a room with a view

I may not enjoy sitting all day in front of a computer, but I can't complain about the view:

The  tourists (and all their lovely Hawaii prints and goofy hats) are often a part of this view. They are usually seen doing the Titanic move at the bow of this ship, the Medea, which happens to be my favorite boat here.

The Medea in the 1930s, courtesy of hnsa.org

 It was built in 1904 in Scotland, and in only 30 days, as a family fun boat for the family of William Macalister. (Although apparently not so fun for his wife, who was prone to seasickness: she would get off the boat before they went around the cape, take a carriage across land, and join them on the other side.)

Later on, the Medea made its way around to several militaries and was involved in both World War I and World War II. And now, here it is over a hundred years later, looking as beautiful as ever in San Diego.

A painting of Medea by Richard de Rosset

The back portion of the deck. Mostly everything is wood (teak and oak) except the hull which is steel. It was a steam yacht until the museum converted it to diesel, and they still take it out for a sail like they did today.

The little parlor. There is also a nice dining room.

 Other than the nice view of the boat and harbor, every few minutes a plane comes in for landing right across the horizon, just barely above the buildings. This keeps me strangely occupied as well. I love to see which Southwest Airlines paint job I can check off my list. So far, this has been my favorite:

tea (or coffee) time!

My current museum project is now a large collection of cups and saucers which happen to be from ship companies that made their way through the Panama Canal about 25 to 35 years ago.

These housewares were given as gifts or souvenirs to a captain that had piloted large cargo boats through the canal, and (as it tends to go) were donated to the museum by his wife.

  The cups and saucers are mostly "hotelware" or "restaurantware", so they're sturdy ceramic and many look similar to this, which came from the company of the boat pictured above, N.Y.K Line in Japan:

Most of the logos do not have writing though, so it's my job to figure out where they come from. So far, I've found cups & saucers from Japan, Norway, the Peruvian Navy, England, Chile, and Russia. And I'm only halfway through the collection! Even with so much helpful information on the internet, it sometimes still takes a lot of effort to find what I'm looking for, and sometimes I never do. Other times I have to take a chance with Googling a description such as "red moose head with a B", and then I get lucky and find that it's a Russian ceramic company. And then at times I get sidetracked with other finds, such as these adorable ceramics from Norwegian companies, Porsgrund and Figgjo, that also produced the shipping company cups & saucers, although these are much more fun:

(I have a skirt that is nearly identical to this pattern)