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.

So, Get This

Remember how I was talking about the woman at the gym who was talking about how she got burned even though she was wearing SPF 6?

On Wednesday night she approached me in the locker room, "So, I am going to the beach this weekend. I think I should wear a stronger sunscreen, but I still want to get tan. Do you think 15 is too strong?"

"Let me put it this way," I replied. "I won't bother with anything less than 30, and I am still tan at the end of sailing season. You will get color, you just won't trash your skin."

"OK, that's good. But if I don't get any tan you're gonna hear about it," she laughed.

"Right now I have a bottle of spray SPF 70 in my Jeep that I put on when I am tooling around town."

"70? Are you kidding me?" she laughed again.

"Yeah, I really don't want to burn, at all, ever."

She headed for the door and said, "Have a nice workout, 70. I'll let you know how the 15 works out."

I have converted a confirmed sun-worshiper on the virtues of sunscreen, and picked up a new nickname simultaneously. Go me!

Bullet Dodged

I am a Google stalker. I admit it. I look up the names of people I know, people I used to know, co-workers, relatives and anyone I have come into contact with to see what they’re up to online. Occasionally an old boyfriend will cross my mind, so I’ll Google him to see if there’s anything interesting about him (interesting meaning that his life took a serious downturn since he dumped me oh so many years ago.)

This morning I was eating breakfast and goofing around on Google, trying to come up with a name of someone to Google stalk. The name of a guy I dated for a few weeks when I first moved to Boston crossed my mind. I met him at a bar when I’d lived in the Boston area for all of five minutes. I was 22; he was 23 and impossibly handsome. We quickly began to spend all of our free time together, and I was instantly head over heels. After a few weeks of having a great time together, he broke up with me claiming that he needs some space to work out some issues in his life. We decided to be friends, which of course was agony for me because I wanted to be more than friends. But I was a good sport, and I went along with this “just friends” nonsense. One night he came over to my apartment and we cooked dinner together. Over the meal he proceeded to tell me, in excruciating detail about a woman he’d begun to sleep with—you know, because that’s what friends do to people who want to be more than friends over dinner. I decided at that moment that he could be more of a casual acquaintance than friend, after I’d grinned through dinner. I didn’t call him all week, and felt this heaviness descend on me. I couldn’t function as his friend, and my co-workers were so sick of hearing about it.

The following Saturday morning I got a box that he’d mailed me that contained a CD that he bought for me and book he’d been dying for me to read. I looked around my apartment and saw similar gifts and a few articles of clothing he’d left at my place. I scooped all of them up, tossed them into my car and high-tailed it to his apartment. I burst into the front door, didn’t bother with pleasantries with the roommates, barreled into his bedroom and dumped the armload of stuff onto his bed with a disgruntled “I can’t be friends with you. I want to be more than friends, and you want me to be your friend. This isn’t working for me,” and I turned on my heel and walked out.

He chased me down the stairs, as I carefully navigated them because my knees were shaking so hard I thought for sure I’d fall down the stairs and make a complete fool of myself—which didn’t make for a quick and dramatic getaway in which I could look cool.

“Beej, wait! Would you please just talk to me?” he called after me. I ignored him and focused all my attention to the bottom of the stairs and ran through the front door of his apartment building, trying hard not to cry and to control my rubbery knees. He managed to catch me by the shoulder, spun me around and he hugged me. He told me how much he valued our friendship, while I held up my hands between us and told him that I didn’t want to be just friends. I wriggled free of his grasp and headed for my car.

I got into my car and drove off toward home, taking deep breaths to calm my racing heart and still shaking knees. I thought for sure I’d feel entirely heartbroken and unable to continue existing. But no, actually a sense of relief came over me, with a surge of confidence. I knew my life would be great without him; after all it was great before I knew him so it only stands to reason that it would continue to be great after I knew him. And I was right. My life has been great without him; even greater than I imagined as I drove home that Saturday afternoon. I have an awesome husband, whose hair glows red in the sun and who makes sure that everything I could possibly want out of life is brought to me. He makes me laugh every single day, and makes sure I know I am loved.

It’s been almost 12 years since that fateful Saturday when I went to this guy’s apartment to return his things, and it’s been 10 years since I’ve actually seen him. He tried to remain friends with me for a few years, and would occasionally invite me to a party over email. I politely declined every invitation and asked “So, how are you?” He would write back about some “meaningless” relationship he was in (his word, not mine) and basically how he wasn’t really doing much with his life. He stopped emailing me invitations once when he’d asked me “Enough about me, how are you?” I wrote back, “Let’s see, I am engaged, just started graduate school and am restoring a 41’ sailboat. Life is awesome.”

I haven’t thought about him in ages, except for this morning when I Googled him and saw a picture of him on a web page. In the last 12 years this impossibly handsome guy has taken on a John Belushi on the morning after kind of a look.

I cannot imagine how different life would be had that relationship worked out so many years ago. As much as I hated hearing “Everything happens for a reason,” from my friends at the time, it really is true. Everything does happen for a reason.

I consider it a bullet dodged.

I Don’t Get It

We’ve been experiencing a heat wave here in Rhode Island. I, of course, am reveling in it because I am part reptilian. I’ve been looking forward to summer all year long, and it’s here—with a vengeance. In the winter I am on the constant search for one of those plug in rocks that iguanas rest on, only I want one that is large enough that I could lounge on comfortably and long for days like these.

When the weather heats up, I pile on the sunscreen. I wear a body lotion that has sun protection in it, and I keep a can of spray on sunscreen in the Jeep for the days I ride with the top down. Over the weekend Todd and I worked on the boat and we coated each other with SPF 70 before we started our day working in the heat. I’ve become obsessed with sunscreen, have even studied up on the ingredients that make sunscreen work, and often inspect the back of Todd’s neck for the slightest shade of pink on a sunny day. I have never set my eyes on a tanning booth, let alone laid down in one to get a fake bake, it’s my sincere hope that I never end up with melanoma and that my skin will never look like an old alligator boot from prolonged sun exposure.

Tonight I went to the gym after work and overheard some women talking about their sunburns from the weekend. One woman said “Oh, my face was so swollen from the sunburn. I don’t know how it happened, I was wearing SPF 6. I had to put ice on my face all day long to get the swelling to go down.”

Then another said, “I know, right? I got so sunburned on my Caribbean cruise. I don’t know how it happened, I was wearing 4.”

They went on and on, comparing sunburn stories, until I couldn’t stand it anymore, “You guys do realize that SPF 4 is NOTHING even in Rhode Island, right?”

“Well, that’s why I wear 6,” the first woman replied.

I cannot believe, that with all the information we have available to us and with all the warnings we get year in and year out about sun exposure that there are these people out there who aren’t protecting themselves from the sun? I just wanted to grab this woman by the shoulders and say “You are killing your skin with your measly SPF 6. Your face will look like an old handbag by the time you are 50 from all the sun exposure. How do you not know this? If your face is swollen from a sunburn, do you have any idea how much damage you’ve done?”

Ladies and gentlemen, coat on the sunscreen. Getting a tan is not worth it.

Public service announcement now over.

3-2-1 Contact!

Sorry, I’ve been very neglectful of my blog. But as always I can explain. See, I am starting the new job on Monday and it was my goal to finish writing my book before I start the job and I did it! I finished the book yesterday afternoon.

I haven’t talked about the book here because I don’t want to turn into one of those bloggers who shamelessly promotes the living hell out of my book should it ever get published. I think it’s inevitable that some promotion happen, I mean I would want people to buy it, but I don’t want to be annoying about it. So anyway, I’ve written a fictional book, and now I need to print it all out, settle down and read it and make a few more edits, and then I’ll be ready to start querying literary agents and see if I can net one that can sell the book. So, this last week it’s been all-book-all-the-time in our house. As a result I’ve largely given up on the endless “settling in” process that happens when you move house, and it also looks like a bomb went off in our house as it’s now filthy where I live.

:::

Today we spent the day at the boat, getting it ready for launch. I have mentioned in past posts about Sabine’s leak and how we’ve been attempting to isolate the source of the leak, and in the process jacked up our electrical system. Well, the electrical was a quick and cheap fix today, and then tomorrow we’ll lay down some fiberglass inside the bilge so we can seal up any holes in there. During the week we’ll replace the depth sounder, which has a crack in it. Hopefully this will do the trick and Sabine will be floating at her mooring by the end of next week. Conveniently said mooring is a only a few blocks away from my new job, so I will have a very short commute on the nights when we stay aboard.

:::

We left the dogs home while we were at the boat, because the temperature has been in the 90’s today. Normally we’d take them along, but leaving them in the truck would have been way too uncomfortable (and deadly) for them, and because the boat is in dry dock right now, it would be impossible to carry a 70 lb Labrador up a ladder. Since we’ve lived here we’ve been leaving them in our vacant master bedroom (which we’ll start renovating in the fall, so we didn’t bother to move our bedroom furniture in there) because there’s nothing for our mischievous dogs to get into in that room while we’re out. Today we decided to let the dogs have the run of the house.

In our old house we couldn’t let the boys have run of the house while we were out because Griffen learned how to open the fridge and help himself to the contents. In the new house we have a side by side fridge and freezer. The handles are higher, so we figured that Griff wouldn’t be able to open it.

Boy, were we wrong.

While we were out Griffen grew a thumb and opened the freezer. He helped himself to a pound of frozen ground turkey, whatever was left of the peas and a package of brats. Of course the styrofoam and cellophane packaging was strewn all over the house, licked clean.

Looks like they’ll be banned to the bedroom for the rest of their lives.

Dammit Again!

Last Wednesday I sent in my letter requesting that my jury duty summons get postponed. Yesterday I got a letter in the mail, a very short letter, that said that my request was denied. So now I am stuck with having to attend jury duty 1 week and 1 day after I start my new job.

The letter said that there was no legal basis for my request to be granted. Well, I understand that, but still, dammit! I still maintain that the timing of the judicial system sucks!

But to look on the bright side, I get to see the court in action which should be interesting. The people watching will likely be fascinating, and imagine all the freaks I could attract with my tractor beam of freakiness while I am waiting to be called.

It'll be blogger heaven!