PHASING IN

How to buy our business:

Phase One:
Talk to the broker. Get preliminary information.

Phase Two:
Submit financial credentials. Sign nondisclosure agreement. Get P&L statement and company profile.

Phase Three:
Make an offer.

Our broker notified us that somebody moved to Phase Two this week.

We're still in a deep haze from the beer festival. Alas, it's not from drinking. It's from fatigue. Looking forward to some days off this weekend!

STIRRINGS

The beer festival is behind us now, and the universe is stirring.

After one month on the market and one person looking at the house, it's time for some action. The New York Times called our real estate agent this morning. They want to use our house in their What You Get column.

Then someone called for an appointment to see the house Wednesday morning. Then someone called for an appointment on Friday morning.

It must be house week.

Stirrings.

PIG STEIN '08

And thanks to Amanda Zamora for capturing the mood in pictures.

PIG STEIN COUNTDOWN: 24 hours

PICK A DAY

In boating it's important to watch and wait for weather windows. You can't plan a passage based on the calendar. It's more complicated than that, at least if you're smart.

You have to wait until all the right conditions converge that will allow a safe passage.

Unfortunately, when you plan a beer festival you have to base it on the calendar and hope against hope a weather window will open up around you.

The weather forecast for the week is clear except for pouring rain on the day of our beer festival.

There's a window there, but we can't see out for the rain.

Last year, it didn't rain from the end of July until October 27th, the day we had our first beer festival.

Let's review: the first year it rained. The second year it's supposed to rain. We're beginning to wonder if somebody's sending us a message here. Have a rain festival? Include mud wrestling as a stage event? Hire ducks as parking attendants?

But maybe, just maybe that little rain cloud will move on to another day.

In the meantime, we wait.

Is it just me, or do we seem to be doing a lot of waiting lately?

TODAY:
--checked the weather about 15 times
--got a bid on another big tent

THE PIG THAT ATE MY DREAMS

In August my dream of cruising was so close it was tactile. I think my eyes were red from the salt and sun, I could hear the water gurgling while I slept. Or maybe that was the toilet leaking.

Either way, cruising seemed close enough to touch.

And then a huge monster loomed up on the horizon, snorting and foaming. We call it Pig Stein, our annual beer and bbq festival hosted by us and our friend Will, who owns High Cotton BBQ. This year we have 25 pit masters competing, 48 breweries coming, and we expect more than 2000 people.

My days are spent drawing diagrams of the festival site, ordering tents and porto potties, arranging for dumpsters and trash cans, scheduling radio interviews, recruiting volunteers, and most stressful of all, watching the weather forecast change from 40% chance of rain to 20% chance and back to 40.

What's that proverb about knowing what you can change and what you can't and totally freaking out about the latter. That's a paraphrase.

The good news is the festival is this Saturday. What I will change is my focus. Starting on Sunday my thoughts will be consumed by gentle tradewinds, the warm, warm sun and water as deep as forever.

TODAY:
--sold the banjo
--got the generator working
--put the boat on towndock.net and wilmington craig's list

SEVEN BOATS

More boat shopping. Seven Island Packets in one day. That's Nan Shan in the photo. It was a great boat at a great price, but we don't want a centerboard.

What those seven taught us:
>We still don't want a 38.
>Centerboards are a steal if you want them.
>The 35 v-berth is plenty big for us both.
>They all have stern access so a scoop is an expensive luxury we don't need.
>Just because it's an Island Packet doesn't mean we'll want it. We saw some pretty rough boats.

We think we're ready to buy a boat. Now if we just had some $$$.

TODAY:
--decided what boat we want (!)
--started varnishing the bowsprit seat and grate