March 29: Epilogue

 

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Since getting home on March 21, we have been busy catching up on deferred tasks and re-engaging with family and friends. 

While we have manual overrides on all critical systems, such as thermostats and the whole-house water shutoff, normally we control them via apps on our phones. On February 23, while Nieuw Amsterdam was in Hawaii, the Blizzard of 2026 damaged our wi-fi service, severing access to devices controlled by the apps. They remained offline for the duration of the trip. 

At 11:00 PM, the night we got home, I found myself in the basement trying to restore internet service. The storm had necessitated replacing the wire from the street, and an electrician for a blown circuit. The work having been done, theoretically, wi-fi should have been working, but it hadn't gotten that memo. Fortunately, the fix was a simple issue on my side of the modem (the technician had not reconnected it to my router), so within 15 minutes, the house was back online and all the devices accessible through their app.

The tip of the iceberg on post-storm tree work.

The next morning, we got our first look at the outdoor damage the Blizzard of 2026 had wrought. Even though our tree company had already been there to remove the bigger fallen limbs, the ground was littered with smaller ones. A number of trees that lost sizeable limbs are going to need work. Nevertheless, we got off lightly compared to some people in town. Our dental hygienist had a tree drop on her home, puncturing the roof.

There was a wire hanging down from the cable that supports the wires running from the street pole to the side of our house. It was a blizzard casualty. We had originally worried that it was electrical power or internet, but it turned out to be an unused New England Telephone phone line. This posed a problem since NET had gone out of business in 1984. In theory, its successor should address the problem, but getting them to do so would likely be a Herculean effort. Fortunately, when my electrician came by on Thursday to service the generator, he assured me the wire had no power and could be cut down using a pruning pole. Thankfully, the wire is well away from the electrical wires.

The day after we got home, Pam patiently went through the stacks of mail, winnowing out the pieces that warranted attention. I had received a USPS Informed Delivery email every day, so we knew to look for some particularly important pieces. One that had been on my mind since late February was an IRS letter. Not knowing what to expect, I opened it. The letter informed me that the IRS needed more time to research a question, unbeknownst to me, that my accountant had submitted. Boring!

Since we shipped our big bags, unpacking our carry-ons and backpacks was easy. The arrival of the shipped bags on Friday posed a much larger unpacking challenge. Rather than struggling to get them upstairs while full, we set up an unpacking center in the garage.

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Both during the trip and while unpacking, we edit travel lists, adding things we would have liked to have and reconsidering things we did not use. Several snorkeling items made their way onto my Christmas and birthday lists.

Over the years, my list has become intimidatingly long. The first thing I do when preparing for a trip is make a copy of the list and then delete all the items I know I will not need. The much shorter list then becomes a guide that makes packing go faster and gives me more assurance that I am taking what I need. How all the other stuff sneaks into my suitcase is a mystery to me.

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Here ends the blog of this trip. 

As I have done for every trip since 2011, next, the blog will become a coffee table book.

The blog is currently in reverse chronological order because it automatically places the newest post first. The bookmaker I use is PixxiBook. It puts the entries in proper chronological order.

Once the book is on its way to the printer, I will manually do the same to the blog so that it can be read front-to-back, before marking this year's entire travel blog project as done.

As for future blogs, who knows, but we've already booked cruises for 2027 and 2028, so...