School Finished

We finished our quarantine in time to spend one final week on the school, Every Child Counts, that All Hands has been working on all year. They built four buildings and we mostly helped finish the last one. It was really cool seeing everything come together. We are a lucky cohort because we are getting […]

Deck finished!

Super fun finishing the deck railing this week. We had to manufacture a bunch more spindles, which involved not only the miter saw but also the table saw. The table saw was only scary before we were taught how it worked, something that could be said about a lot of things in life I suppose. […]

Beaches and building

Went to the most amazing teal Caribbean beach on Sunday. The water was totally clear and the sand was white. Tried to snorkel but not much to see, just water and sand. Monday we went back to work and I opted to do something besides paint. The last two days I’ve been putting together deck […]

Day off adventures

Saturday mornings we learn about how All Hands and Hearts projects are conceived of and managed, which was actually quite interesting, and then we had the afternoon off. First we drove out to a “blue hole”—a natural super deep swimming hole. The first part of the drive was quite sad, as it was through miles […]

Dragonflies

Lucky enough to chance on the dragonfly migration the other day! Hundreds of thousands (millions?) of dragonflies all pointed due south, zipping down the coast. Very cool. Very hard to photograph. But over the jungly trees on our dunes many of them had nipped off for a break and a snack; they were zipping over […]

Ceramics and transcriptions

I’ve been keeping busy! Sort of. Too busy to write blog posts, apparently, or not busy enough to have anything in particular to write about? Maybe both. Anyway I have been doing lots of novel writing, and also some working and some day drinking with friends, and lots of going to the gym and yoga, […]

Hurricane Vacation

Record-setting monster hurricane Dorian almost paid us a visit! The original forecast was to hit basically exactly where we live as a 4, which would undoubtedly have been the end of our house (or at least of our roof and therefore all of our things, as the landlord hasn’t repaired the roof after the last […]

Seeing friends

I’ve been really lucky the last couple weeks in having two of my best friends come to visit me. I was afraid that I’d be super grumpy and tired and not remember how to socialize, but I’m down to 15mgs of prednisone and the grumpy tiredness was minimal. After a while I felt like I […]

Red tide and voting

We’ve been having an especially bad red tide the last week here in Florida, which means all the fish are dead and going outside makes you cough. What sort of Blade Runner-esque future world is this anyway? Florida has been having especially toxic algae blooms like this in the last few years thanks to ever-increasing […]

The Daily Beach

I’m so lucky to be able to spend time in Florida to heal! There couldn’t be a better place than a warm climate, right near the beach. Getting plenty of vitamin D is important for balancing your immune system and the AIP emphasizes fifteen minutes a day of sunshine. I also think it’s important to […]