Tomorrow is International talk like a pirate Day,

which seems like a good thing to me.

For me it is a paid holiday in that I work on it, and therefore will be getting paid for it, which is OK by me.

This is about the dopiest holiday I can think of, and for me it is a holiday because it is listed as such on the company calendar. Someone well up the food chain likes pirate things and has a pretty good sense of humor, so I guess he decreed that it be added to the company calendar.

Still, though, some of the dopiest things in the world can be the most satisfying.

Years ago I had an employer that paid a few holidays, which was a lot more than I expected from such a small fly-by-night company consisting of two or three employees. I remember July 4th was one of them, but Christmas and New Year's were not. The man had an interesting outlook on religious holidays and that was fine by me. It was his company, and not mine.

This was before International talk like a pirate Day had been invented.

I'd just bet that if it existed that he very well might have made it some sort of paid holiday just for the sake of plain old being different and difficult. He was that kind of guy.

Actually, I liked him. People like that entertain me and make me laugh.

Then again, the part of life in Alaska I found that was so amusing was the number of crackpots that were up there trying out half-baked ideas, many of which revolved around catching fish...but not all of them

I once worked for a skipper that wanted to take his boat and head to Nome and set up some kind of 'suck up the sand from the bottom of the surf line and wash any gold he picked up in the sand' system. He described the system he had devised and it was really fascinating. I had a pretty good idea that it would work all right becasue it was fairly simple, and simple generally works.

My thought was that the problem would lie in simply locating a sandy bottom to use the sucker-uppper on, but he had already done his homework and knew which parts of the beach off of Nome had sandy bottoms suitable for his little invention.

I actually offered to go with him on that venture because it sounded interesting, but it came when I was leaving town on my sailboat so I never found out what happened. I hope he did it and I hope he made out.

While catching fish can be good money, there is a certain style to making your fortune by finding gold.

Personally, given my druthers, I would rather make two million finding gold than make three miillion catching fish.

Job satisfaction is important to me, which, I suppose, has a lot to do with why I am out here being a sailor rather than being home every night. I like it. There is a pretty smug, satisfied look on my face when someone asks me what I do for a living and I tell them I am a sailor.

Anyway, this is turning into a ramble, which is fun sometimes even though probably make no sense.

Neither does International talk like a pirate Day, but it's still enjoyable.

Enjoy.


my other blog is:http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/