The Reservoir

I’ve been looking for a photo library alternative to .Mac (which is what I’ve been using until now). Export support from iPhoto is nearly a deal-breaker feature and although I know lots of folks that use Gallery and think its relatively slick, I didn’t consider it until I found this utility for exporting from iPhoto. And so I headed off to install Gallery at Dreamhost.

Thanks to this helpful post, I finally have the package working. I still have a fair amount of exploration and configuration to wrap up before I start using it as my primary photo library, but hopefully it will be ready for the next significant round of pics.

At long last, after a couple of cancelled trips early in the season and a long string of social and family obligations (all of which were fun), I was able to get out on the water yesterday. A low-key Annsville Easy trip out of Peekskill was exactly what I needed to get back into the swing of things – a very slow pace with time to play around and lots of newbies anxious for low-impact instruction. There’s still half of the season left, but I’m a bit doubtful of achieving either of my goals for this season. I haven’t fully conceded that fact, but at this point 4 Star Sea is far more likely than Coach 2, provided I can build a little stamina quickly and can find a BCU certification program in early fall.

I demo-ed an Dennis Nigel Explorer LV for the day. Not nearly as playful as its little brother the Romany, but as fast and smooth as its near 18ft length would suggest it should be. Unlike the full volume Explorer which has tons of room and sits very high in the water for a paddler of my stature (unless seriously loaded), the cockpit of the LV is surprisingly snug for a boat of its length (3.5inch shorter and 1inch narrower than the regular Explorer) and I was able to re-enter and roll it easily (also not bad for the first try in months). All in all, not a boat I’d buy for my regular paddling (the Romany is hard to beat), but definitely would make the short list of candidates for a moderate to longer expedition.

I’ve been playing fantasy baseball in The Sporting News Basic Baseball league for a couple of years now – an obsessive, but not altogether unhealthy diversion. The league is a stock market model league with a fixed starting salary. Buy low, sell high and increase your buying power for better players. There is no limit to the number of managers that can own a given player and standing is based on total points earned. It’s mildly embarrassing due to the amount of time I spend pouring through baseball stats and results. Regardless, the first fantasy season just ended here at All Star Break and out of 355,000 competitors worldwide, I managed to finish in a tie for 20th. That topples my previous best of 41st (2003 Season 1), which I thought I’d probably never beat. Take that Team Tribeca, Kansas City Lowballers and M&M Boys of the Bronx!

A few more photos of the lovely event.

My Hoya plant is finally blooming. I’m pretty sure the exact plant I have is the Hoya carnosa latifolia.

The story of my plant starts in Kew Royal Botanical Gardens just outside of London many years ago. The grandfather of college roommate of mine, Nicholas de Monchaux, once clipped a cutting of this plant while visiting the gardens and snuck it out under his bowler hat. I’m not quite clear whether the plant followed Nick’s mother to Australia or not, but my understanding is that a contentious dispute over possession of the heirloom ensued after the grandfather’s passing. Regardless, after many years, the plant came to live at the de Monchaux house in Cambridge, MA. I never had the chance to visit the house, but I did see pictures, and the plant was an integral centerpiece of the soaring 20 ft ceiling. Well, with Nick and his twin, Thomas, safely in college the de Monchaux’s accepted a 2-year sabatical in Geneva, Switzerland and decided to sell the house in Cambridge. The Hoya stayed with the house, but Nick took a cutting as they moved out and brought it to our apartment in New Haven for me to root.

At graduation, I gave Nick the plant, but kept a cutting for myself. It never flourished and the single stalk spent many perilous years in the dark, harsh climate of Canal Street. After moving to our sun-drenched apartment last year, the Hoya has simply taken off and 11 years after starting with that first cutting, it’s now blooming constantly – for the last month it’s had at least one and as many as four open bloom pods at any given time.

(more…)

The second wedding in a month and another pair of our close friends, Spencer and Kristi, embrace the married life. Spencer and I met in 1996 at Two Twelve of all places. Somewhere along the way, Spencer convinced me to join a dart team with him and I had the pleasure of watching Kristi capture his attention and the rest is now history.

More photos of wedding day.

I travelled to Virginia to celebrate the 60th wedding anniversary of Dwight and Vada Swartz (my mother’s parents). 60 years of marriage for both sets of grandparents. That’s not something that happens very often anymore – my friends getting married now will have to be particularly blessed with health and longevity to see their 60th.

The family also then got a sneak preview of the Bowman house being reconstructed at the Fontier Museum in Stanton, Virginia. The house was originally built in 1752 in Edinburg, VA by George Bowman (my grandmother’s great-great-great-grandfather).

(more…)

One of my closest friends said his wedding vows Sunday evening in Tribeca. Dan and I were freshman year roommates on Old Campus in Welsh Hall, Entryway C. We then went on to be roommates for an astounding 12 years – from BookWorld to High St in New Haven, and then Normandy Court to Canal St in the City. After Dan met Aliki, the only question was when, not if, they would be married. I had the great honor of signing the Ketubah and thanks to a stiff breeze on a sweltering afternoon, I had the unexpected privilege of holding the huppah (chuppah) and the best seat in the house for the ceremony.

A few more photos of the event.

Clearly I’ve been wasting too much time with Google this evening, but I found this concise history of the Horst family name. The Who are the Mennonites section gives a fairly comprehensive overview of the church and culture.

Growing up, I always thought I had a pretty unusual name – last name that is. And then came the internet. It’s been interesting to see how the results of a Google search for Michael Horst have changed over the years. Initially, the results were dominated by the publishings of a cardiothorasic surgeon in Germany and although I was quoted in a handful of the technology rags at the time on a variety of issues, I never made the first page of results. Now the search produces a much wider range and its quite clear there are many Michael Horsts running around this planet.

I guess I can thank Google for all the misdirected email I get for this Michael Horst. I recently got a request to return a set of borrowed tent poles after a Rainier summit.

I’m still not to be found in the first page of results (I’m not complaining about the anonymity), but simply adding any one of these three words to the search will find me as the first result: kayak, darts, or Macktez. Really not surprising, given the amount of time I spend with each.

Even adding New York returns the wrong Phonebook listing, but I do get a couple of hits on the first page.

This is one of those little tidbits from back when the internet was young and uncluttered by images. Silly as it is, I don’t want to lose this and copied the content here (without permission, but with credits intact).

Pages: 1 2 3

A young boy enters a barber shop and the barber whispers to his customer, “This is the dumbest kid in the world. Watch while I prove it to you.”

The barber puts a dollar bill in one hand and two quarters in the other, then calls the boy over and asks, “Which do you want, son?”

The boy takes the quarters and leaves.

“What did I tell you?” said the barber. “That kid never learns!”

Later, when the customer leaves, he sees the same young boy coming out of the ice cream store. “Hey, son! May I ask you a question? Why did you take the quarters instead of the dollar bill?”

The boy licked his cone and replied, “Because the day I take the dollar, the game’s over!”

I finally dealt with settling on a blogging package. WordPress was the winner and aside from my painfully amateur html and css skills, its been pleasantly easy to get this up and running. I’m not so bold as to create a stylesheet and theme from scratch, but modifying this theme downloaded from wptheme.info has been a breeze.

I pulled together some of my older postings and back-dated a few entries below in an effort to consolidate things here.

Atlantic Kayak Tours is the outfitter with whom I spend many of my spring, summer and fall weekends. AKT follows the British Canoe Union (BCU) skills and coaching certification scheme. Last year, I received both my 3 Star Individual and Coach 2T certifications. This year, I’m hoping to get the chance at 4 Star Sea and Coach 2 Assessments.

Here’s a little bit of publicity from last year in the Gannett Journal News and another article focused on safety.