There are, as you know, all manner of chores that must be done on a boat, and this was the weekend I was to accomplish this! I had my turpentine, my sandpaper, pots of varnish, a twelve pack- in short, all you need to get a lot of shit done. And, perhaps most important, I was of a mind to work! No distractions! Old Alt would sparkle like a champ!

Five minutes later, Steve had noticed my arrival at the marina. "Huw!" he called, ""Huw! C'mon! we're sailing to Vermilion!"

"Ah, thanks Steve-o, but I got a lot a work I gotta do." It was time to get cracking!

Twenty minutes later we were under sail for Vermilion.

Captain Rob, of course, insisted on sailing his own boat, his lovely Irwin 30 Nirvana. As it was early in the season, I too insisted on sailing my own boat. As it was blowing something crazy, Steve insisted on not sailing his own boat. The Blue Dragon, a lovely Catalina 27, is a delightful boat but perhaps not quite the thing for heavy weather. As Nirvana sports an autopilot, we decided it'd be just as well for Steve to come with me.

Oh, how we flew! The wind was blowing strong, sure, and due out of the west, so we were as close-hauled as ever we could be. Rob, with his autopilot, kept a true course for Vermilion, but I was having all kinds of trouble with my Steve-o-pilot, because Steve kept getting entranced with speed and falling off ("Look! Six point nine two! Six point eight! Seven!!! SEVEN POINT TWO TWO!") and so I was "Yeah, we're sure going fast alright... although not towards Vermilion..."

Because of this Rob beat us handily to Vermilion. We rafted up off of Nirvana at the restaurant, and despite the crowds we were the only two sailboats there. All the others were powerboaters. We could here them murmuring about how pretty our boats were, but frankly I couldn't help but notice that all the powerboaters had crowds of gorgeous young ladies on their crews, whereas I had... Steve.

Maybe it's about time I re-evaluate my boating decisions?

This morning at work we had some kind of meeting about 401 k plans, apparently a new benefit of working for Landmark Survey Group Inc. Naturally I was late of course, so I spent the meeting gazing longingly at the coffee tureen, while Stephanie the 401 k Lady talked about 401 k's, and Brandon gazed longingly at Stephanie the 401 k Lady. It was pretty clear where he wanted to put his employee contributions! The meeting was presided over by my boss Paul's pal Mike Kozick, whom I had last seen at the company Christmas party, when he drove his Mercedes smack into the concrete median divider so hard that he not only blew out the tire but also broke some mechanical doo-hicky, or rather thingamajig, which makes the wheel like, I don't know, turn or something. Fortunately he was good and drunk at the time, else he probably would have been pretty pissed off indeed.

Anyways the interesting thing about the meeting was the reactions of my various co-workers. Dennis, for example, was all impressed with Kozick, in that as Kozick, a man of style, was impeccably dressed- tie and everything- therefore he was obviously a master of the esoteric world of High Finance, in which all the acolytes are always sharply turned out, and wear ties. "Yeah" says Dennis. "Yeah, you can tell he really knows what he's talking about!"

Mohamed, evidently under the impression that Kozick was really named John Hancock (the name of the firm for which he works), had an entirely different take. "Did you see John Hancock's car??!" Obviously, any financier who wore nice clothes and had a nice car got such fine things by stealing them out of the mouths of the Working Man. After all, there are only so many dollars in the world, and it's not like bankers do any actual work. By now Mohamed was going off to me about some guy he had seen on the news ("You hear about this guy? This Bernie somebody guy?") and I thought he was talking about Bernie Kosar, the Cleveland Browns quarterback from back in the day, who had been in the news lately for going bankrupt. "Oh yeah" I said, "yeah, that sure was a shame!" I don't really care so much about Bernie Kosar, of course, and I couldn't imagine his relevance to finance in general, let alone to 401 k plans, but you know sometimes you got to be conversational. "Fifty billion dollars! Fifty billion dollars! Where did it go? Where did it go?" says Mohamed. If there had been a table nearby, I'm pretty sure he would have banged it. "ah, well, ah I don't know?" I mean, fifty billion? I had no idea that quarterbacks made that kind of dough. Honest to God I thought they only made like, millions or so. Don't get me wrong I know my money and everything but I'm pretty sure that even Bernie Kosar couldn't fritter away that kind of money on hookers and blow, which is what NFL stars generally fritter their money away on, as everybody knows.

But it turns out that the Bernie that Mohamed had in mind was actually Bernie Madoff (so aptly named, because he made off with so much money! Get it? Madoff? Made off? Ha! Ha Ha!) who was also in the news- at the very same time- after having been caught perpetrating some truly monumental ponzi scheme which left thousands of morons broke, from coast to coast.

"Man!" said Brandon. "Did you see that Stephanie?"

Tonight I'm pleased to report that I've seen the Meat Puppets twice in one week, which is surely some kind of record. For me at least. Because I've never seen them twice in a week before.

Wednesday Nick was all like "Guess what! Meat Puppets are playing tonight!" So I'm like "Huh? What?" And Nick's like "No, swear to God, they're playing some dive!" Meat Puppets? Playing in a dive? Naturally, this called for further investigation, as I am fond of dives.

Turned out it Nick was completely on the mark- the Puppets were indeed playing and the venue- joint called the Summit- was about as divey as they come. How they rocked it out! And what's more, the poster said that Saturday, they'd be playing Cleveland! As I was going to be up at the lake anyway, there was NO WAY I was going to miss that show!

Turned out that Cleveland doesn't really share the sort of enthusiasm that the rest of us have for the Pups. Guy at the door, looking genuinely puzzled, "Tickets? Awrr.. ?" It took several minutes of patient explanation before he cottoned on to the fact that I wanted to buy a ticket- to actually put up perfectly good money in return for admission- something that apparently was beyond his experience as Door Guy. "Sold out? Ah er no, um, they ain't even close to being sold out.." Which is true in the larger sense, I guess, although the Puppets were perilously close to selling out back in the early nineties, if only anyone were buying.

What I like about the Meat Puppets is that before the show, when you go to the pisser to take a pre-emptive pee (the last thing you want to do when the show starts is have to go pee), when you're standing there at the urinal, who shows up next to you but Chris Meat Puppet! So we shot the breeze and everything, and I tell you what- it turned out I didn't actually even have to pee after all! But I stood around anyway, holding my pretending to pee, all so's I could, uh, hang out? and bother Chris Meat Puppet while the poor bastard peed.

I got to admit that when the show started, I was kind of disconcerted that they played more or less the same set of songs that they had back in Columbus: 'The Touchdown King', "Plateau', 'Station', 'Coming Down', 'Sam', 'Some New Song Which Involves Whistling' and so forth. Not that there's anything I'd rather do than hear the Meat Puppets play 'The Touchdown King', "Plateau', 'Station', 'Coming Down', 'Sam', 'Some New Song Which Involves Whistling' and of course I realize that they only got like what? four hundred songs? so OBVIOUSLY there'll be some overlap, but I felt kind of, I don't know, a faint disquieting feeling like maybe someone let 10 psi out of my tyres, but then they busted out into 'Look at the Rain' , and it was like a switch had flipped- I don't know, maybe their drugs had begun to kick in- but they proceeded to rock out in so astonishing a fashion that I was completely astonished.

After the show I hung out with two teenage dudes from some small town near Canton outside, snickering at the various whackos, loonies, freaks and nutcases that wander the streets of Cleveland at three in the morning, and then the band came out and so I bought their CD and got it signed- which makes only the second CD I've ever had that's been signed by the band, that and my Aunt Beany's First Prize Beets CD.

I know, I know. I'm a total dork.