what a weekend!

OK, happier post - yesterday's got a little on the heavy deep n' real side. But I worry about that kind of stuff. A lot. Every now & then I just have to say something - somewhere - even if it's here on the ultra-mega-super-top-secret blog.

But this weekend - oh, it was just too damned nice for effective brooding. Y'know my secondary title "because it's too cold to paddle & I'm bored"? I wasn't kidding! That was why I started this thing - cause we were locked in a deepfreeze there for a couple of weeks & I could feel the cabin fever setting in. Oh yeah, that was also before I got the invitation to teach that just cheered me up & made the long dark cold months left in winter seem at least SLIGHTLY more palatable.

This weekend though - just great. Lunch with a old friend I hadn't seen for a while yesterday - she just moved to a town "down the shore" (isn't that what they call it around here?) so after lunch we went for a walk on the beach - great surf, and only a few people out enjoying the day (where was everybody? jeeze, if we'd been out on Brighton Beach, which is the closest beach where I live, all the Russians would've been out there with their kids and their dogs and swimming & sunning & generally acting like it was 80 degrees as they do all winter - great peoplewatching!). I even took my shoes off for a little while (that ended after one promenade across some snow that hadn't quite melted yet...yipes! cold!) Good stuff. Really good catch-up, I was really glad to see her.

Then back to the city for a housewarming party with some of my friends from sailing - it's a good crew, I don't see a whole lot of these folks when it's not boating season so this was also fun. plus...ok there were a couple of guys there that actually seemed to want to flirt a bit & while I'm not really looking, and there was no swapping of numbers or anything else, it was still nice after that whole Baggage Boy thing made me feel kinda chopped-liverish.

and then today - it was warm enough to paddle! YAY! I haven't been out since New Year's Day when it was also beautiful - but then the ENTIRE month of January was just a deep freeze and ended up with the river all full of ice that kept me from getting out last weekend. It always amazes me how fast the ice goes away when it warms up - there's so much of it one day, and then three days later - nada! My paddling companion today was saying something about wanting to paddle in ice sometime - I actually have, and it is fun, but you have to catch it just right & pretty early on before it all stacks up & gets big enough to block you from your dock or damage your boat. Anyways, it was ALMOST all gone today - but I saw a little white thing floating down the river, and we paddled over to find ONE lonely little berglet - the last one left of last week's packs. Awwwwww. Poor li'l thing. So I told my fellow paddler that now he could say he'd paddled in the ice, and he started cracking up, bumped it with his bow, and said "In the retelling, it will become an iceberg" - "the size of Texas" I chimed in - of course an iceberg the size of Texas wouldn't fit in the Hudson but there's been some kayak listserve chat about some iceberg bigger than Texas so why the hell not? - and by the time we finished elaborating it was like "Titanic" all over again only with kayaks and without Celine or whatsisface. Fun fun fun.

We were just so glad to be out - we paddled to Liberty Landing, stopped for lunch at the lightship there, then hemmed & hawed over the still-ebbing current & in the end decided to paddle on down & go around the Statue of Liberty. Timing worked out PERFECTLY, that gave us just enough time to get to slack & then we had a rising flood to carry us home, arriving just before sunset. Sweet. Nothing like being back on the river after a long time of not being able to get out.

of course then the owner of the barge where I keep my boat served up the traditional fly in the ointment (I do always seem to get one of those - keeps me in balance I suppose!) by chewing me out over something I'd TOLD him about back in December - he said then "I'll go take a look, I absolve you of responsibility" - but then he never looked & forgot I was absolved I guess. I reminded him of the whole conversation & he did remember so that was OK but I have a feeling that because of the weird interpersonal politics of the kayak company of which I was once a part owner, this is almost inevitably gonna come back & bite me in the ass again. Oh well. Things do sometimes get weird, irrational & unpredictable at Pier 63,
- but most of the time it's in a good way - it really is just about the coolest thing in the Hudson River Park right now!

Ah! Made it! It's now an hour at which I can safely go to sleep without waking up again at 4:00 in the morning. I hate that. Always a problem after a hyperactive weekend - I get home at 7, I have a couple of really comfortable chairs in my apartment, and it's just SOOOO tempting to curl up in one & doze off. Especially after a big bowl of homemade split pea soup & a couple of gingersnaps. Snooze until 10 or so - finally go to bed, and then up & wide awake at oh-dark-thirty. Ugh. Well, avoided that with this.

and oh yes one other cool thing this weekend - hooray for Justice Ling-Cohan. Of course I've thought something like this was pretty cool before, and had a friend who's both gay & more politically aware than I am tell me "No, it's not cool" and outline the reasons why...sadly, so sadly, he was proved right last November. Well - hope this works out better. Just makes me happy to live here, though.