addiction

I was looking through the 1,496 photos I took last weekend (okay, I'm exaggerating but not by much) and this one caught my eye.

I took it early one morning when I was sitting in the cockpit sipping coffee and soaking up the tranquility that comes early in the day before the lake came alive with activity. Who wouldn't want to wake up to see a sunrise like that?

Unless you are more into sunsets, in which case you'd see this:

I took that one while I was sitting in the cockpit sipping a glass of wine, grooving on the tranquity that comes late in the day when most boats are back in their slips and things settle down to a peaceful, slow pace. You can smell the delicious aroma of distant charcoal grills and hear the soft sounds of far away laughter and easy conversations as they come floating across the water.

It's addicting, this boating thing.

*tap* *tap* Is this thing on?

Contrary to what you would reasonably think, there's no need to collect up money to pay our ransom. We have not been kidnapped by aliens. We are alive and well and still among the living, we've just been deep in the weeds and half nuts.

We came home after our two week trip to England to find business finally picking up after a few months of eerie, worrisome calm. Everything--and I do mean everything--demanded our immediate and undivided attention, which, of course, means nothing got any more attention than we could throw at it on the fly as we careened from one screaming priority to the next. May was a blur around our house.

Here's what we did the entire month of May: we worked. A lot. Thanks for asking.

But it wasn't just ordinary work, it was in-your-face, frustrating as the ever lovin' bejeebers, GET OFF MY BACK ALREADY kind of work where one annoying thing after another happened.

This past week is the perfect example: we dragged home Monday after a rare night at the boat followed by a particularly frustrating day at the office to discover our fridge had gone to Appliance Heaven over the weekend. The timing couldn't have been worse either because for once it was crammed full of newly purchased groceries (vs our typical food supply which would pass for a light lunch in Somalia). Ack! About $600 worth of fresh food and frozen meat went straight into the dumpster.

So Tuesday we peeled ourselves away from the chaos and mayhem we fondly refer to as "our jobs" to go appliance shopping, and by Thursday this baby was sitting in our kitchen:

I love it. It has lots of room inside too, mainly because all that's inside it at the moment is a bottle of steak sauce and a shaker of parmesean cheese, the only food items we could salvage after the tragic demise of our old fridge.

So back to the one-thing-after-another bit, yesterday (Friday) we had to be at the lake by early afternoon to meet a delightful couple who were driving up from Alabama to look at the boat we're trying to sell. Yes, alas, the Carver is still floating two slips down from our new boat, flying her "for sale" sign and patiently awaiting a new owner while feeding off our bank account at an alarming rate and with a loud sucking sound. But I digress.

When the time came to head for the lake Friday afternoon , I had to stay behind to finish off a couple of proposals so Morley went on without me to keep our appointment with the Alabama couple.

He arrived at the boat an hour or two before me. And he found the fridge on our new boat had accidentally been turned off.

For a week.

In hot weather.

And it was at that exact moment that our official family motto became "Son of a #$#%, what next!?!?"

So we cleaned out that fridge too, tossing out another $200 or $300 worth of food and frozen meats. And now we have two perfectly clean refrigerators, each containing precisely one bottle of steak sauce and one shaker of parmesean cheese.

On the brighter note, there are signs that our month of mayhem is finally petering out: we have not one but two potential buyers for the Carver, one firm offer in hand, and high hopes that another offer will follow any minute from the couple from Alabama. Bottom line, it appears the Carver will soon have a new family to love and our bank account will finally get a break from too much boat love.

And we have two immaculately clean refrigerators and all the parmesean cheese we could possibly eat, plus the looming adventure of the Mother of All Grocery Shopping Trips to look forward to.

So that's what we've been up to. And now don't you feel bad about all those disparaging things you thought about me when I was a bit remiss in posting to my blog? Heh.

Butt Ugly Boat Update

Jim brought the furniture home on Saturday and what a difference! Here's a little before/after shot to show you just how far we've come.

There are a few more photos on my website right here. A couple more small projects still to go, and then the interior will be put on the back burner while we attack our list of projects for the outside.

PS It involves polishing compound and lots of wax.

PPS This is where you come in.

PPPS I'm looking at you, Matt.

Please, for the love of God, buy this boat

The deal is we own one boat too many, so in case you know anyone looking for a sweet Carver 350 Mariner that has been maintained in meticulous condition by an anal rententive engineer, we just happen to have one for sale. Go here for a video tour. We just reduced the price and are desperate open to offers.

PS Did I mention we are motivated to sell?

Butt Ugly Boat ...not so much

The blue carpet is gone. Hallelujah. Here are a few photos of the amazing transformation when the new carpet went in last Saturday.

This is a "before" shot of the salon looking towards to steps to the pilot house--except we'd already hauled off a few dozen dock carts full of junk so it is really a "during" shot:

...then the carpet guys pulled out the blue carpet and it looked better immediately:

...and now it looks like this. Mo bettah.

Note my husband coming up the stairs carrying a vacuum cleaner. I'd like to take this opportunity to mention that one of life's great pleasures is watching your husband use a vacuum cleaner.

The BUB has a central vacuum system which would have been a better choice for sucking up the little pieces of carpet fluff that were everywhere, but we blew a hole in our last filter bag about five minutes into the clean up so we had to use the little one and empty its teeny tiny little dust bag about a thousand times.

Here's a shot of the pilothouse with its new floor. It looks three feet bigger without that gross blue carpet, seriously.


And here's a "during" shot of the salon. We'd already hauled off loads of junk by the time I took this shot, plus we'd carried off the massive, oversized, klunky, ugly, beat-up wood table left by the previous owner. We put the table on our friend Mike's houseboat. Mike loves that table. Mike is a bachelor who can decorate to please himself.


And here's the salon now. We've ordered some really pretty leather and as soon as it comes Jim is going to recover the sofa for us.


Obligatory butt crack photo of carpet installer. Sorry, I couldn't help myself.


Here's the companionway that leads to the bedrooms, office and bathrooms. It had always looked like a dark, gloomy cave but the very minute they pulled out the blue carpet it lightened up like crazy. The guys spent about half an hour scraping the old padding off the floor.


And here's the companionway now. Much, much, much mo bettah:

We still need to update the lights with more modern versions that will really light up the area, but at least we can now find our way to bed without getting lost in the dark hole.

It was such a morale booster to see the new carpet installed--you just can't imagine how much we had been looking forward to this day. I'm thinking it won't be long before we'll have to think of a new name for the Butt Ugly Boat.

taking Butt Ugly to a whole new level

Assuming the weatherman is accurate in his forecase of a rainless weekend with mild temperatures, the new carpet on our Butt Ugly Boat will be installed next Saturday. We wanted to get the messy work finished before the new carpet goes in so we spent the last two days ripping out the horrible carpet on the walls and removing the salon furniture which Jim will be reupholstering soon--as soon as we figure out what fabric we want him to use.

The salon as it looks today:

The salon we started with:

The master stateroom today:

What we started with:

The guestroom now:

...and before:
We have a lot--a lot--of work ahead of us.

Atlanta Boat Show 2009

We went to the Atlanta Boat Show yesterday. Since we're in the middle of renovating the BUB we thought it would be a good chance to get ideas on the newest trends in interior finishes and maybe score some bargains on the long list of electronics we need to update.

Normally the boat show is packed and the lines for the best exhibits are an hour long, but this year it was almost eerily empty. The biggest disappointment was there were no mega yachts or million dollar houseboats on display and there were even a few empty vendor booths. Unfortunately there was only one vendor selling electronics and he wasn't in a very generous mood so we didn't bring home any bargain electronics

But we did score a pair of $50 boat sneakers for $9.99.

Oh, and Shelby got a new hat:



...and we ran into our friends and fellow boaters Raif and Linda who are getting married on their boat this summer.

Plus we got to get up close and personal with Miss Geico. Even though we aren't really into boat racing, we recently watched a documentary about the engineering that goes into racing boats and Miss Geico was prominently featured since she is the fastest boat in the world. Seeing this thing in person was impressive--the boat is HUGE and obviously built for speed.

Not to mention it is very, very, very neon yellow.

Miss Geico's throttle man, Scott Begovich there was signing autographs. The documentary also spent a lot of time talking about Scott and how impossibly hard his job is, so meeting the best trottle guy in the universe was kinda cool. I always imagined boat racers would be weedy little guys so they'd fit in that tiny cockpit better but Scott is a BIG guy.

He asked to have his photo taken with me:

....and then he asked me if I had any advice so I gave him some pointers on fast boating based on my experience puttering around the lake in our diesel powered floating condominium. I also suggested some carpet and drapes and maybe a lamp or two to make Miss Geico a little more comfy inside:


He begged me for more decorating ideas but I told him I really needed to get going. Afterwards he rushed back to the table where he had been signing autographs and jotted down some of the tips I'd given him.

Or maybe he just wanted to go back to sitting beside the cute blonde in a bikini and her impressive hooters ability to keep the autograph line moving.

Dock 5 Band Jam

I took my video camera along when we had the Dock 5 Band Jam last week (what a surprise, eh?) (Sorry. I can't help myself when it comes to carrying cameras around. They're attached to me like appendages).

Anyway, since I just happened to videotape the band I thought you might like to see what it looks like when a bunch of middle age people get together and make some groovy music. Check this out:



The band sounded awesome, especially considering they had never played together before. And they sounded that great all night. I think they need to give up their day jobs and go on tour. Maybe. Or not.

Anyway, it was so much fun and the music was so great that it was totally worth it to be exhausted and sore over every inch of my body the next day.

PS The little rap at the beginning of the song refers to the Atlanta Falcons being in the playoffs.

PPS They lost.

Carpet Projection

I was playing around with some interior photos of the Butt Ugly Boat yesterday, and while this isn't the finest work I've ever done in manipulating a photo, I took a quick swipe at it just to get an idea of how the new carpet is going to look.

Here's what the salon looks like now:

Behold the carpet resplendent in all its ugly glory: stains galore, discoloration, fading, and worst of all, dreary blue. Or maybe the stains are the worst of all since we don't know exactly what caused them. Either way, yechhhh! And gross!

And here's what the salon will look like after the awful blue carpet is gone:

Two words: mo bettah. Except....YIKES!!! Look at that creepy sofa! It's horrible!

That sofa is ridiculously butt ugly but it didn't bug me this much when the awful carpet was still there. Now it sticks out like a sore thumb. And those blue chairs? They look like office furniture from the 1980's and they are really blue--not quite as dreary blue as the carpet, but still. They gotta go. Apparently the BUB is like a big onion of ugly--when you peel away one layer, there are more layers of butt ugly underneath.

Speaking of layers of ugly, here's a photo Morley took when we were at the fuel dock this weekend:

There's blue--and we're talking bright! blue!--all over the outside and it bugs the bejeebers out of him. He already has a bead on replacing the blue canvas and blue bumpers with a more modern black, and when we have the boat pulled this winter to take care of some maintenance issues, he's having the bottom painted black while he's at it.

Slowly but surely we're peeling away the layers of our ugly onion.

The Butt Ugly Boat - Progress Report

If you don't know about our Butt Ugly Boat,

affectionally known as BUB, start here.

So far our efforts (and budget) on renovating the BUB have focused on things you can't see--things like new battery banks and chargers, light switches that actually work, new hardware on the cabinets, new electrical service lines and various pumps. Oh, and we have cleaned and oiled a lot of teak. A lot of teak. A lot.

All those unglamorous but necessary items didn't do much to change how the boat looks, which of course is Butt Ugly. But now we're ready to begin the fun stuff --the cosmetics--and the obvious place to begin is getting rid of the gawd awful blue carpet.

One of the biggest factors in choosing new carpet is coordinating the carpet to the color of the existing headliner (ceiling). The headliner fabric is good quality and in perfect condition but is a slightly funky shade of khaki. We originally thought about replacing it but then we visualized what a pain in the ass it would be to recover the entire ceiling. And then we visualized the exhorbitant cost of replacing the entire ceiling. And then we decided to learn to love our ceiling instead of replacing it. Love you long time, funky khaki color.

So before we headed out carpet shopping Saturday morning, Morley found a discreet place behind a valance and cut out a piece of the headliner fabric to take with us, then we headed for Dalton, Georgia where most of the carpet in the universe comes from. We found a carpet store with one million square feet of display area (literally!) and within 30 minutes we found exactly what we had in mind. This one:

The one on top is the new carpet we'll have installed next week. It is a very durable, stain resistant carpet with just a hint of pattern so it won't show stains as easily as a solid carpet would. I put it beside a carpet sample that's similar to the current gawd awful blue carpet (minus the mysterious stains) to give you an idea of how much the lighter color will brighten up the joint.

And here's a close up of the new carpet with the fabrics we've picked out for the sofas and trim panels. The swatch with the creases in it is the headliner fabric and the two bottom swatches are the fabrics for the new upholstery. They look and feel like ultra suede but they're actually cotton microfiber so they're stain resistant, washable and very durable.

PS. Have you noticed how often the words "durable" and "stain resistant" come up in conversations related to the BUB? Go figure.

Anyway, once the new carpet gets in we'll move on to removing the wierd fuzzy fabric that lines the interior of all the closets and the insets around the portholes, and we'll replace it with a marine grade vinyl. After that we'll tackle installation of a new teak floor in the pilot house that Morley has his heart set on.

Our goal is to have all of this work done by March when the weather warms up and boating season begins again, so we have our weekends cut out for us for awhile. The funny thing is that if we had a "to do" list this long at home it would be a bummer to even think about it, but we are excited about tackling our mega "to do" list on the boat. It just goes to show that everything truly is better on water.

I'll keep you posted on our progress--or you could just come visit and see for yourself. Bring teak oil and some rags when you come.

Band Jam

Our dock neighbors Dennis and Max live just a couple of minutes away from the marina. Not only does their house have a spectacular view of the lake, it also has a separate building that's a big garage on the first floor and what will someday be a music room/guest house on the second floor.

But on Friday night, the guest house was the scene of a music jam as we pulled together all our musically inclined friends for the ultimate garage band--a "middle aged rave" as I called it.

Here's Ron: in real life he's a hot shot electrician in Colorado but we know him as a seriously talented bass player. Geez, was he good.

And this is his brother Rick. These days he owns his own home renovation company but back in his younger days he was one of the drummers for Earth Wind and Fire.

Here's Dennis on the drums. He's a responsible kind of guy who owns a window company but in another era he was the drummer for a band that was pretty hot stuff down here in the South. Dennis is a killer drummer. Killer.

Here's Ron and Chat playing a hot riff. Chat is still a professional musician, by the way.

And here's our friend Steve. In real life he and his wife own a company that puts on races for historic race cars, but Friday night he was hitting some hot licks on the bass.

Here's Chat doing some vocals. His wife Peggy (behind him taking a photo of me taking a photo of her) plays the flute professionally. Who knew a flute could sound so good with rock music?

And here's my husband. In real life he's a responsible mechanical engineer, but on Friday night he was...ummm, a responsible mechanical engineer.

Actually, he wasn't too shabby if I say so myself.

But once the band's break was over they made him go back to his seat so they could get down to making serious music.

PS. We're such rock stars that virtually everyone in these photos--including yours truly--barely got off the sofa the following day. We were napping like Seniors in an old folks home after staying up past our bedtimes the night before. We are a pathetic bunch of old fogies, aren't we?

PSS Unlike some people, I did not wear my pajamas all day.

Cowardice

One day last summer when I was sitting on the dock in shorts and a tee shirt sipping a cold one and trying to stay cool in the summer heat, my dock friend Ann came up to me to ask if I would be the photographer at her son's wedding.

Her son Randy and his darling fiance Rita are a young couple in love and are as sweet and nice as any two people you could ever hope to meet. They were planning their wedding on shoestring budget and couldn't swing the expense of a professional photographer.

Since I have a reputation for constantly shoving my camera in peoples' faces, Ann figured I could make myself useful for a change. And because I definitely wanted to help Randy and Rita, and because a wedding date two days after Christmas sounded like a long time away, I said okay.


So two days after Christmas I loaded up my camera bag and headed off to the church to take their wedding photos. As I made the one hour drive from the marina to the church I was cool as a cucumber as I made a mental list of all the shots I wanted to take and counted how many spare batteries I had in my bag. And then about five miles from the church I had an ephinany:

"What the hell was I thinking?!? I'm not a professional photographer."

Duh.

I'm just an annoyingly persistent amateur armed with an overly elaborate and ridiculously complex point-and-shoot camera with tons of bells and whistles I haven't figured out yet.

The ephinany was immediately followed by a serious case of the heebie jeebies, the technical term for which being "performance anxiety". I could clearly envision the day sixty years hence when Randy and Rita's grandchildren would beg to see their wedding photos, and Randy and Rita would sadly shake their heads and explain they don't have any wedding photos because their mother's dumb ass friend screwed it up. And a tear would run down Rita's cheek. And Randy would mutter my name followed by a swear word and wish for the ten thousandth time that they'd hired a real photographer to capture the most important day of their lives.

I was about to screw up the happiest day of Randy and Rita's life.

And what was so wierd was this was not the first wedding I had photographed. I did Heather's friend Shannon's wedding a couple of years ago and never broke a sweat. But I had a bad feeling about this one and it scared the bejeebers out of me.

Since the wedding was in an hour it was too late for me to back out or find a professional photographer, so I sucked it up and said a quick prayer that I wouldn't screw it up too badly. And for the next three hours I snapped a million photos and used every setting on my camera I could think of and fervently hoped for the best.



After the wedding was over I came back to the boat and put my camera away without even looking at what was on it. I was too scared to look. Seriously, I have rarely been as nervous about anything as I was when I thought about looking at those photos.

After letting them lay there unseen in my camera for a week, I finally put my big girl panties on this morning and put the memory card into my laptop to see how bad the photos were. And praise be, they aren't bad. Not the caliber you'd get from a professional photographer who actually knew what they were doing and who used professional camera gear, but not bad.

These photos are the raw version--unaltered, untweaked "straight from the camera"--so I still need to do some retouching with PhotoShop to sharpen up some details, boost the color and contrast here and there, edit out ceiling light fixtures and other background distractions, and do some cropping to make them more interesting. But all in all, they aren't bad.

You have no idea how relieved I am that I won't have to talk Randy and Rita into having another wedding so I can reshoot their photos.

A very mellow Christmas

What to do at Christmas is always a bit of a quandry for Morley and me. Although we know perfectly well that we could show up at any family member's home and be welcomed with open arms, that solution has never felt quite right to me. Chalk it up to being single for too many Christmases, but being a participant in somebody else's Christmas feels a bit like being Uncle Lewis and Aunt Bethany in the movie "Griswold Family Christmas". (At least I never felt like I was being a Cousin Eddie but my family might have a different viewpoint they haven't shared with me.)

We used to solve the dilemna by going on a tropical cruise during Christmas week but two years ago we discovered by accident that we were paying super premium prices to cruise during the exact week the ship contained the maximum number of brats running wild children exploring the ship under minimal supervision while their parents got hammered at the pool and totally ignored their hoodlums relaxed.

Since this has been an intense year with precious little time to chill out and relax, what I really wanted to do for Christmas was as little as possible. And that's what we've done.

On Christmas Eve we attended the first half of a candlelight service at a Baptist church near the house. It's a long story about that half-sermon, but let's just say it was the most depressing somber Christmas message I've ever heard and we sneaked out the back door discreetly left the church before we gave into our sudden urge to put a bullet through our brains the minister finished his thought provoking sermon. We dropped by some friends' house for a quick visit, then went home and built a fire and stayed up late waiting for Santa to show up.

On Christmas morning we exchanged gifts and hung around the house reveling in the rare sensation of not having anywhere to go and nothing to do, then we packed up Shelby and headed here to the boat.

In the early afternoon two couples joined us for a long, leisurly Christmas cruise around the lake. It was perfect: we had the water to ourselves, the weather was warm (nearly 70 degrees), the sky was sunny and blue, the seagulls were playful, and the boat was decked out in Christmas lights and garlands. We had Christmas carols playing on the radio but the best music of all was the sound of our cell phones ringing with calls from the kids in Kentucky and our families in Tennessee and England.

After our cruise was over, our friends left and we grilled a nice simple dinner for ourselves. Despite the wonderful weather the dock was quiet and peaceful and we had it all to ourselves for awhile, except for the ducks and the seagulls and the occasional fish jumping out of the water.

In the early evening another couple from a neighboring dock dropped by for coffee and dessert. We stayed up late again, talking and laughing and sharing memories of Christmas Past spent with our families. It was, all in all, the perfect low-impact Christmas celebration.

Today we not only get a visit from Santa (the satellite guy is coming to finally move our TV signal from the old boat to our new one), we get to be Santa by finishing a little project for Heather that wouldn't fit in her Christmas stocking. I'll have to tell you about it later since she might be snooping around the internet while she's spending Christmas with her sisters and her dad in Kentucky. All I can say about it for now is that we've had a ton of fun plotting our little project and can't wait to implement it, and she's gonna love it.

And that's what we've done with our Christmas holiday so far.

From the decks of Magnificent Obsession, we wish you a very merry remainder of the Christmas weekend, and to all a Happy, Mellow and Less Frantic New Year.