The End

At this point I am going to officially quit blogging indefinitely. It was fun but I have too much on my plate. If, in the future, I feel that I need to let my opinion be known, I will certainly come back to this page. For now, take care and God bless. If you really want to find out what I'm up to, look me up on Facebook.

Roasting Marshmallows

I was unable to post this until now for fear of repercussions; names have been omitted to protect the guilty. Last October, one of my coworkers at my former part time job told me that she had always wanted to roast marshmallows at the Piedmont Natural Gas building in downtown Greenville. To make the point that it is a gas company, the water fountain has flames coming out of the top of it.

So in March I was again scheduled to work with this coworker, who will remain unnamed for her safety and job security, and I brought along a long stick and she brought some marshmallows. At about 3:00 in the morning we took turns roasting some marshmallows over the flame.

I know, I know. The first rule in rulebreaking is "If you ever break the rules, don't take pictures of yourself breaking the rules." I am aware. I should point out that in spite of the enormous policy book that we had, it did not mention anything about roasting marshmallows over flaming fountains in it.

Well, I quit my job with that service so I thought I would post this picture. The marshmallows were good by the way.

Cutting Board

Here are some pictures of my most recent project and my newly (somewhat) organized shop/shed/storage building. The cutting board is made from maple, cherry and walnut. The finish is walnut oil.

Swimming in 38 Degree Water

This past weekend, I flew up to Maine to compete in the annual Kenduskeag Stream Race in Bangor, Maine; it's a 16.5 mile race over water that ranges from still to class IV rapids. There were about 500 canoes and kayaks and over 800 contestants overall. Dad and I were in an old aluminium Boy Scout canoe that he bought just for this race.

It was a timed event with 5 teams starting every minute. We were number 332 and we had to wait a little over an hour for our turn.

We made very good time in the first 10 miles and passed through several small rapids. However, the stream was higher that it has ever been since they started the race 41 years ago and the water was moving very fast over the notorious Six Mile Falls. About three quarters of the people who ran the falls capsized; Dad and I were among them. There is always a large crowd gathered at this spot to watch the spills (they are called vultures). Between the vultures and the families of the contestants, there were several hundred people lined up on the bridge overlooking the falls.

We capsized at the first set of falls and floated for about 200 yards through the rapids. I think I hit every rock on the way down. We held onto the canoe to try to keep our heads above the water which worked pretty well. Did I mention the water was kind of cold?

As we neared the bridge I waved to the crowd and attempted to nonchalantly say "I decided to take a swim because I was getting a little hot." It came out kind of squeaky though.

Just downstream of the bridge was a rescue canoe that was tied off to someone up on the bridge. The person on the bridge was supposed to move back and forth and let out line to help the guy in the canoe snag people coming through (the rescuers were hopelessly overwhelmed by the number of people in the water). As we got close to him, the rescuer in the boat yelled up to the guy on the bridge "Give me more rope! I need more rope!" For some unknown reason, they couldn't let him out any more and he couldn't get over far enough to get Dad, so Dad and the canoe floated on down the river. I was able to get just far enough over to catch the rescue canoe and he was able to drag me over to shore. (Notice in this picture that Dad is in the water with the canoe there are four empty canoes and only one still upright; that's about the way it was all day)


From there I met up with Annie, Lianna, and Mom and we started trying to catch up with Dad. I started hiking downstream through the brush and finally caught up to Dad after about 25 minutes or so- but he was on the other side of the river so I hiked back up to the bridge and met him. He had been in the water significantly longer than I had been and was pretty cold. We finally met up with Mom and changed into our dry clothes.

Since it had taken so long to do all that, we knew we were done as far as the race was concerned. Plus, our canoe had two large dents in it and some rivets had pulled out of the ribs so our canoe would no longer float anyways so we called it a day and headed off to Olive Garden.

I did find out one interesting tidbit though. When I passed under the bridge my mother and sisters had run across the bridge to watch us come out the other side. In doing so, my mother had walked up to the railing and leaned over -standing on the rescue line. So when the rescuer in the canoe had been yelling for "MORE ROPE," my dear mother was standing on that very same rope that was supposed to save me.

We had a good time and survived without any major injuries. We were pretty sore the next day though. Dad lost his hat, his glasses and his designer contoured paddle. I lost my sunglasses. We also learned some valuable lessons for next time.

Here are some articles about the race:

Bangor Daily News

Channel 2 video clip go to THIS LINK and fast forward to about 8:15

Sarah's New Business

Over the last few months, Sarah has been making beaded jewelry for her self; she is very creative with her designs. Then she started bringing them to work and selling them to her coworkers. She has recently teamed up with a friend who makes baskets and they have gone into business together. They will be selling their products at the fairs and festivals in this area, starting with the "Azalea Festival" in Pickens on April 21st.

They also have a very sharp-looking website that will eventually have PayPal and Ecommerce for online sales. Their website is: www.basketsfullofbeads.com/.

March

In addition to Caffeine Awareness Month, March is also the official National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month. At fist, I wasn't going to touch this one . . . but I couldn't resist. The Cancer Research and Prevention foundation promotes awareness of colon cancer and recommends regular colonoscopies and other preventative procedures. I went to their website and was greeted with a picture and description of their Super Colon. They describe it as "an inflatable 20-foot long and 8-foot high replica of the human colon. As visitors walk through the display, they get an up close look at healthy colon tissue." There are so many jokes I could make about this . . . Use your imagination so I can avoid the complaints I would surely get.

March is also National Noodle Month, National Nutrition Month and Kidney Month. March 5th is Multiple Personalities Day (should there be several days for that?). March 20th is Extraterrestrial Abduction Day. March 31st is Bunsen Burner Day. There are also several that I can't mention, but I really laughed about when I read them.

Today is St. Urho Day. Who is St. Urho? I'm glad you asked. According to legend, he used a pitchfork to skewer thousands of locusts out of Finnish grape vineyards, thus saving the farmers from losing their crops. He is now known as the official saint of grasshopper eradication.

To celebrate St. Urho Day you should wear purple and green to symbolize the grasshoppers and the grapes they never got to eat; you should also go to a lake shore and chant "Heinäsirkka, heinäsirkka, meine täättä hiiteen," which roughly translated means "Grasshopper, grasshopper, get out of here." He has a statue in Minnesota honoring him. He is depicted carrying a pitchfork with an enormous grasshopper impaled on it.

March 27th is National Quirky Country Music Song Titles Day. Grab some of your most redneck, backwoods friends (you'd better not call me) and line dance to the likes of "May the Bird of Paradise Fly Up Your Nose" by Little Jimmie Dickens, "You're the Reason Our Kids Are So Ugly" by Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty, "You're the Hangnail in My Life (And I Can't Bite You Off)" by Hoyt Axton, and "Flushed From the Bathroom of Your Heart" by Johnny Cash.

Make sure to celebrate all of our national observances. To save time, combine the celebrations. Just line dance in a large, diseased colon while yelling Finnish obscenities at grasshoppers. (If you do, make sure to send me pictures!)