´people use the same knife they are already holding in hand from slicing the 'cado open… 
It’s a lot easier to handle when it’s been sliced in half before it’s been peeled, so there’s already a knife handy.
I cut an avocado in half, whacked the pit with a knife, and twisted it free. As I walked toward the garbage can, the slimy pit fell off the blade and rolled away. My daughter said, “You looked kinda professional until that happened.”
(I did not in any way intend for my avocado anecdote to spawn a mini sub thread of avocado discussion, but I’m amused to see it happen.)
Why would you need a heavy-duty chef’s knife to slice open an avocado?
I use a full-size chef’s knife for almost everything. With enough time and experience, it really is an all-purpose tool.
Also, since avocados have taken over the thread, here’s a handy tip: After you slap the blade into the pit and twist it out, you can safely get the pit off by reaching your finger and thumb down from the dull top and pinching against the pit. Pops right off, and your hand is opposite the sharp edge.
I’m confused by this, surely this fellow, as well as your friend, do not try to paddle a canoe solo by sitting on the back seat? If you sit backward on the front seat with your knees braced on the bottom of the canoe your weight will be distributed much closer to the center of the canoe and no counter weight is needed.
In my experience, you still need some counterweight when you do this, just not as much. (Also, you can sit backwards on the front seat or you can kneel with your knees on the bottom of the canoe, but not at the same time, at least for me anyway. And while kneeling lowers the center of gravity—which improves stability—it gets tiring after a while.)
The bigger problem with only one person in a 2-person canoe is that it rides too high and gets very tippy. This is not usually a big deal in still water, but can be a big issue in moving water and rapids.
I ran into this in dramatic fashion recently with a 20+ year old Grumman 17’ aluminum canoe that was one of 5 that our local Scout troop inherited. I found them to be particularly tippy with only one person in an unloaded canoe. I don’t usually capsize in a canoe, but I did that day several times.
When cutting up avocados I use a paring knife. I start by bring the knife down from the narrow end so it slices through the skin on both sides, then continue cutting around one side and over the bottom until I meet the cut on the other side. The avocado is now in two halves, one with the pit; I stick the tip of the knife into the pit and usually it just takes a little twist to put it out. Occasionally, particularly if I’m making guacamole, I’ll just use a spoon to scoop out the avocado around the pit until it comes lose. I have never come close to cutting myself.
Yup.
Drove me crazy when I saw my wife trying to dice an onion with a pairing knife. “I’ll get that sweetheart”
My Wife has figured that out though.
It’s a lot easier to steer a canoe sitting in back. With two in a canoe, steering is the back person’s job, while the front person just provides propulsion. With only one, obviously you get less propulsion, but you still need to steer.
A friend who is a dietician and works in food service stupidly held the avocado in her hand while using the chefs knife to whack the pit and ended up slicing her hand and nearly severed a nerve. This was at home too.
She learned the hard way.
As per the link from @thorny_locust, avocado-related injuries are one of the common ones in the kitchen. I remember when bagel-slicing injuries were the common thing.
Some ^$#!@# ahem person at another organization sends me an Excel workbook with the data in it that I need to import into our database, but with each column being a registered site and each row being a piece of information pertaining to it. Which of course is the opposite of the structure of our database, where each row is a site and the columns (database fields, non-changing parts of the database structure) are “Site ID” and “Month” and “Year” and “Service Units this month” and so on.
So I wrote an inversion script that would walk through a temporary table imported from this back-asswards spreadsheet and write the row information out to the correct column.
Then it crosses my mind to wonder if Excel has some kind of feature built in that switches columns and rows, since in Excel they’re all just cells. Sure enough… Select All, Copy, go somewhere else e.g. a new sheet, right-click, and Transpose.
The first apartment we lived in after we were married was a ground floor apartment. There were two entrances, one in the front and one in the back at the parking lot. Both of them had seven steps up to a small landing then another seven steps up to the send floor or seven steps down to the first floor.
We carried all the cheap furniture and other things we had up and down the stairs and halfway down the hall to our apartment.
A couple of months later we realized that the laundry room which was across the hall from our apartment had a ground floor door. No steps and about a tenth of the distance had he parked U-haul right there.
Oh boy–I was cringing when you described what you did, until I remembered what the thread was! I use the “transpose” feature pretty often. It’s great.
Worcester sauce? Are you joking? Extra virgin olive oil is the way to go here, and sprinkle the whole thing with everything but the bagel seasoning.
I prefer vinaigrette.
I’ve been canoeing since I was 7 or 8 years old, and used to do a fair bit of white water canoeing in my late 20’s and early 30’s. However, you don’t have to take my word for it.
Here is a National Film Board short featuring Bill Mason demonstrating solo canoeing techniques. He is paddling a 16 foot canvas covered cedar strip prospector style canoe.
I’ve solo paddles my share of canoes. “Feathering” your stroke is key. I actually prefer canoeing solo