Everyone knows the business school students spend a lot of time abroad, but what do they really do while they’re over there…

This is a blog from one of my classmates that never fails to make me smile.

i.jumped.here

I like to sell my used textbooks on Amazon as I can generally get a better price for the book this way rather than selling them back to the bookstore at a loss. Once the book sells, I then take the book to the post office, buy an envelope and ship the book media mail to its new home. Amazon allows you a shipping allowance which roughly covers the cost. Today, however, things didn’t quite work out.

I took the book to the post office in between my classes, got the envelope, wrote the address on it and put the book and packing slip inside.

Me: I’d like to ship this media mail please, its a book.
Post Office: I saw a letter inside the book.
Me: Yes, that’s a packing slip.
Post Office: That’s correspondence, I can’t ship it media mail.
Me: No, its a packing slip. It tells me where to ship the book to and what book it is.
Post Office: I can only ship it media mail if its just a book.
Me: ….seriously?

The post office refused to ship the book media mail. Flat refused. So no more putting packing slips in with the book. But I’m mailing used textbooks, aren’t the notes written in the book correspondence? What if I shipped a book of letters? Does the post office really have an issue if I ship a book to a friend with a sticky on the front that says “Enjoy!”?

How dare I ship a packing slip with a book!

“The boat’s name is Perseverance.”

I wrinkle my nose. What kind of name is that for a boat? I grew up around boats with clever names like Liquid Joy which had so many different meanings one could get endless amusement out of guessing which the owner meant. But Perseverance? Sounds like a goal someone was striving towards rather than a pleasure boat.

But Geoffrey refuses to let me change the boat’s name. “It’s bad luck.” I beg to disagree. Pirates changed the name of their boats all the time. So I insist on calling in Percy.

But stories should start at the beginning rather than in the middle where I’m standing on a dock fighting 60 mph winds to tie up the boat. The only question is, where does this story begin? Back when Geoffrey and I were first dating and he planned a whole date around taking me to learn to sail that was canceled due to weather? Or does it begin with our decision to go sailing for our honeymoon…somewhere?

I think it begins in the afternoon in late September, with me sitting in the middle of a lake, trying to sail. Geoffrey decided that the best way for me to learn to sail was, after taking me out in the boat twice and explaining it to me, to turn me loose in the middle of the lake in a sunfish and tell me to get back to the dock. Which was working just fine until the wind died.

I sat there, trying to figure out what I was doing wrong, while the boat sat there, doing nothing. A redneck in a big powerboat (two motors) drives by me laughing and asks if I need a tow. No, I’ve got to learn to do this. Geoffrey is calling encouragement from the dock, “You’re doing great!” How do you figure? I’m not moving.

The wake from the powerboat knocks my little sunfish to the side enough for it to catch a small puff of wind. I proceed with my attempt at sailing back to the dock. This involves a rather tedious business where I have to sail at an angle towards one shore of the lake, then quickly turn to sail towards the other shore, slowly making my way towards the dock. Tacking – the reason you have to really enjoy sailing and not be in a hurry. There, are you happy honey? I learned to sail. Or at least made it back to the dock.

Shortly after this, Geoffrey found a Victoria 18 for sale in my hometown. Instead of renting a boat for the honeymoon, we could have our own boat to sail every weekend and everywhere we wanted. It was in good condition and we could keep it in my parent’s backyard. (Or rather, dad volunteered we could keep it there and even thought it was a pretty sight out the window until we put a bright blue tarp over it.) We could go over in the evenings and Geoffrey could work on the boat while I played with mom.

“We can’t take it on a blue water crossing, it’s too small,” Geoffrey insisted. I had my heart set on the Virgin Islands. “But we can take it down to the Keys. That’s Caribbean sailing but safer.” I’m game, especially for the idea of getting a boat where we can sail lots of different places.

So we buy the boat. And like excited new boat owners, we take it to the lake our very first weekend to sail. Which was a great plan, but there was absolutely no wind. Geoffrey made me rig the sails anyways for practice. We took it out again the next weekend and again, there was no wind. It was starting to look like we would be going on our honeymoon having never sailed the boat.

Our last free weekend before the honeymoon, we took the boat down to Edisto since we figured there would always be some kind of wind at the beach. Saturday was beautiful and we cleaned the boat, put on a new coat of bottom paint, waxed all the metal parts and oiled the wood. It was really starting to look like a pretty boat (it already was a pretty boat, but the bottom paint was see-through and the wood was parched, it needed some attention). Sunday, we took the boat to the landing and stood there with some park rangers looking at the giant waves and listening to NOAA weather radio call out a small craft advisory. For a change, it was blowing too much to sail.

So the next week, when we hooked the boat up to the truck to tow it down to Florida, we hadn’t gotten to actually sail it. Still, Geoffrey was confident we were going to have fun and I was looking forward to the honeymoon, the warm weather and going someplace new. Geoff, of course, would undoubtedly go into a long, detailed discussion at this point about oiling the hubcaps of the boat trailer for the trip down or the specifics of tying down the mast so it doesn’t bounce loose or how it isn’t safe to park the boat anywhere because someone might back into it and chip the gel coat. But I was the happy, carefree, head-out-the-window passenger who wasn’t worried about all the problems between SC and Florida. We were going sailing! Finally!

And sure enough, the water was beautiful. Perhaps not as clear as Geoffrey remembered, but wonderfully warm and delightfully salty. We were staying off Marathon at Valhalla Point Resort, an absolute jewel of a small beach shack hotel. Clean sand, hammocks, a dock out back for the boat, the grill out front, other friendly guests, a spoiled lobster-eating dog – it could have been the set of a 1920s/30s movie. We trekked sand in and out of our room, forgot to turn the AC on for most of the stay, cooked lobster, fish and shrimp on the grill and, oh yes, sailed.

Geoffrey started calling me his deck lemur, “no matter how much we’re bouncing around, she gets up on the front of the boat, wraps her prehensile tail around the mast and rigs the sails.” I loved bouncing over the waves on the bow of the boat, helping Geoffrey navigate through the shallow water. If we were at anchor while he fished, I stretched out along the deck, enjoying the sun and salt and a good book.

Then, Friday, the weather hit. The water had been choppy Thursday and the weather radio had been predicting bad weather since Tuesday, but what we got was a downpour. We went shopping in Key West rather than even thinking about sailing. Why ruin something fun by going into miserable conditions when you don’t have to?

“We’ve had hurricanes with less rain than this,” one lady told us. The people of the Keys seem to have a very interesting view of hurricanes. The caretaker of our hotel had just told us a story about trying to drive into town during a hurricane to get cigarettes and having a wave of refrigerators come down the road at him. But hey, its just a hurricane, lets go into town.

When we got back to Marathon that evening, the wind had picked up enough that Geoffrey wanted to move our boat to the other side of the dock. It was dark and crazy windy and the last thing I wanted to do was stand out on the dock while he fidgeted with the boat. I’d been doing a lot of that all week. I would much rather be inside.

But instead I helped with the hard part of owning a boat – dealing with the bad weather. Trying to move it against the wind and current, tying it down when its wet and dark without hurting myself. Not slipping off the boat’s wet deck (yay Sperry!).

Finally, curled up in our room, the boat safely tucked away from the worst of the danger, we were listening to the VHF radio (which goes almost everywhere with Geoffrey) to a boat no one could get out to rescue. Geoffrey likes to tell this story in disgusting detail also, but I really don’t think it necessary. It just graphically illustrated the valuable lesson of not taking a small boat out in big seas. Something will go wrong. And when that something goes wrong and you don’t have the right emergency equipment, well, at best you’re in for a rough night.

We went back to SC. The boat, parked in a hotel parking lot overnight, got backed into and had its gel coat cracked. Something for Geoffrey to repair. I didn’t want to go home and neither did Geoff. We only lacked a slightly bigger boat and we could just keep going. Past the Keys, down the Caribbean to Trinidad. And from there, who knows. There are an endless number of sailing adventures to be had and we’re only getting started. And I still have much learning to do. But its fun, not work. I don’t have to stick with sailing, there’s no need to persevere. Sailing is just fun and the next boat is going to be named something fun.

It was an absolutely beautiful day at the beach…until I decided I wanted to take a kite out to fly. I had been walking along the beach earlier, watching all the people and all the dogs and all the kite surfers.

The people all have these sticks with ball holders on the end which they can use to launch the balls long distances with little effort. The dogs seemed to enjoy this improvement on the average human’s throwing distance and raced past each other in attempts to catch their balls mid-bounce. Of course, sometimes, they got sidetracked seeing a different ball going the other direction and would turn around and chase it, leaving their owner a long way to walk to recover a ball that has either washed out a few feet into the surf (cold) or been confiscated by another dog (icky). Then the dogs and their owners would be involved in a repeated and slightly awkward conversation about getting the right ball back to the right owner.

I was especially inspired by the kite surfers. The wind was kicking and the weather radio was calling for 8-11ft seas but the sky was as clear and blue and the sun as bright and warm as anyone could wish. They were jumping and splashing and having a blast, safely protected from the cold temperatures by their wetsuits (it is January). I wanted to try. Geoffrey has said I can – we’re hoping to move somewhere we can live on the water – and then kite surfing could be my afternoon exercise. Maybe I need to learn how, first.

But inspired by the sun and the wind and the kite boarders, I went back to the beach house and picked up a kite we’d brought back from China for Geoffrey’s mother. Then, after untangling some cord and making a new tail for the kite, we trouped back out to the beach, ready to try out the kite. By the time we hit the boardwalk one house over, it was raining.

We managed to get the kite in the air, though it almost immediately lost its tail. While Geoffrey and I ran with the kite and threw the kite into the rain, Geoff’s sister amused herself by “flying” the tail of the kite. Five minutes later, soaked through by rain and freezing cold due to lack of sunshine, we trouped back home, defeated.

The kite was put down in the garage, sandy shoes were taken off, wet jeans and jackets thrown into the washing machine and we made it back upstairs.

“Back so soon?” Geoff’s mom motions to the window. The rain clouds have cleared away and the sun is once again shining brightly. One brief blow of weather to drag our kite through the sand and remind us not to give up right away. After all, the sun will come out eventually.

Some strange thing is starting to occur among many of my friends. First they all got married, then they all had babies. Now, they’re all blogging about cooking. While I know from marketing classes and work experience that “mommy-bloggers” are a force of interest in the marketing world (because if you pay them to rate your product, this somehow has more weight than paying, say, an expert in the field). But now I’m watching this start to occur among my friends. Every evening, about this time, they all post what they are cooking. It makes me hungry. So I either drag Geoffrey out to eat or make pasta.

But tonight I am actually cooking. Not for my loving husband and small child (because, much to my mother’s disappointment, I still don’t have one or more of those) but for some friends who are coming over to eat. And by cook, I mean, of course, that I have bought all the food and it is lined up neatly on the counter waiting for Geoffrey to get home and do something with it.

I did make tacos the other day that I’m assured were better than the ones you get Tuesdays at the Whig.

So, as far as what I’m Geoffrey is cooking for tonight…oh no, nevermind, it would not quite fit the balanced mealplan, healthy cooking mommy-bloggers.

This summer, I was in Dearborn, MI working for Ford Motor Company and blogging for the business school.

Originally posted on 9/22/08 as a diversion from studying Management…
—–
Two years ago…

He’s still walking next to me. How am I supposed to change from heels into walking shoes if he’s still talking to me? I apparently have a subconscious desire to impress this boy who has rambled on about digital cameras, his garage apartment, his dog and a bunch of engineering stuff for a while now and appears to have decided to follow me to work. Oh well, four blocks in heels won’t kill me, will it? But why is he walking me to work? I say something about cookies to keep the conversation going. I like cookies. And I’m on solid footing talking about cookies. I’m not so sure about all this water-flow-modeling stuff. Cookies are a nice, safe subject. This guy is scary smart. Best to talk about cookies.

I keep thinking he’ll finish whatever he’s going to say, but it looks like he’s going to walk me all the way to the door of the office. Which means he’s probably going to ask me on a date. I feel all middle school. Except that won’t do. I like Geoff, I really do, but I can’t go on a date with him. It’s a shame, if he doesn’t ask, then we can go on being friends. But I’m scared if he does ask, and I have to say no, then will he stop talking to me? I don’t want that. I’d better show some interest in water-flow-modeling…

Sure enough, out it comes. He’s going to visit some friends this weekend, but has some free time Saturday morning and would love to see the zoo if I’d like to come. This isn’t fair, I love the zoo. I love running around and taking a zillion pictures of all the animals. But I can’t, I say, I agreed to go shopping with Mallory Saturday. It does sound like fun, though, and I do hope he checks it out some time. I smile sweetly and disappear in the door and make a mad dash to my boss’s office.

“You will never believe, I just got asked on a date to the zoo by an engineer!” I’m obviously flustered. Which is why, a year later, when I tell my boss I’m now dating the engineer, she remembers the event very well and doesn’t seem the least bit surprised.

Saturday, September 20, 2008, 4:15 pm

“Are you ready to go?” Geoffrey now, because I love saying his full name, looks ever so good in his suit and I can”t help but grin at him. “We’re going to get bar-be-que!” He loves bbq. Me, not quite as much as he does. But I’m determined not to spoil anything and smile at him. I think he believes he’s pulling one over on me. So we get in the car and chat all the way over to West Columbia where he suddenly swerves into the zoo. Click, this should be interesting. I had some suspicions, but his silly grin now is a confirmation. I start to get nervous.

He buys us tickets and we wander around the botanical gardens trying to point out elephant ears and roses. He’s talking about engineering some water-flow-carp-pool thing. I’m beginning to wonder if my wedges are going to get caught in some of the thicker sand. We wander through all the little paths that in the spring would be impassable due to flowers and now, in late summer, are just green and you can read all the tags and inspect the leaf shape without the colorful flower to distract you.

Finally we settle down in a brick gazebo on a bench, Geoffrey sitting next to me while I look at the sky, the plants, anything I can see to distract myself from just looking over at him and grinning. From the sneak peaks I’ve seen of him, he”s grinning at me something fierce. It takes him three tries to get through the lead in, but finally he manages.

“So, I was going to bring you here to get to know you better,” he has been refusing to take me to the zoo since I first turned him down two years ago.

“I’d guess you know me fairly well by now,” I reply. I’m grinning at him, ignoring the hand fidgeting with something in his pocket.

“Well, I just have one more question…” he puts a small velvet box in my lap.

blog up – now, to integrate? always changing things around.

Geoff’s idea, doing a blog about the boat. Probably because its something he’s interested in. We’ll see how far I get tonight, anyways.  Big image on the homepage was taken by another couple while we were on honeymoon, so that’s us sailing. Little images will probably go. Still playing around with all that in Illustrator. Thought I would have it done before the blog went live. Ah well.