Tuesday, August 31

We're still alive

I know, it’s been far too long since the last blog entry. Blame it all on me. Tom wrote the last two entries so it’s definitely my turn. My only excuse is that between field work and boat work, things have been pretty hectic. However, if there’s one thing ferry lines are good for, it’s free time. So here I am, waiting in line for the ferry back to San Juan Island, typing away. Gotta love laptops!

We’ve been working pretty hard on the boat these past few weeks, and when I say “we” I really mean Tom. I come down on the weekends and do what I can, but he’s the one who’s put in the majority of the effort, since he’s the one who’s living on the boat full-time right now (I finish field season and officially move in at the end of September).

Currently, his big job is to install new portholes. A hell of a task that involves lots of hammering and chiseling and sawing and swearing. I try to steer clear of whatever area he’s working on, especially if I hear “Oh, crap.” Not because he’ll take his frustration out on me, but because if he makes a mistake while he’s using a power tool on the wooden hull – well, I just don’t want to know.


Tom, showing the boat who's boss. Posted by Hello

Regardless, he has managed to make a portlight go from this:

Before Posted by Hello

To this:

After Posted by Hello

Obviously, he's doing a fantastic job.

While Tom works away at the portholes, my fun job is cleaning the blinds. Yes, it sounds like nothing: just wipe the blinds clean with a little all-purpose cleaner. Oh, if only it were that easy (I feel like I’ve said that about a lot of things on this boat!).
The blinds are so disgustingly filthy that cleaning them involves scrubbing each individual slat. If I ever needed a reason to dust blinds weekly, this is it. After sitting for years without being cleaned, it’s as if the dirt and grime were glued on. The good thing about the filth is that you can actually see where you have cleaned.

Dirty blinds (note clean section in top right) Posted by Hello

And Dad, take a seat before you read on. At your request, here is another picture of me voluntarily doing chores:

Each slat needs to be scrubbed. Posted by Hello

Along with the blinds, I’ve been giving the rest of the boat a thorough cleaning. We’ve also done a fair amount of re-decorating. Here’s the clean, updated salon (Meredith, note the red couch):

Shiny happy salon! Posted by Hello

So, the boat is coming along! Of course, we’ll never actually be “done,” but we’re certainly getting close to finishing all the major stuff. For this year. I think.

-Jessi

1 Comments:

At 12:02 PM, Blogger Steve Hall said...

Tom and Jessi,

My name is Steve Hall and I've been reading your blog and like it. I can't wait til you start the trip and blog it. I write a blog called Adrants. I wanted to run something by you to see if you were interested. Aside from Adrants, I'm doing some work for an ad agency in Dallas, TracyLocke, that's putting together a piece a program that will be marketed to 18-30 year olds in about 20 states and part of which is going to be populated with rss feeds from weblogs. In essence, a fancy newsreader.

They want to showcase content from weblogs rather than regular boring news. You don't have to be a spokesman or endorse the company. You definitely won't have to change the way you run your site. But, depending on the level of involvement, they will pay you, up to $300 a month during the launch period for the right to pull your RSS feed, and for you to display a small badge for the site on yours. The money's not the big part though. The big part is that there's a huge company behind this that will be promoting this site that will have links back to your site making your traffic grow a lot. And we all love lots of people to read our blogs.

Of course it's one of the non-disclosure things. I want to tell you more but you have to sign an NDA first. If you're interested, let me know (call me, email me) and I'll give you more info. I think you'll like this.

You can reach me at steve@adrants.com

Steve

 

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