Vacation..sort of?
Just got back from vacation. Thought I'd write a bit about it.
I flew to Detroit on June 9. Picked up by Mom & Grandpa, who were en route to Port Clinton, Ohio. My dad's birthday was the 8th, and he spent it racing his trimaran in a yacht club competition there. We had dinner at Port Clinton, then drove to Cleveland.
June 10. We went to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with the Grebners, who are old friends of my dad's. Saw some interesting stuff about Jimi Hendrix, Madonna, Elvis, etc. Lost a pair of sunglasses; bought a new pair for $8 from Walmart. We ate and drove to Catawba, OH, then boarded a ferry to Put-in-Bay, OH. Found the house my dad rented (he forgot where it was initially, and as is custom for him, also lost track of his book with the info about the trip).
June 11. Played golf with Grandpa and Dad in the afternoon. My game's improved since the last time I played with Grandpa, and I actually got par on two holes. Course was a bit low quality, but it's just golf anyway, right? The practice session my dad enrolled me in while I was at the family farm over Thanksgiving 2006 was very helpful as I got a better feeling for how to hit the ball properly. Lost some of the edge though.
June 12. Went to Kelleys Island. There's some interesting old buildings there. There's a rock that has some old inscriptions. Heh, not much else to say.
June 13. Mom and Grandpa went home. Dad and I went to see some caves, a winery, and a butterfly house. One cave consisted of the world's largest known geode: big enough to hold about 30 people. The other was formed by limestone being crushed and then pulled apart. Both caves were about 40-50 feet underground and maintained a temperature of 50 degrees year-round. The butterfly house had some butterflies from other continents, so we had to be careful not to allow any to ride out with us. Pretty buggers.
June 14. Gill, the current crew for my dad's trimaran, showed up. We went sailing and did some practice. I learned how to tack and read telltales. Spent about 6 hours on the boat. Gave myself a back sunburn. We attended the pre-start dinner of the seminar on multihull sailing competition. Some people cancelled so there were only two boats. The others seemed like your typical older people with too much money and time on their hands.. so they spend it on sailing. :P
June 15-16. We attended the class. Wind was low in the morning both days, so the two classes of the day were combined into the morning. Ate, then went out and did some drills. Spent about 5 hours on the boat each day.
June 17. The class was concluded. We sailed the boat back to Port Clinton, then took it out of the water.
I felt left out of much of the class. The guy teaching it obviously never tried to teach anyone who was deaf. He talked while facing the board, forcing me to miss about 30% of what he said, and it was no doubt important. The class frequently engaged in overlapping conversations and fast talking and I found myself losing grip of them whenever I tried to listen. So I spent most of the classes reading news on my sidekick.
Because my speech processor costs about $6,000 to replace and cannot be repaired if it falls underwater, I had to remove it while we were on the boat. We worked on some hand signals and tried to work around this. However, on the 15th, while doing a drill, the instructor blew his whistle several times and my dad, in his excitement, managed to hurt me trying to get my attention while I was finishing the previous task I'd been assigned (which he apparently did not notice I was doing).. so I pushed him around and screamed at him for a minute.
I spent some time thinking about this incident. At first he just tapped me, but while I was busy trying to finish the previous task, I wasn't able to respond. The tapping turned to hard slapping a few seconds later, which caused significant pain on my back. I realized this is something that some people (perhaps just guys?) tend to do.. push harder if they don't get their way. The problem is, some things (like messages) can't be communicated more effectively just by increasing the pressure. They have to be synchronized properly. For example.. a while ago I was playing Guitar Hero on the PS2 and Lori noticed I tended to push harder on the guitar controller when I got frustrated.. but it makes no difference in my performance because the controller only needs a certain amount of pressure; any more than that is useless effort. I feel the same thing occurred here.
Another thing that happened is I tried to learn while on the boat, attempting to make up for the fact that I learned almost nothing at the "chalk talk" class. But my dad and Gill were too busy trying to pay attention to the drill to teach me anything. So I pretty much sat there and got bored, or executed simple maneuvers like tacking and other jib-related tasks. I had some success helping them manipulate the mainsail and spinnaker as well, but they never really took the time to teach me anything, especially important stuff like tactics.
This was all exacerbated by the last day's events. After we got everything loaded on the boat, they went off somewhere and I spent about an hour waiting on the boat for them to return. Only later did I find out they were eating lunch and had not bothered to communicate this with me. In addition, I mentioned several times that I considered it important that we get to the airport so I could sleep before having to get up at 4:30am Monday. We didn't arrive at the Port Clinton dock until 7pm, and it took about two hours to finish cleaning things up and get the boat out of the water properly etc. So as you might guess I didn't get to sleep until 11:30pm. I made a bit of a fuss about this because I'd informed them of my desire several times and they went out of their way to make us as late as possible. So, whatever. It's so fucking important that I move a couple fucking ropes within 3 seconds, but not important that I get 8 hours of sleep so my mind can withstand 8 hours of work? And this is supposed to be a fucking vacation... sigh.
Fortunately, I slept pretty well even though I only got 5 hours of sleep, and managed to sleep about two hours on the plane (impressive for me under the circumstances), and did OK at work today. So, much ado about nothing.
Thinking about it.. sailing is an interesting hobby. I guess it's ok if you like working and thinking while you "relax".. and feel the wind as you manipulate it to move on the water.. but me, I'll take a jet ski any day.
I came home and discovered my roommate actually did the things I asked him to before leaving. Cuddled with Lori on the bed for a while, since she didn't sleep well last night either. It's so good to be home! And I did feel energized to be back at work.. 9 days of vacation did some good, I think.
I flew to Detroit on June 9. Picked up by Mom & Grandpa, who were en route to Port Clinton, Ohio. My dad's birthday was the 8th, and he spent it racing his trimaran in a yacht club competition there. We had dinner at Port Clinton, then drove to Cleveland.
June 10. We went to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with the Grebners, who are old friends of my dad's. Saw some interesting stuff about Jimi Hendrix, Madonna, Elvis, etc. Lost a pair of sunglasses; bought a new pair for $8 from Walmart. We ate and drove to Catawba, OH, then boarded a ferry to Put-in-Bay, OH. Found the house my dad rented (he forgot where it was initially, and as is custom for him, also lost track of his book with the info about the trip).
June 11. Played golf with Grandpa and Dad in the afternoon. My game's improved since the last time I played with Grandpa, and I actually got par on two holes. Course was a bit low quality, but it's just golf anyway, right? The practice session my dad enrolled me in while I was at the family farm over Thanksgiving 2006 was very helpful as I got a better feeling for how to hit the ball properly. Lost some of the edge though.
June 12. Went to Kelleys Island. There's some interesting old buildings there. There's a rock that has some old inscriptions. Heh, not much else to say.
June 13. Mom and Grandpa went home. Dad and I went to see some caves, a winery, and a butterfly house. One cave consisted of the world's largest known geode: big enough to hold about 30 people. The other was formed by limestone being crushed and then pulled apart. Both caves were about 40-50 feet underground and maintained a temperature of 50 degrees year-round. The butterfly house had some butterflies from other continents, so we had to be careful not to allow any to ride out with us. Pretty buggers.
June 14. Gill, the current crew for my dad's trimaran, showed up. We went sailing and did some practice. I learned how to tack and read telltales. Spent about 6 hours on the boat. Gave myself a back sunburn. We attended the pre-start dinner of the seminar on multihull sailing competition. Some people cancelled so there were only two boats. The others seemed like your typical older people with too much money and time on their hands.. so they spend it on sailing. :P
June 15-16. We attended the class. Wind was low in the morning both days, so the two classes of the day were combined into the morning. Ate, then went out and did some drills. Spent about 5 hours on the boat each day.
June 17. The class was concluded. We sailed the boat back to Port Clinton, then took it out of the water.
I felt left out of much of the class. The guy teaching it obviously never tried to teach anyone who was deaf. He talked while facing the board, forcing me to miss about 30% of what he said, and it was no doubt important. The class frequently engaged in overlapping conversations and fast talking and I found myself losing grip of them whenever I tried to listen. So I spent most of the classes reading news on my sidekick.
Because my speech processor costs about $6,000 to replace and cannot be repaired if it falls underwater, I had to remove it while we were on the boat. We worked on some hand signals and tried to work around this. However, on the 15th, while doing a drill, the instructor blew his whistle several times and my dad, in his excitement, managed to hurt me trying to get my attention while I was finishing the previous task I'd been assigned (which he apparently did not notice I was doing).. so I pushed him around and screamed at him for a minute.
I spent some time thinking about this incident. At first he just tapped me, but while I was busy trying to finish the previous task, I wasn't able to respond. The tapping turned to hard slapping a few seconds later, which caused significant pain on my back. I realized this is something that some people (perhaps just guys?) tend to do.. push harder if they don't get their way. The problem is, some things (like messages) can't be communicated more effectively just by increasing the pressure. They have to be synchronized properly. For example.. a while ago I was playing Guitar Hero on the PS2 and Lori noticed I tended to push harder on the guitar controller when I got frustrated.. but it makes no difference in my performance because the controller only needs a certain amount of pressure; any more than that is useless effort. I feel the same thing occurred here.
Another thing that happened is I tried to learn while on the boat, attempting to make up for the fact that I learned almost nothing at the "chalk talk" class. But my dad and Gill were too busy trying to pay attention to the drill to teach me anything. So I pretty much sat there and got bored, or executed simple maneuvers like tacking and other jib-related tasks. I had some success helping them manipulate the mainsail and spinnaker as well, but they never really took the time to teach me anything, especially important stuff like tactics.
This was all exacerbated by the last day's events. After we got everything loaded on the boat, they went off somewhere and I spent about an hour waiting on the boat for them to return. Only later did I find out they were eating lunch and had not bothered to communicate this with me. In addition, I mentioned several times that I considered it important that we get to the airport so I could sleep before having to get up at 4:30am Monday. We didn't arrive at the Port Clinton dock until 7pm, and it took about two hours to finish cleaning things up and get the boat out of the water properly etc. So as you might guess I didn't get to sleep until 11:30pm. I made a bit of a fuss about this because I'd informed them of my desire several times and they went out of their way to make us as late as possible. So, whatever. It's so fucking important that I move a couple fucking ropes within 3 seconds, but not important that I get 8 hours of sleep so my mind can withstand 8 hours of work? And this is supposed to be a fucking vacation... sigh.
Fortunately, I slept pretty well even though I only got 5 hours of sleep, and managed to sleep about two hours on the plane (impressive for me under the circumstances), and did OK at work today. So, much ado about nothing.
Thinking about it.. sailing is an interesting hobby. I guess it's ok if you like working and thinking while you "relax".. and feel the wind as you manipulate it to move on the water.. but me, I'll take a jet ski any day.
I came home and discovered my roommate actually did the things I asked him to before leaving. Cuddled with Lori on the bed for a while, since she didn't sleep well last night either. It's so good to be home! And I did feel energized to be back at work.. 9 days of vacation did some good, I think.