kayaking

Much better today, thanks to J.Bro - still waiting for the rest of you layabouts to leave me jokes. (They don't have to be good jokes. Seriously.)

Tonight after work I kayaked around on the Potomac for 45 minutes or an hour. This was about 10,000 times better than the rest of my day. (In which thing #1 from yesterday became no longer true.)

The kayaking was part of a party for my department. And, I'll admit, I was completely dreading this party. But then I got there and the host was all, Towwas, cmon, let's get you in a kayak! And I said, uh, ok, because she can be difficult to work with and I would like to please her. She picked out a particularly stable kayak for me and held it while I got in. Five minutes later I was halfway to Virginia. When she caught up with me later on the river, she said, "Towwas! You're like a duck!"

There was wide, slow-moving water. There were trees and baby ducks. A great blue heron and big sky with clouds and glorious sun rays. And after that, sangria and hummus and chocolate chip bars and so on. And now I am very tired.

oops, sorry bout that

I would like to offer an open apology to anyone who has ridden in the backseat of my car recently. Since that's only two or three people, and none of them read this blog, this apology is worthless, but I'm sorry anyway about your wet butt.

The other morning when I was trying to get the film off my back window, I spent about half an hour kneeling on the backseat scraping. And at the end of this time, my knees were wet. And I was like, huh, that's not right. I stuck my fingers down behind the seat and discovered...standing water.

So today my dad and I took the bench off the seat and pulled out the lining of the trunk and discovered that my car is basically a pond on wheels. We dried lots of surfaces with rags, took out various fabric bits to dry in the basement, and tried (unsuccessfully) to find a hole where the water was getting in. I bailed about three gallons of water out of the well where the spare tire sits. If it were warmer out, I probably would have been breeding mosquitoes back there.

The stuff in the water wasn't too rusted, so I'm hoping this is a recent problem. The car is at the mechanic's now - I hope he can find the leak!