Thursday, 18 May 2006
(on sabbatical)^2
My visiting position at Microsoft ends June 30 (hard to believe it’s been nearly a year!), but we can’t return back to our house until our tenants move out at the end of July. Since I’ve agreed to speak at this year’s MSR Faculty Summit, we decided that we’d do some vacationing in the Seattle area during the first two weeks of July. However, we procrastinated on making our plans, and I realized earlier this month what a big mistake that was. When I started looking around, all the prime rental spots in the places we were considering seemed to be booked.
Then late last week, I stumbed across this online listing. A boat named Sabbatical! How perfect was that? I was sure it wouldn’t be available, but sent an email inquiry anyways. And to my great delight, the answer came back that it was available for rental from July 1-12.
Today we took a trip out to the Pleasant Valley Marina to check her out, and we were all totally enchanted. There’s a lot of space, and the boys would each have little “cabins” to themselves in the lower deck. Gerald and I will have the “master” bedroom on the main deck, which is next to the living/dining area. And we’ll all get to enjoy the open space on the fore and aft decks, and the hot tub on the top deck.
The marina has a swimming pool, as well, which should be fun for the boys, and may provide opportunities to meet other kids staying at the marina while we’re there. And I suspect we’ll be able to coax their friends to come stay with them for a night or two, as well (the downstairs bunks actually will accommodate up to five small people).
Now all we’ve got to do is find someplace to stay for the 12-15. We’re hoping we might find something reasonably priced in the San Juan Islands, but I’m not holding my breath…it’s a little late for that now. If that doesn’t work out, we may see if one of the waterfront cabins near my uncle’s house in Marysville is available. Worst case scenario we’ll find a hotel to camp out in for a few days before the summit begins.
But for now, we’re reveling in our wonderful good luck, and thinking about how much fun it will be to tell our friends that we’ll be staying on a yacht for half of July—and spending the end of our sabbatical literally on Sabbatical.
