Anticipating the Weekend

You may recall that the boys and I are Scuba certified.  I hesitate to call myself more than an occasional vacation diver, but I do enjoy it.  My son is a little more adventurous doing a drift dive in the Niagara River and my husband is one dive away from his Advanced Diver certification.

So the wonderful husband scheduled a dive trip for the three of us for this weekend.  Granted this is probably the worst weekend to go away seeing as school just started, I am in the midst of a new job and we have about 10 birthdays to celebrate.  But it was thoughtful and he is really excited.  A weekend away looking a ship wrecks 70 ft below the surface.

Seems harmless enough until I get the details.  First of all the location is 6 hours away in upper Canada.  It appears that the hotel we are staying at is on park grounds and that park closes at 11pm so we must, must, must get there Friday night before the gate goes down or we are sleeping in the car.  Also, Sunday we need to be back home to attend an info session on Max's POTENTIAL trip to Japan, which means we must, must, must leave Sun morning before 8 am.  That's about 12 hours of driving for 5 hours of diving.

Well, we have had tight schedules in the past so this isn't that bad.

Until I hear the next part.  I need a 7mm we suit because the water can be as cold as 40 degrees.  You heard me - only a few degrees above FREEZING. The packing list includes gloves, coats and hats to put on in between dives because it is so damn cold.  Did I mention we have 4 dives Saturday?  In between we sit on board wet with cold water.

I spent close to $1000 on wet suit, hood, gloves and more weights as the suit will make me more buoyant.  I can't even bend my arms it is so thick.  Image the shoes I could have bought for this price tah.

Let me paint this picture. Before entering water I am loaded down with a black wet suit and full vest, hood which covers my entire head only the face peering through, gloves, slippers and fins, a bc loaded with air tank and a regulator in my mouth, leaping off the side of the boat.  Once I finish the first dive, I I am back on a swaying boat.  My hands and feet are blue (I have Rinaud's syndrome).  My 7mm wet suit is on from the bottom down, from the top up I am wearing layers of fleece, a winter hat and most likely a blanket.  You know my nose is running cuz I am still dealing with allergy season.  I remove the blanket to periodically vomit over the side of the boat, because I am continually motion sick.

What happened to beautiful fish and coral under the sun as the water glistens on my warm skin?
I will try to get photos for next week.

No one can say I am not adventurous!

Watching Fireflies

Did you know firefly populations are shrinking?  Did you also know that over 700 people have volunteered to journal their insect observations in an attempt to help scientists discover this potential extinction of the glowing insect?

Tons of volunteers tracking fireflies.

I am amazed that people will go so far as to track the appearance of fireflies but are too busy to:

Vote
Write a thank you note
Give to a food bank
Read to their kids

Maybe I an cynical, and its not that I have some aversion to fireflies, its just very odd to me that all those people would jump to this cause but let seemingly more urgent issues pass them by.

Time Shuffle

Hopefully you have noticed that I have not been writing lately.  Bad news I have not had the time.  Good news is I have taken a new job.  Could not be more excited about the company and the opportunity but it means my schedule is a mess.

I have always been that early morning riser.  Getting things done as soon as possible in the day just in case something comes up later in the afternoon.  The adjustment is subtle.  I still get up at 5:30 am but now I need to shower, get dressed, get the kid off to high school and get myself out the door.   Takes some re-alignment.

I have too many yet not enough calendars.  Trying to sync my work, committee and home calendar with that of my husband's work and home calendar and my son's school calendar is becoming a nightmare to do electronically.  Odd huh?  its just that my son does not update his and my husband's integration is not happening.  So back we go to color coded white board in kitchen.  We each have a color and one which means the entire family is needed.  The boys have committed to updating it, watching it and living by it.  Every month we will sit down and update.

So as I shuffle my schedule I will try to update my blog as possible. But writing time is fighting with yoga time so we will see.