As many of you know, I have been involved with the kayak rental Galveston Bay organization for many years. I absolutely love to kayak and have owned and personally built almost every type and size of kayak including sit-ins to sit-upons and both single person and two person models.

I have never been especially fond of ocean kayaking but prefer the tranquility and calm of floating down a quiet lagoon or exploring the hidden coves of a fresh water lake.

A few months ago, my best friend Tony and I decided to pack our favorite kayaks on top of my Hummer and travel around the country for a couple months exploring different places to splash our boats. The trip actually got extended to almost seven months but that one of the benefits of being semi-retired and not needing to go to a job. The trip also ended up taking us out of the country to Canada which hadn’t been in our original plan.

Needless to say, we had some unbelievable experiences! We kayaked mountain streams in Colorado, some beautiful lakes in Minnesota and many, many other truly fantastic spots.

One of the places we kayaked that was especially nice and rather surprising was in the Boston, MA area. We had heard that the back bays and estuaries around Boston were a particularly interesting area to kayak and we definitely found that to be true. It was amazing to find such primitive areas and wildlife within just a few miles of Harvard Square.

The only problem we had with Boston is that it is almost as expensive as New York and we had to do some serious hunting to find affordable Boston hotel deals. We succeeded but the funny thing is that we then left the country to kayak the St. Clair lakes chain outside of Montreal, Canada and by that time we were ready to indulge ourselves and went shopping for the best hotels Montreal.

We finally made it back to Houston after almost seven months of traveling and kayaking with memories that I hope we will never forget.

I recently got tired of my bathroom layout and decided that I needed a change. I figured that it was about time for some much needed maintainence work as some of the fixtures were starting to show their age. The way I saw it was that at this moment in time it is unlikely that I would be able to sell my property even if I wanted to. By making basic changes to my bathroom layout I could make it a nicer place to wash and raise the value of my property for the future.

After having a look around my bathroom, I thought there were a few different options I could try that would not take much effort but would give the bathroom a fresh look. The first things that I noticed about the bathroom were the bath, toilet and sink as they had started to look dated and past their prime. I decided against getting a new fitted bathroom because they were out of my price range plus I could always spend time just cleaning them up. I then looked at the tiles around the bath and shower and realised that I could easily re-tile the walls. It then occurred to me that I could probably do the same with the floor in order to create a visual effect for the complete bathroom layout.

The bathroom tiles on the wall were incredibly out of date so I headed off to my local home improvement store in search of inspiration. I came to the conclusion that I should go for some ceramic floor tiles in black and white so I could create a checked effect on the floor. I then decided to co-ordinate this with black and white marble tiles for the bathroom wall. Instead of going for a chequered effect I went for blocks of black marble tiles amongst the white marble tiles.

The shop assistant at the bathroom tiles area of the shop was great and provided me with some excellent advice on laying my floor tiles and bathroom wall tiles without damaging the surface underneath or the tiles themselves. He also recommended the best tile adhesive for each of these jobs and gave me a few hints and tips for using it.

A couple of weeks later and my bathroom has been reinvigorated with life, giving my bathroom a lighter and more modern look without having to hire in tiling contractors. I am so happy with how my bathroom now looks that I have already started looking at creating a new look for my kitchen with my trusty trowel and some ceramic tiles.

Cats are the coolest animals on the planet. Yes, that statement is rife with conjecture and straight up personal opinion—based on personal pet preference. But they really are amazing creatures.

Cats have their own laundry or body soap solution, and can wash themselves in all areas except the one area Moms used to nag about—behind the ears…at the nape of the neck. Oh, and they can be picked up (with teeth!) by that nape of the neck, without ever flinching or griping or calling out in pain.

Cats don’t hassle or pounce, relentlessly, when you enter a room. They have little interest in your command performance attention—the quality and quantity of which had better be delivered, according to their mortal foes, dogs, or you’ll get a face full of slobber, a front full of mudprints, or a shove to the ground because the dog thinks he’s a lapdog when he is, in fact, a Rhodesian Wolfhound weighing in at over a 100 pounds.

Cats are so intuitive they know when you need them. That is, if you are weeping, depressed, lonely, or ill, they will first stare at you for a minute, likely picking up which vibe it is they need to address, and then will come close. This is not hyperbole or conjecture on my part. Numerous studies have been done to indicate that pets in general but especially cats have been introduced into high-stress people’s homes and hospital wards—and the illnesses decreased, the stress levels reduced, and the feeling of well-being returned to degrees of something around 15% improvement.

I mentioned that cats stare. Yeah, this is one I still am trying to figure out. They will position themselves in statuesque stillness, focus on one spot, thing, or you (shudder), and with unblinking, undeterred pose will penetrate whatever (or whomever) it is they stare at. I have paid close attention to this particular behavior on many an occasion, and can only see not a bored soul just watching the air molecules move about but a profoundly knowing being…whose eyes, when you look deeply into them, reveal eras and ages of reincarnated mystique, reveal the origin of their many dimensioned essences.

I may be interpreting this because I know the cat’s history. Or know what others know thus far. Cats were a revered animal in Egypt. They were found buried in the tombs and sarcophagi of the royalty. They were reportedly so esteemed that a person was caught harming a cat that person was executed. (Wish we had held onto this one archaic law, especially when I see how cats are sold in markets for food in some countries, or how cats are tortured by cults or kids with nothing better to do and no more brain cells than to set a now defenseless domesticated creature on fire. Makes me very angry, actually.)

And back to the physical wonderment of cats…that whole hairball thing, while at first may be disgusting or may seem pitiful (I always go into apoplectic sympathy mode as the cat looks at me to shut me up so she can be sick), is really fascinating (and makes sense). The cat is licking her hair every day and night, many times. She is of course collecting the fallout. In her gut. She then, on scheduled intervals of time, hunkers, hacks, and hawks until the perfectly bundled thing is expelled. And then she begins the cycle all over again.

Cats have (students and professors at Cornell studied) 100 different vocalizations. My favorite is the rrow-rrow-rrow one as if my cuddly baby is chirping with giddy delight. (It is happy, it is friendly, and it is a greeting. It is also an expectation—of goodies.)

I am really not all that intellectual about cats, though I do acknowledge a deep respect for and kind of metaphysical fascination with cats. So I am always learning something new, coming to understand their biological imperatives—that they wash immediately after eating (or after you eat, even) so they don’t (their cells recall this from jungle days eons back) appear as food or prey. Duh. I didn’t think of that. They scratch and claw stuff not only to sharpen their claws. They do so to leave scent for those competitors (in our case, the raccoons) that might even think about approaching for a nice warm bed, lots of healthy food, much smooshy affection, and the occasional starefest. Which still kinda creeps me out.

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