I finally got one of our kayaks in.  Still like pulling teeth with those guys at The Great Outdoors though.  Who would have thought it would be such a hassle just to get those fishing rod holders?  I called them up on Friday to check status on the rod holders which are apparently being delivered by camel from Pakistan or something.  One was in and installed, but the other one was "probably at their Enosburg store".  Whatever.  I went down to pick up at least the one.  

My fear is that I would get the kayaks after we have had all this nice weather and then it will suddenly turn constantly crappy.  I really wanted to try it out.  So I went down to the store which is like less than 1/4 mile from our house.  I had the Prius which ended up being good.  The kayak is pretty short, only 10.5 feet long.  I was able to open the hatch back on the prius, fold down the back seats and fold back the front passenger seat. Doing that, I could load the kayak into the Prius and just tie down the hatch.  It is nice to know that I can do that because that is infinitely easier than putting it up on the roof, especially for a short trip.

I took it up to the house and checked it out.  It has foot pegs in it that you can adjust to your leg length for comfort. Well, I must have messed around with them for 10 minutes and I couldn't get one to move.  Then the other one got stuck too and I couldn't move it.  I was like, "What the heck?!" Am I just an absolute idiot with this thing or what? I did a quick internet search to see if I could find anything that I was doing wrong, but that yielded no results.  So I picked up the phone and called the guys at the store.  They must hate me because I have been calling them like 3 times a week about the kayaks.  I don't care, we spent a lot of money on them. So the guy said he would just come over and take a look since we are so close.  He drove up and said it would be pretty simple to move them.  However, he had just as much as a struggle as I did.  He finally managed to force them back into place.  We are not sure if maybe they were installed wrong at the factory or something, but when they go all the way back, they get stuck.  The temporary solution is not to move them all the way back.  When the second one is ready, we will compare them and see if there is one part that was installed backward.  If so, he will fix it.  Not a show-stopper, but just goes to prove my theory that no matter what you buy these days, it always SUCKS. I cannot remember the last time I bought something and there wasn't some sort of issue.  Why can't anything ever be easy and work as advertised???

Anyway, I wanted test out the roof mounting system.  Although the kayak only weighs about 50 pounds, it is still pretty cumbersome to get on the roof of the car.  Then there are five straps to strap on there.  The Prius also annoyingly has its antenna on the roof, so I had to angle the kayak cockeyed to not hit the antenna. But I got it on there and figured everything out. However, it is still way easier to just put it in the back if possible.  I imagine putting it on the Corolla will be a little easier because the car is smaller, and there isn't any other option with that anyway.  

I drove out to Clyde Pond to test it out.  There were a lot of people fishing in Gardner Park, so I didn't want my first kayak experience to be in front of a bunch of people in case I embarassed myself.  I got in and paddled around the pond for a while. I really like it.  It actually goes a lot faster than I expected and is pretty easy to do.  The only hard part is going in a straight line.  That is the disadvantage of getting such a short kayak -- it doesn't go straight as easy, but it is more maneuverable.  Also, getting in and out is a little tricky.  It was very stable once I got in it, and I never thought I would tip it over or anything.  I am sure I will get better at paddling it around with practice.  

We took the plunge and plopped down the cash for the kayaks. Hopefully they will be in this week. Actually, they are in, but we are getting them outfitted with fishing rod holders, so we are waiting on that. No rush, there is still ice on the lake.

Jaime got a stomach bug this weekend, and spent most of Sunday sick. So that was no fun for her, especially since she is starting off her vacation week. Today she seemed to improve and I am sure she will be back to normal by tomorrow. She has a lot of things planned for the week so I am sure that she wants to not be puking so she can get them done.

It has been fairly nice outside, so I have been walking instead of sweating in the hot gym. It has been nice. It is the time of year when it is still cool enough outside that I want to walk. I go for about an hour, probably about 3-4 miles around Newport.

Work has been busy as usual. I have been finishing up a few projects, so it is nice to see some stuff come to fruition. I still have more work than I can possibly do, which does keep me busy. Sometimes I feel like I could lock myself in the office for about a year and not run out of things to work on!

I have a new personal finance program I am using. Right now I am entering all my transactions from 2007, then for 2008. I used Microsoft Money years ago, and that worked pretty well for me, but since I pretty much switched to Linux exclusively, I haven't used anything. I have been using Gnucash, which seems to be a little more like Quicken. I haven't gotten too deep into it yet, but I think it will meet my needs. However, it does take time to get things set up the way I want. So I am plugging through it little by little.

I also want to continue to get caught up on going through my pictures. That is also a never-ending process.

To distract me from these things, I have been addicted to the following game:

http://arcade.itch.com/games/random-defense/

Today is the last day for my intern at work, Matt. He's been a great help on a lot of my projects, so it was a bummer to see him go. I took him out to lunch at Hoagie's for a going away. Unfortunately, he was supposed to be an intern for the whole mill, but no one else took much of an interest in him and I don't think he got everything out of it that he could have. There is only so much time I could give him, but no one else took advantage.

On our way to Hoagie's, I noticed a sign in front of The Great Outdoors stating that they were having a sale on kayaks for 15% off. Jaime has been saving her money and wanted to get us kayaks for our 30th birthday this summer. I was really excited about that when I found out about her plan, so I have been doing a lot of research on them lately and looking forward to it. We didn't really know where to go to get our kayaks. We had heard there was a place down in Lyndonville and a place in Stowe, but we didn't think to look locally for some reason. I had never thought of The Great Outdoors. So we decided to walk down there and check them out after work since it was nice outside.

I wasn't expecting too much, but to my surprise the sales guy in the store was very knowledgeable about all their kayaks and the accessories and such. He also seemed interested in saving us money too, which I thought was good. He wasn't trying to sell us up to stuff we didn't need. Anyway, after pricing them around, and taking his recommendations into consideration, I think we will probably get our kayaks from them. It is good to shop locally too. It seems like a good deal because it is 15% off for the first one and 20% off for the second one, and 15% off any accessories we get at the same time (paddles, life jackets, thingies to put on roof of car, fishing rod holder). I think we are going to go with the Old Town Canoe Dirigo 106 Kayak.

I think this will suit our needs. I wanted a kayak that would be good for fishing, and also somewhat a beginner level kayak, but with a lot of storage space. Also, these are fairly short in length, so they should be light and easy to transport. There was also an "Angler" addition that already came with the rod holder and an anchor, but he said that it was like $100 more and you could add those things separately for less money. We can both get the same one this way too, because they should be good for just paddling around recreationally.

The sale ends in a few days, so we need to make a decision on this now, instead of waiting until our birthdays. Which is good anyway, because we can use them once the ice is off the lake and it warms up a bit and not have to wait until almost July. So I think I am going to go down there on Wednesday and close the deal. Probably the only drawback is that unless we had a roof rack on our cars (which we don't), we can't put them both on the roof at the same time, unless we wanted to invest in a roof rack. So if we want to go somewhere, we need to take both cars. If we were to go down a river, we might need to do that anyway, so we could leave a vehicle the end of the trip to pick up our stuff.

So, I am pretty psyched!