Dock Staff/Editor

I can't wait to update my resume again.

Dock Staff, Windworks Sailing Center
-Cleaned boats
-Performed light maintenance, including oil changes, electronics installation, and (fun) marine sanitation system repairs
-Edited monthly newsletter

Our current issue

Clearly not as fun as the now-defunct Front Dock Lines, but I do occasionally try to sneak the occasional bad pun or ironic pop culture reference.

If you check out the archives, you can see that the newsletter (or "News Letter" as it's called on the homepage) had nowhere to go but up. I'm still working out the kinks (new font-- Franklin Gothic Heavy-- for headlines this month), but in three issues I've accomplished a few things:

-Eliminated bubble letter captions on photos
-Purged newsletter of underlining
-Reduced number of typos per page from around 17 to less than 0.5
-Brought overall look of the newsletter into the 21st century

Things I was less than happy with in my first issue as "editor" (in quotes because my boss still managed to come back from vacation and in less than 12 hours micromanage the whole thing and turn almost everything that was in my voice into his voice, which sounds much more like a used-car salesman) included my boss turning the hilarious ad (that Kate wrote--thanks!) from a spoof of a personal ad into what sounds like more of a solicitation for prostitution.

Here is how the ad show have read:

PERSONALS
Classy S/V Seeks Owner for LTR
Svelte 42.5' Dufour looking for an adventurous partner who isn't afraid to get salty. Sophisticated craft enjoys long sails around the Sound, but is also comfortable with dinner cruises or hanging around the marina. Serious inquiries only.

Only Greg, who apparently thinks people need to have sales shoved down their throats, takes out the last line and replaces it with "Brings money to the table through charter program."

Anyway, if anyone actually reads the thing (and I won't feel bad if you don't because even my mom just skimmed it-- I sent her a copy of the September issue and she didn't even see that I had written "My Mom's Cure for Seasickness"), let me know your brilliant ideas for next issue.

I've Been Doin' Some Writin'

So I thought I'd share with you. Although you've probably heard most of this before.

Duck Captains of the Puget Sound: The Adventures of Captain Quack Sparrow, Part I

I used to be a duck tour guide. And by “duck tour” I don't mean escorting naturalists around a pond; I mean driving an amphibious WWII vehicle full of tourists through downtown Seattle while playing cheesy '70's music.

According to my first job performance review, the actual content of my tour was solid. Despite having moved to the city only a few months before, I had picked up the fun facts and historical anecdotes rather quickly. It helped that almost everything important that happened in Seattle history occurred in 1907.

But my personality score was much lower, reflecting a lack of sound effects and props, and I was told in no uncertain terms that I needed to obtain a minimum of three wacky hats before my next tour.

Since the majority of our customers responded favorably to captains wearing mullet wigs and making obvious jokes, you can imagine how much they enjoyed my grudgingly-worn child-size plastic viking helmet and my sarcastic sense of humor. Midwesterners and west coasters love sarcasm. In fact, sometimes I could make it all the way to the waterfront without a single person realizing that maybe that Starbucks we just passed wasn't the only one we'd see on the tour.

But I could hardly blame them; even after just a few months of being out here, my East Coast reflexes began to atrophy. First I lost my ability to cross a street without pedestrian walk signals and soon after I found myself almost unable to converse with my own people. On one tour, when I mentioned that the floating home used in the movie Sleepless in Seattle was purchased by a couple from New Jersey after the filming, I remembered that one of the families on the duck had said they were from New Jersey, so I asked if they knew the couple that bought the house. "Yeah, that's actually why we came out here-- to visit them," the mother said. It took me a whole 2 seconds, enough time to say, "no way, really?" to remember that sarcasm could be a two-way street. It had been so long.

But despite my refusal to adapt my delivery to the tastes of our average customer, I still received occasional positive feedback, even having my comedic talents compared to Ellen Degeneres. Once a woman getting off the tour looked at me and said, "You're funny . . . like Ellen Degeneres." Now I’m definitely not funny, but I am a lesbian, and I think that's what she meant.

But I amused myself and that was what counted. After all, I was the one who had to take my tour four or five times a day. At the end of each hour and a half, I’d pull into the parking lot, and say, airline-style, "On behalf of everyone here at Ride the Ducks, I’d like to thank you for riding with us today. We know you have your choice of amphibious tour providers here in Seattle and we'd like to thank you for choosing Ride the Ducks."

OK, Enough About the Bikes

But first, you must see the Speedster's recent fashion adventure. I think you will agree it is quite special.The photo doesn't do it justice. The Speedster was essentially wearing the dollar store. A pink hula skirt and plastic stegosaurus (that roared sporadically) on the handlebars, a reflective (bike safety!) "Es Nina!" banner, a yellow bumper sticker that says "Beer: Now Cheaper Than Gasoline. So don't drive, drink!", a plastic lei wrapped around the seatpost and a plastic bat dangling from the seat, various ribbons and pipe cleaners twirled around the spokes and bars. 

What was the occasion, you ask? Seeing as one's birthday and/or April Fools Day (which, depending on how cool you are, might actually be the same day) would be the only two holidays where you might suspect any sort of rogue decoration to take place, you can imagine my surprise (or look at my face in the picture below) when I saw this spectacle on September 19. 

Had Diana and Crystal simply walked up to the marina and surprised me at work on a Friday afternoon with a hot chai, it would have made my day, but not as good of a blog post. 

P.S. I found a crank and a right pedal, and my ghetto singlespeed commuter bike is working now, just in time for the rainy season, although it looks even more like a Frankenstein bike now with mismatched pedals and an inferior crankset.