When Lake Union starts coming in the front door, it's pretty sobering--provided you're sober enough to notice it before you have to begin treading water.

I remember one hoot in one of the smaller Lake Union houseboats when the lake started coming in the front door because the weight of everone in the living room unbalance the houseboat. Ken Manus, the host, managed to re-balance it by rolling his wife's piano into the bathroom. The piano wasn't that big (standard upright), but the bathroom was very small. It was a little hard to be unobtrusive about having to use the facilities when a couple of bully-boys had to roll the piano back out of the bathroom and several people had to move into the kitchen to keep the place balanced. The guys usually stepped "outside for a smoke." Even the ones who didn't smoke.

But one of the nice parts about hoots on houseboats was that if you had to throw somebody out, they made such a satifying splash!

Great times, those!

Don Firth