I Bought A New Car

Yes it's true! I have a new car!

I went back to the dealer this afternoon, test drove a car or two, looked at a few more, and decided to buy the saturn after all. I drove my boss's truck over there originally, so I had to leave it at the dealer until my boss could come with me to get the car. On the way we picked up a repair manual and a front right motor mount. It looks like my weekend just got filled! I drove the Saturn around town after I picked up the motor mount and I must say that it handles rather well. I'm satisfied with it.

Thanksgiving Pictures

No new car today. I tried out several cars yesterday, and settled on a bare bones 1998 Saturn LS1 with 124K miles logged. It has no power steering and is a 5 speed manual. It isn't a great deal, but it is reliable, simple, and not very expensive; all of which are pluses... at least until I find a Spyder. :-)

Well, I had a WONDERFUL visit home during Thanksgiving. 5 days was far too short. And as a treat to y'all, I have some pictures! Click on them to see bigger versions.

Three Weeks in Three Minutes

I've been late, and since I just wrote a brief e-mail detailing what I've done the last three weeks, I though I would co-opt part of the e-mail and at least get something up so that my Mom (she is wonderful!) would have something to read when she checks in the morning.

Let's see, giving a brief mention to what I do while down here.

• Three weeks ago I drove 5 1/2 hours to visit my Uncle, Aunt, and two friends from Switzerland.That had a NICE room rented for the week (I only stayed two days) and it was nice visiting with family and friends. I had some loverly conversations with Aunt Angie and the hottub was wonderful. I actually went to sleep in it briefly.
  

• The week after I went scuba diving and found 54 sharks teeth, lots of shells, and spent way too much money buying junk. Having little fish nibble on my ears was an experience.

• Last week I went snorkelling to try out a shorty wetsuit. It was boring, dark, and raining so I quit early.

• Now? I'm taking a break this weekend and recovering from Aikido. I bruised my thumb muscles Saturday morning from giving too many wristlocks. Wristlocks are tricky... I really have to grab and sqeeze and I bruised my thumb muscles from too much pressure. Being gentle is NOT an option or our Sensei will spot it and demonstrate a proper wristlock to the failing individual. No one wants that. :-)
  

Picture Intensive Day

Same old-same old for this week. I was tempted to put up pictures of my Aikido bruises, but my mom worries enough. :-)

I took my camera down while snorkelling this time, and I managed to take some better pictures this time. Some trivia: in aquatic lingo, a cavern system is a cave system that contains native life and a cave system is/are cave/caves that doesn't contain life. Blue springs is both a cavern and cave system. It's considered a cavern to at least 90 feet down, past that... the spring probably starts to turn into a cave system. So without much more delay, picture time!

The water was the best I've seen. Very few people were around to disturb the silt and sand.


The sign at 60 feet.



Underwater pictures with snorkels NEVER turn out right. This was a bear to position properly. By swimming down then facing up, I go too high for a nice picture. After 10 seconds of twisting, I just give up, swim down with my back down, hit the sign, allow time for floating up, and snap! Oooo. Red chest hair.



There were two other freedivers diving, and this is a picture of the wife, about 25 feet down - I'm a little lower. I kept waiting for someone to come down so I could try an upwards picture and I think it turned out well. The husband was a fantastic diver, but I was never down at the same time... actually I was. The husband dove down first, the 15 seconds later I dove down, and headed straight down to the "death sign" to take a picture of another diver that deep (the water is very clear, but without ambient light, it's hard to see )... and... he's nowhere around. He took a light with him, but I didn't see anything farther down. I'm guessing he was at a minimum of 90 feet if I couldn't see his light. On the way up, I looked around in the crannies, but he wasn't to be found. By the time he came up, I would have had time to swim down and up another time.



Random fish shots. Notice the teeth of the fish in the last picture. Margaret remembers those fish. >:-) That particular fish was just under 3 feet... average. I saw a really big one that barely veered out of the way as I came through. I was within 6 inches of him as I glided by the fish. I guess he was pretty comfortable with his weight.



Algae art in the cavern. The first picture has "JESSE", a tic-tac-toe game, and a figure of a spiky haired person.


And the geo-cache picture I said I would get posted for everyone. I dropped of the nail trimmers and picked up the baseball key chain. The paper on the left is 10 sheet stapled together with signatures filling up the first page. An officer left her card there. She came earlier that day and beat me to the geo-cache.

Titleless (not hyphenated)

I am so close to tossing XP and picking up another operating system. I would have done it last week, but I can't get my wireless card to be recognized, so I would be off the internet, which is just not acceptable!

Nobody wants to hear about my computer frustrations though, so lets go onto a more pleasant subject. The pain from the 5k is at manageable levels at this point. I haven't been into the gym since last week, but tomorrow I've planned a nice long jump rope session.

There isn't much more news to give. The only other activity I've done this week is give blood to a local blood bank down here. In the three hours they were stationed in Tavares, I was there only donor. :-( At least they go one donation though!

I'll try to put some pictures of my geo-cache I found in my next post.

Quickie News

Time for an update

1. My computer is still not on the internet, so I need to blog/check e-mail at work
2. I went out Firday night to downtown orlando with some friends. It was a lot of fun, so I hope R&D enjoyed themselves too. The pizza was nice (but the crust was a bit thin for my taste.
3. After having 2.2 drinks Friday night and getting home after 1:00 AM Saturday morning, I proceeded to get up at 6:30 and run a 5K the next morning.... then 3 tought hours of tennis... and the hardest Aikido session workout I've had since I started. It was a monumental struggle just to stand up to exit the car.
4. I'm off geocaching. There are two new ones nearby that were posted recently, so I'm going to find them!

YMCA

I went to the YMCA again today. I found that jump roping in air conditioning is vastly easier than jumping rope outside in the heat and humidity. Today I brought my jump rope, but all the areas were full. Apparently, something called 'Boot Camp' was going on and all the auditoriums were in use. I just worked my legs and came home. I'll try again tomorrow.

SeaWorld Again

Yes, I went to Sea World today - and I only stayed four hours. It was just too hot today. But don't worry, half way home, I stopped at a light and a breeze came sideways through the open windows and it was cool (as in cold). I had been sweating all day, and finally, a bit of fresh air. Five minutes later, when I passed a bank with a clock and temperature guage, I realized I had almost acclimated to the summer temperature. That refreshing breeze, the cool air as I drove... 85 degrees out. Must have been 98 while I was walking around, and a 85 degree breeze was wonderful!

Tomorrow is Blue Springs!

A Brief Review of "War"

Warning - A very short review with plot spoilers is below. Don't look any further that point one if you wish to remain surprised.

War, the new movie with Jet Li and some other actor (I'm a bit biased) was a big disappointment. Two actors great at karate, fighting each other - how could that not be a great movie! But alas, it did fall down.

First problem - I didn't check the rating. R for violence and partial nudity, which was shocking for a movie with Jet Li. He always has very clean movies (other than the martial art violence) and I had assumed this one would be the same.

Problem two - Very little fighting that was a pleasure to watch. It was all over too fast with camera angles too close to the actors. The sword fights were decent, but it look very well rehearsed.

Slight Problem three - everyone dies.

Redeeming quality- the bad guy wins. Really! It is the redeeming quality of the movie, and the only way it could end once the plot twist was revealed.

Jason Statham and his parter are tracking down "Rogue". Rogue traps Statham but his partner shoots him in the head. Someone snitches to the Yakuza on the cop that hurt Rogue, so Rogue (who didn't die) comes back and kills Statham's partner, wife, and child. The FBI agent, Statham, swears revenge and spends the next three years tracking down Rogue. At the end, Statham succeeds in tracking down Rogue, and the Triad and the Yakuza are wiped out in the process but Rogue kills the FBI agent in the end.

The plot twist. Rogue failed to kill Statham's betrayed partner John, but did kill the wife and child before dying. John swears revenge against the Yakuza who ordered the hit on him and his family and takes the place of Rogue (who needed major facial reconstruction anyway) to get close to the Yakuza boss who ordered the hit. Rogue manages to destroy both gangs branches in San Fransico but finally finds that the one who snitched and caused his wife and child to be killed was FBI agent Statham. Statham and 'Rogue' fight and Rogue kills Statham and decides to become Rogue since the only person he trusted was the one that betrayed him.

Because of Statham's betrayal, he loses his marriage, eventually his wife and kids are killed, his partner's wife and kids are killed, all but one of the FBI agents are killed, the gangs in SF are killed, long standing friends kill each other, and Statham's whole quest for revenge circles back to himself. Result and effect were all put together quite well and believably, and left me sad that innocents got caught in the crossfire, but satisfied that the mill of justice ground exceedingly fine for those who crossed any line. I was almost upbeat when I left!

End of a busy/happy week

Whew, it has been a hectic two weeks, but now I think it has calmed down enough to blog again. So expect daily updates for a few weeks!

Last Monday I went out with a friend I met during snorkeling and one her friends and we put together a snorkelling trip to... Blue Springs! This will make the third weekend in a row I'll have been there. As much as I enjoy Blue Springs, I think I'll need to take a break from it after this weekend. Maybe I'll go wander through SeaWorld next weekend.

My mom and sister came down this last weekend, and it was wonderful! I'm so glad that my family sees where I work and live and play. When I refer to Subway, Taco Johns, Wal-Mart, or directions, my mom will know what I'm doing now.

My sister and I went swimming on Sunday. We started swimming at the beach for... two hours, maybe three. My sister did a really good job of putting sunscreen on my back, but I still have a sunburn on the places I was responsible: shoulders, upper arms, and crazy patterns on the top of my feet where I was a bit haphazard with the lotion. My sister says that her back is pretty sunburned, so I must have missed quite a bit when spreading lotion. I get two chances to put on sunscreen right and what do I do? Miss both times. :-)

Then, we went to the springs to swim some. My sister was still getting used to the snorkel and fins and the cold of the spring, so she swam a lot more than I did. I ended up diving into the spring more than snorkeling along the surface. The only thing really missing from the snorkeling was the schools of fish that I usually see. Those were the best fish to swim through, and maybe M will have a chance next time.

Clean Up and Snorkel

Today is the day I prepare for my mom and sister's visit. I'm straightening all the books, arranging the movies, hiding the my video games section so it doesn't 'disappear' after my mom sees them ;-), vacuum the floor, clean up papers, collapse cardboard boxes for storage, arrange my dresser surface, and make sure all my clothes are properly folded. In short - everything I should have done for myself already! Except for the hiding of the computer games.

I went snorkelling for four hours today (2000 Calories), and I was pleasantly shocked and surprised to see snorkelling on the shapefit.com site I mentioned yesterday. You know it has everything when it has a listing for horse grooming. Let's see... pogo stick... pogo stick... pogo stick... no. Doesn't have quite everything. Maybe I'll E-mail and request to have it added.

I tried out a new snorkel today. I bought the snorkel so my sister would have something to use when we go swimming. The new snorkel has a feature where a tab will keep water from coming in once I enter the water. The only problems with that feature is that as I go 30, 50 feet down, the water is trying to press into the snorkel and the only flexible entrance to the snorkel is my mouth. So as I go down, I not only need to equalize pressure in my mask to prevent mask squeeze, I also need to equalize the pressure in the snorkel to prevent, ah, snorkel squeeze? The short story? The new snorkel removes useful air from my lungs to use in the snorkel. Fortunately, after my intake of air going down, I can just remove the snorkel from my mouth and not worry about it. Problem solved!

Calorie Burn

I had a long weekend in Florida when I came back from home in PA and I had very little I needed to get finished. Most of my projects had been completed or shelved neatly for a nebulous later, so I decided I would take the time to try out a few different activities. I went jump roping, jogging, biking, heavy Aikido session, and tennis. Between those four activities, spread out over four days, I managed to burn approximately 7000 calories just in exersize. The chart I use is at shapefit.com - the largest list I've seen and very similar to other estimates for burning calories that I've seen.

Try picking an exercise you think you would/want to do and find out how long it would take to burn 7K calories. You might be surprised!

I have a few goals in mind for this exercising, and they are listed in order of current imporance.

• Snorkeling - A healthy heart and aerobic system can increase the amount of time a person can hold his breath.
• Better shape for outdoor activities
• I plan on biking to Orlando in a month or two to try out Couch Surfing before I depend on it in other countries.
• When I go hiking (hopefully for a long period; that would be fun) I want to be in shape before I go hiking - not afterwards.
• Lose weight - an obvious advantage with exercise
• Get really good at jump roping. I have a long way to go - I've jump roped for over 7 hours total since I bought my jump rope and I just now figured out how to cross my rope when jumping.
  
• Look incredibly handsome... but there isn't much more to improve so I put this goal low on the list. :-)

Back Again!

This long hiatus was due to my being on vacation, and having no incentive to spend time blogging when I could spend time doing other useful help around the house. The craft show I went home for was a good one. We sold out of our really good sellers in the first day, and the next day people kept coming back to pick up the "pole we saw yesterday"! If you are going to buy a pole, why don't you buy it the day you see it? Some ladies had a good excuse... they changed their mind, but other ladies decided to wait a day. Hmmm. I bet that saves a lot on spur-of-the-moment buying. Maybe they are onto something.

While visiting home ( at my parents house, not the craft show ), I managed to get a lot of weed-eating accomplished. Weed-eating isn't too tough, but it takes time, and it is hard on the back, so my mom and dad save the job for us "young and spry" children to do. :-) On the last day I was there, I got about half way done with a bank but had to clean up before the job was finished; so Dad takes the weed-eater and says he'll finish the job. In the time it took to take a quick bath and get dressed, MY dad had already finished the rest of the job. It was a section of the bank I wasn't looking forward to because of the steepness and the amount of long grass on that particular side of the bank that gets tangled up in the weed-eater - yet my dad did it in under 20 minutes! Just before I entered the shower, I looked out a window to see how the weed-eating was going, and I saw, halfway up this 15 foot tall bank, Dad with his right leg outstretched for grip, his left knee digging into the ground (it is a very steep bank... 80 degree slope I would guess) whacking away... quite the feat for those who know how difficult it is. :-) Go dad!

But what about my mom you say? We had a very nice visit... there isn't much better I can say that would portray the joy of visiting. I caught up on all the news happening in the family, and my mom got a list of plans and ideas for the future from me. 20 minute phone calls don't cover all the fun nitty gritty issues that families have to deal with, but long drives and working together gives enough time for a wonderful visit. I would come back and do a "working vacation" in a moment. I would say more of what we discussed and did, but once I start, I would couldn't stop for 2o or 30 pages. :-) Lots of fun stuff, maybe to come.

Margaret is doing well it seems. I think all that lifting and stacking she does so wholeheartedly is ruining our wrestling sessions. I try to demonstrate a simple Aikido move for her, and what does she do! She refuses to cooperate! If I try to twist her hand, she is supposed to lose her grip and fall down. What happens? I tried to twist, and Margaret's hand didn't budge. There I am, in a chokelock, trying to show how effective Aikido is, and it fails miserably, and I just keep gasping for air and pulling while Margaret just keeps holding my neck. :-) Oh well, we had a good wrestling session. Maybe when I see Jesse next, I can get him to cooperate. :-)

I didn't get to visit with Katie and Ryan as long as I did the others. Mom, Dad, and Margaret I see at home while working, but I only got to see the other three members of the family after getting off the plane and before heading home again. It wasn't nearly long enough. I'm hoping Thanksgiving or Christmas will have a better visit. Christina is as lovely as aways and walking short distances which was very exciting. She wasn't quite sure if she was willing to trust this stranger (me) to hold her though. I'll just have to visit more often! Ryan's foot is still holding up his job, and the doctor won't release him to go back. I think he is seeing the specialist again today to get the go-ahead for working.


The last thing I wanted to mention today was the friends I saw and some plans that are solidifying as something I definitely want to do. I managed to visit some with Ben, Dan, Mark, Stacy, and another Mark. Ben came down for a whole day, and we spend most of the day lounging about, waiting for people to get off work. Ben also offered to room with me if I moved to Ohio. A very tempting offer. Very tempting. As for plans - after work I want to spend a month/a few months/a year traveling. I've very recently started heavy duty exercising to get into shape for hiking/walking/biking and checking out programs that let you stay nights at houses across the world. I'll get more into that tomorrow. No time for spell checking. It's off to bed!

Less than a week to go

I'm going to be seeing most of my family in just under a week. I found out that my boss won't be coming in to work until the day after I get back... so... there was only one conclusion I could reach: I just changed my ticket to stay an extra day at home. Home sweet home.

Yo-Yo

Just a fun post for yo-yos. He is the current world freestyle champion and this is his performance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXFTdBqi7jg&mode=related&search=

Snorkelling Pictures

I finally managed to bring my camera to a snorkeling dive. Unfortunately, the first 3 or 4 pictures I took at the springs didn't print. Not all is lost, because the spring was extremely cloudy, even when I first got there - at that point only three scuba divers and I were in the pool. I don't know why it was so bad, but after seeing how the more or less well lit pictures turned out, I'm sure the pictures I took while 40 feet down were almost solid black. Next time, when I'm pretty deep where it is clearer, I'll use the flash and see how that works. Even when the sun was shining directly overhead, I could only see two or three feet farther down at sixty. Oh well.

Here are four of the better pictures I got of the fish as I swam along. Keep in mind that there were only a foot in front of the camera, and I still got the aim off. Live and learn. I saw some bigger fish this time, but I couldn't get withing 2 feet of them.


And here are four obligatory pictures of ME! I didn't want to waste the filem, so I took a few pictures of me, the equipment, the car, a parking lot.

Plans Plans Plans

Not much of one. I'm planning to go snorkeling tomorrow again. This time I will be taking my underwater camera, so hopefully I'll be able to share the view from sixty feet down... hopefully I can go lower though now that I feel a bit more comfortable diving. Going that deep also depends on the scuba divers around. So far I don't cut things close enough to be too concerned about problems, but as my mom says, "Accidents happen." If there are scuba divers around that would notice me passed out and sinking, it gives a person an extra bit of confidence for dangerous and insane stunts!

In other personal news: jump roping is fun! Especially now that I've gotten used to it and have the skill to do more than ten at a time (go ahead and laugh. You try it!). At a very slow rate, I've been able to jump rope more than 20 minutes at a time. I was going to opt for running, but apparently jump roping isn't as hard on the joints as running. That makes a certain amount of sense I guess... jump rope jumping may be constant ups and downs, but it is always on the balls of my feet. While running, I'm landing on my heal at every step.

Training-wise, I am being a little more careful about the 'how' of my training. I started looking into exercise routines to improve my heart health, but mostly just news on what I can do to lower my heart rate (for longer snorkel dives!) I put my current resting heart rate is 54. Oddly enough, I only get that rate while working. While sitting in my room, upstairs, outside, or in the car, my resting hear rate is 60. It's like clockwork. I can do push-ups and curls in the morning, take a shower, go to work and sit in my chair, wait ten minutes, and I only count 54. Just before I go to lunch? Still 54. Walk upstairs, sit a half hour and read, and my heart rate is at 60. It just doesn't make sense.

Someone is Happy!

1st Timothy

There is a lot of information and insight available in the tiniest pieces of the Bible. While I was jumping rope today, I was trying to memorize a verse of 1st Timothy. Since I'm just starting, I am still on verses one and two. In those two verses are an incredible amount of information, and I wanted to share my thoughts on those two verses.

vs 1. Paul. The first thing he says is that he is an apostle by command. It wasn't his choice, he was going his own way, when boom! Jesus Christ stepped in and blinded him and told him what he wanted done. I find that reassuring. In all of our weakness and failures and sin, God can still step in and redeem us and put us back on the right path.

vs 2. Paul says an odd thing to Timothy, and it's something that I'm going to look into further tomorrow: "grace, mercy, and peace." What didn't occur to me until about minute 30 of jumping (at that point, the brain starts loosing focus and going onto tangents) was Paul's repetition. I always considered grace and mercy to be identical. If someone is merciful, he is showing grace. Likewise if someone is showing grace, he is being merciful. I can't see the difference between the two concepts - yet Paul, in wishing three good things upon Timothy repeats himself with "grace" and "mercy". Such basic concepts, and yet my understanding about the simplest?/greatest of God's gifts is lacking.

vs 1 and 2: In order, Paul refers to God as God our Saviour, Jesus Christ our Hope, God the Father, and Jesus Christ our Lord. In those four phrases is a great layout of who God is. For Christians, He is a savior, a hope and our lord - but he is everyone's father. Everything and everyone around us had our source in God. Those that follow Him have even more though: they can count look to god as a savior, a hope, and a lord. I find that a very comforting thought.

Parents and Philosophy

My parents are at a craft show right now, unloading, unwrapping, painting, organizing, and tarping their work, just to name a few of the things they need to do before Saturday comes around. I think this is the first year that Mom and Dad have done all the setup by themselves. They've usually had me or one of the other kids to help out with the work. I hope everything goes well for them - four days of setup may sound like a lot, but the time flies while setting up.

I'm readying a book right now "Voyage From Yesteryear". It's a pretty good book portraying how the author sees a near-perfect human world operating. There are problems that come in from the outside, but by the end of the book, you see that the "Chironians" (residents of the planet Chiron) had everything well in had, and there wasn't even much worry about the final outcome from the Chironian side. I would like to quote from the book, a line I think is pretty accurate describing man and his capabilities.

I said the mind was an infinite resource, but only if you don't squander it. Don't you think that makes an interesting paradox?

My lunch break is almost over, so I need to get prepared for work again. I hope everyone has a good weekend. I'm planning to go snorkelling again this Saturday. Remember I said I had some friends down here, just not my own age? Well, it looks like there is an outside possibility one of those friends would go snorkeling next weekend/July 4th - around that time. Time will tell. Now I must go exercise my brain cell through work.