School's Out

Let the education begin!

After a difficult year of loss and change, barely squeaking through the seventh grade, the kid needed a celebration:



We even let her play with matches. What teenager doesn't like to light stuff on fire?



Get a grip will ya, we were simply having dessert. No need to call DCF just because we let the kid finish making the peach flambe.*


*No minors were served alcohol in the process,
which was a real bummer to the minor.

Home Oil Refinery

Has your waterfront property just become coated in oil? Do you have a fishing boat that's not allowed to catch fish, despite the demand for pre-oiled fish in upscale restaurants and markets?

Don't worry, because now you can turn that disaster into profits with one of our home oil refining units:



Simply collect the tarballs on your land, or skim the oil surrounding your boat, and fire away. You'll now have your own gasoline, diesel, heating oil, motor oil, and heck, with our number one best selling unit, you can even make jet fuel. And anything you make over and above what you can use, big oil must buy back from you, just as the electric company must purchase excess electricity generated from your solar panels or wind generators. Big oil will no longer corner the market with their billion dollar refineries.

Your property values will soar, and your boat will no longer be a rust bucket derelict that no one wants. All the brokers will be on your doorstep with enormous offers.

Contact us today to view our demo and pricing. Hurry, these units are slipping away fast!

On the Rocks

It's not that I don't love you. It's not that I want to give up on us. I don't want to leave you, I want to stay here forever.

But you've been so cold to me for so long, and then sometimes you smother me until I can't breathe. Between your dark moods, and those biting jabs that knock me to the ground, oooof. It's nearly impossible to get up again.

I know that in order for this to work, I have to accept that you are what you are. I'm the one who has to change, adapt, because you won't compromise one inch.

I don't know if I'm up to it. I've tried to make this work for two years now, but am longing for some warmth in my life.

Oh, Rhode Island, I don't know if I can continue to live with so much winter. Which is followed by spring, oh, lovely spring, when everything blooms so beautifully and clogs my lungs with pollen. For an entire week, there's been no sun, no temp above 70. Is this a rerun of last year's wet, cold, soggy non-summer, filled with life-sucking ticks?

I don't think I can take it. It may be better if I pack up and go. But go where???

Ever hear the term 'armchair sailor?' It's a somewhat derogatory term for someone with little or no boating experience, who can expound in great detail about how some nautical catastrophe like sinking, running up on a reef, or getting dismasted in a storm wouldn't have happened to them, because they've read all the manuals.

We have them here too:

Economic recovery

This year there seems to be a drought in the normally abundant money season. Lots of boats didn't go into the water. Many summer home owners are doing cleanup and repairs themselves, rather than hiring someone.

Last summer, even though I was barely able to function thanks to lyme disease, I earned more than I have so far this year. Apparently, I have recovered much better than the economy. On Memorial Day weekend, the official start of the season, there was no parade of boats in the harbor, despite the picture perfect weather. The beach town next door was bereft of the usual traffic jams.

When I returned here two years ago after several years of wandering, I had the best summer ever. Why? Because I mostly diddled, enjoying sailing the bay and playing on the beach, working just enough to get by.

Trying to live here year round is a completely different shell game. Freezing all winter, garnering debt that needs to be eradicated by hustling to earn a buck in the short summer season, all while trying in vain to breathe the constantly yellow air, has made me realize that I'm doing it backwards. I should be living and working somewhere else ten months a year, and then taking an extended vacation here in July and August, working a little bit just to break even.

But where to go? What to do? I want to stay in canvas work, near boats and the water, and I don't ever want to see snow. That pretty much narrows my choices down to Florida and coastal California. Florida is a hurricane prone, soon-to-be oil coated swamp; California tends to have earthquakes and be on fire. What a selection.

I'm thinking that I'd like to participate in an exchange program starting in the fall: Anyone who has a boat canvas business in Mexico, Central or South America (not cape horn or anything stupid like that-palm trees only!), let's swap for a year to see if the grass really is greener on the other side. Before we trade places, we can apply for a government grant to study, document and publish the results of our experiment, possibly encompassing a best selling book and movie, so we'll be covered if it doesn't work out. Any takers?

It Don't Bug Me None

Haven't blogged for a while, have I? That's because currently, I'm not speaking to the human race. I've found something much more entertaining, and which requires more intelligence, to do: observing the great variety of insects that inhabits my camper.

That's right, I said camper:

Last month I moved out of the house, nothing against my housemates or the squirrels that run wild in the eaves. I just needed my own space. Peaceful. Quiet. No wild parties till dawn (that'd be those pesky squirrels).

I may now be headed down the redneck road to becoming trailer trash, but so what? I like living here in my tin can, more so than in the the tin shack. It's not a boat, but still, I'm cozy and comfortable, going to sleep each night and staying that way until dawn.

The only bummer is the much longer commute to my canvas shop. Now I have to truck all the way across the yard in order to get to work:


But this will do for now, until I re-evaluate my life in the fall. By then I should just about be all done with my bug study.