Fish and I are finally making some visible progress on the sailboat.

( Delays, and progress, and delays, and progress. )

No, I didn't hit last night's MegaMillions drawing.  But we did get a buoy on Lake Calhoun at the Parks Department lottery!  Lake Harriet was our first choice, but it filled up before they drew our card.  Calhoun's not a bad runner-up, though.  Nearly the same size, with plenty of other "big" boats, and it turns out that the Lake Calhoun Yacht Club ( Read more... )

Fish and I spent most of yesterday working on The Boat, though it's not the sort of work that shows up well on a photograph.  Sure, I added a fifth coat of varnish to the woodwork, but can you tell the difference between that and the second coat?  Sure, we added a fourth layer of fairing compound to the keel, but does it look any different from the ( Read more... )

I've started a boat page on Picasa to track the work that Fish and I are doing.  It is here, and has lots of descriptive captions to help explain what we're doing.

( Progress report... )

My company's annual summer meeting is this week, so there's lots of extracurricular activities that are keeping me away from home.  Tonight it was a happy hour to welcome our out-of-town compatriots, so my boat experience was fairly limited.  That being said, I did get home in time to haul the battery up to the deck (no small feat single-handed; ( Read more... )

Got the boat home last night.  Bit of a pucker factor involved in getting it out of Uptown, and some more when we hit the Interstate and discovered the straps weren't tight enough, and finally some more when we had to finesse it into its landing pad on my alley.  But in the end, the boat was successfully planted at my place before darkness fell ( Read more... )

So, I have this agreement with Lemur where I can buy myself the odd toys on occasion, provided, and I quote: "Nothing with a comma in the price tag."  This works out great, as most of my impulse buys consist of old computer games from the $9.99 rack, and an issue of Sailing magazine now and then.

Well, yesterday afternoon I made the mistake of ( Read more... )