Friday afternoon yacht spotting

Anyone who knows much about me knows that I like boats. Okay, I love boats...boats of almost any type, the bigger and more complex the better. So when an impressive (both for size and engineering/design) yacht shows up in town I have to go check it out. This one was moored in Lake Union. For those who care, the boat was built in 2000 by Feadship at the DeVries yard in Holland. It's 175 feet long and was actually designed as a way to hold part of the owners' art collection. For the name, think chocolate kisses. There was actually another large-ish boat there, an interesting wooden sailboat. It looked small in comparison although it was probably three times larger than our own boat. Was a nice way to end my week, wandering around the outside of a boat I've seen online in and in magazines for years.

Kisses & S/Y Tatoosh

Other than getting excited over a big boat, it's been a weird week. I had some frustration at work with an employee being sick too often and thinking that she didn't need to stick to a schedule. So, I sat her down and talked to her about it and she was very receptive to what I had to say and didn't realize that I had concerns. So, she responded to me saying to not have so much sick time by calling in sick the next day. At least what I said sunk in. I did have a meeting with my boss where we discussed my yearly goals and how I'm doing. It was a good meeting in that I came out of it feeling confident in my job and how I'm doing it. He seems happy with what I'm doing and has several new projects for me. Job security is such a nice thing in this day and age!

There were quite a few political things going on this week, but I'm not sure I even want to talk about them. I'll attribute it to burnout I guess, and I hate being that way. But, after a point, how much outrage can I muster? I expect to be mortified by pretty much anything the Repubs and especially Bush do, but one thing that did get to me was this story about Diane Feinstein voting to confirm an anti-gay racist nominee to a federal court. My problem with this is that the Dems weren't able to do much about these nominees while the Repubs had control of both houses of Congress. The Dems told us that they would do things differently if they had control of Congress. Now that they do, they're still voting for these extreme far-right nominees that Bush puts forward. What's up with that? Are the Dems so inherently emasculated by the Repubs that even when they have to ability to stop Bush's extremist nominations they don't? I'm beginning to wonder...

There is one other thing I came across, a movie by Max Blumenthal. I really like some of the work he does because he gets the wingnuts to simply describe what they believe in which makes them look ridiculous. In this video he's at the College Republican National Convention and he doesn't hesitate to ask them why they're not enlisting in the military if they're so pro-war. Some of their answers, when they give answers, are actually funny. It's really amazing how people are so quick to send someone else to fight and die for a cause they won't fight and die for themselves.

No real plans for the weekend here. Jayson is on-call so we'll be staying near home. I might head up to the boat and spend some time there. It's always therapeutic to spend time up there even if I'm doing work. Beyond that, I can't imagine what will be going on. I intend to sleep late and maybe we'll meet a friend for lunch. My birthday is on Monday but it doesn't seem like a big deal to me. I guess I don't like having a a lot of attention paid to me.

This is kind of random, but maybe not really. I'm sitting watching an episode of the Golden Girls where Rose (no snide comments please) where Rose is afraid she's contracted HIV through a blood transfusion. One of the things my mother and I discussed during her visit last week was my grandmother, her mother, who died of leukemia in 1977. There were some odd things about it. The leukemia apparently progressed VERY rapidly, more so than it should have. There were some other things my mother mentioned, but the upshot is both she and my aunt seem convinced that my grandmother died of AIDS. She had been in the hospital roughly 10 years before she died and received several blood transfusions. That was way before HIV had even been identified so no blood was tested for it. The time from HIV infection to full blown AIDS without treatment would be right. And, my mother mentioned some other things that would indicate AIDS symptoms. I don't really have any point here but I thought it was very interesting.