     This is a Russian DJ dressed as an American aerobics instructor from the late 80's. 

      Leave me to my memories.  We are not what we once were, as a people.

 Well, I'm down to the last few days aboard here, for which I am grateful.  I head home in a few more days, for some much needed rest chores and home maintenance. 

Sigh.   Lol, not really, I actually like puttering around the house and I'm REALLY looking forward to not having cold hands and feet. 

        I'm better, healthwise. It's been years since I had a full-on flu, and this was a classic full-strength flu af that... the one that is going around. Being unable to rest, or even unable to reduce the pace of work was a slog, but it's done now. Sailors don't get days off for illness unless we're truly unable to do the work... and well, I could. So I did. 

      As often happens, the flu opened the door for a cold to move in after, and so I have a throat infection and a head cold as well. Thanks be to God, it didn't settle in my chest, which is a hazard for me, my lungs being a bit prone to bronchitis, but it's been unpleasant enough having a head cold and wanting so badly to clear my throat enough to talk above a whisper, but knowing how much it will hurt to do so. 

    Today, though, I appear to be on the mend. Still congested but better, still hoarse, but better.  With just s few days until I go home, I'm really hopeful I'll be close to 100% on travel day. 

     Does anyone else always, ALWAYS have that moment when your sinuses completely purge in massive bulk, but it always happens when you're in public, with your hands full, and no damn hankie or tissue to hand when the stuff inside decides it's time to go outside? 

 Every. Damn. Time.   I'm pretty sure the person next to me on the plane is going to have to watch me panic and try to discreetly do something about the 2lb lung clam that's about to say hello to the world. 

   I don't think I've ever had that moment somewhere like in a bathroom or my bedroom or somewhere private. Every. Damn. Time. 

 Well, we'll see.   I'm pretty happy about not feeling awful today already. 

 It's been busy and the weather has ben unsettled. Gales every 3 days, about 6 inches of snow yesterday morning and winter is here for sure. A little break will be welcome. 

 Well, I have the flu.   I feel... unpleasant. Congested, high fever, body aches... 

     Worse than the flu, in terms of impact, I bought a store bought chicken pot pie yesterday and had it for lunch. 100% ultraprocessed 'food.'  I don't eat processed foods and haven't in about a year. My daily caloric limits w/ my now- reduced metabolism, I want good tasty food since I can't have a lot of it.  I eat clean. 

 I didn't yesterday.   About 3pm I thought I would die from the indigestion and cramps that damn pie gave me.  By 5pm I was more afraid I'd survive and  continue to suffer.   Gas cramps, sharp pains, even chest pains from the indigestion itself.  It didn't settle down until about 7pm. Thank God that's done.  No more trash food. 

To be fair the body aches ain't much worse than my usual of a morning, though.  The fever, OTOH, sucks. That's 2 nights of almost no quality sleep. 

     I got the flu vaccine about 3 weeks ago. Waste of fuckin' time yet again. I can't help but think that I missed a night of drinking whisky and chasing my wife around the kitchen (I felt a bit peaky after the shot), and I get so few of those days. Damn. 

 Well, I hope today the fever breaks and I start feeling better after bed tonight.  I REALLY wish I could take Nyquil, knock myself into a coma for the night but alas... oil tanker. Ist Verboten. The side effects might be too pleasant, and we can't be trusted to have nice things since we're retarded and like as not to do dumb shit all zooted up on happy pills. 

 Well, that was a lumpy night last night. 

   We had a stiff gale blow through yesterday. It reached its' peak after dark last night. Hod damn it was a good 'un. 

 We went through it just fine. Oh, yesterday morning was nasty- strong squalls but the sustained winds were less than gale force, but it was pretty sporty. I had a mixed bag work-wise. We were alongside an anchored tanker who themelves were in ballast (empty) and riding high out of the water. In cases like that it's wind V. tide on boats to see where you end up pointing. Sail area (places for the wind to push) above water is a lot greater than sail area underwater for the current to push, but water being so much more dense, it has a strong impact.  Yesterday morning the eye of thebwind was only about 30 degrees out of alignment with the tidal direction, and it was gusty enough that even with the extra drag of the HQ tugging on one side of the ship, we pointed up with the wind about 5 degrees fine on my bow, which is to say, blowing fore-and aft. 

    I had the misfortune of having a poorly-crewed ship, though. 

    The rarest of rare birds, a female Indian chief engineer, herself very nice and very professional, and the weather being shitty, I stayed in touch with the captain, too. It was a small job but Lord, it took way too long to get done.

     If I wasn't getting pounded by rain and wind, and if I wasn't trying to beat the next change in tide (we'd end up broad to the swell, taking waves on the beam, and even in harbor, we'd get tossed around and us and the tanker would want to resonate in an accordion motion that could strain my mooring lines), it would have been comical. 

     So, for tankers, when you look midships on deck you'll see the manifold area, the area where the pipelines converge... the area where oil comes on and off the ship. 

   I'll lift one end of of our bunker hoses up on deck to the ship, and they'll grab it with their crane, cast off my crane's lifting sling, and then connect the hose to their bunker manifold.  If 3+ guys are working together well, this can be done in 10-20 minutes start to finish... and for oil tankers this is how EVERY SINGLE job both starts and finishes. Hose on... hose off... so expectations are that tanker crews will be good at this. 

      90 minutes later, I've gone in and out of the house a few times, paced, grumbled to myself, and mentally fantasized about throwing grenades at the guys on the ship for being so slow. 

 90 minutes, and a couple of calls on my part on the radio. 'Still woarking my fren, still woarking.' 

 2 hours. 'Bunka baj, bunka baj, hello, my fren, you have a reducer?' 

   A reducer is a pipe fitting to connect two different size pipes. And when I had asked earlier, they didn't need one. Generally, you can see easily when one was needed.

 The 3 men at the manifold were so clueless, so untrained, they spent 2 hours trying to connect two pipe fittings of completely different sizes together... in the wind and rain. 

 Well, shocking, but I blew up. I'm REALLY making an effort not to do this, as it does no good, but me, on the radio. 'Oh you stupid, you stupid sonsabitches... oh, you ASSHOLES! 2 hours? 2 FUCKING HOURS?' You get the chief engineer on the radio. I need the chief." 

    The chief, to her credit, came out on deck in the rain and weather a few minutes later. I let her have it too, but professionally, as I was already feeling guilty about cussing out a bunch of retards. She apologized, and then lit into the men in Hindi, I think, went full Bollywood mother-in-law on them, everything but the flip-flop held as a weapon. I sent up the reducer, an 80lb cast iron affair, and 15 minutes later we started the transfer. 

 I saw the captain in a bridge window too at one point. He looked pissed off himself. Hard to find good help I guess. 

 Well, the tide turned just as we finished the job, and the hose came off at a professional pace, but we had to get an extra tugboat to come alongside to help our own tug, for safety's sake, as we now were in small gales now, and the white horses (whitecaps) were marching with some gusto, but we were pinned to the side of the ship as the wind shifted with the turn of the tide, as it so often does, and started coming into opposition. 

  All went well, though. We got off the ship and just 30 mins later our tugs were pinning us to the lay berth dock in Brooklyn, the good one where we can get ashore from. 

   Last night the wind shifted and picked up again, blowing us directly off the dock, and even with extra lines out, my lines were groaning and complaining... it's not often I hear the wind whistling and screaming through the tophamper above the house here, the antennae lights, and floodlight mast but it was singing. 

      As for contributing factors to me being unhappy yesterday, I could feel the pre-sickness itch in my throat signaling that a virus of some sort had paid a visit, and that also made me sad. By last night I was coughing a little and my voice was froggy. 

 Today my throat hurts. I don't yet know if it's strep throat or a real humdinger of a cold bug that is still building, but B brought it with him when he came aboard and shared it. Luckily I have some basic meds for this in the med chest and us having shore access, I'll go for the 45 min walk to CVS and back and stock up, pick up some cough syrup too.  I get bronchitis at the drop of a hat. Scarring on my lungs from childhood bouts of it always freaks out doctors who worry about TB, but nah, 70's parenting, I was pretty much left to cough it out for a month or so every winter from age 5-14. Ah, memories. 

   Anyhow, with first light just a half hour off, I'll go walk the deck here, see what got moved and if everything survived the night, then off for a deep walk in Brooklyn, something I haven't been able to do in a long while. I'm very grateful we're free today. Next job is tonight.