A non-army story
*** This should have been posted last night, but Adelphia sucks.***
I've been a good boy for a change. Done all my job searches and organized the interesting ones for the big application sendout tomorrow. I have set a goal of reaching a total of 100,000 words on my book by the end of the week, and put in 2,400 words towards that, which is the most I've written in any single day since February 5th, so I'm pretty happy about that too. I have glued ears to all three mandolin necks and I've put the carbon fiber reinforcement in one of them. The weather has been absolutely brilliant today (75 degrees and sunny) so being out in the shop and hacking about is a lot more pleasant than average.
Now that I'm writing it down it doesn't sound that greatly impressive, does it? Well. I might still do the dishes, so there!
Okay. This is turning into yet another one of those "Wow, I've done mundane things around the house" posts. Insert humorous anecdote here:
In honor of Blatt being on his way over here (well, sorta, in a week and a half) I will now tell you the story of when Blatt and me took my parents boat out in the Stockholm archipelago to grill some hotdogs, drink some beer and camp out. Well, one of the times, anyway.
My parents had this 14' outboarder boat which they were not more emotionally attached to than that they would let us take it out now and then, so we packed up some hot dogs, a lot of beer and a lot of cigarettes and set off. Sometimes we even remembered to bring a tent. We had our little route pretty much set. We'd put the boat in Edsviken, just a couple of miles from my parents house, go around Lidingö and on to Vaxholm, where we had pizza for lunch. After that we'd get back into the boat and putter on to this island that probably had a name, but if so, we never knew it. I do remember that we thought it was a particular island for a year or so, but were then told that we were wrong, so I guess not. In any case, it was a pretty good trip out there, over some water that was sometimes a lot rougher than was comfortable in our boat, which of course was just an added bonus to us. The island was fairly popular as a place to spend the night, and not once when we were there was there a single boat that was any less than twice the size of ours. Obviously we were the superior sea men. This fact that the island was popular became a bit of a problem with time, as we really didn't want to have a bunch of annoying people around, with screaming kids and annoying adults with comments on our behavior, and so we came up with a plan. The spot where we always put up our tent was in a sort of bay, with another island just across the water, maybe 150 feet off, which made it very nicely sheltered. Everyone else there having their nice big boats didn't actually NEED the camping area, as they slept in their boats, but they tended to prefer OUR island anyway, probably because there was a public bathroom on it and a big fireplace with logs to sit on and things. We, however, HAD to be on that side, as the other island didn't have any open areas to pitch a tent on. Okay, enough excuses. We arrive veeeery quietly, puttering through the channel between the islands with barely enough speed to steer, as slowly as we can, and much as we expected, there's five or six sail boats on OUR island, and they're all over the place. There's the arguing couple who owns the boat, their screaming children and their grumpy parents. Five sets of them. Argh. So we putter slowly through and out on the other side, where we wait very patiently for a few minutes, before putting our plan to work.
We take off our shirts and stuff them into bags, break out some beer and light some cigarettes, which is a BITCH of a job in an open boat on open water, turn our little boom box up to 10, playing some kind of horrid crap (I forget what exactly, brought specifically for the reason of being offensive and bad), turn the boat around and go full speed into the channel. Blatt climbs up in the front and we sing along with the music as badly as we can. "ÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖH!!!!!!" As soon as we enter the channel we have the undivided attention of all the sailing people. Fear and loathing and if looks could kill and all that. We only slow down a tiny little bit as we slam the boat onto the small strip of sandy beach on the island, and Blatt goes flying off the boat rolling onto the sand and cursing my eyes out for being such a ********** idiot and where the ****** did I learn to ****** a ******** boat*****? Etcetera. I answer in turn and throw half a beer at him. It's a near miss but he responds with a new row of inventive cursing. The sailing people are holding their ground so far, hoping that we're just so drunk that we ran the boat ashore, but will still leave. No such luck. I start throwing our junk at Blatt and opening another beer. I fall in the water while getting out, which spouts a new bout of cursing, and Blatt falling over backwards from laughing at me. Now the sailing people are in frenzied activity getting their crap and people together, as they have just realized that they'd be better out of the wind if they dock across the channel for the night. By the time we've made it up to the camp site, a full 100 feet, every single one of our boating friends have left for the other side or are in the process thereof. We continue shouting and carrying on until everyone is safely across the water. We then sit down for a much deserved rest. Something that was not planned was that we somehow had lost our lighters at this point, possibly at our less than very gentle landing. We figured we could have cold hot dogs, and live, and it turned out that we could. What we realized after 30 minutes or so, however, was that we couldn't bloody well drink beer and not have cigarettes. Well. We were both boyscouts once upon a time, so we figure we should be able to make fire, right? Wrong. Everything is wet as it rained the night before, and this whole rubbing two sticks together is a load of hokey anyway. Try it sometimes, and you'll see. So we think. We can't bloody well pack everything up again and go back to Vaxholm, as it's a one hour trip, and it's already getting dark. It's rather unlikely that any of our deer boating friends will lend us a light. We finally come up with a BRILLIANT idea, however. Okay, we don't have any lighters or matches, but we do have a mechanical spark maker! Sure we do! The outboard engine on the boat! There's also a tool kit, so we can get a spark plug out. So here we go, lugging a 40 HP outboard engine up the rocks and taking the spark plug out, bringing the gas tank up and soaking some wet firewood with gasoline, putting the spark plug at the edge of it and pull the cord. WOOMF! Very quickly remove the engine and drag it back to the boat. Voila! A campfire!
After a while you can see that our boating friends on the other side of the channel are pointing at us and talking, so apparently our cover is blown. None of them, however, bother with switching islands again. This would be the happy ending if we hadn't forgotten to take into account the fact that people kept arriving after we did, so every 30 minutes or so there would be a boat coming in through the channel opening, which we typically wouldn't immediately notice, as they tend to be bloody quiet. Of course, when we spotted them heading for us, wondering why there wasn't anyone on our island, we'd have to get up and really excel at being offensive, and FAST, to make sure that they suddenly realized that, you know, they'd probably be more out of the wind for the night on the other island and do a quick 180. Blatt found very soon that throwing knives at targets was an excellent deterrent, and that if even that failed, throwing our little camping axe was infallible. Of course, as soon as they had landed on the other island, we'd sit down and go back to talking, grilling and drinking beer, which the other boaters realized soon enough, so after a while, they'd all pop their heads out of their boats to watch the show every time a new boat came in. The next day we'd get up when the sunlight was stronger than the hangover, putter to Vaxholm for another pizza and then continue on home. We had a good trip every single time. You might be able to tell from the picture.
I've been a good boy for a change. Done all my job searches and organized the interesting ones for the big application sendout tomorrow. I have set a goal of reaching a total of 100,000 words on my book by the end of the week, and put in 2,400 words towards that, which is the most I've written in any single day since February 5th, so I'm pretty happy about that too. I have glued ears to all three mandolin necks and I've put the carbon fiber reinforcement in one of them. The weather has been absolutely brilliant today (75 degrees and sunny) so being out in the shop and hacking about is a lot more pleasant than average.
Now that I'm writing it down it doesn't sound that greatly impressive, does it? Well. I might still do the dishes, so there!
Okay. This is turning into yet another one of those "Wow, I've done mundane things around the house" posts. Insert humorous anecdote here:
In honor of Blatt being on his way over here (well, sorta, in a week and a half) I will now tell you the story of when Blatt and me took my parents boat out in the Stockholm archipelago to grill some hotdogs, drink some beer and camp out. Well, one of the times, anyway.
My parents had this 14' outboarder boat which they were not more emotionally attached to than that they would let us take it out now and then, so we packed up some hot dogs, a lot of beer and a lot of cigarettes and set off. Sometimes we even remembered to bring a tent. We had our little route pretty much set. We'd put the boat in Edsviken, just a couple of miles from my parents house, go around Lidingö and on to Vaxholm, where we had pizza for lunch. After that we'd get back into the boat and putter on to this island that probably had a name, but if so, we never knew it. I do remember that we thought it was a particular island for a year or so, but were then told that we were wrong, so I guess not. In any case, it was a pretty good trip out there, over some water that was sometimes a lot rougher than was comfortable in our boat, which of course was just an added bonus to us. The island was fairly popular as a place to spend the night, and not once when we were there was there a single boat that was any less than twice the size of ours. Obviously we were the superior sea men. This fact that the island was popular became a bit of a problem with time, as we really didn't want to have a bunch of annoying people around, with screaming kids and annoying adults with comments on our behavior, and so we came up with a plan. The spot where we always put up our tent was in a sort of bay, with another island just across the water, maybe 150 feet off, which made it very nicely sheltered. Everyone else there having their nice big boats didn't actually NEED the camping area, as they slept in their boats, but they tended to prefer OUR island anyway, probably because there was a public bathroom on it and a big fireplace with logs to sit on and things. We, however, HAD to be on that side, as the other island didn't have any open areas to pitch a tent on. Okay, enough excuses. We arrive veeeery quietly, puttering through the channel between the islands with barely enough speed to steer, as slowly as we can, and much as we expected, there's five or six sail boats on OUR island, and they're all over the place. There's the arguing couple who owns the boat, their screaming children and their grumpy parents. Five sets of them. Argh. So we putter slowly through and out on the other side, where we wait very patiently for a few minutes, before putting our plan to work.
We take off our shirts and stuff them into bags, break out some beer and light some cigarettes, which is a BITCH of a job in an open boat on open water, turn our little boom box up to 10, playing some kind of horrid crap (I forget what exactly, brought specifically for the reason of being offensive and bad), turn the boat around and go full speed into the channel. Blatt climbs up in the front and we sing along with the music as badly as we can. "ÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖH!!!!!!" As soon as we enter the channel we have the undivided attention of all the sailing people. Fear and loathing and if looks could kill and all that. We only slow down a tiny little bit as we slam the boat onto the small strip of sandy beach on the island, and Blatt goes flying off the boat rolling onto the sand and cursing my eyes out for being such a ********** idiot and where the ****** did I learn to ****** a ******** boat*****? Etcetera. I answer in turn and throw half a beer at him. It's a near miss but he responds with a new row of inventive cursing. The sailing people are holding their ground so far, hoping that we're just so drunk that we ran the boat ashore, but will still leave. No such luck. I start throwing our junk at Blatt and opening another beer. I fall in the water while getting out, which spouts a new bout of cursing, and Blatt falling over backwards from laughing at me. Now the sailing people are in frenzied activity getting their crap and people together, as they have just realized that they'd be better out of the wind if they dock across the channel for the night. By the time we've made it up to the camp site, a full 100 feet, every single one of our boating friends have left for the other side or are in the process thereof. We continue shouting and carrying on until everyone is safely across the water. We then sit down for a much deserved rest. Something that was not planned was that we somehow had lost our lighters at this point, possibly at our less than very gentle landing. We figured we could have cold hot dogs, and live, and it turned out that we could. What we realized after 30 minutes or so, however, was that we couldn't bloody well drink beer and not have cigarettes. Well. We were both boyscouts once upon a time, so we figure we should be able to make fire, right? Wrong. Everything is wet as it rained the night before, and this whole rubbing two sticks together is a load of hokey anyway. Try it sometimes, and you'll see. So we think. We can't bloody well pack everything up again and go back to Vaxholm, as it's a one hour trip, and it's already getting dark. It's rather unlikely that any of our deer boating friends will lend us a light. We finally come up with a BRILLIANT idea, however. Okay, we don't have any lighters or matches, but we do have a mechanical spark maker! Sure we do! The outboard engine on the boat! There's also a tool kit, so we can get a spark plug out. So here we go, lugging a 40 HP outboard engine up the rocks and taking the spark plug out, bringing the gas tank up and soaking some wet firewood with gasoline, putting the spark plug at the edge of it and pull the cord. WOOMF! Very quickly remove the engine and drag it back to the boat. Voila! A campfire!
After a while you can see that our boating friends on the other side of the channel are pointing at us and talking, so apparently our cover is blown. None of them, however, bother with switching islands again. This would be the happy ending if we hadn't forgotten to take into account the fact that people kept arriving after we did, so every 30 minutes or so there would be a boat coming in through the channel opening, which we typically wouldn't immediately notice, as they tend to be bloody quiet. Of course, when we spotted them heading for us, wondering why there wasn't anyone on our island, we'd have to get up and really excel at being offensive, and FAST, to make sure that they suddenly realized that, you know, they'd probably be more out of the wind for the night on the other island and do a quick 180. Blatt found very soon that throwing knives at targets was an excellent deterrent, and that if even that failed, throwing our little camping axe was infallible. Of course, as soon as they had landed on the other island, we'd sit down and go back to talking, grilling and drinking beer, which the other boaters realized soon enough, so after a while, they'd all pop their heads out of their boats to watch the show every time a new boat came in. The next day we'd get up when the sunlight was stronger than the hangover, putter to Vaxholm for another pizza and then continue on home. We had a good trip every single time. You might be able to tell from the picture.