Hot like home

On Saturday, I went to the chowder festival and tried each of the 36 types. While some were great, there were a lot of mediocre entries. I say 15 of them were worth ordering at a restaurant. The 2 best were a mussel chowder and a New england clam bake chowder. It was hot, the live music was decent(mostly classic rock covers, buffett/james taylor and reggae). There was an alarmingly large number of middle aged women in jean shorts that had been hitting the Heineken Light tent a little too hard. Walking in front of the stage was wading through a sea of denim Fupas*. I guess that is what city festivals are all about.

Later that night, I met up with neikia and some of her friends. She lives in a huge old house right on Thames street(middle of downtown). They recently built a huge roof porch that overlooks all of Newport and the adjacent shipyards. She grew up in town and knows everyone, so we were able to avoid cover charges at the bars we went to. It is a good bar scene from what I have seen so far.

Working in the Engine room yesterday when it was 90 degrees outside was hot. I spent the day scrubbing generators and pumps and other strange mechanical equipment that make noise and exude levels of heat usually only found in solar flares. The good part about yesterday is that I also got to work a "watch." This consisted of getting paid to eat an enormous BBQ rib dinner, watch 3 hours of America's Funniest Home Videos and make sure that the boat did not explode/disappear. Then Jason and I went down to pint night(blue moon=no blatz splatz).

I just signed up for a course to get my STCW(Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping). Its a basic level course dealing with live firefighting, CPR/First aid, and general maritime safety. It is a week long and often necessary for getting a job on a boat that is doing any substantial travelling. Its expensive (1k), but as I am not paying for rent, a couple more days of day work should cover it. Here is a picture from the course itenerary on the confidentcaptain.com website.


*What it a FUPA? "A FUPA is a Man or a Woman so afflicted by obesity that their pubic area is used to store patches of soft fatty waste. Often sighted at work, the food court at the mall and Walmart, they can be spotted in families, or occasionally traveling in groups called 'schwaggles'."