I just got an E-mail from Daniel, Andrée and Sonia (hi, guys!), I guess Mom (hi Mom!) forwarded them the blog adress... reminded me that it's been awhile since I updated this.

Started to e-mail them back, realized I may as well turn the e-mail into a blog entry. It took me a while... in the meanwhile Mom e-mailed, too...

... and, on Feb 21, at 4:45, Heather became a mom!

Everyone, meet Luca.


Is it me, or is that kid particularily good looking for a newborn?


Okay, having a really hard time with the pictures to this post. I'll try posting them as a seperate entry or entries, later.

Ironically, my e-mail to Daniel started off with...

... I really need to get back to that thing sometime. But trying to upload pictures takes forever (and often fails) because the internet's off a cellular signal.

Anyhow.

Fire Island Pines is totally surreal. There's no way I can think of that it's "kinda like" anyplace else I can think of.

In the summer, it's the summer beach resort community for the jet-set multimillionaires of the gay world. Other than a couple of dinner parties, I haven't seen that side of it much - after all, I'm here in the middle of winter, none of those folks are around.

The guys I'm working for aren't like that - they all work for a living (Jon's an estate lawyer; Tim's a lawyer, too, I think corporate mostly; Sean's area manager for a chain of funeral homes). Near as I can tell, they're just really successful at what they do. And buying houses is what they do with their money - instead of stocks or whatever. They've bought & sold 12 houses in 12 years, always at a profit... and now they've bought this place.

So, yeah - in the summer, the pines is a really fancy gay resort town (I'm going to post some links eventually). In the winter, it's a whole other scene.

The days are full of construction sounds, people driving by on their weird little boardwalk vehicules (I gotta get a pictures of those...), small-town guys busy doing their job. All the construction and maintenance work happens in winter. None of those guys live here, they drive down the beach, or use their powerboat, to get here every day. Nice commute, eh?

At 4 pm, everybody leaves again.

Just to give an idea: the town has about 800 houses in it; according to the local water authority, on a July weekend, there are 10,000 people staying here. Right now, there's 11 people staying in 9 houses.

After 4pm, it's a ghost town. It's kinda weird walking through town in the evening, but it's pretty cool, too. It'll be a shock to see it fill up with people in the spring...

The town's a weird mix of opulence and half-assed - some of the houses are absolute mansions - but the boardwalks are full of popped nails, rotted boards, etc, and they lean crookedly in places. Or take this house: it has a pool, two hot-tubs, a jacuzzi, $20,000's worth of refrigerators... but the kitchen floor tile doesn't extend under the stove, the outdoor lighting (line voltage) is either sitting in the dirt or stapled to the deck framing, there's wire junctions out there without even a box...

So there's a weird conflict there, between the wealth and the shoddiness, a lot of the time. Jon wants to be the exception, take this from a 3-season house to a truly winterized home.

The Bay looks like AMAZING sailing - and I'm told it's even better (less choppy) in the summer winds.

... update: it looked amazing a week ago, when I started writing. Today, it looked like this.

When I came this fall, I noticed some boats moored nearby, and an empty mooring about 20 feet from this property. The moorings sat there untill november, when someone removed them for winter - all except the one right in front of the house. I asked around, learned that the moorings belong to the houses... and Jon says I can keep a boat here if I want.

I may have already found my $500 boat (http://www.sailboatlistings.com/view/3775)

...this is where the skills I learned with Aben are going to be useful, I expect.

The force 5's are a pretty cool boat - the hull is like a cross between a laser and a sunfish in shape - the size & weight of a laser, but 25 sq ft more sail. But I can't find my way to seeing it untill the ferries run more regularly, in mid-march. And for the water to warm up, so I can sail it back from Amityville... a cheap boat is great, but it ain't worth risking hypothermia over, and a drysuit costs more than the boat.

But then some days, I look at the Bay and I think, "I oughta buy a really thick wetsuit and go get the boat right now... maybe they'll take a low offer just to clear the yard..." somebody just got a new 6/5/4 hooded for $145 ...

Other days, I look at the mooring go up & down 6 feet, and I'm really glad that I don't have even $500 worth of boat depending on it...



Anyhow, even if it sells before I get to it, with the amount of sailing in Long Island, I'm sure I'll find something... So while I wasn't planning to be out here so much over the summer, I'll probably be out a fair bit.

Still, I think it will be weird to see 10,000 maniacs roaming this town...



... after evening walks on a deserted island by myself all winter.