Guess What...

I got to drive...a boat. Skip took me and several ladies from the business office who had been hankering to go out on his department's boat for a ride. His boat had been docked a week at a friends house, so someone drove us all there, and then we rode on the from the backside of Morehead City under the Radio Island bridge, into the channel, and under the Atlantic Beach bridge towards his dock at the aquaculture unit in the college. Before we even got to the Radio Island Bridge, Skip asked me to take the wheel. It was only when he took both hands off the wheel that I stepped in and steered. And I steered it all the way to the dock, and I even took the throttle a bit as Skip went for a brief lie-down on the bow. Of course, that was in the no-wake-zone in front of the harbor, but for five minutes I was in complete control of that boat. Then we docked into this really cool lift that, well, lifted the boat out of the water. That was the end of the trip, but not the end of the fun. I got to clean out a little tank that had a thin layer of sludge on the bottom, probably from the dead and decaying organisms also in the tank. A few days ago, the pump that runs the entire building shut off and couldn't be fixed in time to save any of the animals in tanks. Almost all of them died - I think the only survivors were the three of four crabs I moved to another tank today. Anyway, I get to tackle some more cages tomorrow, after I help 'restore the shoreline' with a lot of volunteers for a bit, planting various species of marsh grass. Then maybe I'll get to some organizing of his class files.