Here it is February 25th, 2 months after Christmas and well over a month since my birthday and I have not mailed a single thank you note. Shame on me. What am I doing about it? Updating my blog about how I feel guilty for not writing the notes and mailing them in a timely fashion.
Rules of Etiquette (or so I hear - I should ask one Emily Post) dictate that one has a full year to write thank you notes. By that time line I have plenty of time. I wonder how long that rule has been around? I'm guessing it has been around since the days of Pony Express. I imagine delivering letters took a long time when the postal services transportation system was fueled by hay.
I had vowed to write my thank you notes this weekend but alas, here it is Sunday night and I have a full evening of drying my hair and watching some TV.
This has been a relaxing weekend for me. Quite vexing for Ryan. He is trying to set up our CAT 5, high speed wireless cabling blah, blah, blah. He spent over 2 hours on the phone with Sun Rocket's tech support only to learn their gizmo is not compatible with the wiring stuff he did. So if we want online we have to unplug the whatchamacallit and plug in the dohickey. Then when we log off we have to unplug the dohickey and plug the whatchamacallit back in so we can have phone service.
Yesterday morning I had my 6th rowing lesson and it was only our second time out on the water. The coach said we were her prodigy class because we were doing in our second week what they normally don't get to until the third week. It felt good to know that what felt akward and clumsy to us was actually good for beginers. Hearing accolades was the only warming thing about the experience. It was cold and raining. It wasn't just cold it was c-c-c-c-o-o-l-l-d-d. To top it off my knees started to hurt. Rowing is a lower body sport. Your arms are there to hold the oars and guide them through the water but your legs do the lionshare of the work. Rowing is like doing squats sitting down; I don't do squats - even on a good day. I thought I could power through the pain but it became too much. I finished the practice since my only other option was to jump out of the boat and swim back to the boathouse.
I could have jumped out and swam back since I still left practice soaked to the bone. Once back at the dock we lifted the boat out of the water and hoisted it overhead and tilted it from side to side to empty out the water that accumulated during practice. BRRR!!! Gallons of water poured over us. Cold, nasty Lake Union water drenched us. I stopped at Starbucks on the way home to get a hot coco and I noticed I left a small puddle of water on the counter after I reached my hand across to give the cashier my gift card. When I got home I peeled my clothes off - all three layers were wet enough to wring water out of - and soaked in a nice hot bath until I felt my bones warm.
Maybe I'll try kayaking in the Spring.
3 comments:
Rowing always seemed romantic to me - in that Norman Rockwell kind of way. I always imagine the solitary rower out on the still water as the sun rises. You can see the steam coming off of them as they glide smoothly across the water.
Although I have never rowed I understand that the reality is far different than my mental image. It is a tough sport to say the least. Very grueling? How did you take it up?
Matt
I thought I was cold...but cold and wet is a lot worse than just cold. You are very brave to go out in the rain! I'm cold just thinking about it.
Speaking of writing thank you cards... I'm really bad. I'll just leave it at that.
So have you gone rowing again since?
Nicole
Rowing can be grueling but I wasn't in it long enough to find out. We had a mock race on rowing machines that killed us one evening when it was too windy to go out on the water. I would have liked to gone out one more evening just to get pictures of downtown at night. The skyline was so pretty with the towers jutting up out of the water (so it seemed) with thousands of lights lighting the sky.
I took it up because I've wanted to do it since I saw the sport in the Olympics when I was in High School. After thinking and talking about for so long I thought I need to shut up already and just do it. There are a lot of places in Seattle that offer rowing classes. I chose Lake Union Crew because you get 12 lessons in 4 weeks for a $100.
I only went out twice. The second time was the last time for me. It really hurts my knees. Rowing is like doing full squats - and I can only do squats to half position when I'm in physical therapy and doing my exercises faithfully.
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