Splash!

Ladies and gentlemen! Behold! Sabine is in the water. She went in today, and she is not leaking. She happily sits at the dock, and it's likely that tomorrow we'll take her to her summer home, a mooring in Greenwich Cove, RI.

This is Sabine in the slings on the travel lift. This bit of machinery is the dream of every man, as it is controlled by a remote control. They lower the boat, which is held in place by the slings, into the water. Then when the boat is all the way in the water they pull the slings out and the boat is left floating. In the last 10 years I've seen the boats we've owned launched with a travel lift at least 10 times, and it never ceases to amaze me.


This little propeller moves the whole boat, that is when the sails aren't doing it.

This is the fix that the fabulous men of Brewer's Marina in Cowesett did. You can see the stern tube toward the top of the picture, in the center. Then they poured fiberglass resin over the tube to seal it in there. In a boat you have to be creative with your space. All this stuff, the stern tube, the black exhaust tube at the bottom of the picture and whatever else is in there that I cannot identify with words other than "thingy" all sits under the bed that Todd and I sleep on. Between the stern tube and the bed is a compartment that holds six batteries as well--these batteries are what makes cold beer in the fridge, lights at night, and running water when we want to brush our teeth.

The shiny substance in this picture is ocean. Ocean beneath the boat. Not in the boat, beneath the boat--this distinction didn't exist last summer.

Sabine at her temporary slip.

All we need to do now is finish cleaning the interior, flush the antifreeze out of the water system, change the oil in the engine, and move to our mooring.

Can I get a hell yeah?

No, No and Hell No

Todd and I have been DVRing this show called “Ice Road Truckers,” have you guys seen this show? I think it’s on the History Channel, or the Discovery Channel maybe? Anyway, it’s about these 18-wheeler truckers who drive these trucks over roads that are made of ice. See, in the northern Canada winters the rivers, lakes and the Arctic Ocean all freeze solid enough so that they could drive these heavy trucks with these massively heavy loads on them in order to bring supplies to the mines and drilling rigs located way north in Canada.

Of course, the camera crew takes pictures form under the ice of the trucks riding over the roads that are constructed of solid ice. And of course the ice will give slightly under the weight of the truck and crack. And of course the sound crew will dub in the sound of ice cracking every so often, you know, just to antagonize me.

Let me tell you, this show stresses me out. Normally I do not get stressed out about watching something on TV. When this show is on, I bite my fingernails down to nubs—which is just about impossible, because I have lousy looking fingernails that are already bitten down to nothing as it is. I am just waiting for one of the trucks to be riding along on the ice and then KER-SPLASH! through the ice it goes, and it’s to the point where I watch the show between the fingers that cover my eyes. That is, when the tips of my fingers aren’t in my mouth getting gnawed off. The narrator of the show always has to say something to the effect of “The water under the ice is 9,000 feet deep, and the temperature of the water is 0 degrees Kelvin, which means that the driver of this big rig will suffer hypothermia and die in roughly 0.00000001 seconds once he falls through the ice. And his body will never be recovered.” Oh, great. Crap, now my fingernails are bleeding.

And what’s more? These Canadian truckers are the most relentlessly cheerful people I’ve ever seen on TV. They say things like “It’s 900 below zero out here, a bit chilly, eh?” with huge smiles on their faces and they’re walking around in just a fleece vest over a T-shirt as they are chipping ice off of the tires on the truck. “I hafta drive to the Arctic Circle today to carry a load that weighs 5 billion pounds, eh? I hope the ice will hold me, eh?” Are you kidding me?

Yet, somehow I still tune in and watch. It’s like watching a train wreck, only more stressful.

A Shout Out to Zeke

I absolutely love that the town I live in has a place called Zeke's Bridge.


Now, I don't know who Zeke was, but he must have been a nice guy if they named this beautiful spot after him. Aaaahhhh!

Even though I don't know Zeke, I am thankful to him because it was his bridge that put this smile on my labrador's face.

I've never seen Griffen happier than when he's in the water. Look at the gleam in his eyes, the smile on his lips, the overall look of contentment. Now, if he was swimming in gravy this would be a labrador fantasy come true. For now, he'll settle for the lake.

He is a coiled spring, ready to pounce.

Nemo, however, is not quite convinced that in the water is the coolest place to be when you're a dog. We threw a rock in, trying to convince him to go in after it. No dice. He throws a casual look over his shoulder, as if to say "You think I am going in there? For a rock? I don't think so. Not for a rock. For a steak bone, maybe. Maybe. We could try it, you know, just in case."

Griffen, however, will chase anything that splashes within a mile radius of where he swims.

He is so intently focused on whatever Todd was going to throw into the water. If he manages to lose track of the object thrown in the water, he will swim in concentric circles until he finds it.

You can't see it, but Todd has a stick in his hand. "Ba-ROOOOO!" says Nemo, which is beagle for "Oh would you throw it already?? I am dyin' over here!"

Thanks Zeke. We love your bridge.

I’m New Here

Over the course of my career I’ve worked for many different companies. All of these companies were different, but there’s one thing each of these companies has in common. Everyone sitting in the cubicles and offices has a first day. First days are great in that you can claim ignorance about any question you are asked “I am not sure about that, you see, it’s my first day working here…”

It constantly amazes me how first days differ from company to company. I remember when I started my first job out of college. On my first day I was taken out to lunch by my co-workers, I was shown around all day long, and I got to know the people that I ended up working with for the next year and a half. It was such a welcoming atmosphere and in my mind it set the expectation for how first days in the corporate world are supposed to go. At my second job I didn’t pack a lunch because I was 23 and I assumed that I’d have the same sort of reception as I’d had at my first job. Boy was I wrong; in fact I don’t recall ever being taken to lunch again on my first day at any other job I’ve held.

But it’s not just the social interaction that takes place on first days that is different from company to company. It’s the actual orchestration of the first day. Will I go on a new hire orientation on my first day? Will my office supplies be laid out on my desk when I get there, next to the stack of paperwork I need to fill in as a new hire? Will I be handed an overstuffed file folder with all the relevant information of my first project and be told “have at it”? Will I be left alone while everyone else rushes through their day because they don’t have time to say hello to me, let alone train me? Everywhere I have worked has done it a bit differently, and I am always thankful to see that some thought had been put into my arrival on my first day.

In the late 90’s I worked for a series of dot.coms in the Boston area and I vividly remember my first day at an online technology news magazine where I worked for two years. I was the first person to be hired in that department by a man who clearly did not put any thought to the fact that he’d have a new hire starting. My boss said “Here’s your office, there’s the ladies room, have a good day.” Then he turned and headed for his own office. That was it. There was no “Hey, why don’t you go to this file on the server and familiarize yourself with this project I am going to have you work on.” There was no “Hey, take a look at this site and let me know what you would propose to make the user experience work better.” All I got was “Here’s your office, have a good day.” At least he showed me my desk and didn’t just leave me in the lobby—I mean, really, can I complain?

I sat in my office for an hour or so, thinking he’d come back to talk to me about my job. So I surfed the company’s web site and got more familiar with it. I roamed the hallways and introduced myself to people who weren’t so engrossed in their day that they looked up to say hello to me. I lurked outside my boss’s office while he endlessly droned on the phone, never beckoning me to come in and wait or never holding his hand over the receiver to say “I’ll come to your office in a bit and we’ll talk.”

I called Todd, to give him my new work phone number and he asked, “How’s your first day going?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “It’s weird. My boss just kinda left me in here with nothing to do. I am looking at the train schedule in my purse trying to decide if I should leave here right at 5 to catch the 5:40 train, or should I wait and catch the 6:15? I am so bored!”

“I think you should wait for the later train, it will make a better impression,” he suggested. I stared longingly at the pencil on my desk, wanting to stab myself in the eye with it rather than stay for a minute longer than I had to.

I waited around the office, and my boss finally came and talked to me at 5:30 or so. He didn’t mention leaving me alone for the entire day. He didn’t mention any plans for working with me the next day. He asked me how my day was.

“Well, I think that tomorrow I would like to sit with you so I can get my hands on my first project,” I replied with what I hoped would be a display of my motivation. Instead it probably came out like “I am bored out of my fricken skull, will you please give me something to do or I am going to break the window and jump out of it merely for something that would occupy my time for a few hours.”

The next day came and went just like the first. Before I knew it a month went by, then another. I was given a project, but it was so slow going I didn’t have enough work to occupy me. The boss hired another employee to work in the same capacity I’d been hired for, but he worked on different projects. At the time I had no idea that this guy was as bored as I was. We both took great efforts to look busy, probably afraid that the other would pull the job out from under us. After working there for about six months, our department was being disbanded and we needed to find jobs in other departments. The company was big enough that this was possible. Finally this co-worker and I had lunch one day, before we both went our separate ways in the company, and we laughed about how bored we’d been, how ignored by the boss we’d felt, and how pressured we’d felt to maintain this semblance of being busy. At least he had an office where his back wasn’t to the door so he could look busy on his computer when he was really surfing and shopping online. I sat in a cube, and constantly checked my back when I was surfing for non-work-related items online.

Most of my days spent at that company were spent like my first day there—bored and trying not to look bored. I’ve since learned that how I spend my first day on a job will set the tone for how the rest of my tenure there will go. At my first day I socialized, and I spend my time there socializing with some of the nicest people I’d ever met and some first days had been spent going over the company's systems and policies, which sets the tone for how my work will be completed.

So, it is true—first impressions are almost always the correct ones.

Cracked

I had mentioned before about how Sabine is sinking, how we’ve been steadily taking on water and how it’s been getting worse and worse over the years. Over the years we’ve been trying to isolate the problem, and still had the bilge fill with water over and over, and we pumped hundreds, maybe thousands, of gallons of water out of the boat in the 6 years that we’ve had this boat.

At a party last month, our friend Cap’n Paul told us to fill the bilge with water from the hose and see where it leaks out, with the logic that if it’s getting in it’s got to get out. Before committing the counter-intuitive act of filling out boat with water there was one spot we hadn’t checked—the propeller shaft.

The prop shaft connects the inboard engine to the propeller—to do that it resides in a tube that penetrates the hull called the stern tube. The stern tube’s point of penetration through the hull is higher than where we would have filled the boat with water, so it is entirely likely that we would not have seen the leak if we filled the boat with water as water only runs downhill. On a lark we asked the mechanics at the boat yard to pull out the prop and shaft and check it out. When they did that last week they saw that the stern tube is literally crumbled into pieces.

At the moment the guys at the yard are ripping out the old stern tube and replacing it with a new one. If all goes well the work will be done by the end of the week and she’ll be in the water again for the weekend. Hopefully this weekend I’ll be aboard cleaning in preparation for the 4th of July, and putting all of our cushions aboard while Todd is in the engine compartment changing the oil and our sailing season will be salvaged after all.

Lunchtime Surprise

I looked down at lunch today and realized that I was wearing someone else's pants.

No kidding.

The dry cleaner gave me someone else's pants and this morning I just put them on no questions asked.

I miss my pants.

This One Goes to Eleven

Todd,

It’s been eleven years since we kissed for the first time. After that kiss, I began to say things like “My boyfriend Todd and I…” and I would say “Yes, I do have a boyfriend,” when people asked.

In the years since that kiss, you’ve gone through a variety of titles. For three years you were my boyfriend, for another three years you were my fiancé, and soon it will be five years since I’ve been calling you my husband.

But there are a few other distinctions that have stuck to you over the whole of the eleven years.

Best friend.

Secret keeper.

Nurturer.

Heat source.

Dive buddy.

Love of my life.

Thank you for all that you are and all that you’ve added to my life. Thank you for all that I am because of you.

And most of all, thank you for taking this picture and not getting annoyed at me for posting it on the Internet.

I love you,

Beej

Little Debbie Can Suck It

My blog pal, the Taoist Biker, got me thinking about childhood. His wife brought home some Little Debbie snack cakes, and TB was instantly returned to the time when he was young and his mom used to bring Little Debbie home to play. Then I got to thinking about the things my mom used to make or bring home when I was a kid. It really is amazing how the taste, the smells, the textures bring me back to being a little kid.

My Mom, as I may have mentioned, emigrated to the US from Poland in 1961. She used to tell me stories about growing up on a farm in post-war Poland. She told me stories about how she and her classmates at school would line up to get a daily dose of fish oil when meat was scarce. She milked the cows, she chopped the wood (and subsequently took the butt end of the axe to her own forehead at age 9), and she harvested the crops with her brothers and sisters. My grandfather would store meat in snowmen in the winter because there was no refrigeration in their home.

Usually she would tell these stories when I complained about the lack of Hostess, Little Debbie and Oscar Meyer products in the house. My cousins had these foods, but we didn’t often have them in our house. The boys who lived next door snacked on Slim Jims while we snacked on homemade kielbasa that was smoked in my Grandfather’s basement smokehouse. Hot dogs were bought from the deli case, burgers were made of ground beef and contained hunks of onion instead of the preformed burger patties, and we didn’t eat Oscar Meyer bologna, we ate Gem Polish Loaf from the deli case instead. Of course Mom would tell me how they didn’t have a deli in Poland, and how I should be glad I wasn’t slaughtering the cow, roasting it and cutting it up myself just to have a sandwich.

When I was in kindergarten Mom brought in paczki (pronounced PUNCH-key) for my birthday. Paczki are the Polish equivalent to the donut, only it’s spherical, is filled with marmalade, and weighs about a metric ton when ingested and mixed with saliva. Most of the other moms at Warehouse Point School would bring in clever looking cupcakes baked into an ice cream cone, or sugar cookies cut into this shape or that depending on the season. Of course, kindergarten me was completely mortified at the mound of paczki she brought in. She carried them in a gigantic white enamel bowl that she would use to kneed dough. This bowl was something you’d see on the set of M*A*S*H and the enamel was faded from overuse. The pile of paczki was barely contained by this bowl, so she covered the pile with a dish towel to keep any paczki with ideas of escape from hopping out, rolling down the hall and out the doors to the freedom of the playground. Just the week before Mom brought in the paczki, Mrs. Sheldon brought in her sugar cookies, in the shape of letters of the first name of every kid in the class. I ate my “B” shaped sugar cookies, which were brought in on a platter covered in saran wrap and not in a stainless steel bowl covered in a towel. Yet, my Mom proudly held out this bowl, proclaiming that the paczki would be the best thing Mrs. Burg’s kindergarten class would ever eat.

There are certain things that instantly bring back memories of my Mom when I was a little kid. The smell of cinnamon bread brings me back to when Mom would bake it from scratch, and the loaves cooled lined up on the counter. Her cinnamon bread was such a treat, and she would even make it for me when I’d go home from college for the weekend. I’ve since made cinnamon bread, and am instantly reminded of Mom kneeding dough, and giving me little lumps of it to play with.

A few summers ago one of my customers at the dive shop, a Polish man, brought me some blueberry pierogi (pyeh-RUG-ee), which are kind of like ravioli, but are half-moon shaped. That night I ate them and tears streamed down my cheeks as I remembered Mom making my favorite, blueberry pierogi, on a summer day. The chewiness of the dough, the tartness and sweetness of the blueberry, the sour cream and sugar I mixed and put on top melting in the warmth of the pierogi, stained purple from the hot blueberry filling oozing out from where I just cut into the dough with the side of my fork. Blueberry pierogi aren’t just a food, they are an experience to be had—especially when your mom makes them because she knows they are your favorite. I ate the pierogi that some other Polish mother made and I was instantly transported to childhood, when Mom said “If you go outside and pick the blueberries, I will make you pierogi tonight.” And I grabbed the colander and raced out to our bushes and sat in the sun frantically plucking the berries off the bush, an equal number of berries landing on the bowl as were stuffed into my mouth.

Little Debbie and Oscar Meyer still are not staples in my home. I tried a Little Debbie snack cake not long ago and was largely unsatisfied with it as I felt like all I could taste were the chemicals that Debbie uses to make her cakes last for years on the shelves. But I have blueberry bushes that I cannot wait to pick this summer, and my sisters have Mom’s pierogi recipe.

And now that I think about it, now I would give up all the “B” shaped sugar cookies in the world for one of Mom’s paczki.

And It’s Not Even Groundhog Day

When Todd and I first started going out (11 years ago this Friday, by the way) he had this thing about showing up to where I work with flowers for me and treats for my co-workers—bagels, cookies, or some other yummy thing to eat. My co-workers loved seeing his face in the office, because apparently they were all starving. He is also notorious for sending me flowers to where I work on days like Groundhog Day.

Yesterday, just before quitting time, Todd showed up at my new job with a humongous bouquet of flowers, and a rather impressive mountain of chocolate from Chocolate Dave’s shop. I work with mostly women, so of course they all came out from their desks to check out the spread.

“What’s the occasion?” my boss asked.

“It’s Tuesday!” Todd replied

“No, seriously…” someone else began.

“What? It’s not Tuesday?” Todd smiled, mischievously.

I shared my chocolate, and showed Todd around my new workplace, and then we left for the day. We walked out together, me smiling from ear to ear with my feet barely touching the ground.

This morning my boss asked me “OK, seriously. What was the occasion yesterday?”

“Like the man said, it was Tuesday,” I replied with a big smile.

“You have got to hold onto that one,” she declared.

Oh, I will. I am the luckiest woman alive.

Oh, and Another "Get This!" Post

Remember when I got summoned for jury duty for the week after I started my new job?

Remember the angst I felt when I couldn't get a postponement?

Remember how much I felt like a dork about having to approach new employer and say "Uh, yeah, I know I just started here, but I'm gonna need a day off so I can go to jury duty 1 week and a day after starting here"?

Well, I got a letter from the court yesterday which talked about how they like people who sue to not act like a bunch of crybabies and settle their differences without a judge having to settle them on their behalf. As luck would have it, the people who were suing or getting sued managed to settle out of the court, and the need to have me make the decision for them no longer exists. No jury duty for me. No missing work in my second week to resolve a dispute between this pair of crybabies.

What's more is that if this case was cancelled, that means I am put back into the pool for another random selection--which means I could get called on a more interesting case. My fantasy of being the secretive juror has been restored and now I can once again daydream about putting away some insanely bad criminal, or getting the chance to see someone who is in the witness protection program, or getting to passionately argue with another juror during deliberation about why their vote is wrong.

I can't wait.