Progress, Vacation, and Father's Day Weekend

I took some vacation time this week. I have only been on the new job for about three months, but I have been very busy and it is the kind of place where you can burn out quick, if you are not careful. I don't usually take vacations, my standard joke is that I work until I either take time off or kill everyone in the office, it wasn't quite that bad, but I needed the time. I took Thursday and Friday to relax and work on the boat, and it dovetailed nicely with Father's Day.

Thursday:

I spent Thursday morning with my daughter. We stopped at the diner for breakfast and she was late to school so I use my dad powers and wrote a note so she wouldn't get in trouble. I would have let her stay home, but she was presenting the sponge report we worked on last week (see my last post) and she had to give a speech. We practiced in the the car on the way in, she sounded pretty good. She takes after her old man, I guess. She is a great public speaker and a bit of a ham.

I dropped her off and headed to West Marine to get the fittings I needed for the bilge pump. I got some clamps, 2 feet of 1 1/8 hose and a tee shirt that said Captain – my Father's Day gift to me. My plan was to install the pump and run it into the exiting bilge plumbing using a barbed connector (1 1/8 to 1 1/2).

I got everything I needed from West Marine, except for the connector itself. The connector is nothing more then a hard plastic tube that connects two different sized hoses. The barbs are a series of sharp bumps that hold the hose in place and prevent the water from leaking. I spent the next 3 hours searching for this damned little piece of hard plastic.

First I went to Home Depot, where I spent 40 minutes looking for someone to help me, and another 20 minutes waiting for them to figure out that they didn't have what I needed. This process was repeated, sans the waiting for help, at two marine stores and a plumbing supply house.

Slightly discouraged I met up with my mom, dad, and brother at the doctors office in town. My brother is sick so he has to go to for check ups pretty regularly. After his appointment was over we headed back along the shore road toward my house and had lunch at the Greek place in the village. Adam, my brother, is pretty handy, especially with electrical stuff, so I talked him in to hooking the pump up to the battery. I would worry about the plumbing later.

We spent about half an hour below deck before Adam announced that I didn't have all the parts I needed. I was missing wire, connectors, and a switch - to turn the pump on and off. This meant another trip to West Marine. I picked up my daughter from school and we headed out. Adam gathered up the parts and my daughter found a ships log for kids.

My brother's selection of parts did not inspire confidence and I scrapped the whole purchase. This caused an argument and my daughter had a quasi-tantrum inside the store. More discouraged then ever, I decided it was time to call in the big guns. My Father-in-law is a retired electrician, I left him a message and asked him to come over.

Friday:

Friday morning was smoother. I got my daughter on the bus and headed out to pick up my mooring permit. The lady from the town finally called to tell me the paperwork was ready and that she would put it in the mail. I told her I would pick it up. It had been over a month and I was a anxious to get the ball rolling at the marina.

I was meeting my wife at noon, so I was a little pressed for time. She is going back to school in September to be a teacher and we were supposed to go over to Stony Brook University to register. I hit the Parks Department and hustled over to the college. She was late, but I got a BLT at Subway, so I wasn't too upset. Gina showed up at a quarter after and we headed to the Admissions Office.

After waiting for almost an hour we finally saw a councilor. In a matter of minutes Gina was officially a student again. She is majoring in math, with a minor in secondary education. Stony Brook is an excellent science and math school. So good, in fact, that when I applied, after high school, I was rejected.

After Gina was finished, I headed to my kid's school for her Father's Day lunch. I came into her classroom and she ran over to me and gave me a big hug. It was great. The class sang a song, to the tune of bingo – with D-A-D-D-Y taking the place of B-I-N-G-O. She hid behind the flag as she sang and made it a point of sing bingo instead of daddy. She found this to be the height of hilarity and has been calling me bingo ever since.

As soon as the party was over we jumped in the car and drove to the marina, Ralph's Fishing Station, to drop off my permit and my mooring. I scraped the crap out of the side of my car putting the anchor in the trunk, much to my chagrin, but we otherwise we made it unscathed. As I was paying my drop fee I learned that the marina is run, owned, and operated by my neighbor, Kieth. Kieth and his wife are very nice people and they have the world's largest dog, Laya, who is a Great Dane. She is about the size of my car and still a puppy.

I ran into Keith in the boat yard and he hooked my up with a new float for my anchor and promised to get me a good spot. He also offered to help me get straight with the harbor patrol. Good deal.

We made it back from the boat yard just in time to meet my in-laws for dinner. My father-in-law made short work of the pump installation. It is now working, using the intergrated switch panel in the cabin, and I even figured out how to hook it up to the existing plumbing. I clamped the small hose inside the bigger one and duct taped the whole thing - god bless duct tape. The bilge is pumped out and, if the battery doesn't die, I think the boat is ready for the water.

Saturday:

On Saturday we stayed in a hotel. The exterminator came that morning and gassed the ants in the walls. We have (had?) carpenter ants and the exterminator told us we had to get the baby out of the house for 24 hours. On a positive note, we had a milestone at the Holiday Inn, the baby rolled over for the first time!

The evening we headed to Sayville and had a light meal at Cafe Joelle. I had a seafood salad and a crab salad, I was in a salad-y sort of mood. Gina suggested that we head over to Fire Island, so I drove down to the docks.

For all of you non-Long Islanders, Fire Island is the barrier island that runs the length of the south shore. On the northern side it forms the Great South Bay, on the southern side is the Atlantic Ocean. The island itself is dotted with Federal Seashores and small ocean communities, some of which cater to the gay community. I think all the locals know about Cherry Grove, but apparently there are other towns as well. The ferries out of Sayville serve Cherry Grove, Sailor's Haven, and Fire Island Pines.

As we tried to park the man at the gate stopped us with an unusual question. He looked in our car and asked “Is there anyone else in there?”

I wasn't sure what he meant and asked him as much. He looked again and said “I guess I should tell you that we cater to, well, the gay community”

I told him that I knew about cherry grove. Apparently there are no secrets between sailors either, as he informed me that Sailors Haven is also queer as a three dollar bill. Fire Island Pines too.

Truth be told I could care less about a persons sexuality, but I don't want the kids to get an education. My wife and I were in tears as we drove away. It felt like a surreal Scooby Doo episode. “You kids should stay away from Cherry Grove, its haunted. Beware of the gay sailor's ghost!

I also asked my wife who the parking guy thought was in the car, did he think we had Liberace in the truck, maybe Freddy Mercury? Or better yet Rip Taylor would jump out, throw confetti, and yell “Fabulous”. It was pretty funny.

Sunday:

I finally got to clean the boat on Sunday morning. On the way back from the hotel we stopped at my parents to bring bagels and wish my dad a happy Father's Day. We had a soccer game at 12 so we left pretty quickly. I power washed the boat, when we got home, and Gina got our daughter into her soccer uniform.

I got most of the deck done and the gunwales washed down. The Maggie Mermaid is looking pretty good. I plan to caulk the windows and put on the pin stripping this week. If all goes well I should have her in the water in the next two weeks.

My kid's 8 birthday is coming up and I am going to do a “kid friendly” naming ceremony. I figure, since it is going to be a mermaid and pirate party, there would be nothing luckier then having the kids do the ceremony as a party activity. I am going to get a bunch of the that non-alcoholic chanpagne.

More good news. We won our soccer game, the last one of the year. We went 6-1-2 for the season, though no one officially keeps records. Some of the kids got me gifts and, because it was so hot, we spent most of our practice having a water fights.

After the game we headed out to the Mattituck Strawberry festival, the tea house, and then to Cedar Beach to go swimming. Everyone got sunburned and salty, and the baby put his feet in the water for the first time. All in all it was a great weekend.

Happy fathers day....