Translate

1.26.2009

Not Much Really

Well, as usual time has passed and I've had about a dozen ideas for things I should put on here and yet what do we see? Nothing. Nada. Bupkis. (How the hell do you spell "bupkis?" Oh, I got it right. . . I think there should be a 't' in there. Ah well, you can't win 'em all.)

It's been cool here for about a week. Probably hasn't gotten over 75 ONCE! Ha. This place is hilarious. Longest cool spell I can remember since I moved here. It's nice to sleep without the a/c on. Had a good weekend in the nice weather. Happy hour, gym, Lewis Black, biking, new web cam, boat work and maybe a mixed drink somewhere in there. But my free time is once again drawing nigh as another dry dock approaches.

The Summit is only a quick 4-day "emergency" dry dock but it'll still steal a weekend away from me. I suppose I should follow everyone's advice and just be grateful that I have a job. . . but then I wouldn't get to bitch nearly as much. And speaking of bitching, I'm writing this from work and should really get out of this dismal office. The nearest window from me is 80 feet away and I have to stand up like a prairie dog in my little cubicle to see over the rest of the little prairie dog homes and try to figure out if it's day or night outside. Someday I should just learn how to tell time and then look up the sunset time on the intertwebs. . . but that sounds horribly efficient and I'm sure that's the wrong path for me.

I'm not sure if the gym or the bottle is calling me tonight. Guy at the boat told me that a buddy of his drinks vodka/sprite while they play hockey. Now THAT'S dedication. Bah, I guess the gym will win out. . . damnable sensibility, I'll get my parents back one of these days for passing that trait along. I finish with a warehouse shot. Why?
'Cause.

TFTS
Can you even see the other end of this place?! Sheesh.

1.18.2009

The Might, Mighty Shamrock

Welp, thar she blows!

P1050305

She ain't much to look at right now because she's at the most gutted point in her life. We're abating mold, cleaning tanks, checking lines, removing old equipment, drawing new layouts, over-hauling the engines, etc, etc. . . of course my part in all this is to perform the most menial of tasks seeing as how my technical capabilities are somewhat less than my compatriots. There's quite a few more pictures up on my flickr page (find the flickr window on the right hand side of this site).

P1050356

Man, these pictures really don't do much for this boat. It's 53' long and wedged in between other boats in a Ft. Lauderdale neighborhood waterway. For those of you who have never been to south Florida, Ft. Lauderdale is a bit like Venice in that there are a ton of houses along a myriad of waterways and each house has it's own pier in the backyard. Kinda crazy, fairly polluted, awfully cramped at times but a nice feature for a region driven by fun in the water.

I'm off to dinner (and the AFL Playoff game) in a minute so I don't have time to tell much more of the story. Long and short of this boat is that we're planning to get the basics taken care of in the water and then take her into dry dock. After dry dock we should just have finish work left and when she's completely done we'll use her for our pleasure and rent her out for charter trips. The timeline is for us all to be watching New Year's Even fireworks aboard our completed vessel going into 2010.

I know, a year sounds like a long time but we're pretty much only working on the weekends and most of us travel quite a lot for work. I'm the lowliest owner (I think) as a project manager. . . most people are Directors or VPs or other such nonsense. Busy people and their toy. That's what we are.

Except me. I'm not busy. But I gotta go.

1.12.2009

On Being A Good American


I am a good American.  Which is not much different than being a good Amur'can.  So far this year I done gone 'n got invested in a small business AND bought a luxury item.  The small business involves a boat and would require a number of posts to properly explain (without actually boring you to death) and the luxury piece came in the form of a gee-tar.  Despite working for a cruise line I don't know much about boats and despite growing up with piano and trumpet lessons I don't know a thing about playing the guitar.  Should make for an interesting winter before I travel again in March.

I'll start to post pictures of the boat and give a few specs and the story once I get everyone's approval for the story going "public" via the interwebs.  And when I say Everyone's approval, I mean it.  There are fourteen people who own part of this boat and before anyone get's too excited you should know that it's definitely a work in progress. . . and probably will be for another year or so.  The guitar on the other hand doesn't need any work at all. . . just needs someone to play it (or learn how).  I'd give both ventures about a fifty-fifty chance of panning out in any sort of positive way.  Cause I'm both a glass half-full AND a glass half-empty kind of guy. . . hence the fifty-fifty. . . what?  Do you want a pie chart for clarification?

What else. . . oh yeah, on a much more important note, I'm an Uncle again!  (Implying that I wasn't for a while?) Now I've got TWO nieces to influence in my own particular way.  I'm still debating which Uncle personality to go with.  I'm leaning towards the slightly-off-Uncle-that-the-kids-like-cause-he-brings-them-stuff-from-other-countries but there's always the classic quasi-cool-uncle-that's-never-around. . . but then of course, I've have to be cool.  

Well, I'm definitely not cool but I am finishing off my work day by writing this.  Sorry there's no fun work stories or amusing anecdotes about monkeys or lemurs.  So Flo is surprisingly lacking in both animals.  I do have a short, four day dry dock coming up in February.  We're gonna exchange a whole azipod on the Summit.  Should be interesting in only four days. . . kinda like exchanging that diesel engine block on the Jewel in four days in Boston back in October.  Like Kevin Nealon once said, "Life is circular, Happy.  You've gotta block out the bad and let in the good."


Block, Bad.
In, Good.

Bueno.