Flooding!


Last night my water heater cracked and water flowed all over the floor, under the wall and flooded my neighbors apartment and mine. All my towels were reduced to rags, trying to sop up rust chunks and tea-colored water… Gross! But the plumber came very fast and replaced the water heater. Kudos to the plumber and my landlady. Oh yeah, my dog, the killing machine, bit the plumber on the heel.

The broken water heater is why I missed last nights Astronomical Society Meeting.

Today is my split shift day. I’ll be looking forward to a long beach lunch hour and maybe a nap. I’m definitely still a little sick from this cold or whatever it is.

Yesterday back to work wasn’t as bad as I expected. I had a lot of little things to fix from just about everyone who saw me. It’s nice to feel needed and useful.

Above is a picture of a Queen Angelfish. I’m still trying to get the perfect picture of one.

Here I go

Back to work.
It’s always hard to go back after time off. Especially here.
Last few weeks I’ve been waking up at about 3:30. figured it was just because I go to bed at 9. Last night I stayed up till 11 and still woke up at 3:30. I heard my neighbor come home right after that. I wonder if they’ve been coming home and waking me up every night. New neighbors are moving in next to me on the other side. I anticipate trouble there. I think I know who they are. . . drunks.
I have a wonderful outlook on life today, don’t I?

Last day of Vay-cay

Today is my last day of vacation. tomorrow it’s back to work, where I won’t have a day off for at least 11 days. It’s like you take holiday time, which you’ve earned, and then go back to work, and feel like you’re being punished.
I’m kind of angry about it.

It’s time for the IO Girl and I to have a talk. We have to either move forward or move apart. Living on separate islands is no good. Plus it’s in voilation of my no long distance relationship rule. Also my plans are to stay here and hers are not. Plus her cat and my dog will never get along.

There’s also a problem where I work so much, then I haven’t seen her in a long time so I go see her. Then I can’t go diving. I didn’t dive for almost two months before last week. I basically gave up diving for my now ex-wife and won’t do it again. I gave up everything and did everything I could to get that relationship to work and now in my life it’s William Shakespeare, “To Thine Own Self Be True”. Yessiree, diving will come before a relationship if push comes to shove. I already tried the other way and it was disastrous. I’m not saying I’m inflexible and won’t compromise. I’m not saying that at all. Diving is just very important in my life.

Many times in my life I have been lonely and wanted a relationship, then gotten into a relationship and found myself lonelier that I was before. Like now. If I wasn’t in an relationship already, I could at least go out and try to meet someone. But since I’m in a relationship, I’m trapped. I just have to suffer. Like right now, I’m waiting for her to wake up so I can talk to her on the stupid phone.

I realize that this doesn’t sound good, but it’s just half of how I feel. It would be great if things could work out with the OI girl. I want it to. I know this post doesn’t sound like that, but I want it to work if it can.

My Dad

My Dad is not doing too well, his brain is bleeding and he lost his memory. My Mom is trying to teach him “L” for Lobby and “2” for their floor. He disappeared in the lobby and she found him on the 10th floor.
I talked to him on the phone and he sounded OK except he told me how he’s trying to learn “L” and “4”. He hesitated and seemed to know that wasn’t quite right.
His 80th birthday is in August.


Sick boy

Night before last, I came home from diving and took a shower. When I got out of the shower, the air in the room was intolerably cold. I ran and jumped into bed with two blankets, wondering why I was so freezing. I ended up being incredibly sick and delerious. It was a miserable night. Yesterday morning I went to the dive shop and told them I wouldn’t be diving that day. I moved my rebreather to a nice shady spot and covered it in towels. Then I came back home and went to bed and stayed there all day. Last night I was feeling a lot better and went out and got some chicken noodle soup. Then I went back to bed and this morning I feel a lot better still.
But that’s why I didn’t post yesterday.

Attack of the baby lobsters

This morning the alarm went off and I said to myself, “You’re on vacation, sleep late if you want to” So I did. i slept an extra hour! Now I’m running a little late but I’m trying not to get too worked up about it.
Yesterdays dive was great! the wreck is still there and relatively unchanged. There is a big barrell sponge in front of the bow that I can tell gets bigger and bigger. On the ascent, there were dozens of baby lobsters living on the rope. The one inch rope was about 3 or 4 inches in diameter because of all the sea life growing on it. The lobsters were crawling all over us. One crawled in one guys wetsuit and he was quite uncomfortable the last half hour of the dive.
They were all over the place. Here’s a pic, it’s out of focus, but you get the idea as to the size of these monster creatures. (He’s still alive and we threw him back after I took this pic)
Yes, everone is right, yesterdays abstract photo is the legs of the chairs and tables. Told you it was too easy!

Pics as promised

Yesterday was great! Today promises to be better. Yesterday was 303 feet, my new deepest depth on the rebreather. Today is the Carrie Lee, a wreck sitting on the edge of an underwater cliff at about 275 feet. Awesome dive!

Here’s some pics I took yesterday on a shallow afternoon dive. They are Flamingos Tongues. the spotted part is the creature that lives inside the shell, kind of like a snail. They come out of their shell and wrap their bodies abound the outside of the shell. The shell is plain tan colored. They live on sea fans.


And a baby turtle. He was about a foot across.
Also, look at this coral, I took it for the pattern, but the flash made it bright red. click to enlarge. This is my favorite pic of the day.

And my abstract pic. Guess what it is! (easy) Hint: I was in a swimming pool next to a restaurant.

Still no pics

But today, I promise to take some!

Yesterday was great! Went down 258 feet, stayed 20 minutes, back on the surface after 103 minutes. Today the plan is 300 feet, which will be the deepest I’ve ever been on my rebreather.
Yes, Jona, I am waking up at the same time I always do for work, and I’m actually leaving the house earlier than I normally do, but it’s great! (I’ll try and get some rest when I get back to work!)

This is yesterdays dive downloaded from my dive computer. Depth is on the left and time is across the bottom. The dark blue line shows my actual depth, and the light blue line shows my ceiling, which means the shallowest depth I can ascend to with out risking decompression illness. The little green rectangle at the bottom center is what I see on my handset while I’m underwater.

click to enlarge

I feel like I’m getting a cold, so yesterday, instead of an afternoon dive, I hung out by the pool and tried to catch some preventitive sunrays.

Yesterday was great!

Today will be better!
Yesterday the dive was 150 feet for 30 minutes, swam in one direction. Then up to 100 feet for 30 more minutes, still swimming in the same direction, then across the sand to a mini wall where we swam back for an hour and did our deco and had a 2 hour and 1o minute runtime. It was just a shallow warm up dive.
Plus, it was great seeing a bunch of old friends.
Today I am on the boat.
All these dives are too deep for my camera, (140 feet or 40 meters) but I will take some shots today on the boat and stuff. Maybe this afternoon I’ll do a shallower one and take some U/W pics.
SEE YA!