Wahoo!

Frank called via satellite phone as I was driving home. (But I was only on the phone for a minute, Officer, I swear!) After spending the day motoring as expected, he and Bob were thrilled by a wind shift with accompanying increase in wind speeds. They cut the motor and were still doing 9 knots. And judging from Frank's tone of voice, they were loving every minute of it.

A quote for the ages

Papa Tom to almost-13yo Megan: "Is that a jacket? It looks like a bra!"

Grammar from the Interwebs

The horror!

i no some of you dont like uesing the SDD wind shear maps but in tell the wind shear maps gets fixs this will have to do

My favorite part is "in tell" for "until."

Here's an edited version (just in case you couldn't decipher that):

I know some of you don't like using the SDD wind-shear maps, but, until they are fixed, this will have to do.

On the home front

I'm working a lot, trying to make up for the week I missed while we were in Canada (no regrets!) and prep for the month I will miss while we are in Europe. The girls have been entertaining themselves with a long, video-centric visit from Chelsea, some reading and writing of fanfiction (MJ), some helping Mom out (both), and some creating of a video-game walk-through (Chloe).

We're a little lonely for Frank, but life is good.

From a less lonely day:

Departure

Frank and Bob expect to head out into the Atlantic tomorrow morning. What winds there are, are out of the south, so they also expect to be doing a fair amount of motoring. They hope to reach Fort Pierce sometime Friday afternoon/evening, where they'll put in for more fuel and some uninterrupted sleep.

xkcd storm watch

Live images

I'm a Google user despite my employment, but I LOVE the image search on http://www.live.com. Check it out!

My favorite search: yawn

Notice how it will keep adding photos to the results page for as long as you're willing to keep scrolling. On the yawn results, I was willing for quite a while. :-)

Cap'n Blacktoes sails again

Frank just called. Bob is officially a boat owner! He is very excited, especially after their first little test sail.

Tonight, they have dinner with Gail and Broc (he of the long armspan for raffle tickets). Tomorrow, they stock and equip. Thursday, they sail. I'm their designated weather girl, so I'll be hearing from them and will post updates regularly.

Saturdays!

Don't you just love them?

MJ is mowing for dollars.

Frank is reading "Life Learning" magazine.

Chloe just got up.

I am doing a series of 5-minute tasks that I hope will total up to a measurable improvement in the length of my "ohmigod, there's so much to do" list.

And we get to see Harper and his family this afternoon.

What could be better?

Sleep is good

Okay, you all have to see these pictures if you haven't already. I'm going to "leverage" them since I didn't take a photo for my photo blog today.

http://gail-hummingbirdhaven.blogspot.com/2008/06/sleep-is-good-at-life-is-good.html

Thanks, Gail and Broc!

Fial

So, how'd you do on Learn Nothing Day? We failed. But we weren't surprised.

Another exercise that might be interesting is figuring out which day of the year one learns the most. I'm thinking Christmas, 'cause of all the new stuff to try out. Or maybe a day spent sightseeing in a new place. Or maybe a day spent watching videos or surfing the Internet.

What do you think?

Why "fial"?

Friday fill-in

1. I believe whatever doesn't kill you shapes your life.

2. If you're good at something, SHARE!

3. Why so grouchy, Charrrr-lieee?

4. Something is out there, it's life.

5. If my life were a sitcom, it would be titled "On the Road Again."

6. Sitting on my back porch, I see chores that need doing. (And thank you so much for reminding me, Janet and Sherry!)

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to Psych, tomorrow my plans include touring my new health club and seeing Harper and his family, and Sunday, I want to be with Frank!

Thursday 13

13 Things I Find Difficult

1. Intentionally violating a grammatical or typographical Convention. For example, I have a bumper sticker in my office that says this:

Chaos, Panic & Disorder..

My work here is done

Do you see that faulty ellipsis? It drives me crazy. And that capital C I put in "Convention" above? It's just WRONG.

But I'm leaving both in place. I think it's good for me.

2. Being indoors on a sunny day in the Seattle area, especially after a week on Salt Spring Island spent almost entirely outdoors.

3. Listening to GW Bush speak. At all. Even Jon Stewart's goofy Bush impersonations cause me to grit my teeth and/or shudder with revulsion.

4. Living with my (mild) asthma.

5. Waiting.


6. Being at work when my family needs me.

7. Being at home when my work needs me.

8. Resisting the temptations of the moment.

(OMG! Chocolate Shoes!)

9. Saying good-bye.



10. Asking people about themselves. I want to know, and I know intellectually that most people are happy to tell their own stories, but curiosity feels rude.

11. Keeping quiet when people around me are promoting traditional parenting or schooling.



12. Going to bed at least eight hours before I want to get up.



13. Coming up with ideas for Thursday Thirteens.

Getting Things Done

For some time now, I've been applying some of the organizational principles found in "Getting Things Done" by David Allen. I moved the system into Excel using ideas from Dave Pollard, and then I moved the system into Outlook using ideas from both Allen's own GTD and Outlook whitepaper and The Zen of Zero Mail.

Anyway, my personal system has all its own quirks and, well, personalizations, so I decided to reread "GTD" to see how far I've strayed from the path. Pretty far, as it turns out, so I'm refining my system yet again.

But in the meantime, I found this quote. You know how you feel like you have way too much to do for the time you have to do it in? Maybe this is why.

[Your current action items make up] the accumulated list of all the actions you need to take—all the phone calls you have make, the e-mails you have to respond to, the errands you've got to run, and the agendas you want to communicate to your boss and your spouse. You'd probably have three hundred to five hundred hours' worth of these things to do if you stopped the world right now and got no more input from yourself or anyone else.

And most of us keep all those things in our head! No wonder we feel stressed out!

Anti-journalism

McCain misspoke. CBS edited their interview with him, thereby concealing that McCain misspoke.



I can accept (or try to) that McCain got the timeline wrong. After all, I barely remembered the phrase "Anbar Awakening," let alone when it was first used. But that CBS showed McCain's response to one question as if it were the response to another... Call me naive, but that I find outrageous.

MoveOn has a petition going where you can object to this shoddy journalism. If you'd like to sign, click here.

It's Learn Nothing Day!

I dare you to try it!

http://sandradodd.com/learnnothingday/

Friends R Fun

We made it across the border! Twice!
We saw orcas from the ferry!
We enjoyed perfect weather! All week!
We ate pancakes!
We ate salmon!
We ate more salmon!
We ate salmon salad, salmon mousse, and salmon cakes!
We painted, glued, wrapped, tattooed, and dyed!
And we did some crafts, too!
We built dams and dug canals!
We paddled! We swam! We floated!
We rolled tubes!
We sang! We danced! We strummed and drummed!
We said "eh" and "oot" and "zed" and "dick" (I mean "deck")!
We spent loonies and toonies!
We might have slept a little!

But mostly we played with Meah, Fergus, Effie, Lily, Max, Otto, Sabine, Vivian, Fenna, Hamish, Dan, Benjaman, Cooper, Frankie, Noah and his brothers, Forest, Amy, Emma, Jayne, Erich, Autumn, Qacei, Madelyn, Conor, Shelby, Sasden, Sam, and probably a few more whom I am forgetting! Oh, yeah, and their parents!

It was a lovely, busy, noisy week. We're pooped!

Thanks, everybody!

P.S. MJ's camera got passed around some and we ended up with over 600 amazing photos. I imagine we'll post a few eventually.You can see some of the ones I took on my photo blog!!

Blogoversary

I've been blogging three years today.

A year or two prior to starting this blog, I took a survey at work that included questions about blogs. One of these was along the lines of, "Do you find blogs useful or entertaining?" Since at the time I barely knew what a blog was, my answer was a rather confident "No," with my interior monologue running along the lines of, "Newfangled contraptions, who needs 'em?!"

By now, my answer to the latter question is ME!! I need them! My own blog provides me with an outlet, a hobby, a forum, and sometimes a little therapy. The blogs of my friends and family members provide me with community, information, and entertainment, in quantities and of quality that I couldn't have imagined way back when.

Thanks for reading! I'd probably still blog if you weren't here, but it's ever so much more fun that you are.

Here's to the next three years!

This is cursed, that is cursed

Frank jinxed us. That's all there is to it.

Let's just review our last two weeks without him, shall we?

• The day he left, Chloe decided it would be a good idea to smash her face up. One trip to the ER.
• Two days after that, I tried to cook a frozen pizza for Conor and the girls (this being just about the limit of culinary abilities), and the oven. never. got. hot.
• Two days after that, when I had a houseful of guests and was preparing for a long holiday party, the water heater died the heat death. There was flooding. There were no showers. There were no clean dishes. There was a $500 charge at Lowe'st Point.
• And now today, the dryer won't work. It's a fairly new dryer. I can't find any obvious cause.

I am not sure what's going on here, but I don't like it one bit.

Get your fanny home, Frank!

Friday fill-in

1. Oh, I can't wait until I have a banana split.

2. Abundance is the first thing I see when I open my refrigerator.

3. I never leave home without my glasses and my inhaler.

4. If I were a condiment, I would be Thai sweet chili sauce because it's colorful, unique, sweet, and spicy.

5. Smoking is really high up on my list of pet peeves.

6. The last thing I thought of before I went to bed was things I have to do today.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to getting ready for our trip to Canada, tomorrow my plans include PICKING UP FRANK!!!!!, and Sunday, I want to have a hassle-free expedition!