God's Aquarium

4/21
This morning's first dive was just an absolute joy! We saw big creatures and little creatures and it was all great! Free swimming eel x 2, 3 bumphead parrotfish (big!), 5 barracuda together in a gang, 1 black tipped reef shark that we saw twice cruising along the top of the reef, plus manta shrimp, false clownfish, real clownfish, etc etc. I absolutely loved it! So many fish! Even one super ugly big one with buck teeth and the strangest rotating eyeballs. I couldn't look away!

For breakfast, we were treated to donuts with chocolate sprinkles and homemade bread - both chocolate and raisin varieties. Holy carbs! Oh well! It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't spend all day basically in a swimsuit.  "You can fool some of the people all of the time and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool anyone when you are wearing a swimsuit!!"



Now waiting next dive, which will be Chicken Reef.

8 PM
Well the next two dives are in the book and we just did the usual relaxing between dives upstairs. I am still working on studying and also I finally read the magazines I downloaded. I may have taken a little n-a-p too! We have all been commenting on how well we have been sleeping. Whether it is the gentle rocking of the boat or the exertion during the day, I can't say, but it has been some amazing sleep!
Tonight was another PB&J night with watermelon. I can't wait to get to land and have some control over food! Also looking forward to getting some more bandaids and stuff for cleaning my leg a bit better.  It seems to be scarring ok but the bruise on my butt must still be pretty bad because the old grandpa boat captain saw it today again and pointed and winced. Glad my butt can be such a topic of discussion! Haha I can't see it, so I'll have to assume it looks as bad as it feels!
After dinner, we went outside and were able to see the stars that make up the reference points for the Southern Cross, which looks a bit like a kite. I would stay out longer but the island near us here has a ton of bats with sufficient wingspan to come for a visit, which they demonstrated!  
It is hard to believe we only have one more night after tonight on this boat! I am glad I didn't miss all the great things I got to see underwater and all the conversations with my fellow divers.  Those are what I'll cherish and take with me and I'll hopefully soon forget the food, the lack of dive safety, and the owner with his little Lolita girlfriend that looked about 14! Eew.
We are trying to figure out how to share photos, since we have some amazing underwater photographers on this trip. I can't wait to see their best images, which of course I will share!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
Ok - here's the big news: I bought a house! Yes, I have made the brave jump from the carefree, irresponsible life of a renter and am in the process of becoming a homeowner! It still has to be inspected and there are rumored to be a ridiculous number of papers to sign, but once that's all over .... it's mine! Woo hoo! So yes, that means I'm staying in Yakima. I like the sunshine, I like the fruit, I love my job, I love the food at the hospital most of the time, I like my Safeway store, I like my dentist, I like my doctor, I like my coworkers - basically I pretty much love my life! The location is perfect. I can (theoretically) walk to work, although we'll see about that. I'm near a fantastic park, a pool, my gym, and a few restaurants. The inside is cottage style, which really appeals to me. It's a 1940's house but appears to have been re-done on the inside. It had all the things I wanted when I made my "What my dream house looks like"...
Read more
iCooked Hooray - I got my cooking project done!  It took the better part of the day and I was proud that I only had to make 2 extra trips to the Safeway store down the street!  I'll skip the details. Anyhow, over the next month or week or whatever, I'll have lots of food essentially ready for me when I come home!  I hope I like how it tastes!  It can't help but beat running to the grocery store 2-3+ times a week and wandering around aimlessly until I wind up in the frozen section once again eating stuff I don't really like but settle for due to the fact it takes 8 minutes to heat up. Today I made Mexican Lasagne, White Chicken Chili, Chicken Nuggets, Marinated Flat Iron Steak, Swedish Meatballs, Pork Chops, French Bread Pizza, Texas Skillet, and Chicken Scalloppinne something-or-other.  I'll keep you posted on how it all works out.
Read more
Musings and thoughts.... It's amazing how many thoughts can go floating through your head while frosting cupcake after cupcake. That's how I spent part of my evening ... thinking about why I love holidays so much and thinking about Valentines Day tomorrow. I had great plans to bake all these cupcakes and then spend some quality time curling my hair with my magic curling iron. Unfortunately I fell asleep while waiting for the cupcakes to cool so I am now out of time for the hair so I have to get up really early tomorrow and get curling. I celebrated Valentines Day a day early ... doing all the self-indulgent things I wanted to do. I'm most delighted with the eyebrow waxing lady I just went to today after work. She's definately an artist! She did a wonderful job and it was a wonderful way to kick off the next few days! One of my thoughts was about holidays and if maybe I missed my calling as, oh I don't know, an elementary school teacher? I just love holidays, ...
Read more