Today [10]

I have been walking Gracie as usual to-day.

My Dad is going to Brighton Hospital tomorrow afternoon to have an operation to do with his kidneys. Mum is going with him and staying in Brighton. All being well he should be out and back home sometime on Tuesday. I have to stay here and look after Gracie whilst this is happening. I will keep you updated. Also once he has this operation he should feel better than he does now.

Today I installed Windows 8 Pro. :)

Dinesh said:

Today I installed Windows 8 Pro. :)

Have fun playing around with your new installation!

You have installed it earlier in the new laptop, Dinesh? :)

I thought yours came with it Dinesh, so I'm enjoying it but I still have more to do with it before it's as I want it. Fun times ahead.

Thanks LittleJay.
Arc, I had installed it earlier but due to lack of video driver support for Windows 8 x64, I switched back to Windows 7. 'I finally found the driver so installed Win8 again.

Since two days back home after my trip to my native Finland, to say Farewell to my dear mother.

The trip was emotionally difficult as if I had heavy weights on my shoulders. Even more difficult because the health situation of my ailing mother-in-law forced Angie to stay home. Originally we had planned to cross the Baltic Sea together (we needed to take so much stuff back from Finland we had to go with car and ferry instead of flying).

Angie's mother's situation caused first change in plans. I drove to ferry and crossed Baltic Sea alone, Angie was supposed to fly Saturday morning to funeral and Sunday back, leaving me to return alone with car. Then two days prior to the funeral Mutti's (German nick for mother, meaning here my mother-in-law) situation turned worse and in a "phone conference" we decided it was better Angie stayed by her mother, so I was representing our family alone.

The most difficult, heaviest duty of my life, carrying my mother from the church to the cemetery, accompanied by my sister:

A detail from the memorial:

I loved the way my sister had made this. Two photos showing my mother with her last great-grandson, son of the oldest son of my sister and the other picture showing mother in her sea scouts uniform, wooden spoon in front symbolizing the countless camps she volunteered as a camp cook. Flag of Finland on right, on left the coat of arms of region of Karelia where mother was born, the part of Finland we lost for Russians in last world war. And, of course, some of the several hundreds of Angels my mother collected.

If you are not a seafare enthusiast you can stop reading now .

Although it was quite difficult for me to be on the road alone without Angie, I enjoyed my both Baltic Sea crossings. About 30 hours from Lübeck Germany to Helsinki Finland, the same on my way back home. As a sailing / seafare / ship geek, I especially enjoy doing these trips on cargo ships or as now on so called RoRo-ships. They are mainly for transporting trucks, trailers and containers over the Baltic but can also take about 30 cars and passengers in them, so total passenger capacity including truck drivers is about 300 passengers.

A photo of aft deck I took on my way up north to Finland to explain a bit more. You can clearly see tightly loaded trailers, mostly fruits and vegetables from Southern Europe on their way to supermarkets in Finland:

These RoRo ferries have a total of about 4.5 kilometers, a bit under 3 miles long lanes for trucks and / or trailers. When loaded, one truck-trailer combo needs about 25 meters, so the ship can take about 180 trucks with a trailer. Additionally, as I mentioned, about 30 cars or vans. Both ferries I sailed this time were sisters. Length 218 meters (716 feet), breath 31 meters (102 feet), depth 7 meters (23 feet), 42,923 gross register metric tons, top speed 25 knots.

A photo of a 1:150 model I found on port terminal shows the idea of RoRo ship better than my words:

Bridge:

A view from my table in dining room on my way up to Finland:

Kari

Not too sure what to say Kari, except my sincere condolences. I lost my mother when I was just 17 years of age so I know how upsetting it is.

Hope you are ok

Paul.