I Helped Break a World Record!

Last year for World Environment Day, the kayakers & canoeists of Pittsburgh gathered for an event known as Paddle at the Point.  The goal was to break the world record for the world's largest kayak/canoe flotilla.  We had to have over 1,104 hard-hulled canoe/kayaks held together by hands only floating for 30 seconds+ without disassembling or touching land.

It was a moderately warm day, but windy and dreary and inevitably rained.  Did you know it rains more in Pittsburgh than Seattle?  But we wound up with 1, 619 in our flotilla, a fact they just verified officially this week.

My In-Laws in the Wooden canoe they made themselves!

Boyd and Leah, they borrowed our Canoe

Nick, Me & My brother.
My brother kept calling me a "semi" in my 16 ft touring kayak that took forever to turn around, while he turned on a dime in his teeny whitewater kayak, but guess who showed him when It started to pour just as the flotilla broke up?  Needless to say, I made it to shore in half the time his little squirt did.  

A good time was had by all! May our record stand for a good long time.  

Dust to Dust

Ya'll may not know this about me, but I can be a morbid sort of person.  I sometimes think about my own death.  Not in a creepy or suicidal way, but i do recognize that death is an inevitable part of life and i'm okay with that.  I think about how i'd like it to go (i'm a super planner, after all).  I wanna die peacefully in my sleep.  Old, but not so old that my faculties have started to decay.  Pipe dreams, I know.  We don't get to choose our own death.  We do, however, get to have some input on how we are laid to rest, or so I thought.  When a burial request comes to my mind, I make it known to my husband.  I figure he'll be in charge of planning my funeral (did i mention that i wanna pre-decease him?).  I realize that, looking back on what I just wrote, I must sound kind of creepy but this isn't a regular occurrence in my house or anything.  Maybe 4 or 5 times ever.  My two biggest requests are to be buried in a specific cemetery in my hometown where most of my family and friends are buried and to "be treated like compost".  I just wanted to stay chemical-free and be buried in a something that’d decompose; nothing terribly crazy, and still respectful and fairly traditional, but also low-cost and green.  Hanging out at the funeral home last month (mostly an observer of other's grief), I realized that it probably wouldn't be that simple.

The Right Yellow

Behold: My Primary Kitchen Inspiration.

Spring is Sprouting

My birthday was a little over a week ago and my (totally awesome) boss got me an herb garden kit and a seed starting kit.  Remember when I promised to start a small herb garden for the kitchen?  I don't think she reads Living From Scratch, so it was a particularly thoughtful gift.  I started the herb garden and nick started cabbage seeds in the other pot.  This weekend, nick also started snow peas and sugar snap peas.  It's still way too early to be starting most plants, but these guys are the frost-hardy ones that we can plant early.