I told you it was auction season, remember the year supply of dry sodas? Well, we get a kick out of picking one interesting item per auction, perhaps one with a story or experience. At a recent auction, I renewed our family pass to the Seattle Art Museum---which was brilliant timing as they just renovated a huge portion of the museum. It is gorgeous.

At last year's school auction, we were nudged by our children (they let the kids drool over auction items, so they can 'encourage' their parents to gun for specific items---smart, eh?) to check out "shrimping for a day." My kids want to shrimp?

We walked away with a day on a shrimp boat.

And it is May, and shrimping season has arrived. So we picked up our one-day shrimping licenses, wore layers and layers of long-johns and wool socks and shoved on our rubber boots... and got up WAY to early for a Saturday (why did we buy this again? oh yes, we spent money for a good cause... and it will be a memorable family experience...). And off we went.

And it was great. And for the sake of culinary school (couldn't write a post without that in mind), having hoards of shrimp (80 per person, so we came home with 320) to deal with and learn to devein and clean and cook is, well, pushing me out of my comfort zone. And that really is the point, the 'why' behind culinary school: to push my kitchen knowledge and comfort and experience far beyond what it would ever be without school. And it all starts right about now, with all these live little buggers and their iridescent eyes, legs flailing.

Once we were home we simply had the meat in the shells and all I had to do was pick a recipe and clean 'em. My son looked through my culinary book, while I was cleaning them, to verify the proper cleaning technique (well, I actually developed my own improper method, which will no doubt be corrected sometime this fall, at school, with yet another pile of shrimp). Because the index leaves much to be desired, he wrote up my own special little sticky note and inserted it on the shrimp deveining page.

My family is supporting my schooling efforts, one sticky note at a time.

Know what else warms my heart? My son learned how to clean shrimp, too.