Over the Independence Day weekend, Cleveland hosted the Tall Ships Festival. So on the 4th of July I decided to go pay a visit to the Port of Cleveland, where it was taking place. The last time that Cleveland hosted, it was at the East Ninth Street Pier, which I think is a far better location, but that's just my opinion. There were, all told, about a dozen ships, and lines to tour them were fairly long, so I didn't really get to see all of them, unfortunately, but I did get to see the ones that really caught my eye, so that's good. One really cool thing that you could do was to go sailing on a tall ship, so I decided that this was in order. Sure, it was a little expensive, but worth every penny. The ship on which I sailed was a more modern tall ship, a two masted schooner as opposed to one of the great huge three masted ships that I would love to have gone on, but still, it was every bit as fun. We got to learn how to hoist the sails and actually help with the ropes, which was surprisingly challenging but really fun when the wind actually caught the sail and you could feel the ship's momentum when it did. From that point on, the engines were turned off and we were under the power of wind and sail on Lake Erie. It was exhilarating and it felt so natural to do be out on a tall ship, as if I was born to be there. Maybe it's genetic: my four times great grandfather on my mother's side was allegedly a British Naval Captain in the War of 1812. I've always felt a real affinity with water and the sea and ships. It's just such an amazing experience to be sailing on one of these great ships under power of wind and sail. All told, we were probably out about an hour and a half. As we were coming back, the captain of the ship steered us by the port so that we could take photos of the ships docked there. It was just incredibly cool, very exciting and a really fun day overall, a fantastic way to celebrate the 4th of July. I would have stayed for fireworks later on that night, but the skies kept looking as if they were threatening rain all day, and anyway, I was quite tired, so I decided to make my way home and catch the fireworks in downtown Kent over the weekend at the Kent Heritage Festival.
SETTLING IN
I am gradually settling in at my new apartment. My furnishings are all here, most of my things are here, but books are the last to arrive and are coming in fits and spurts. Most of my bookcases are on the third floor in the finished attic of this house, but it being summer, it's beastly hot up there right now and hard to get any work done. I am also in the process of packing for vacation and realizing that some of the things I will need are going to require extensive searching to find out where I put them when I moved. Back at my old place, I knew where everything was, but with so many of my things now in crates and in the attic, I can't recall where I packed things when I moved, creating difficulty in trying to find those things that I know that I both need and want. It's just a bit frustrating to be in the situation where you are not quite settled into new quarters, have your things still mostly packed and can't remember which things you put where. I mounted a frantic search last night for something I wanted to take on vaction that has, for years, been in my desk drawer in my living room. I searched the crate that my drawer things are still packed in and it was not there. Then I thought that maybe I had put it in the top drawer of my dresser, which has its own crate, but it was not there, either. I wracked my brain trying to remember where I might have packed it and could not come up with a location where I may have put it. After calming down and taking a break trying to find it, I vaguely remembered putting a bunch of smaller things in a red box that had been part of a gift basket of some kind that I had gotten, and that had gone into my one closet in my bedroom. So I searched my four crates that hold the contents of my closets, and voilá, there it was. Sighing with relief that it did not accidentally get discarded or misplaced somewhere else, I continued my packing until both heat and fatigue overcame me. That has been the most frustrating part of this move, not knowing where things that I want are located and worrying about accidentally throwing them away or outright misplacing them. I double and triple checked my old apartment once I was totally moved out to make sure that nothing got left behind, and nothing did. Everything was removed, packed and gotten out, but in some cases, I just can't recall where I put them, because the last week or two of living there were a frantic rush to get everything out by the eviction deadline and to the new house. We were successful, but in some cases, we just threw things in crates rather haphazardly and got them out as quickly as possible, so it's been tough locating things that I suddenly realize, hey, where is that, anyway? I am sure that things will eventually turn up, but for now, I am trying to create some semblance of normal here at my new place while trying to figure out where I put things that I need and want. I'll be very glad once all of my books are here. It feels weird to be looking at empty bookcases where once they were brimming with good books. In time, they'll arrive, get unpacked, put away and life will feel just a little more settled then. For now, I am hopeful that this new house will get to feeling more like home the longer I live here.
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