The Adventure is Almost Beginning

We’ve made a list.

It includes all the boat chores that need to be done. We need to fabricate a fuel tank that holds more diesel than my car can carry. (Seven years ago we installed a “temporary” fuel tank.) Also on the list are things like finally installing the anchor windlass we bought 6 years ago. We bought the chain to go with it. Six years ago. It’s been sitting in Maggie and Charlie’s yacht rigging shop since then. They used to tease us about it. Now they use the chain’s container as a table.

I put in for two weeks vacation in July, and got approved. I also requested two weeks unpaid in August. I don’t think I’ll get the August time, so we’ll have to figure something out with that.

I grabbed a book from the library about where we will sail to. Todd read some of it last night and used Google pedometer to plot how far away our destination is. 405 miles.

Destination: Chipman Point Marina in Orwell, Vermont. We will sail east through Long Island Sound to New York City. We’ll have the masts taken down and head up the Hudson River and into Lake Champlain.

We’re at that exciting and overwhelming time at the start of the trip. There is a lot to do; a lot of phone calls to make, a lot of plywood to cut to build the prototype for our custom fuel tanks, a lot of time spent trying to figure out why the radar won’t work, and a lot of calls to Raytheon technical support.

There’s a lot to do at work to make sure my absence won’t stress out my co-workers and boss.

There are provisions to plan out and buy.

There are details to arrange, like sailing the boat to Essex, Connecticut the weekend before the trip, then taking the train back to Rhode Island.

Then we need to figure out how we’ll get back to RI from Vermont.

Spreadsheets have been made; measurements have been scrawled in notebooks.

And we're loving every minute of it.

Burnin' Rubber

Nemo's got this whole exercise thing worked out. 

Birthday Week: Day 4 and 5 and a Computer Virus

Birthday week has come to a close.  It breezed right by me, in a sugar rush haze of chocolate, cupcakes and Girl Scout Cookies.

On Thursday morning, the day of my actual birthday, my dear friend Charlie brought me a box of chocolates from the world's best chocolate shop, The Chocolate Delicacy.  The label on the box said "Calorie Consuming Anti Matter Chocolate," and then the other label had the atomic symbol on it.  Of course, the box had all my favorites in it, because Chocolate Dave knows what I like after having been diving with me and eating post dive chocolates with him.

Then I met Todd for Mexican for dinner.  He presented me with a group of papers stapled together with a riddle on it.  He'd bought me tickets to see Willy Porter again (swoon) in April.  But he won't be around to see the show with me.  So he hooked up my friend Dennis from work and his girlfriend Nikki to go with me. 

Then on day 5 he baked me a chocolate cake, and got me a device from Amazon that will measure how much electricity (and money) the lights and devices in our house use.  Which I think will be fascinating to play with.  And maybe it will help me to bitch less about our electric bill every month.   So, it'll bring peace to him as well. 

Also on day 5 I caught a computer virus, which was both good and bad.  It was bad because I didn't get the chance to work on the book, or the freelance project I'm working on.  But it was also good because it forced me to unplug for a weekend.  Todd just finished fixing it a bit ago.

Thank you, love, for an amazing birthday week, and for spoiling the hell out of me once again. 

Birthday Week: Day 3

On the third day of birthday week
My true love gave to me
A red velvet cuh-uh-up-cake.

And then this morning I ran 5 miles on the treadmill to keep up with the excess consumption of goodies.

Birthday Week: Day 2

Birthday week, day 2 brought two boxes of Caramel Delites.  My favorite.

And they're great with Twisted Tea.

Birthday Week: Day 1

It happens the same way, and pretty frequently too.  The doorbell at work rings.  One of my co-workers who sit near it answer it.  They groan and say, "Beej?  Really?  Again?"

Todd likes to send me things at work.  He sent me flowers last year on the first day of spring.  He sent me flowers this year on the first day of February.  I've gotten them for Groundhog's Day.  I've gotten them just because.

Yesterday an Edible Arrangement arrived--chocolate covered pears and apples.  The card read "Happy Birthday Week!"

The women rushed in to share, because I ALWAYS share in my bounty.  And then they rolled their eyes, because it's my birthday week.  I get presents when it's not even my birthday.  (Hell, he's gotten me presents on HIS birthday.  Figure that one out.)

Is it wrong that I was pushing for a birthday month?  Not necessarily for gifts, more for chores.  For example, "I shouldn't have to chase the dog to the neighbor's again.  It's my birthday month."  Eventhough I often call Todd "Excellent Husband," he's not buyin' into the whole birthday month thing.

Mistaken Identity, Again

It happened again on Friday. I walked into Subway to get lunch. I rarely go there for lunch, and normally pack a lunch to eat at my desk. Then I spend my lunch hour huddled over my laptop in my car to work on whatever I am writing.

“Hi Debbie,” the woman behind the counter said to me. The first time she said that to me, 4-5 times ago, I looked at her puzzled. This time I ignored her and placed my order.

“You’re not Debbie, are you?” she asked me, while she laid out my turkey and provolone on a 6” piece of wheat bread.

“No, I’m not.”

“I’ve asked you that before, haven’t I?”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “It’s OK.”

“You look just like this woman Debbie I know,” she told me, again. Debbie has some long and complicated Italian last name. (Yeah, because Polish last names are so much easier.) She told me the Italian name, again.

“Is she Italian?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Hmm… I am Polish,” I explained, hoping that it would help her to not think I look like Debbie.


But then, it must be that Polish Mediterranean skin of mine throwing her off

It Must Be my Mediterranean Skin

It was a slow day at Jacques Penney. That’s what I called JC Penney when I worked there when I was a teenager. I said it with a heavy faux French accent. We were all standing around, me and a few women I worked with who were also bored. These were older women. They had husbands and kids. They worked for Jacques on nights and weekends for extra money.

“Ugh, my skin is peeling from this sunburn,” one of them women scratched her shoulder blades against a display. I joked about taking one of the hands off a mannequin so scratching would be easier.

She looked me up and down. It was summer. I was 17 and tan. “You don’t burn, do you?”

“Nope,” I smiled back at her. “I think about the sun and I get tan.” Then I paused, looked up and to the right, as if deep in thought. Then I showed her my arm, “See, it’s already more tan.”

“Well, you’re Polish. You have that Mediterranean skin,” she replied, thoughtfully.

I conjured a map of Europe in my head. The summer before I had vacationed in Germany, Poland and Italy with my family. It took a long time to drive to Rome from Krakow, Poland.

Pop quiz, Internet! Do you know why it took a long time to drive from Krakow to Poland?

It’s because Poland is nowhere damn near the Mediterranean Sea, my friends.

Hijacking Greta

The other day I read in the Providence Journal about an old lady who received a phone call from her grandson. The grandson lived in Florida, and she hadn’t talked to him in awhile. He calls her up and said “Grandma, I’m in Canada and I got arrested. I need $2,000 to post bail.” The grandma told him that she’d call his parents, and he was all like “NO! They can’t ever find out, they’ll be so mad at me. Can we please keep this between us?” She wired the grandson some money to some location in Canada and then called him back on his cell to tell him that she’d wired the money.

Then her worst nightmare came true. The grandson said “What are you talking about? I’m not in Canada. I’m having lunch with my co-workers in Florida…” She’d been taken for a $2,000 ride, and of course that money’s gone.

Then just yesterday I got an email from my friend Greta. Apparently she was in the UK, been mugged at gunpoint, and needed some money so she could settle up with the hotel and fly home that night. She promised to pay me back when she got home.

The problem? Greta was not in the UK. Greta lives in Florida. Even though I don’t talk to Greta every day, I knew that she was not on a “last minute vacation to London.” Luckily I knew enough not to wire Greta the $2,500 she’d asked for. (Where the hell did she stay that she needs $2,500 to “settle the hotel bill” and how much caviar did she get from room service??)

Greta’s email account had been hacked. Her facebook page had been hacked too. The hacker posed as her and chatted to her friends online trying to get them to send money. Her friends knew that Greta was not in the UK. One even said “I am texting with Greta right now. You are not Greta. I just saw her this morning.” The hacker then disconnected from the chat and retreated. Greta’s friends know better, and have not given the hacker a dime.

Internet, if you get an email or a phone call about a friend of yours that is in trouble please verify it before you act. One little phone call to the grandson’s cell phone would have saved the grandma $2,000.

The Boobie Dry Cleaner

The way she leaned against the counter, it pushed her boobs into display even more. That’s the thing I never liked about going into that dry cleaner, was this young woman behind the counter. She was pretty enough, but she shoved her big ol hooters up and out of her shirt on display. I wonder if she ever had the chance to know what eye contact looked like.


I went to that dry cleaner every other week while I had the dive shop. It was on the way, and was the last one nearby that I hadn’t yet boycotted for some ridiculous reason. I did that a lot back then. I had a mental list of the dry cleaners I didn’t want to ever set foot in again, and now I cannot remember the reason for any of them. Over the time I’d been going to the “Boobie Dry Cleaner,” as I’d begun calling it, I became friendly with Kayla, the one with the boobs.

I went in one night on my way home from the shop. Kayla didn’t smile. Her boobs stood at attention, but she didn’t smile like she usually did.

“Hey, how are you?” I asked.

“My boyfriend and I just broke up,” she sighed.

“Oh no! How long have you been together?” I asked. She told me it had been a few weeks. I tried to smile sympathetically, but couldn’t seem to muster one up for a 20 year old girl who had broken up with her weeks-long boyfriend.

She went on to tell me that she had such a great time with him. He was older; I gathered that he was at least in his thirties or maybe forties. He took her to all the “right” clubs. He bought her jewelry. And now she’d need to find another guy to do all those things for her. It was catastrophic.

I couldn’t resist. I asked her why she needed all that in her life. What was so great about going to the “right” clubs if she couldn’t get along with the guy who brought her there? She looked at me with a puzzled look on her face.

“The way I see it,” I paused to choose my words carefully. “If you really like a guy then it doesn’t matter where you guys go together. No matter where you go, it will always be fun.”

She considered for a moment while I told her about the dates that Todd and I had been on when we were first together. He was 20, I was 23. We were flat broke and our idea of a date was cooking dinner together in my apartment. There was a supermarket a few blocks away. We’d walk there and spend Saturday afternoon wandering the aisles, picking out the ingredients and laughing. He really knew how to make me laugh, too. I have a very vivid memory of him speaking French to a cantaloupe. I have no idea what he said to it, but it was funny as hell as he tapped the top of it and held it to his ear. It’s those memories that make me smile still, 13 years later.

Kayla raised her eyebrows at me incredulously. “And you married him after that?”