Its Heritage Day here today, a national holiday!. Which means big business for establishments like Stonehaven that sell liquor! Its also payday. One interesting thing about South African society is that they all get paid once a month, so businesses thrive that last weekend of the month, from grocery stores to movie theaters to restaurants and pubs. It seems the average South African citizen spends his money when he gets it, then lays low the rest of the month. It is a visible and huge difference when one goes into town or to the grocery store around this time of month, and it is also a visible boost to Stonehavens business.
Im not sure what Heritage Day is for, and neither are the people I have asked so far. Seems to be like one of those state holidays that we have at home that we are not sure (or dont care!) why we are off work, but we are damned happy to take it off!
Rosemary, Rex and the kids have gone for the weekend to a place near Durban where John is playing in a cricket tournament. I would have gone with them for the weekend, but got an invitation to go to Johannesburg tomorrow for the day, so I chose that instead. Rosemarys sister lives in Durban, but she is actually in the States at the moment (Orlando of course!), so I know I will be going back down there to visit her in the next couple of months anyway.
Sorry for lack of blogging this week, it was a full workweek and not much worthy of blogness I afraid, but I will post anyway.
Emails have been trickling in from home and family and friends who were hit by Ivan. They all seem to be slowly getting electricity and emailing abilities back. It sounds like the worst of the storm went east of Baldwin County, which took the direct hit. Everyone at home just sounds tired and cranky now.
We took the Royal Stonehaven out of the water this week for its annual cleaning/repainting/maintenance checkup. It is a big boat! It is used for functions, weddings, receptions, brunches, river cruises and things like that.
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3 days later, we put her back in the water:
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and headed back home.
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Since we had it out for maintenance, it was time for a stress and balance test, and we needed 62 people to be on the boat at one time. Since it was payday, we decided to use the Stonehaven staff! We gave out paychecks on board, and made them stay put for a few minutes. We managed to get 66 people on board, and herded them up to the top deck, had them stand all on one side, then the other, and took water measurements (and hoped it didnt tip over, which it didnt).
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This week, we also started installation of a new time-clock system for employees here to clock in and out on. Sorry I dont have pictures of that, but it is very exciting stuff! OK, maybe not. And people always resist change, no matter what hemisphere youre in.
Kali the Great Dane puppy also took her first dip in the river this week, quite unexpectedly, at least to me. I had walked her down to the river and I was sitting on a jetty watching the sunset, while she sat there with me. Out of the blue, she decided to dive in and I mean dive. And with her sleek divers body, she went straight down! There was a few second pause (probably 1 second, felt like about 30!) where I did not think she was coming up and I was thinking Oh great, my first swim in the Vaal River (and the water is still kinda ice cold!) is going to be to the bottom looking for this damn dog. But she finally surfaced wide-eyed and panicked, and started paddling, fortunately towards me. She latched on to one of the rubber tires that protect the jetty (see the picture above) and clung to it for dear life. Im not sure how I did it, but I managed to lie on the jetty, reach down and pry her front paws off the tire, and pull her up. Guinness was there, but was no help at all --- he just thought this was a great game we were playing! (he swims in the river daily). Here is a picture of me and Kali (I woke her up from a nap for this picture):
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Oh, and Mrs. Cat is still bonding with me.
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She and Guinness had a standoff the other day when Guinness wanted to come up stairs to my room. He got half way up the steps when Mrs. Cat stood at the top and dared him to come closer. He turned around and went back down.
As I said, Johns cricket season has started, so most afternoons when he gets home from school, I go out and bowl to him. Thats cricket-speak for pitching/throwing the ball to the batter (John). Bowling sounds so gentle, but Im definitely throwing it. The batter (John) wears all these pads, on his shins, hands, arms, etc. The bowler (me) doesnt wear any of that. Im not sure why this is, since Im just throwing this small ball to him (it is harder than a baseball), and it comes flying back at me at about a zillion kph. So far, I have ducked well. Good thing I have quick reflexes. But really, I would rather go back to kicking the rugby ball around. Much safer. We watch some cricket on TV in the evenings now, and I am slowly learning the rules, but its a little bit tedious.
Thursday night we had the Shag Pad Kalahari Express Reunion here at Stonehaven. It is the first time we have all been together since the Botswana trip, and it brought back a lot of memories. I almost felt dirty again. We had the reunion in the Wine Cellar, which is the room directly below my room here at Stonehaven. Here is a picture of myself and Rita (one of the function ladies who works here) in the Wine Cellar before the reunion:
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We had a slide show of Botswana pictures running, and the highlight of the evening was later when our trips video expert presented his compilation DVD documentary of our excursion. For those of you so lucky at home, I will definitely be making you sit down to watch these home movies of what I did on my summer vacation! It plays sort of like a music video, and I think will be entertaining even to folks who werent along for the adventure. It certainly captures our highs and lows.
So I need to stop blogging now and go celebrate Heritage Day.