I am addicted to weeding.

At the old house, the whole YARD was made of weeds, so pulling them up would’ve been futile, and we would’ve been left with big patches of bare red clay. Now that we have a house with an actual lawn and landscaping, any weeds that appear are much more obvious.

No matter what I’m doing — walking the dogs, checking the mail, sitting by the pool, whatever — I simply cannot refrain from pulling up any weeds I see. It’s ridiculous, to the point that John giggles every time he sees me veer off and head purposefully toward the landscaping.

There is an end to this, right? If I pull up enough of them by the roots, I’ll eventually run out, won’t I?

So we bought this canoe yesterday, and since the weather was halfway decent this afternoon, we decided to take it out for a spin. Everything initially went off without a hitch. We climbed into the canoe and took off, no problem. Within a few minutes, we got the hang of steering, and then we were off exploring. We finally got to see the Isle of Goose Poop up close, too!

A while later, we started thinking maybe this boating thing wasn’t so hard, after all. We hadn’t tipped over the canoe, nor had we run it aground. Everything seemed rosy. But we had forgotten one thing. We had no idea how to get OUT of the boat.

Oh, maneuvering the boat so that it was close to the bank was no big deal. Even keeping it in a stable position next to the shore wasn’t hard. The problem came when I had one foot on the shore and the other on the boat, and then the boat started heading back out into the water. Splitsville!

If I’d had any sense, I would’ve…hmm…I’m not sure what I would’ve done. I think the trick may be to get out gently and not put yourself in the position of one foot on land and one foot on a rapidly receding watercraft. Once that starts, I think you’re pretty much screwed.

When I (stupidly) tried to get back into the boat, I did it a little too forcefully, which tipped the whole thing backward. John’s elbow got up close and personal with my glasses, and if I don’t have a black eye by tomorrow I’ll be very much surprised. We both ended up flat on our asses in about six inches of water, with the little boat bobbing cheerfully nearby.

The good news is that our combo paddle/oar thingie floats. We found this out because they both went flying when John fell out of the boat backward. Cool. We had been wondering about that.

Also, John’s Treo was safe inside a ziplock bag, thank goodness, so it didn’t get wet.

I have no idea if our neighbors saw us or not. Heard us, probably yes. I bet our cackles — and screams, initially — were heard halfway around the lake. :-)

When I was at the mall earlier today buying some jeans for John, I happened to pass by a new sporting goods store that had tents and canoes for sale. I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to browse, of course. We’ve been planning to buy a teeny little boat of some kind ever since we moved into this lakeside house, but everything we’ve looked at has been too heavy or too likely to dump us into the water.

Well, the 10′ NuCanoe I bought today looks to be just about perfect. It’s flat and wide like a kayak but open inside like a canoe. According to everything I’ve read about them, they’re tough to tip over and nearly impossible to sink. Better yet, this model only weighs 62 pounds, so John and I can easily haul it out of the water and secure it to the back fence with a cable.

They’re delivering the canoe this afternoon, so we’re going to take a very short boat ride today if the weather holds out. We’ll probably take the older camera phone with us so we can photograph the Isle of Goose Poop from close up. There’s no way we’re taking the Sony with us. Expensive camera plus two clueless n00bs on their first boat ride? Disaster waiting to happen.

Stand by for our “Name That Boat!” contest. :-)

One guy I rented from was a tad obsessive about his female tenants and called them at all hours of the day and night, expecting them to drop whatever they were doing and talk, even flirt, with him. When I was busy at work one day and couldn’t call him back immediately, he showed up at my office and told the people at the front desk he would kill my dog if I didn’t come out to talk with him. It had nothing to do with rent (which was always paid on time) or anything at all business-related. He just got offended when I wouldn’t take an hour out of an extremely busy day and respond to his increasingly scary flirtatious overtures. Corporate security threw him out, of course, and they told me I ought to get a restraining order against the guy. After that little escapade and other weird behavior (sneaking into the house and snooping through my underwear when I wasn’t home, etc.), I gave him written notice and moved out.

And then there was the landlady who refused to fix the dangerous wiring in a small house I rented near Morningside. About a year after I moved in, the wiring started melting in the walls, filling the house with the nasty, toxic smoke of burning plastic. Thick rivers of black goo from the melted fuses in the main panel covered one section of the kitchen wall. The fire department told me they would condemn the place within the week if the wiring was not completely replaced. When I notified the landlady, she initially agreed to have it fixed. In the meantime, I kept the main switch pulled and lived mostly in the dark.

Several days later, a repairman showed up, presumably to replace the wiring. When I asked him if I’d need to move anything out of the way so he could work, he told me he was only there to replace the fuses and clean the black goo off the wall in the kitchen, not to rewire the house. I called the landlady to ask (politely) when the rewiring would take place, and she said she’d changed her mind because it was too expensive. She then accused me of plugging in all my appliances at once to try to burn the house down, just to spite her. Umm, yeah, with my dog, my cats, all my earthly possessions, and me inside it?

I’m glad I own my house nowadays. I don’t ever want to be in a situation again where fruitcake landlords can endanger my loved ones like that.

But even though I’ve had some pretty bad experiences with renting, I still think the folks who were victimized by this San Francisco couple had it much worse. I hope the tenants sue those guys for all they’re worth.

Like I was saying in the comments on another post here, I just don’t feel right about posting reviews for friends or for books I’ve critiqued in crit groups. If a prospective buyer of that book ever found out, I think my credibility would be shot, and so would the review’s. I want my friends’ books to do well, but I’m not sure that a review from a fellow writer adds anything to the sales pitch.

As in many, many other lines of business, the best way to increase sales is through word of mouth, and that comes from having a genuinely good product — recommended by people who have no interest in its success or that of its producer(s).

The lake is finally looking pretty again. The photo below was taken from the deck outside the living room. As you can see in the blog header pic, the island just out from the house used to be a bit larger back when the water was lower. We keep seeing our neighbors out on the lake in pedal boats and canoes, so maybe it’s about time we got around to buying a teeny little boat for pilgrimages to the Isle of Goose Poop.

Like one DA commenter said, the way these people behaved is “boil your bunny” crazy.

We ordered service from another local company on Saturday, and everything went live earlier today. Yay! Let’s hope these guys don’t get bought out by clueless n00bs like the last company was.

Edited To Add: I’ve heard that people may be having trouble posting comments since I upgraded to a newer version of WordPress. Please send me an email if you’ve commented and your post appears to have been eaten.