Hilton Head Island : hors de combat or the perils of moving

A dark and stormy night morning in the marsh.  Rain, lightning, thunder, and a tornado watch.

Carol and I have been solving problems sequentially as is our custom.  All of the stuff we brought with us has been stowed and we have been dealing with bureaucracies Federal and state, but this has caused me to neglect GANNET now for more than two months.  I had planned to spend more time with her next week, but that is not going to happen.  During the move from Carol’s apartment I did some heavy and awkward lifting which as I learned yesterday has resulted in a hernia that will require surgical repair.  I do not yet know when this will be done and it may even not require hospitalization.  The hernia itself is not painful, but left untreated could become worse which might be unpleasant at sea a month or two away from medical care.

Also yesterday we officially became South Carolinians.  

Carol drove us to the SCDMV office in Bluffton where she got a South Carolina driver’s license and I got an I.D. card and we both registered to vote.  

One man, one vote sounds good, but it doesn’t actually work that way.  Under our vestigial and absurd Electoral College system our votes will be as meaningless in South Carolina as they would have been in Illinois.  South Carolina’s delegates to the so-called college will vote for the Republican candidate.  Illinois’s for the Democratic.  And the election will be decided elsewhere with the winner possibly being the man with the fewer votes cast by the public nationwide. 

We’ll vote anyway.