Benvenuti in Italia

With our trip to Italy coming up soon I have been trying to learn a bit of Italian. What I have realized is that I don't think I have the gift for learning languages. Italian and Spanish are pretty close so that has been helpful somewhat but they roll their r's as well and I can't seem to do that for the life of me.

I have been listening to my Italian CD's in the truck on my way to and from work but so far I wouldn't say there has been a whole lot of progress. Plus what I really want to know doesn't seem to be covered.

Personally if I was producing an learn to speak Italian CD I would start with things we really need to know when visiting a foreign country. I think asking where the bathroom is would be a great place to start. That would be a phrase you will be using on a regular basis. I would also cover ordering food, asking for the check, and of course shopping! But instead they cover the months of the year, days of the week, and then verb tenses. So right now I can go around saying what month of year it is and the day of the week. To me this isn't a huge priority because on vacation I don't really care much what day it is - isn't that really the point of vacation? I only need to know it is Monday if I have to show up for work.

I also think types of food should be covered as well - I want to know what chicken and beef are so I somehow don't end up with meat I don't recognize when it is meal time. Knowing which words to avoid would come in very handy when looking at a menu in Italian. At least I should recognize the word pasta and cappuccino so I will have a back up though when knowing what comes in my pasta could be a bit of a toss up.

Sam is much further ahead of me - he has been using the Rosetta stone and has been more diligent than I have on the studying part so far. It also might be the fact that he has been working on his Italian off and on for 2 years now.

Fortunately this trip he won't be working for much of it so he can be my translator. Usually I am in the one figuring it out while he is working so this time it can be his turn to try and communicate. I won't remind him that when I was in charge we were in countries like England, Germany, and Amsterdam where finding an English speaking person wasn't too terribly hard. I did somehow get us around in Japan though some of our dinners were in the don't study it too hard category and we were often surprised when the food showed up at our table.

Maybe miraculously in the next 2 1/2 weeks I will become more proficient but I guess at this point I will be happy to get through at least 1 more CD. Sam didn't seem very impressed when asking what CD I was on to find out I was just starting the second one, guess he thought I should be a bit further along by now.

But if anyone wants to know it is Thursday or how to say I like to travel I am your person. Just don't answer me back in Italian as that is when I will get very confused, and I don't even know how to ask someone to repeat their question or statement back yet! I think I may just work on finding my speaking Italian translation book and working on learning how to say where to find a shoe store, where is a great restaurant, how much is it, and where is the bathroom. That should really cover most situations I will be in. If I can eat well, buy great Italian shoes, and know how much I am paying it should all be good.

Plus there is iGoogle where I type in words in English and it will give it to me in Italian though I haven't found out where it will say it to the person for me yet since that is really what I need. Maybe all I really need to know is if they have wifi so I can use the Internet to look up the translation - that seems a bit easier to me.

shrimping season

Sam and I made our reservations early this year for shrimping season at casa del Schober on San Juan Island so this year we could get our share of shrimp and make it in time for the super short season. Last year the season closed early and we missed out on getting very many so this year we wanted to make sure we got plenty.

After meeting dad down at the boat on Friday evening we ate the dinner mom had made us. I don't know if it is bad form to eat shrimp on the boat where you are going out to catch their friends and family later but I didn't feel too guilty and ate way more than my share. Luckily for me Sam and my parents were much too polite to comment on my greediness or maybe because I ate them quicker they didn't notice. But I filled up on the grilled shrimp and was hoping we would find some more in the pots since 1 shrimp dinner wasn't going to quite cut it.

Finding your pot always seem to be a big of a challenge but since everyone else had mostly pulled theirs and headed home it made it much easier. That and the fact dad figured out how to track his pots on his GPS screen. I am pretty sure Sam received the message loud and clear that he might want to figure out this neat trick for himself soon on our boat.

Spotting the pots can be easy sometimes compared to grabbing the buoy and dragging it onboard. Sam and dad though have this routine down and they grabbed them on the first try. I just observed and applauded their performance since sometimes less assistance is better. I also took this approach when it came time to pull in the pots. When I reminded Sam we need to practice our man overboard drills for the upcoming summer he told me had been doing it all weekend when bringing in the pots and I really didn't have much of an argument against his theory.

Dad invested in an electric puller and this is the way to go. He doesn't mind hard labor but I think pulling 1 or 2 in by hand convinced him some things are really worth the cost. I think that is one thing my mom hasn't commented on how much it cost and she always reminds us boating isn't cheap but somehow the cost of the electric puller is never mentioned. But then I don't think she wanted to try her hand at manual pot pulling either which might have happened if she brought it up. Guess we know where I learned to pick my battles from.

Both pots had shrimp in them but not quite as many as we had hoped. Turns out the commercial boats had come in the day before and cleaned it out a bit. But we got enough for a couple of dinners so Saturday's evening menu was saved and mom didn't have to pull the ones out of the freezer she had just frozen.

Friday evening after much discussion and deliberation Sam and Dad decided on the best time to go fishing and shrimping Saturday morning. While Sam is not a morning person if it involves boating morning suddenly isn't a bad option. Sometimes I think more planning and strategizing goes into determining where to go fishing and when than corporate takeovers.

Mom and I decided they could come pick us up later when it was time to pull the pots since Dad had told us how choppy it was on Middle Bank on Friday morning when he went out. If my dad mentions it was a bit choppy and nasty I know I probably wouldn't want to be out in it on a destroyer much less his boat.

Lunchtime the guys called primarily since they hadn't taken along snacks and were hungry and hoping we would have a solution. If they had brought along food I am not sure when they would have contacted us.

We didn't get as many shrimp as we had hoped again but it was a decent catch. So if you don't limit out it must be time to move the pots. If it is a Saturday during shrimp season and you don't see any pots close by yours it might not be the best place to put your pot. Of course this was all discussed in hindsight when 1 pot came up empty. So the pots went down for the 3rd time. By now it was time to go eat some of the shrimp we had on board before we pulled the pots again.

Once again I ate way more than my fair share and we had fresh halibut as well. It is hard to beat fresh shrimp though when crab season comes around I will think that about fresh crab. After dinner we headed back out to pull the pots once more and try to limit out our 4 licenses. While we needed 3 licenses the 4th wasn't needed. But we did get some pretty good sized ones.

Sam and I got enough to have shrimp again for dinner on Sunday night and again on Monday night plus more for our freezer. My mom also gave me some to take to the cabin and share with my sister this next weekend. I wonder if she will tell her exactly how many she gave me. Something tells me I had better show up with all of them though I am tempted to do a shrimp appetizer instead. With an appetizer you can get away with serving less! Plus these shrimp have to last me until next year now or at least until crab season. This is one of those times when I wish I was married to someone who didn't really like seafood.

Sam - don't forget you need to figure out how to set the tracking system on your GPS. While it may be fun to see who all set pots in the bay driving right up to our pot would be much more efficient and leave us more time to drop it again if we don't limit out. I promise it won't reduce your boating time.