Look What Logan Found

I went diving about 10 days ago with Scott, my Navy dive buddy dude. He just became Chief at the ceremony a few days before our dive. He showed up with the gear he rented for us, and produced a net bag with rocks in it. He had several in there, about 8 of them, and they were painted to look like navy uniforms in black pants and blue shirts with the little insignia on them to denote rank. This was a project he had to do in Chief's school, and they represented a division of sailors. He had to make up records and all kinds of info for each one of them. He decided that on our dive he was going to place them in a circle somewhere on the ocean floor.

Cool, I'm all for an interesting ceremony with some meaning. We headed out to the sea wall for our dive. The tide was still high, but on its way out soon.

It's very cumbersome and awkward to walk with an air tank on your back and a mask and fins in your hands as you navigate the bumpy coral and eroded concrete steps. It didn't take long for Scott to get frustrated because he was also carrying a bag of rocks. About 15 feet out, he was over it and said, "Ok, I can't carry all this, I'm placing them right here." We went on to have a fantastic dive and enjoyed ourselves very much.

This past weekend after my photo shoot, I saw the Neathery family hanging out on their driveway. I needed to hose off my shoes and they were out there hosing off their gear after a snorkel. Anne (mom) was holding baby Knyte Lukas:

(had to show you that - he's gorgeous) and the other 3 kids and dad were cleaning up after a snorkeling trip. Anne says, "Look what Logan found, check this out..."

Logan (fellow kindergartener of Mia's and all-around sweetie-pie) walks over and opens his hand to reveal a blue & black painted rock.

I start laughing hysterically. Anne isn't really sure why, but says, "I know! Isn't that a hoot! I wonder what that is... that's just so funny, he was just swimming around out there and swam down to get it." I'm still laughing and she still doesn't know why.

Through the tears I explain the story of the previous week's dive and Scott's inability to realize that when the tide was LOW, some kid might discover his little division of sailors down there. Logan only found one - but I think he might be looking for more now. Maybe he'll bring the poor guy home to be with his buddies. But I think he's probably happy to have found a home with the Neathery boys.

Picture Perfect

Today is picture day at school for our almost-6-year-old kid. At dinner after soccer practice last night, her dad said, "When we get home, after your shower, we're going to pick out what clothes you're wearing for your pictures tomorrow, ok?"
"Yeah - so that we don't argue about it in the morning."

She had her yearly physical yesterday, which wasn't really all that because we'd just done a lot of it for her school immunizations and her sports physical to play soccer. She's 47.3 lbs and 45 3/4" tall. Doing great in every way, and told the doctor that she "eats broccoli now" and that in school she's "learning to listen well". Gotta love it.

Here she is mugging for me before she went to school:


We might put her in an Aikido class we just heard about. Craig insists it's time she start training to fight the boys off. I can't say I disagree.

In other news- I had a FANTASTIC dive yesterday with my original dive buddy, Scott. He was nice enough to rent gear for us ($15 for tank, BCD, regulator & weights) and we easily had more than $15 worth of FUN. Among other things, we saw a moray eel, a cuttlefish (seriously one of the COOLEST things I've ever seen, we followed it for 10 minutes), lots of sea snakes (yeah, I kept my distance), a very friendly clown fish that was playing around Scott's hand (and another that was peeking in and out of the anemone below), several puffer fish, and tons of other tropical goodies in every color of the rainbow on a beautiful great visibility dive just a 5-minute swim from the sea wall at the end of my street.

Another one of my favorite things out there is the christmas tree worm:
They come in every bright color you can think of, and when you swim up and reach to touch them, they suck down into the coral really quickly. For a video of this, if you care, click here.

I'm off to continue my busy week!

Whale Sharks! Blog!

My dive buddy from class went diving with whale sharks today (largest fish on the planet - about 7m long). I'm going to see if I can put a link to his pictures here:

http://share.shutterfly.com/action/pictures?a=67b0de21b35360304522&sid=8AatGLdu1cuHnw

If that doesn't work for you, whoever you are, email me so I can pull it. I'll be doing this soon despite the $115 pricetag - gotta save up for that experience before I go!

I also found an incredible local blog - http://okimama.wordpress.com/
HOLY COW wealth of information! Categorized beautifully with pictures, directions to places - wow, I am more than happy I found this only 6 weeks in!

I Predict I Will Become A Dive Bum

This weekend I did my first 4 dives - 2 on Saturday at the Kadena Steps, and 2 on Sunday off a boat in Ginowan. (I recommend a boat over walking out on coral, I have a big target bruise on my calf to prove why...)

Loved it. It's peaceful and fun down there, I was comfortable in the warm water with a very good instructor and a cool dive buddy in my class. The visibility was pretty crappy - mostly still due to the after-effects of the typhoon. (max was the very first dive, 25-30 foot vis)

But, we saw a variety of fun creatures. I don't have a waterproof case for my camera (yet...) so deal with the fact that I had to put pictures from the web in here to show you what I saw.

Yesterday off the boat in Ginowan, we saw 2 of these guys...one of the most poisonous snakes that exists anywhere. I'm glad he was about 10-15 feet away from us!


Yep - "Gill" was everywhere. These are super cool, we saw families of them swimming around & eating coral.


Lots of puffer fish. Some are pretty large too - but they only puff out if you yank their tail, so we didn't do that.

THIS was a gorgeous fish. One of the prettiest we saw.

Yep - the first day I found Nemo - in an anemone. Very cool.
Lots of these - I called them referee fish.

These nearly glowed in the dark down there.
But THIS blue one took the cake. WOW was this sucker bright. In turquoise waters, this guy seemed to have a light bulb inside of him. Amazing.

Lots of these butterfly fish - really pretty.


And tons of sea urchins, anemones, pretty coral - and one poking out head of a moray eel - orange guy. Very cool. I'm excited to get some more diving done here, I'm glad I got certified early. I hope Craig can drop the golf thing for long enough to get certified & come with me. Unfortunately Mia will still be too young for a while.

Other news? Not much - I was gone from the early morning until after 3 both days, so I just came home and relaxed. It's still hot. We're happy to have our stuff. And after a brief time of sleeping on the mattress on her floor (due to the movers losing the 8 bolts that hold her bed together), Mia should be on a bed tonight in a put-together room. My parents were kind enough to go to Ikea and find the bolts to Mia's discontinued bed and mail them out to us. THANK YOU!

Gotta go, she'll be up soon and then we need to start our day.

And So It Begins

What a week we have ahead of us! First of all, thanks to everyone who complimented the photos of the water via comments & emails. It's fun to shoot, and a bit easier to get good shots with thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment. Also, we shot those in RAW format, and manipulating them with Adobe® Lightroom is OH so fun - it'll be even more fun when I have my manual with me to reference (see "Household Goods" below). The water is great, but it's 86 degrees in there, so not really that much relief. And hosing down the kid & us after getting out is a bit of a challenge too - at a tucked away beach with no fresh water faucets close-by. And of course, the moment you're out of the warm water you start sweating profusely again, and now all the sand is sticking to you.... you get the picture.

Scuba Class, Day 1
I began last night, Sunday evening, at 3pm. The night previous Craig and I were lying in bed and he said, "Are you excited for diving?"
"Yeah," I replied, after having finished chapters 1-3 of the book I had to read before day 1 (which was about 2/3 of the book). "Just want to be as safe of a diver as I can be and really learn all this stuff. Maybe a little nervous."
"Well," replied my wise hubby, "Les and Wendi did it, and they were probably drunk the whole time while they were on that vacation, so you should be fine." We had a good laugh at that one. I put this dig in my blog, not to insult them, but pretty sure that neither of them read this regularly, so now I guess we'll see.

First class - I arrived at 3 for a classroom session and finished at 8. I did NOT think I'd be there for FIVE HOURS or I would've brought a freaking cheeseburger with me! We actually didn't start until 3:30 because we waited for 2 no-shows for that long.

The instructor, Bill, a Marine with 20 years of diving experience is fun, amusing, and will be a great teacher - though quite VERBOSE. There are two 11-year-old girls in our class, which we've all been told will slow us down in the pool and on our dives. Fantastic, because in the classroom that shouldn't have made a difference but it DID because one of the girls has a mouthy diver father with her who needed to put his two cents in on everything the instructor said. THAT guy is going to annoy the heck out of me for the rest of the week - guaranteed.

At the beginning of the class, Bill said that if everyone wanted to pitch in we could rent a boat to go out to a really cool dive site for our dives, but only if everyone agreed they had the money to pitch in. UNFAIR! Of course I do, but there are 3 Marines in the class (I'd say E2s or so, which translates to starving teenagers who don't have much money to their name) who probably won't be able to afford it. Just my luck. But - whatever, I'm there to learn and get certified, right? I have 3 years to dive - minus any time I might be pregnant of course (I said "might" - in the future, not now, stop speculating - I want to have cocktails and eat sushi for a while).

We watched a video of the first chapter of the book - nearly verbatim. (Yes, about half of the 10 or so students in the class didn't read or do the chapter reviews before class, so that slowed us down too.) Then we went over it and took a quiz on which I got none wrong. 5 minute break. Then we spent about 1 1/2 hours going through the Tsunami Gear dive shop and learned about & saw all the gear. Interesting, educational, and informative - but at least 30 minutes more than needed to be dedicated to it was in there with funny quips and stories. I did learn that I should buy ALL my gear here if I want to keep doing this - it's HUNDREDS of dollars less than in the states due to government subsidies. (For those who know the equipment, a top of the line BCD is $300-$500 here, in the states upwards of $800-$1,000, or a titanium regulator is $365 where I think you'll spend $500-$800 in the states for it.) Then we went BACK to the classroom, another video, 2 more quizzes, and at 8:00 the class voted to go over chapter 3 on Tuesday when we're back in the classroom.

Today (Monday) I have to swim 200 meters (no time limit) and float for 10 minutes. No big, then we do some pool work with the equipment for the first time. I did already buy the mask, fins & snorkel, they provide the other stuff for now. Tuesday more class time where we cover the last 2 chapters of the book. Wednesday in the pool again for more practice and some emergency situation procedures. Saturday & Sunday are dive days. Very excited for that!

Mia's Swim Class
For the next two weeks Mia has swim class at 5:30 - Craig has to take her b/c my scuba class is at 6 - whoops... but oh well, Mia will be back in swim! She's so excited. The following 2 weeks she has swim class at 10:30 b/c I can take her.

Household Goods
AND today they're coming to get our borrowed furniture (2 beds and a couch) and we sleep on air mattresses tonight. Tomorrow (Tuesday) we get our household goods somewhere between 8-5. HOPEFULLY closer to 8! OUR OWN BEDS! OUR COUCH! MY KITCHEN STUFF! It's going to be like Chrismakkah! We haven't seen our things since May 30th - I think I've forgotten have the crap that's even in those crates. I'm very excited - so are Craig & Mia. Back to big head TV!

Ok, it's 7:40 and they might come as early as 8am - gotta go get ready and take the sheets off the beds!