auchmeddan

Its Thurs on my first week not working, the house is starting to look pretty tidy. Waking up on Monday was really strange, I felt like I should be getting up for something but knew I didnt need to. Didnt get up until 10am in the end, was so slow getting started. I think that I need to try and plan my days so I get at least one thing done every day. Monday was picking up the rest of my crap from work and recovering from the long walk that Dave and I did Sunday (I’m not as fit as I thought I was. Tuesday was spent doing laundry and for some reason going on a 2 and a half hour walk from my house to horseshoe and back. Was very sore and tired after that. Wednesday was spent clearing out my closet, its a big closet and took me about 4 hours and 4 trash bags. Looking very nice now, even organised Dave’s closet so everything is now in order. I cant believe how many blue T-shirts he has.

After last nights high winds and the most irritating squeak I’ve ever heard I couldnt get up this morning. I got some groceries and started this post. I dont think that I’ll be doing much today except typing up my recipies and going to my salsa class later on. The winds are still high and the sea is looking really cool with lots of white caps, got a couple of photos this morning. Just tried to get the photos off Dave’s Canon camera but aparently its too complicated for me so I went out and got a couple with my camera. Have put one below, click on photo for full size version:

Yesterday at 2PM-ish, we started watching Season 4 of “24″. It was Jules idea to watch it all in one marathon session, just like we had with Season 3. We finished up around 08:30am this morning, and caught a few hours sleep. I’m now even more confused than before about what day it is now.

During the show, we paused for around 10 minutes so Jules could open her cards and celebrate her Birthday. It would have been impossible for Jules to have left her cards and presents until she got up today.

Happy Birthday Jules!

Well, the best thing I can say about this weekend is Jules passed the first 3 of her Dive Master exams on Sunday. At least something good came out of the weekend.

The best bit of my weekend was watching the Dolphins LOSE on Friday night! On Saturday I had a really sucky dive with a tourist who stuck to me like a 200lb limpet, scaring any small fish away along with any photo opportunities. I don’t know if he was unsure of himself at the depth (70ft) but he was WAY too close to me during the entire dive - I could barely move or turn with him being there. I only managed to take 2 photographs - which really says everything about how much I enjoyed my dive. Oh, and my dive watch failed/flooded and I was unable to equalise my left ear and had to abandon the 2nd dive.

This weekend was a write-off.

Last weekend was nice and relaxing - we did a couple of new sites and I took Sunday off from diving while Jules went out to get some more experience for her Dive Master - she has been tearing through her course requirements, but needs to buckle down this weekend and start studying for the exams. Unfortunately, I really need to do the same and start studying for some IT exams….sigh!

I had a nice relaxing Sunday, at least until I had a couple of beers and watched the Dolphins throw away another game. It’s very frustrating watching them self-destruct - Jules told me she’d rather be out the house when the game is on as watching me stresses her out a bit. Must be the floor-slapping and cursing.

This weekend we are scheduled to dive Saturday morning, study in the afternoon/evening, and go out on the (re-scheduled) Argus Tower trip. I really hope it goes out this weekend, but I doubt it considering what Hurricane Wilma is up to. While no threat to us, she’ll probably make the seas too rough for the boat to go outside the reef.

Normally I would end with a couple of photos from last weeks dive(s), but for a change here is a picture Jules took of last night’s Sunset.

I haven’t been out diving for a couple of weeks, due to a hurricane stirring up the Ocean one week, and me having a little bit of a cold the next. Jules is still blasting through Dive Master though, and is doing really well.

We just got Digital Cable and “NFL Sunday Ticket” last week, so I can watch all the Miami Dolphins games this season. This Sunday is the first chance I’ll have to use it, but we may end up being out all day now as we have a chance to dive Argus Tower.

Argus Tower is way, way offshore and is a deep dive. It’s out in deep blue water where the big fish play. It’s probably our best chance of seeing “something big” out here in Bermuda.

I’m hoping the dive goes ahead. But if not, I should still have my Dolphins to look forward to!

As the dive season winds down here, we are starting to look at Dive Vacations online for a trip next year. We are pretty sure what one we want to do, and are just getting some more info on it just now. Whatever vacation we decide on, we can guarantee that sharks will feature somewhere. Hopefully, they’ll feature a lot.

Got held up at work tonight working on a laptop which was running the WinXP User Interface in Italian. As I couldn’t change the UI to English (it’s XP home) I had to rely on Icons and good guesses…it was kinda fun. I wouldn’t usually mess around with a home users laptop, but I was at a loose end at the end of the day and really couldn’t resist the challenge of troubleshooting software problems in a foreign language. I even learned to read a little Italian to boot! (no pun intended).

As I drove the bike home I could feel the wind had picked up a little, but nothing all that bad yet. When I reached the gas station down the road from us I had to laugh - people are already filling their cars in panic. The station had at least 20 cars in it, and there is only 4 pumps! Cars were blocking each other in all over the place, and I’m not sure how anybody was going to get back out.

Jules and myself are a bit more relaxed about NATE. We have done the sensible stuff like stow our patio furniture and BBQ away safely, and have closed the storm shutters over the patio doors. We have some canned food, tons of chips, plenty of soft drinks and beer (thanks Jules!) and Jules has cooked some meals we can easily heat over the BBQ should we need to.
Hmmm..it sounds more like planning a party than preparing for a storm!

To put things in perspective, NATE is currently only a Tropical Storm that is likely to hit us worst around 16:00 on Thursday 8th Sept. It means tomorrow won’t be pretty, and may turn into a Category 1 Hurricane, but it’s not exactly “The Day After Tomorrow” either. We lost all power island wide in July and everyone started panic buying then as well…and it was a total waste of time.

Of course, I could be wrong. NATE could turn into a Hurricane, and could decide to concentrate all it’s efforts on our only (already damaged) power plant, and could knock power out for days. I really doubt it though. I still think we’ll be out diving this weekend.

If you want to see how the storm is tracking, go to Shark Oil and use the Animated Storm Tracker option.

We’ve had a water shortage here the last few weeks. It’s quite serious, and we’re having to do everything we can to save water - including only flushing the toilet when it’s absolutely necessary. For the past 3 weeks or so We’ve both been showering at work, to save what’s left of the water in the tank at home. It’s a real pain, and has been playing on both our nerves a bit.

It got worse
We both woke up around 3.05AM, in the early hours of Thursday morning. It was strangely quiet in the house, and after a few seconds we both realised the air-conditioner wasn’t running. I turned on my flashlight, and checked the ceiling fan - it had almost stopped turning.

“Did you pay the bill?” Jules asked me, rather grumpily.

I snorted a laugh and said something along the lines of “They don’t turn up at 3AM on stealth missions to cut off the power!” After checking the house, I confirmed we had no power at all. I didn’t look like the neighbours had any either.

As I headed into work the next morning, I stopped at the Gas Station down the road to get gas for my bike, as I was getting very low. There were cars parked and people huddled around talking, but none of the pumps were working. I fugured I had about enough gas to get me into town, or at least to the next Gas Station.

When I got to Barnes corner I stopped the bike and stared over at Hamilton. There was a giant black cloud pouring into the sky. When I saw it, I knew it had to be the Electricity plant, but I kept heading into town anyway (I really don’t know why). Every Gas Station I passed was Chaos. People were queueing, getting impatient and grumpy, but they weren’t getting any Gas. I drove Harbour Road and as I got closer to town the view kept getting worse and worse. There was no power anywhere. It was an island-wide blackout.

It turns out that one of the switching stations caught fire/blew up/whatever around 3:05AM, and burned until sometime around 10am. My office was in total darkness (it’s in a basement, so it’s like walking into an underground cavern just now).

I ended up sitting on the patio yesterday drinking beer with a friend, and later boiled water on the barbecue so we could eat a Pot Noodle for dinner. I ended up boiling eggs on the BBQ shortly afterwards, so I could get breakfast this morning.

No Water. No Electricity. Welcome to Paradise

I said to Jules last night - “you know what I’d really like for my Birthday? Water and Electricity”.

We got power back at home a couple of hours ago. It’s been raining down here for the last 3 hours or so.

I guess Birthday wishes do come true sometimes!

Well, the weather finally got better for Jules Mum & Dad arriving - Summer appears to be finally here!

We got out Snorkelling at Achilles Bay at the weekend, and I managed to get 2 pretty good photos of a Queen AngelFish that I’m quite happy with.

The unfortunate thing about working in IT is everyone you meet seems to have a problem with their home PC.

I usually try to avoid home PCs like the plague, but made an exception recently for a friend of a friend ’cause I like the guy and all his photos were on his unbootable PC. Being a bit of an amateur photographer, I know how distressing it would be to lose all my photos (I have mine backed up, of course).

Anyway, the happy ending is I fixed the PC and as a thank you he gave me 8lbs of HAGGIS! SCORE!
It makes me wonder what a full network upgrade or Firewall install is worth in terms of lbs of Haggis…

On other fronts, Jules Mum and Dad get here tonight, and are staying for 2 weeks. I’ve said my sad farewell to my PC and playing Battlefield:Vietnam online for the next couple of weeks.

Thank goodness I finally finished “HALO 2″ !!

“It’s an ugly planet. A bug planet!” -Starship Troopers

It’s been an odd year so far in BDA. Summer hasn’t really started yet - it’s warm and humid, but the sun isn’t making any sort of sustained appearance. We also seem to have a TON of bugs this year. I feel like I’ve seen more cornflies, worm/centipede things, and ants in the last couple of months than in the previous (almost) 5 years here. They’re starting to get a bit annoying. We need more lizards! (or Rico’s Roughnecks).

On the bright side, we got out snorkelling at the weekend at Church Bay. The vis(ibility) wasn’t great, but there was one very large parrotfish that made it worthwhile. Unfortunately, it was happy to let me hang around for quite a while, and I ended up staying in the water far too long. It really wasn’t warm enough for that.

The photos below are a Puddingwife, and Parrotfish (respectively).