Ahoy!

Juliet is currently off shore in the Gulf of Mexico doing important seismic research for Columbia. While I have no idea what that means, it sounds cool. There's a part of me that can't help but love the idea of being out on a boat, taking readings and looking at big confusing charts. While I wouldn't know how to, or really want to explain said charts, it all sort of appeals to the kid in me.

My childhood best friend and I used to play for hours in his backyard pretending that his jungle gym was a large ship. His backyard led to the Erie Canal so we used to run to the water, and then back up the slide for lookout. Sometimes we were pirates, sometimes just lost at sea, sometimes explorers. It didn't really matter. It was always the same basic formula: Out on a boat, lookout for other boats, make stew.

The only reason we had any backstory at all concerning what we were doing was so making "stew" seemed more important. Simply collecting mud and twigs isn't fun. But if you were lost and starving and unsure of your fate, you needed that stew. You needed it for survival, to keep you going until you found land that you recognized. That's what we kept telling ourselves for the full afternoons we spent collecting grass and leaves and soil and mixing it together in the McDonald's Halloween Happy Meal Bucket. "Hurry! We'll have to jump ship! Bring the stew!"

We never ate it of course. And we had no problem putting the bucket of glop down to go inside, eat real lunch, and then go back out to the stew. I spent a few solid summers of my life on this stew kick. Bored? Want to go out and make stew? You would think that it would get old, but you'd be so wrong.

Anyway, not sure why I brought all that up. I guess just because when I heard about Juliet's adventure it reminded me of little kid adventures and suspended disbelief, and how fun that can be. I've been thinking about her and her coworkers out on the water and wondering if they had to hold back shouting "Iceberg!" or "Land Ho!" or any of that.

She sent out an email yesterday with the subject, "Very hard at work." I opened it immediately wanting to know all about it and found only this picture.

Note the life-jacket. Note the napping. Note the lack of stew.

sigh.