Yesterday my crew assaulted the Lehigh River in real time and without stunt doubles. OK, so they weren’t exactly my crew. They were weekend warriors in search of a good time with a combined total of 22 minutes of rafting instructions among us.

Regardless of our seaworthiness, we rocked that raft from one end of the 15 mile course to the other. I learned one very important lesson: never argue with a rock in the Lehigh River particularly when approaching at high speeds. The rock will win.

Between runs on the rapids, the tour guides gave us tips on how to negotiate the next stretches of raging water and avoid the pitfalls. At the last break I saw a chance to talk to one of the guides for a minute. I asked all the important questions.

sam: Anyone die out here?
Guide: Roughly one dozen people die on this course a year.
sam: How about on this tour? Will we make it?
Guide: Probably. We’ve never lost someone due to drowning or head trauma.
sam: So people have died?
Guide: A couple heart attacks.
sam: Do you get a refund for that?
Guide: No.

Every so often an opportunity comes along that cannot be passed up. Saturday is such an opportunity. The wife, some relatives and I are going white water rafting. Needless to say, I’ve been looking forward to this excursion for some time.

No movies this weekend, thank you. Just the raging fury that is Mother nature. But wait! There’s more. Saturday is dam release day! That’s right! That means even more water!

Check Sunday’s post for a blow by blow account and find out if we surrvived the rapids.

Tuesday feels far too much like Monday sometimes. Had a decent day at the PC, considering some factors beyond my control consumed the morning.

But other than answering the phone 2 dozen times ( not a single one was a telemarketer ) , waking up the cat one time to check his pulse ( he seemed too peaceful ) and writing, absolutely nothing happened. Wait there was one point were I thought my landlord might be having a heart attack in the basement. That turned out to be indigestion courtesy of the Big Arches.

The wife did promise to see the movie Dodgeball with me tonight. So there’s some exciting big dumb fun on the horizon.

Only 5 new pages today. Not bad, but must do better tomorrow. Based on my outline, 130-145 more pages to go…

*sigh*

This morning there was a baby starling in the bathroom. Very cute but very confused. It was cute and I was confused. The first hint of it’s presence was when it pecked my bare foot.

I scooped up the bird and placed it in the window sill. The bird refused to fly away through the open window. A few nudges later we were still playing chicken.

My method for resolving low impact problems is to let them fester for awhile. If it’s still an issue then I’ll deal with it. Unfortunately, the starling has read my play book, because it was in the window 5 minutes later.

It was time for Lecter.

sam: Hello Clarice.
starling (twitches) : chirp.
sam : You think if you sit in my window sill forever, your mother will stop screaming?
starling (twitches again)
sam: Better fly home to mama now.
starling flies away.