A few weeks ago I volunteered at an accessible sail at the Downtown Sailing Center (DSC). The thing I really dig about DSC is their total commitment to get everyone who is interested in sailing in a boat, regardless of financial or physical ability. Accessible sails are for people who self-identify as disabled (even though I first started volunteering for them two years ago, I only just put together that my father qualifies as such and could come out and sail. When I mentioned it to him, he immediately asked if he could go out by himself and was excited when I said sure. Hopefully he'll recover enough to get out on the water later this summer).
When I've volunteered in the past, I've been put to work rigging/derigging boats and helping people get in and out of the boats. This time the coordinator decided that I should man the DSC booth at the farmers' market that was taking place in the DSC parking lot. Weird but I agreed to it.
I was kept company for a bit by this little guy (far preferable than the freaky goat cheese guy in the booth next to me. I do not need to hear about the niceties [or not so niceties] of keeping goats, thank you).
And the next day I was back at the DSC for their open house. I'd suggested it as an activity for a group I belong to and suddenly found myself the point person for said group. Whatever. It was a nice day for a sail.
There is apparently a new pirate cruise out of Fells Point.
These are new homes that have been built on piers jutting into the Inner Harbor. Is it just me or is this a bad idea? Enjoy that storm surge!
Still no definite word on what's going on with my father but I spoke with him yesterday and he sounded like he was in good spirits. So I felt a little less guilty about going rafting on Saturday instead of going down to see him.
We went out to Harper's Ferry and met up with the group at River Riders for a day of rafting on the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers.
Suiting up.
After a short bus ride (during which we were subjected to some truly god awful jokes by the guides [pictured above]), we were ready to put in.
I was a bit envious of the people in the kayaks.
Our guide told us that every year the raft guides climb up this post and decorate the tree on top for Christmas!
Luckily no one in our boat went overboard but that couldn't be said for other people in the group!
Man, I so want to go whitewater tubing. Hmmmm....
The rapids only went up to Class III but it was still a lot of fun even though our guide was a little inexperienced and we get getting caught up on rocks.
Right at the end we hit a rapid sideways and took on quite a bit of water. And I got soaked!
We spent about 3-4 hours out on the river. Afterwards we went into town to get lunch. Even though we were all pretty wiped out, Rich decided that we should eat at the tavern at the top of these stairs. Thanks Rich! (He, of course, bounded up them in two secs while the rest of us slowly hauled our asses up there). We did end up sitting out on their deck, which had a pretty spectacular view of the mountains and the river. All in all, a very good day.
And it also convinced me to go out and get all my hair cut off on Sunday (it drove me insane on the rafting trip because I had forgotten to bring a ponytail holder and by the time I got home that evening, it was the texture of straw). A full weekend!
My father was released from the hospital last Thursday even though the infection hadn't completely been cleared. By Monday he was experiencing an uptick in the symptoms that had led to his initial trip to the emergency room. I spoke to my mother that afternoon but had some problems understanding her. She was clearly frustrated and furious at the situation. She was also babysitting Finley who, at the time, was sleeping so her half of the conversation was mostly whispered. Fury + whispering is fairly incomprehensible on a cell phone, I've found. A few things, however, were pretty clear.
"He is fighting me every step of the way. God forbid that man put a vegetable in his mouth. But you know your father." I snorted. I do know my father. In fact, I inherited the Mullervy mule-headedness--it doesn't come out all that often with me but when it does no amount of reasoning or wheedling will get me to do what I don't want to do. Frustratingly, ever since his heart attack, my dad has been exhibiting that familial trait all too often.
He did finally go in to see his doctors yesterday and they discovered his phosphatase levels were out of whack. They ruled out his liver as a problem. So now we're waiting to hear if the culprit is his bones. Which, as my mother said is really fucking scary (okay, I added the "fucking"). It could be an infection...it could be cancer. I'm trying not to freak out about it. I mean, what's the point, right? I can't do anything about it. It is, as my sister-in-law K always says, what it is.
And my father is in the hospital again. He had surgery last Friday and it sounds like the site has become infected.
Isn't there some sort of magic shellac you can slather on your parents to stop them from aging?
Also, I really need to re-think this no-car thing.
My office is odd. There are only nine of us (plus a few student workers) and yet we don't, can't, won't communicate well. About two weeks ago, our production coordinator asked me if I had been told when her last day was.
"Ummm, no. Wait, what?"
"Yeah, I don't have a job to replace it but I just can't deal with this place any more. I gave notice about a week ago."
"Well, congratulations, I guess. You gotta do what makes you happy."
She seemed surprised that our boss hadn't told me. Hell, *I* was surprised our boss hadn't told me. She (the production coordinator) and I work pretty closely together. She went on to email her announcement to the rest of the office (without cc:ing our boss). So, here we are two weeks later and still no word to me from my boss. A part of me just wants to bring it up to her myself (because I would really like to know if there's a plan in place for covering her work until we hire a replacement) but another part wants to see just how long this will drag out.
Of course, this is leading to some paranoia in my mind. Maybe they're not telling me because they've decided to outsource her job AND my job to packagers. It's possible. Saleswise, we are having our worst year on record.
Ugh.
Just got an email from MARC (the commuter train). Apparently one of their Penn line trains broke down just before the Seabrook stop yesterday and lost all air conditioning as well. Sadly, that's not too unusual. This is the part that floored me:
While yesterday’s incident was, to say the least, frustrating and the temperature uncomfortable, we do need to ask one thing of our passengers. Please do not ever remove windows from a train, unless directed by a member of the train crew. Doing this makes an already difficult situation worse—once windows are removed, a train cannot proceed until the car(s) in which the windows have been removed are unoccupied and even then the train can only proceed at a significantly reduced speed. It is also extremely dangerous to exit a train through the emergency windows. In addition to the potential injury you may incur falling from the train, trains pass on parallel tracks at speeds of up to 135 miles per hour. These trains approach very quickly and quietly. Again, while we understand the conditions on board train 530, removal of windows and exiting the train is extremely dangerous and should never be done unless directed by a uniformed Amtrak/MARC employee.
People removed windows?! (The MARC train windows do not open and only the emergency exit windows can be removed.) And then exited the train? Good lord, how stupid can you be? (And I've been in plenty of train cars that have lost ac...I do know how hot and frustrating it is. I've been riding the MARC train off and on for about 15 years. And yet not once have I seen people remove the windows).
In other news, the war discussion with the author continues. He has declared our layout "tolerable" but wants additional formatting changes. Sigh. Will this never end?
Finally got around to setting up the aerogarden (yeah, I'm a sucker. I also want one of those topsy turvy tomato planters as well).
My co-worker Valencia is under the very strange delusion that I'm going to be bringing her tons of fresh basil once this thing gets cooking.
JB: I don't know if I'm more disappointed in you not going to the gym...or your excuses for not going to the gym. You talked to Valencia about horror movies and chicken pox? That's your excuse for not going?
Me: I had to tell her about the cure for chicken pox: Rum! And she had just seen High Tension so we had to talk about that. And it's also important to maintain a cordial relationship with your co-workers--I'm not an anti-social freak!
(I would've gotten back to you sooner but I just put in a request to ITS for computer service [I think i have a virus] so I had to spend some time frantically cleaning my computer area. The rest of the office is still a wreck but at least the IT drone won't have to work with eighty billion diet coke caps littering the area.)
JB: There's no cure for chicken pox! Especially rum. And I'm not an anti-social freak. Anymore. I eat lunch with my co-workers all the time. It's amazing the change when you have interesting, non-freakish co-workers.
Did you get rid of all the Monster cans in your office?
Me: Well, I have no memory of what it was like to have chicken pox and I have rum to thank for that. It's like a cure!
Yes, all the monster cans are out of the office.
JB: When you're afraid that the IT drone is going to pass judgment on you...maybe it's time to rethink your life and your relationship with energy drinks.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The fight with the author continues on. Sigh. I don't want to have to pull the "It says in your contract..." thing but I may have to. At least he can't do something like this. That just blows my mind.
The tension over this led me to forgo reading on the train last night and instead I watched Ricky Gervais clips on YouTube on my fancy new phone (and what a wise purchase that was!). My current favorite:
I am currently fighting having a discussion with one of my authors over the font we set his book in. I knew this guy was going to be trouble when he complained about the leading (space between the lines) in the double-spaced raw manuscript. Which is why I sent him sample pages to show him what the typeset pages would look like. Did I hear any hue and cry over the sample pages? Hell, no. Not even a chirp. But when I sent him the typeset pages, he suddenly had a HUGE problem with the font! "It's unreadable!" he claimed. "If someone is going to spend $50 on this book, it should be the most beautiful book it should be!" (We are a university press...and a very niche one at that. Because we do such short runs and have such a small market, our prices are high. It is what it is.)
When I asked him WHY HE DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING about the sample pages, he replied "oh, I didn't think you were going to use the same font." ALL of this could've been avoided had he only bitched about the font then. And what did he think I meant when I said in the cover email, "This is what your book is going to look like"???
He wanted us to hand him over the PageMaker files so that he could design it himself. I explained that we don't set pages in-house and that the typesetter wasn't obligated to give us those files (they give us a pdf at the end of the project). And I sure as hell was not going to ask them to do that. He then sent me the name of his preferred font.
The font we set it in:
The font he wants it in:
Sweet mother of god! THIS is what we are arguing about?!
I checked with the typesetter--changing the font means re-laying the entire ms. Because they like us, they were willing to do it for half the going rate: about $400-$480. I went back to the author with this information and told him that we liked the layout and our font and he'd have to cover the cost if he wanted it changed.
He then proposed that I send him the final Word file and he would do it AT NO COST (his emphasis. Of course, we already owe the typesetter $900 for the intial layout) in InDesign. By this time, my boss (who was copied on all this correspondence) began to crack. "Get some sample pages from him. We'll have to re-cast it (estimate the final page count) using his font and leading. Then we'll make a decision."
I'm so glad I spend my days on such very important things.
I finally managed to drag myself to the doctor and it turns out I had walking pneumonia. Yay me. He loaded me up with an antibiotic and codeine cough syrup and told me to stay home from work for a few more days. So I was a little surprised when Friday night, after a week or so of slowly getting better, my mother invited me down to the house to go out on the boat on Saturday (usually my mom enforces a quarantine period of a week or so after you've recovered from whatever illness you've come down with because "WE DON'T WANT ANY OF THAT AROUND HERE.").
I knew that my brother Colin and sister-in-law Karen were going to be out on the water that day (thanks Facebook!). And, sure enough, Colin called just as we were about to leave for the boat to find out if we wanted to meet up.
Just some random house on the river. It was interesting to see how on one side of the river, the houses were relatively small--like I remembered from being a kid. On the other side, however, a lot of the old, small houses had been torn down and replaced with behemoths.
We met them in Cocktail Cove, a little cove off of Round Bay near St. Helena's island. Mostly, we sat around and chatted, ate lunch, and drank (hey, that's what you're supposed to do on the weekend, right?).
Colin went swimming with Samson and Delilah, their two black labs (and yes, they wore life jackets).
Karen caught a white perch.
And then, oddly enough, my family's old boat, the one I grew up on, showed up (a guy in the neighborhood bought it from my dad after he lost his sense of balance). He's done a nice job of restoring it. I did notice, however, that his wife and kid did nothing to help anchor the boat! My father had my brothers and me trained like little robots to anchor, take down and put up the sails, work the winches, etc., etc. My favorite was when I would be stretched out in the cockpit, reading a book, and my father would just throw down the tiller and bark "Here! Drive!" and then go down below or up on deck and then point out, when he got back, that I was off course. What? I didn't know where we were going in the first place!
Anyway, we were out for a few hours--until about 6, I think. And then we zoomed home.
