Stupid Movie Night

Tonight is Stupid Movie Night, the irregularly-held evening where we gather together to appreciate the finer points of ridiculous, cheesy, badly produced, overblown, or, yes, stupid movies. As the movie night begins in less than an hour, there is not time to write the full story today. I will say that tonight we are taking a bit of a departure (we have periodic recovery nights after the most agonizing experiences) and watching Rambo 3, which, although the whole 1980's-American-action-hero-versus-an-entire-army thing is pretty stupid on principle, is supposed to be a pretty good example of the genre.

For stupid movie connoisseurs, today brought TREMENDOUS news! The DVD release of Gymkata is scheduled for January 30th!!! This epic event may require a second watching in celebration.

A Very Special Day

Saturday was a Very Special Day (TM) in Carrotland. There are four things that made it special. The first is that a bud was in town for the weekend (let's call him... Ben) and a big group went out in celebration of this miraculous event. The second is that I had the worst beer of all time. The third is that M and I sang karaoke, which again all the yunguns was talking about but we hadn't done before. Fourth, yesterday was the official kick-off of me saving the world! Hooray.

Important stuff first. So, we went to Dad Watson's in Fremont for dinner and beers. I will take you on a pictorial journey.

A variety of vegetables:

More vegetables:

Ben has been away for some time, and I wanted to make sure that this "Ben" that showed up was not in fact an androidal space alien spy sent through time to capture and probe us. So I asked him to show me the essence of Ben, January 2007, summed up in a photo. (Ben is on the left; unfortunately, results of the test were inconclusive.)

Yes, and the worst beer in the world was at Dad Watson's. Most of their selection is great, but I tried a Pickleweasel Pale (name should have tipped me off), one of their limited-batch offerings. It tasted like a skunk blended with basil. (To be fair, others thought it tasted like basil blended with a skunk.)

Later we went to the Steel Pig on Aurora. Hey Seattle, since you haven't noticed yet, the Steel Pig is excellent place, if you have a large group of friends, because it is never crowded, and they have karaoke, pool, South Park pinball, and shuffleboard (though the shuffleboard table is sticky in places, making it an "advanced" difficulty).

Some singing vegetables (Karaoke Master Joe is in the middle):

All the ladies of the group got onstage for song. The shimmer from the heat blurred my photo. Yow!

Then we did an aerobics class, apparently. I don't remember this part.

These dudes were part of another group at the Steel Pig. They're doing a rap-core version of Mariah Carey (?), the shoop-shoop-a-doop song. It was suh-weet.

When Karaoke Master Joe was nailing Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (U2... quite an impressive singing performance, I must say, hence the Karaoke Master title), the dude on the left in the previous photo busted some break dancing moves. This is probably something nobody has seen yet, or ever will see again.

Finally: rewinding time a bit, during the day Saturday I began researching how to save the world. It is a big task. The first step of the plan is to identify which aspects of the world economy (human consumption patterns) are drawing down natural resources most severely. Then, I will identify what combination of technology development and conservation could result in reducing resource use to a sustainable level, for each class of resources. If I am successful in this initial stage, I'll publish essays on my website.

Try searching [environment sustainable technology] on Google Scholar, if you're interested in this type of stuff.

Thanks for tuning in!

Arthroscopic Surgery on Ho-Beaux

It has been really cold and icy in Seattle the last couple days, and our electric space heater isn't big enough to heat the boat. We have a thermometer in our bedroom, and this morning it was 45F. In the bedroom. And I'm supposed to motivate myself to get out of bed. Fortunately, being occasional outdoors-people, as well as current (M) or ex- (K) yuppies (can't be a yuppie if you're not employed, natch!), we have plenty of REI thermal under-gear within reaching distance of bed. I couldn't find my 42.7-46.5F cross-woven wick-tech polypro, so I settled on the less-optimum medium-grade polyester thermals and a button-up fleece.

Given this experience, I thought today would be a good day to fix our second heater, a propane stove thing installed shortly before we bought the boat. We had used it once, when I tested it after replacing the propane lines a couple years ago. It hasn't really been functional, though: the problem was that the DC electric fan that circulates the hot air never worked.

The culprit:

So, uber-motivated this morning, I traced the wires from the heater fan, into an adjacent cupboard, through a hole in the floor (pause to unlock the floorboards... hmm, this is strange, why is it heading away from our electric panel?), along the side of the water tank and... spliced into a coil of ancient-looking wire that ends in a wad of duct tape. This sort of thing is common on Ho-Beaux. We like to blame it on the previous owner. (Sorry, Chuck, but you were the only one we met.)

I clipped the wire where it spliced into the dead-end coil, and fed it up to our electric panel. If we are ever hanging out, and you happen to fall ill with cartilage damage in your joints, you are in luck! Because I am a master at arthroscopic surgery.

Here is what it looks like behind our electric panel:

One of the switches on this panel is labeled "Fan". This switch is the fifth one back in the set at the right of the picture. Not the set in the middle that you can almost see, but the set at right that is buried under the writhing mass.

The "Fan" switch actually did have wires attached to it already, however tracing these (with some difficulty) leads into the main electrical conduit, where most of the wires in the picture go. There it vanishes. Flipping the "Fan" switch has never done anything, so I think a safe assumption is that those wires are spliced into a coil of ancient wire, that ends in a wad of duct tape.

I appropriated the "Fan" switch to be the new home of our heater fan wires! Now the interesting part: to remove two small screws buried deep in the wire's nest; to insert each screw shank through a small circular metal ring attached to the end of each heater fan wire; to line this assembly up with the threaded hole; and to re-tighten the screw.

While doing this, there is a choice. You may have any two of the following four simultaneously: either (1) a pair of needle-nose pliers stuck into the nest, (2) a single finger stuck into the nest, (3) a screwdriver stuck into the nest, or (4) light to see by. Arthroscopy! And, as I say, I am by now a pro. (I should make $200K per year at this, really.)

So, now I am relaxing over a post-spaghetti glass of wine, and it is warmed to almost 60F in our salon. What was I saying about the romance of the sea?

Life Aboard

This edition of Damaged Carrots is titled Life Aboard, in which I will try to provide an introduction, to the uninitiated, of what living aboard a 36-foot sailboat is all about.

But first, let us get acquainted. I am Commodore K. Myrth Carrot (K for short), Captain of Ho-Beaux. It is nice to meet you. And this is my... um... first mate Mariann Carrot (M for short). She and I crew Ho-Beaux, currently stationed at Shilshole marina in Seattle, Washington, USA. Ho-Beaux is scheduled to ship out for Sandefjord, Norway in the summer of 2007, carrying a cargo of two Carrots (slightly damaged). More on this voyage in future postings.

Now, living aboard. People ask: "So, K, what is it like living on a sailboat? How exciting!" (Generally, they have this sort of intense look in their eye, imagining the romance of a life at sea.) Some even say: "Cool, I was thinking of doing that myself someday, if I can get [significant other and/or family dog] to go for it!"

To these sorts of questions, which, to be fair, are exactly the sorts I would ask if our situations were reversed, I get a somewhat cynical tilt to my brow: "Nah. Living on a boat sucks. Don't do it."

"Well ... If it sucks, why do you do it?"

Yes, this probably needs more explanation. I guess my point is that sans un plus grand but, living aboard a small boat is just about like living in a small trailer home... Not a choice made by most of us who aren't NASCAR fans. I mean, it is nice - reeealllly niiiiice - to spend an evening at a hotel, or at someone's house, because generally the room you're staying in has more enclosed space than the boat. So, for the layman (those who are not self-proclaimed Commodores or their first mates), I would recommend taking stock of how much stuff you have, and estimating how much of it you would have to get rid of if you were moving into your bathroom. If this does not phase you, then, hey, life is short, go for it.

Let me reinforce the point, though, by taking you on a seated tour of our salon, which is our living room / dining room / kitchen / office. (We also have a small bedroom up front, and a shower-sized bathroom, which actually does double as a shower.)

This sequence of four photos shows me on my settee, writing a mediocre blog. It pans across our salon, towards the companionway where we enter the boat.

A few things to notice:
- Every horizontal surface is covered with stuff. (Including books that will help me save the world.) This is because there is nowhere else to put it.
- The microwave is sitting on top of the stove, and must be moved onto something else each time the stove is used. (Marie Callendar's microwave lasagnas kick ass, by the way.)
- The dishrack is full of washed dishes, and yet the sink is full of unwashed dishes.



Ah, the romance of the sea! But I am being too facetious for my own good. Really, I love this life, even having been liberated of most of my (ultimately useless) material things, however the only thing that makes the years spent confined (rather than making craploads of money on appreciation of the value of a home in Seattle) is that we will be taking this ship on a great adventure. Stay tuned!