Ice Cream Sticks = Viking Ship

What else would you do with 15 million ice cream sticks?

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A replica Viking ship made of 15 million ice cream sticks is to be launched in Amsterdam on Tuesday by a former Hollywood stuntman who hopes eventually to sail it across the Atlantic.

The 15-meter ship, which took Robert McDonald two years to build, is to be launched in Amsterdam harbor with a crew of around 25 in a bid to set a world record for the largest sailing ship made of ice cream sticks.

The Viking longship, equipped with oars and a mast, is built with sticks of birch-wood glued together painstakingly by McDonald and two volunteers in a Dutch workshop. It is to be put through its paces for around 90 minutes Tuesday.

"It's a dream come true. It's truly worth all the hard work," McDonald said Monday.

"I never want to look at glue again. I don't think I will be in a hurry to look at ice cream sticks again," said the 45-year-old from Jacksonville, Florida.

The ice cream sticks used to make the ship were provided by Unilever's ice cream maker OLA and by children who collected discarded sticks around the world.

McDonald, whose Sea Heart Foundation (www.seaheartship.com) helps provide leisure activities for children in hospitals, hopes to sail his Viking ship across the Atlantic next year.

"That's still the ultimate goal, to sail across the Atlantic in the Viking-style," McDonald said.

Christopher Columbus was acclaimed for centuries as the man who discovered America in 1492.

But in recent decades, more evidence has come to light showing that Icelander Leif Ericsson and the Vikings were the first Europeans to set foot on the American continent in the year 1,000.

Viking longboats let Norse warriors land, pillage and plunder large parts of Europe and sail off knowing that no other vessels could catch up.

Quarter-Life Crisis

They call it the "quarter-life crisis."

It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are a lot of things about yourself that you didn't know and may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.

You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren't exactly the greatest people you have ever met and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you do not realize is that they are realizing that too and are not really cold or catty or mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you are.

You look at your job, and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing, or maybe you are looking for one and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and are scared.

You miss the comforts of college, of groups, of socializing with the same people on a constant basis. But then you realize that maybe they weren't so great after all.

You are beginning to understand yourself and what you want and do not want. Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging a bit more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and add things to your list of what is acceptable and what is not.

One minute, you are insecure and then the next, secure. You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try to cling on to the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.

You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you, or you lie in bed and wonder why you can't meet anyone decent enough to get to know better. You love someone but maybe love someone else too and cannot figure out why you are doing this because you are not a bad person. One-night stands and random hookups start to look cheap, and getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic.

You want to be independent, but suddenly, the idea of having the stability of a special someone to trust and lean on doesn't seem all that bad. You want to be your own person and yet be taken care of at the same time.

You go through the same emotions and questions over and over and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision.

You worry about loans and money and the future and making a life for yourself and while winning the race would be great, right now you'd just like to be a contender.

What you may not realize is that everyone reading this relates to it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out.

Baboons

Did you know that baboons share 95% of our DNA and some of our psychological traits?

Hmm.. that explains a lot.