I go sailing at Community Boating, Inc on a regular basis. My current rating is helmsman which means I can take a Mercury sailboat out in any weather I am comfortable with, take passengers, or give instruction to new members.
I intend to get my Jib and 420 rating this season. The jib is the second sail that is rigged at the front of the hull. A 420 is a class of sailboat, like the Mercury, which gets its name from being 420cm long (or about 4 and a quarter meters long). While the Mercury's are fun, I want the option to sail the faster and more challenging 420 class sailboat.
In addition to the sailing, they have a web cam with current outdoor conditions and current weather conditions to see the current weather at the CBI Dockhouse.
I try not to burn myself or set myself on fire by making candles. I usually make large format candles, or pillar candles. Most of them are between 10 to 13 inches high and 3 inches in diameter.
I like the process of making candles. Heating the wax, preparing the forms, mixing the wax dye, attaining the correct temperature, pouring the wax, and waiting for the wax to cool are all fun parts. The real pay-off is pulling a candle out of form after waiting usually eight hours for it to cool enough to pull away from the form. Usually, I make at least 3 or 4 candles, but a normal batch is something around ten candles using almost 30 pounds of wax at a time.
I like to burn the candles, too. But making ten candles at a time, it is hard to burn enough candles so I give away lots of candles all the time.
Bicycling is fun. Arguably it can be as dangerous as riding a motorcycle in Boston, but I ride anyway. This fellow, Lucas Brunelle, rides pretty much insane. I am not quite up to his speed, but I do tend to lane split and ride the sidewalks where needed to avoid traffic, one ways, and other road obstacles.
Lucas has a series of videos that showcase his work
And, I try not to kill myself by riding my motorcycle. I used to have a Kawasaki 454LTD '83 (Dad in picture) until 15 July 1997 when I was run over from behind by an insurance agent. The bike was totaled but I walked away from the accident. Even thought I was wearing my helmet, I was still really lucky.
I had ferrets, three to be exact, when I was living with Joli and Emilly [see Emilly Poems]. For starters, we bought Reggie. We figured we wanted a small animal that was more interactive than the parakeets. She was more interactive than a cat, but less demanding than a dog. They do get into everything, though.
We started reading about "Ferret Math". This is the math were one Ferret is good. One ferret turns into two, two ferrets turn into three, and so on. We have been reading about people who have ten or fifteen or twenty or more ferrets.
Later we adopted three more young male ferrets which we collectively named "The boys". Then we mixed them in with the first three we had and they all lived together in our large cage.
Seeing a classified advertisement, we picked up two more ferrets, one of which had advanced cancer which is common in older ferrets. These two ferrets succumbed to the adrenal cancer and had to be put to sleep soon after we got Claire and Brea (see below).
Finally we picked up Claire and Brea at Rocky's Ferret Shelter in MD. Claire was a young female that has a hard time getting along with any of the ferrets except Brea. Brea's ago might be as high as 8 or 9 which is very unusual for a ferret. A normal life span is 6 to 7 years with cancer usually being the killer.
The ferrets we either adopted out or returned to the shelter since I have a nagging allergic reaction to them.
Copyright Donald M. Nolin, 2006