Saturday, September 6, 2008

Those aren't FLUFFY PILLOWS!!


...they are beautiful fluffy clouds.



Don't they look so soft? Don't you want to reach out and click on their fluffiness...

Oops! It linked you to our raffle draw!
Don't fluffy, pretty clouds make you want to buy a raffle ticket? Don't they?

Friday, September 5, 2008

Bionic Eyes


Most people, no matter how inept they may be at most of life’s things, are really good at SOMETHING. Like Jer-Bear. Now I haven’t found anything that Jer-Bear is inept at, unlike myself, but he’s a guy that can figure things out, like how to fix things. And not just how to fix things half-assed, like the way I would fix things because I don’t really know how to fix things, I just think you can wrap it, join it or cover it with duct tape and it’s all good. But he fixes things the right way, so that if that Mike Holmes guy came over and looked at it, he’d say “Now that’s the right way to fix that.”

Some people are good at style. Like Dara has a knack for knowing how to put an outfit together. That might not sound like much, but I will never buy a clothing item now without taking her shopping with me. She’s a thousand times better than the sales people at picking the right colour, right style and right accompanying garment (because you can’t go into a dressing room without a complete outfit.) I love her to death, but most of the time as soon as she hangs up the phone she’s pretty much forgotten everything whoever was on the other end told her–unless it’s her friend Jayme. But I digress into the bottomless land that is teen world.

I’m okay at a lot of things, but the one thing I have a knack for is finding stuff with my eyes. Not finding the roll of toilet paper I JUST had in my hand two minutes ago (found in the living room) or those papers I was supposed to bring to work (left them in fridge–still can’t figure THAT one out), but little things, like once when I was little I was out riding my bike and I found a ten dollar bill laying on the ground in the gravel. And last week I found a crumpled up five dollar bill lying around in Wal-Mart. And once, when we were grouse hunting with Jer-Bear’s dad, I spotted one of the little fellers on a stump in the bush. I won’t tell you about how he took so long to shoot at it that it flew farther into the bush, and he tramped after it for about 15-20 minutes with no luck but a lot of swear words. I’ll just tell you the part how he was really impressed with my BIONIC EYESIGHT (Ok, “bionic eyesight” are my words, but I bet if someone had asked right there “How did she even SEE that?!” he would have said “I dunno – she must have bionic eyesight or SOMEthing.” I’m pretty sure that’s how it would have gone.)

So yesterday, when we were on our way to drop Jer-Bear’s kids off to their mom, we stopped by to see “our” boat. Sadly, they were closed and they had our baby locked up with the other lonely boats, not allowing anyone to coo and fawn over them and make love to them with our eyes from a shorter distance then the while wrought iron fence.

But while we were there, Jeremy found a penny. A CANADIAN penny. At the boat store. Is that not fate?! Then this morning, and I don’t know how this can get any more amazing, Jer-Bear finds a dime at the corner store.

He picks it up and gets into the truck and says “A penny yesterday, a dime today! That’s 11 cents for doing nothing!”

And I’m thinking “Hey, you can’t steal my magic power.” And now, if he finds one more thing with his eyes, I may cut him.

raffle, boating, Bayliner

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Richard Dreyfuss, how do you do it?


Solitaire is a great game. A great, great game. And there’s lot of versions of it. My dad played it a lot and taught me a really hard version which I’m so-so at. My first FAMOUS encounter with it was in the movie Jaws, when Richard Dreyfuss is playing the cascading card style of regular solitaire on a boat. On a boat!! It’s the perfect game for being on a boat when you’ve proved for the twelfth time you can’t tie that knot and you know the next offer to try again is going to get you thrown off (ahem, me and not Richard Dreyfuss. His knot-tying skills were really good in that movie, as I recall.) Oh, and another thing. In the movie the shark DOESN’T EAT Richard Dreyfuss. So there you go about the powers of solitaire.

When it’s a rainy weekend and there’s nothing good on TV and who cares about chores because we’re just going to sleep in the bed again tonight so why make it, and the kids are coming over on Monday and dammit THEY can clean the sink full of dishes for once… it’s nice to crack open the laptop and zip off a quick game of solitaire.

Except it’s never a quick game.

In fact it’s usually at least 8 games, and God forbid you lose 7 and win the 8th, because now you’re into it for at least another 11 games.

I don’t know about you, but my win to loss ratio is low, low, low. Low in-the-toilet low. I think I win 1 in 20 games or something like that. And do you ever notice, after you’ve lost like 5 games or so, the game seems to take pity on you and deals you out three aces, and gives you a great black and red mix so you’re moving cards all over and FEEL like, holy crap! I think I’m gonna win this one! And the paranoid part of your mind starts screaming “Don’t think that! Don’t think that! The game will know and you’ll lose!”

And then BLAM! You’re staring at a red 8 that you could’ve moved to that black 7, but somehow, despite having bionic eyes, you totally missed it. And after you finally move the red 8, the red jack underneath is turned over and you can’t get to the black ten in the card pile any more cuz it’s buried, and every time you go through the deck you think “maybe this time” but forget it because the red 9 that’s sitting on the LAST FACE DOWN CARD THAT’S SITTING ON THE GODDAMN 2 OF CLUBS YOU NEED TO WIN is saying “Dude, we like so gave you all those aces and you STILL lost?!?”

I hate solitaire.

raffle, boating, Bayliner

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Intoxicating wenches!


I’m back to drinking caff coffee. For many years I didn’t drink caffeine because it was a part of my eating lifestyle plan. No caffeine, no sugar, but I did use cream. It was all about eating real and natural stuff. Don’t even bring up that I use sweetener. I’m not goddamned perfect, okay?

But part of our savings plan is to eliminate unnecessary spending. We’ve cut waaayyyy back on Starbucks–Jer-Bear never goes any more, and I only go occasionally with friends at work (decaf Americano, in case you were curious.)

So now we perk coffee at home. And for simplicity’s sake, because we both want a coffee shot in the morning, we make one pot and it’s caffeinated. And the other morning, after we’d each filled up our mugs, he says to me “I’m proud of you.” And I say “For what?” and he says “For drinking caffeinated coffee.” And I say “Thanks.” But inside I’m wondering does anyone congratulate a heroin addict when they pick up the spoon and cotton ball again?

And just so you know, right now as I re-read that last paragraph, I’m smiling in a smug way at my wit and sipping from my coffee mug as I polish off my third post in 5 minutes. Ahhhhh, Caffeine, you full-bosomed, intoxicating wench!

raffle, boating, Bayliner

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

The day started so good...

and because we can't possibly help ourselves, we stopped by to visit "our" boat on our way to take the Jer-Bear's kids back to their mom.




raffle, boating, Bayliner

Monday, September 1, 2008

Raffle Tickets & Small Countries

You can't imagine our excitement as we all sat in the truck and watched Jer-Bear come out with our first raffle ticket purchase envelope! You'd have thought from our expressions that he was going to pull a frickin' Bayliner 300 from the envelope.


So of course I don't let anybody open it. We MUST CAPTURE IT PHOTOGRAPHICALLY FOR THE BLOG.

Lars bought 8 tickets. And as you can see from the postmark, bought them from Washington State. It's so nice to know our American neighbors feel it's important for our family to own a boat. In your honor, Lars, I have used the American spelling of "neighbors" and "honor", and as soon as I finish this blog post I will personally invade a small country.

So now you will have a 1 in 11 chance if YOU and you alone buy a ticket today. As the Godfather's Pizza commercial guy would say: "Do it!"

raffle, boating, Bayliner

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Bayliner lovers: Unite!


We haven't had a lot of luck finding other blogs–particularly Bayliner specific boating blogs–so we can generate some discussion and share boating ideas, dreams, etc.

However, here is one excellent blog we've found, right here in Blogger world:

http://captrichardrodriguez.blogspot.com/

If you boat in or around the pacific northwest, especially the Puget Sound, you should keep this guy's number in your back pocket. Also, he's got some pretty cools hats.


raffle, boating, Bayliner
 
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