Verruca and the Yacht

So last week my tendinitis in my left foot was acting up so I went to a new podiatrist that was near to the house. He was a nice guy, albeit one that appeared to have a slight foot fetish, and very sympathetic to my foot woes. After the very painful cortisone shot he gave me, my left foot is feeling much better; however since he had me walk around barefoot to admire my extreme high arch (fetish!) I ended up getting a very large and very painful verruca on my right foot. A verruca is a planter’s wart for my American readers (most of you) but since ‘verruca’ sounds 100 times better than planter’s wart (mainly because it leaves out the wart part), I’m going with it. Besides, if you recognize the name, Verruca was a character in ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’. If I close my eyes, I can imagine there’s a lovely piece of dark Belgium hanging off my foot rather than an ugly black wart. I much rather have Andy say to me, “Please get that foot off me lest the chocolate melts on my pants” than the “get your nasty ass warty-wart foot off me!” like he has. I would like to point out that he seems to be rather excited for the point in time when the verruca turns green and falls off. Must be a cultural thing.

My verruca kinds of feels like this actually.

The day after discovering my new foot addition, Andy and I were invited by Patrick and Michele to come down to the Balboa Yacht Club for Opening Day. (How’s that for a transition in topics?) Patrick and Michele bought a boat earlier this year calling it ‘Soiscoisisouuucchlkjljkldsfjalkdsadksfja’. OK, that’s not exactly what they call it, but it’s an Irish word that I can’t pronounce even after they have told me a gazillion times. As a dyslexic, I struggle pronouncing the English language so attempting to say this Irish name or slightly remember how it’s spelled (I would like to mention here that if it wasn’t for spell check ‘dyslexic’ would have been ‘dislexsic’ because that’s how bad it is) is impossible. I’m sorry Patrick and Michele. Your boat is lovely. Forgive me if I just call it ‘Bob’ for now.

So yes, Opening Day at the yacht club… sounds posh, huh? It’s not really (we got in remember), but it is loads of fun. All the members of the yacht club tie their boats to the dock and there’s an open house on any one of them. You simply have to request permission to come aboard. There’s food and snacks and music and did I mention that that there was booze? There was a lot of booze. I would also like to mention that there’s a wobbly dock. One of the first questions I had to ask someone who had been to Opening Day before was if anyone had fallen in on previous Opening Days. “Oh yes, “ they said, “usually more than one person ends up falling in.” Brilliant. I made a conscious choice that that person would not be me, and then proceeded to have a shot of whiskey.

Without further ado, the pictorial highlights:

Here are all the boats tied up together on the dock. They are not tied up by the flags, that's just a bonus. I was told each flag means something. I'm sure that's true but it's too complicated so I will state that they all mean "pretty boat".

Andy, Mari, Gunter and I request to come aboard 'Bob'.

Did I mention that every boat\yacht was having an open house? Of course the only yacht that Andy and I decided to check out was the big massive one that had four bedrooms, a kitchen bigger than my own, and more technology than NASA. Here's Andy at one of the control centers.  I may have told him to "stuck it in" so I could get more of the jazzy features in. 

Mari and Andy show off back at 'Bob'. Notice the cocktails? They had waitresses coming around with drinks. You had to pay for these drinks of course but if you bought four, you got a free seal hat. Who wouldn't want a free seal hat?

'Bob' won best boat for it's class! You seriously couldn't wipe the smile off of Patrick's face even if you had a Mr. Clean magic eraser.

Not the best picture in the world, but I had to prove I was actually there. Nice seal hat Andy.

Did I mention that there was booze? I absolutely love this picture. Classic Andy puts on duck face while wearing seal hat while Gunter pretends he didn't get a rash from drinking tequila.

My classy friends at the end of the day. Marilyn tries to pull of a double bird with drink which is a very difficult maneuver not to be tried by amateurs and monkeys in seal hats.