The Zitzewitz Family's New Boat
Shortarmguy's Diary Update for June 26, 2011
On Saturday night, Grandma Linda dragged me to Mystic Lake Casino to see one of her favorite late night performers, Bill Maher. He's not one of my favorite performers, but I was really intrigued to see what his show would be like.
I really enjoyed the show, even if I don't agree with a lot of his points. His performance was extremely impressive. He was quite topical and went for nearly two hours. The audience roared with approval at about everything he said. But if you're a religious person or fan of Fox News or agree with pretty much any Republican, you probably wouldn't have liked him that much at all.
On Sunday, we had the honor of joining our friends, The Zitzewitz Family, on the St. Croix River for a ride on their new boat. We were so excited for the opportunity!
Karl and I have been to a couple of boat shows together and have shared boating stories for years, so I knew it was a big dream of his to get a boat like this. I just never imagined that he and Tina would actually invite us for a ride on it once they got it! I honestly thought we'd never see them again!
Lucky for me, I think they like Miss Sheri. Otherwise, there's a good chance I'd have been left behind on the dock.
Before we were able to get going too far, Karl told me we had to stop by the Marina for a "Pump-Out". I wasn't sure what that was, but quickly learned it had something to do with the toilets. I half expected us to pull up to the dock and see Randy Quaid standing at the end of it with a Hose asking us the Question "Shitter's Full?" but instead it was this nice young lady. She did a great job!! I only saw a few chunks hit her during the 5 minute "Pump Out" so that seemed pretty good to me!
Once we were out on the river, the kids started having a really good time. I only had a couple panic attacks while they wandered around the bow of the boat, but nobody fell overboard so it ended up being a great day!
The nice thing about the river is that when the kids start acting up, we can literally put them on an island. Apparently it's illegal to actually leave them there, but we're learning how to maximize the time without actually getting in trouble with the law.
When the island starts losing it's effectiveness, we send them off on a rubber kayak and challenge them to make their way back to the boat. They didn't have much luck with all three of them paddling, but once Luke had the other boys get out and push, they started making some pretty good progress.
On the way back from our day of boating, we ran into one of my good customers, Ameet Shah, who was out for a ride on his beautiful boat. Not literally ran into him, but it was actually pretty close. Luckily, he hit the gas and we avoided a collision.
It was a great day of boating, but not perfect. Tina spent a lot of the day trying to convince her "Pet Frog" that it was time that he finally leave the nest and swim away to start a family of its own. But try as she might, the dang thing just wouldn't move.