And the Book, Again

Well, it's coming - the spring school holidays are nearly upon us, and we can untie from the dock and go sailing for a couple weeks.  Man, can I not wait.  I just need to figure out a way to talk Alisa into being the one to dive down and clean the crud off the prop before we go...

Meanwhile, though, it's time for the third (and nearly last!) monthly give-away for a copy of South From Alaska.

You might remember that I've got a few promotional copies on hand and, since the book is only published in OZ, I figured it would give folks a chance to get a copy.  Anyone, from inside Oz or out, is free to have a go - all you need to do is send an email to galactic.seas@gmail.com with the word "book" in the subject line.  I'll choose the winner with a random draw one week from today - that's Wednesday the 5th of September, Hobart time.

~~~

The World Changes

How fast is the world changing?  Here's one answer - it's from a site called The Cryosphere Today.  (Everyone needs a vice - mine is climate blogs.)

The left-hand image is ice cover on August 20, 1979 - the first year that satellites measured ice extent.  The right hand image is from August 20 of this year.

I guess we didn't need to get a steel boat after all.

From a navigation standpoint, it's pretty hard to wrap your head around the magnitude of change that has happened over the last three decades.  Look at the Northeast Passage, over the top of Russia - completely impossible in the 70s, and wide open right now.  And the fabled Northwest Passage, through the Canadian Archipelago - also, as far as I can tell from this picture, completely open.  What used to be impossible for a yacht is now commonplace.  I might live long enough to sail my own boat to the North Pole.

The Boys

Elias is still super-cuddly with his mom, but in recent months the physical way that he interacts with me has been changing.  He's not as interested in cuddling with me anymore - he'd rather wrestle, play rough, spar, test himself (and test me).  He put his head on my lap after dinner tonight, and I had Alisa take a picture, thinking this sort of thing won't happen forever.  The sweet little boy days are numbered.

Eric is such a bruiser that it would be easy to pigeonhole him as the jock of the family, the bulldog to Elias' aesthete.  But Eric is also the two-year old who happily sits and looks at books for half an hour at a time.

An obvious misstep, deciding ourselves what they'll be.  So while we try to keep them on a reasonably short leash, and teach them, we also observe what they are.

(But when I'm tired, I just try to keep them on a short leash.)

The end.