Sugar, We're Going Down

So this weekend was the big sailing adventure. It was quite an enjoyable couple of days spent hanging out with Josh, Amber, Tara and Matt, playing a little Wii Sports (that Wii is quite addictive...), hanging out on the sailboat, and even playing some throw-back old-school Mike Tyson's Punch Out for the NES. I was so horrible at that game way back in elementary school, so I had to prove to myself that I could get past the first couple guys in the game. I can. It's brilliant.

The sailboat was quite the ride. At least for the first hour or so. And then, my penchant for motion sickness started to kick in and I suddenly was enjoying it a lot less. Everything was kinda spinning, things looked not quite so inviting, and the general feeling was wanting to get the incessant rocking motion to stop. But, with Amber to the rescue, dramamine came in handy and a couple hours later I was good as new. One word of caution, however, is to try and avoid talk of spewing, losing the lunch, throwing up, or anything else while feeling sick. It generally doesn't help in keeping one from leaning over the edge.

That's actually Josh's second attempt at getting me to lose my lunch while on a trip or ride of some kind. The other was when he took some of us flying in their family's small plane while at Harding. Apparently I don't do well with heights or small aircraft or something, cause man...I was pretty out of it for that trip. He says that I wasn't really myself for a number of hours afterwards...I don't think I was myself for quite a while longer. I guess I need to just keep the dramamine close by whenever I'm going on an ocean vessel or a small plane. Although, I don't really think that I'll be on either of those types of vehicles in the near future.

Seriously, though, it was a fun weekend. The boat really was incredible, and having not been on a sailboat before, was quite the experience with putting the sails up, leaning all the way to one side to walk since the edge away from the wind was practically in the water, and basically just enjoying the peacefulness of being out on the water. The first time the wind caught the sail and the boat took off, I was kinda caught off guard when the whole ship tilted to one side. Then the boat kinda held it's position, and I thought that I'd be alright with it running along like that. Then, I noticed that the boat wasn't moving. Apparently we'd gotten stuck, but after some work with the motor and all of us standing on one side to lean the boat, we got unstuck and back on our way. Then I got the real feeling for how the boat runs in the water. I'd seen sailboats before, but I didn't realize that they ran so low in the water in the direction that the wind is going. I'd have to say, if there were some larger waves with the wind, I wouldn't be surprised for water to be coming up over the edge. But we didn't end up sinking, despite my early beliefs to the contrary. Overall though, I can see why they went touring around all summer in that thing just hanging out. Props to Josh for letting us get out on it and both he and Amber for entertaining us for the weekend.

For those of you that might not know, Mandi has gotten herself a job working for Bechtel as a Primary Contract Specialist. That's about all I can tell you about her job, because that's about all she can tell me about her job. The funny thing is, she is on her way to Nashville for a conference with the company execs without ever having worked yet. She gets back Tuesday night and will have her first day in the office actually learning the job on Wednesday. But mad props to her for owning the interview and getting hired the exact same day. Now it's my turn to have that kind of interview at some point.

I guess the riddle from two posts back about hunting has got people stuck, although some of the answers were quite humorous, and I would have thought they could work. If I actually made these up, I would select Philip's answer to be correct. The "official" answer however, is lice. Who would think of that? I don't know who did in the first place. But that's what they said. Amber, here's you're chance to be proven as a genius! Today's riddle is more of a logic puzzle called Anniversary Discount:

A fancy restaurant in New York was offering a promotional deal. A married couple could eat at the restaurant for half-price on their anniversary. To prevent scams, the couple would need proof of their wedding date.One Thursday evening, a couple claimed it was their anniversary, but didn't bring any proof. The restaurant manager was called to speak with the couple. When the manager asked to hear about the wedding day, the wife replied with the following: "Oh, it was a wonderful Sunday afternoon, birds were chirping, and flowers were in full bloom." After nearly 10 minutes of ranting, she comes to tell him that today was their 28th wedding anniversary."How lovely", the manager said, "However, you do not qualify for the discount. Today is not your anniversary, you are a liar". How did the manager know that it wasn't their anniversary?

The highlights for the coming week? Going crazy at ORNL with sample running in the machine for my thesis work, the start of the season for the soccer team that I'm coaching, the start of the MLS soccer season, the Champions League returns to action in the quarterfinal stage, and my lab section has their last day of lab, meaning my teaching is almost finished at UT. All brilliant stuff, and all to be looked forward to. For now, though, it's off to continue my reading of The Chronicles of Narnia. The current book is The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and I'm glad that I've picked up reading them again after the long break since I quite (last summer, I think). I figure, though, that I'll have a lot of time to read in the coming weeks while I wait for those samples to cool and warm up, so they should be finished soon. I'll have to find another book after that though. If anyone has some suggestions of good books, I'd love to have them.