We are officially boatless now. Sold the boat this morning.
It had gotten to the point where the projects and work the boat required, including a weak transom, was more than I cared to do myself. And to have it done would have been pretty expensive.
I listed the boat on Craigslist on Saturday afternoon and by Sunday evening I had 18 responses wanting to buy the boat. In fact, the person who ended up buying it from Charlotte trumped everyone else by offering more than I was asking for it even. Which means I was probably selling it too cheap, but then again, I know the issues it had and what work needed to be done. Good deal for someone like the guy who bought it because he has buddies who do fiberglass and another buddy who works on engines. I figure my price was basically value minus what it would pretty much cost someone to repair what needed to be repaired.
At least the boat is for the guy himself, he's not just flipping it after the repairs. Said it will be out on Lake Norman up near Charlotte in a few weeks. I even asked him to forward me some pictures of the repairs and also when they get it out on the lake... he said that wouldn't be a problem at all. I'll look forward to seeing how everything ends up. The guy was very impressed with the condition of the boat and sounded like he was the type who was going to do the same thing and fix it up right.
Anyway, took me all of 5 minutes after the boat was gone to want another boat. However, as ambitious as I am at times, I don't want a boat that has a list of repairs and projects it needs. We've actually talked about joining the boat club here on Lake Murray where you pay a fee up front to join, then a monthly fee, and pay for the gas you use, but everything else is taken care of. They have something like 12 or 14 boats, including 6 or 7 bowrider type boats, a few pontoons, and a center console fishing boat. Depending on the level you join at, you can reserve any of the boats anywhere from 2 hours to 30 days in advance.
We'll see though... if we were allowed to store a boat on our property, I would probably lean towards buying a boat, but since we can't, the club sure does take a lot of the hassle out of it. Things like cleaning, maintenance, storage, water toys, etc are all taken care of for you.
Feeling better - just been crazy busy at work with just Scott and I for the most part. Robert's back half days, but not really doing much.
However, normal issues have been slow enough that we've moved two large groups over to the new servers these last couple weeks. We're a little over 2/3rds of the way done with the project now despite all the problems and delays and other situations at work. But, at least it's rolling along. Should be through by the end of this month and then the next big project will kick up - finally getting our users off Groupwise for email and over to Outlook.
Anyway, since it's been busy lately, I just finally went through the rest of the pictures from my trip up to Michigan two weeks ago. I uploaded them to my Pbase site, click the image or link below to go to the gallery:
Can't believe I'm still sick. Got a sinus infection or head cold or something the day of my last post, over a week ago... sick the whole time up in Michigan pretty much and even yesterday and today there's still annoying drainage. I think I'm going to go in next week if it's not cleared up, make sure it's not bacterial.
But I've had to be at work this week - they got absolutely hammered with support requests while I was gone, and last weekend Marty fell out of a hammock and broke her neck. She broke two bones and tore some ligaments off the bone. So, she'll be out for at least a month most likely.
But have no fear... Robert's returned. Well, afternoon's at least for a month working 20 hours/week. Good for him... very frustrating for everyone else. I still don't know how someone who is out for 27 months can just have their job back. I should have started complaining to the higher ups last Summer and we would have never made it this far... it's just ridiculous. Nothing against Robert, glad he's better, but it's still ridiculous. We'll see how the dynamic works out as he starts to come back full time a month from now. Well, if he is able to come back full time - three half days a full recovery does not make yet.
I'll post some more pictures soon... we're going to be busy this weekend. The Garnet and Black spring game is this Saturday and Sunday we're having lunch with Christina's aunt and uncle from Germany who are over in South Carolina right now.
Been a good trip so far. Flight from Columbia to Chicago was delayed a little so I was worried about that. Forgot about the time change at first so I was really worried about missing my connection... but even after realizing Chicago was an hour back, it was still close - 10 minutes, so I ended up running down about 7 gates worth only to find out the flight to Saginaw was delayed from 7:50pm to 9:24pm.
So, I went to Chili's and got dinner and a couple beers and then headed back down to the gate. It was packed, so I sat on the other side of the hall on the E gates. Learned a valuable lesson too - when travelling alone, headphones aren't a good idea. I was watching a Family Guy episode or two on the PSP with headphones... after one and a half episodes I took off the headphones for a second, can't remember why, but I heard "... 7156..." which was my flight. So, I took them off completely and listened and heard "... last call for flight 7156 - attention R. Jones and T. Johnson, this is your last call for flight 7156 to Saginaw..."
This was at 8:39pm... It wasn't that I wasn't keeping track of the time, but it said 9:24pm arrival and already it's last call? So I race across the hall to my gate carrying the laptop, camera stuff, my fleece, PSP case and headphones with cords hanging everywhere... they take my ticket, give me back the small stub area of it and I head down the stairs to the tarmac.
Walking along the tarmac I'm trying to find the stub he JUST gave me and I can't... not in any of my pockets, nowhere... must have dropped it going down the stairs trying to hold onto all the other crap I had with me. Anyway, walking towards the plane and there's a woman out there helping folks with checked stuff and checking tickets... I just yell as I get closer "Saginaw!?" and point at the plane and she nods and says yes so I zip right by her and onto the plane. And thankfully on my first leg when I was in seat 2A, I checked the ticket for my second leg and saw I was in 4A for the next leg. And 4A was open on the plane when I got on, so I sat there. I'm pretty sure that was my seat.
Anyway, both flights were good, first flights I have ever taken without having issues with my ears after landing, so that's nice. And I checked in early enough in Columbia that I got a window seat for both flights and no one was sitting next to me for either flight.
But the star of the trip so far has been Carson - he's a riot. Always grinning and babbling. He's also got a little bouncer thing he sits in that he loves. Took a handful of pictures so far - a couple of shots of flying into Chicago and a bunch of photos of Carson... here's a few of them:
It's been an odd week for me. Ended up staying at work late two nights this week and that's something I pretty much never do. Also try not to take much work home with me either except the remote things that need to be done late after business hours.
But this week one of our faculty members was being interviewed on ABC in Sydney, Australia. They wanted a Skype video link for the interview and I needed to test it Monday evening and the interview was Wednesday evening. The way our local time lines up with theirs, it couldn't be during our business hours really.
Also met this week with Robert's boss again - this time I gave her a page and a half detailing my concerns with this whole situation before the meeting. The meeting went pretty well, she said she really does agree with everything I've said and I found out more about Robert's absence and what is really going on. Anyway, the biggest point is that this is the final extension and we wanted to set out plans for all of the eventualities. I feel his return should be an all or nothing at this point and that he's been given more than ample time to return already and I let her know that. We won't know anything more probably until April 16th when he's set to return.
In the meantime, I won't have to worry about it anyway... I leave for Michigan next Monday and don't return until the 14th - a much needed break. I just hope Marty and Scott can keep up while I'm gone. They did well when we were on the cruise last January and I wasn't accessible at all then, so this shouldn't be that bad considering they can call my cell and I'll have Internet access to check in on email.
Flight up there and our flight to Germany in June should go a little faster for me also - bought a Sony PSP and a few games last weekend. I got the PSP that comes with the Daxter game so that the PSP was silver and not piano black like the original PSP because it doesn't show fingerprints and other crud all over it like the original one. So that's one game and I picked up the Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core, the new God of War: Chains of Olympus, and the Atari Evolved. The first three are all good time killers and the last one is just some classic mindless video games like Asteroids, Missle Command, etc.
