Friday, March 13, 2009

Pumped plus

Since today was a sentinel moment I’m updating you on Friday evening. This morning the wannabe Captain started living his dream as he left for a two day fishing trip as THE Captain. As the hired man asked his Dad this morning when the boat pulled away “Is this his first trip, I mean on his own? He reversed around the wharf then headed out like he knew what he was doing” And of course he should by now, know about handling the boat and emergencies (as evidenced by the last trip) and quite a bit about how to fish the gear, it’s more about locating the fish that’s worrying him he told me and I reassured him this is what every Captain feels every trip.

When I had a call this afternoon from his father asking for the Air Miles number as the boy had stopped at Sobey’s to pick up a grub order he disclosed the lad had left for fishing about 3 hrs before. When I called the boat cell a very excited newly minted Captain answered and I told him jokingly that he had to come back and pick up his brown bread I’d baked for him and he said “not going to happen, I’ve already been back once” When I asked what for he said “forgot to hail out” which is a regulatory requirement for the fishery. Captain’s have to call in to a DFO central number and register the vessel with the voice recognition program (mind you the boy was so excited he got to speak to a human as the computer didn’t recognize the language he was speaking) so that when they’re on the way in they hail in with an ETA and estimated weight of catch so that Catch Monitoring can arrange for a weighmaster to be present when the boat lands to take out the fish. So I said “just settle down, it’ll be okay, everyone had a first day at some point, I remember when your father started out” And I do recall that he was every bit as PUMPED as his son. So I should get all my presentations done for the trip, as I’m sure I’m not going to sleep until Monday when they return.

The travel partner is heading down to the city tomorrow to visit the Captain who is still being held captive in the hospital and is understandably getting a bit stir crazy. This will be an opportunity to pick up the Serena Ryder tickets for the show she’s giving on Friday night which we’re catching before we head out – means we won’t have to wait in line on Fri. I’ve begged off because I have (as usual) too much to do with the departure date looming. I am really taken with my netbook though so that helps with the getting into it.

I’m off to make some Lady Hannah tea (a healthy guilty pleasure) and get started. I had a boost where I found someone in the Cayman Islands tourism department who offered 500+ free, not copyrighted photos of the Caribbean to me which means I won’t have to dick around with the original plan of crediting each slide, burning and mailing to Texas a CD of my presentation as requested by the egotist photographer I first stumbled upon. I picked up my library book, which is Three Cups of Tea, and it comes highly recommended so I really want to read that before I leave. I leave you with the quote of the day:

"Ask yourself what you would do even if you were never paid. That's a clue to what you should be doing and of course finding a way to be paid for it. You can attract more money from love."— Dr. Joe Vitale: Marketing and Copywriting author, one of the stars of The Secret