Any deeper and you’d have to put your boots on.
So my friend Kregg is explaining to our pool opponents that we’re leaving after this game…
Kregg: Yeah, we’re leaving soon, it’s almost our bedtime.
Me: Please don’t refer to it as our bedtime!
Kregg: Our totally separate bedtimes!
[Standing in an alley, my buddy starts making a weird sound while smoking a cigarette]
Me: Dude, what is that? Did your cigarette go out?
Buddy: Uhh…it’s not a cigarette.
Me: Ohhh…is that why we’re standing in this back alley?
Buddy: Yeah…I, uh, thought you figured that out.
Me: I’m a little slow…
So, yes, I am a little slow. I also have a poor sense of smell…
I went crabbing today. My buddy (Adrian) and I both got our limit. This particular day started out fraught with errors:
So, we *finally* get out to the dive site after a long surface swim. Adrian and I just barely got our crab limit before having to head back to the surface. We ascended to 15 feet and waited there for 3 minutes for our safety stop (helps off-gas any nitrogen—probably not necessary for a short 40 foot dive, but can’t hurt). I thought I had about 400 psi left when we started going up (plenty for breathing 3 minutes at 15 feet). During our stop Adrian showed me his computer, which indicated his air time as “0″. I didn’t know this, but his computer apparently calculate a 750 psi reserve automatically. So I’m keeping an eye on Adrian since I think he’s pretty close to running out of air.
After we completed our safety stop I gave Adrian the signal to go up, and he signaled OK. I give a few kicks up and…”hmm, that breath felt kind of funny, in fact, I don’t think I got a full lungful out of that one…oh !@#$. I’m out of air.” So I start swimming for the surface (15 feet, no problem). My regulator managed to find another half breath for me or so, and I stopped for a second to look down at Adrian, wondering what he was doing down there, and if he was OK. I finally decided “screw him, I need to breathe” so I swam the rest of the way to the surface.
Since I was out of air, I needed to orally inflate my BCD (surface flotation). This normally wouldn’t be much of a chore but my legs were cramping from the long surface swim and chasing crabs down (they’re fast). So I was briefly kicking my head above the water, taking a breath, inflating my BCD as I sank back (resting my legs), and repeating this process until I had enough air in my BCD to float. Hurray! Disaster averted. But I was a little nervous there for a minute. The legs cramping up and having trouble staying afloat was alarming.
While this wasn’t an emergency along the lines of “I almost died”, it could very easily have gone the other way (sinking/drowning diver or lung expansion injury). This event would have been less of an emergency if my legs hadn’t been cramping up, but then that’s always what gets people killed–multiple things going wrong (the so-called “error chain”).
So, in the grand tradition of, “coulda, woulda, shoulda”, I’m outlining things I could have done different, should have done different, and will try to remember to do different in the future.
What I did wrong:
Other choices I could have made:
things to do next time:
All in all, I am thankful that, as I am so fond of saying, “God looks out for stupid people”.
Well now that it’s almost the weekend again, I have a report on my incredibly productive previous weekend.
Saturday:
I was supposed to go to a fish ID class at the Seattle Aquarium. I decided to take the bus—after standing at the bus stop for 20 minutes I realized that the bus wasn’t on the route that day thanks to the University District Street Fair. Every now and then I need to take the bus to remind myself why I never take the bus.
After missing the bus I decided I’d rather not drive downtown, fight parking, and still be late. So, I decided I would run. After getting back from a short run in Ravenna Park I decided that if I was going to have to take a shower anyway, I might as well get some more dirty work done. So I mowed the lawn, weeded the flowerbed, raked some leaves, and edged the lawn along the sidewalk.
After this I decided to go to Home Depot and pick up some stuff I needed—Saturday was scheduled to replace the neck seal on Adrian’s drysuit so I needed some router accessories.
Back from Home Depot and armed with a new router bit (router bits are expensive, I found out), I went to the Waterfront Activities Center and built a circle cutting jig for the router there, and used it to make two neck seal installation rings from a sheet of lexan (lexan is like plexiglas, but stronger).
My primary mission for the day accomplished, Adrian and I sailed the SX-18 in some pretty decent wind. It was a wild ride. No capsizes, but definitely some hull-flying moments to strike the fear of God into us.
Of course, after all this I was hungry, so I went home and made french dip sandwiches (I did not make the dip from a packet, either—onions, garlic, beef broth, oregano, and pepper make a better dip).
After I ate Matt called me and wanted some help working on his boat. I believe his exact words were “I need you to come bang on the starter with a hammer while I turn the key”. Well he didn’t have a hammer, he had a large crescent wrench, and banging on it didn’t really work (at first, anyway), but we did finally get the starter working, and the engine almost started.
After giving up on the boat Matt and I went to Adrian’s apartment and replaced the neck seal on his drysuit.
All in a days’ work…
Although I should note that this is by far the most productive day I have had in *years*.
Sunday:
I was supposed to meet Matt around 11:00, but he didn’t show so I sailed a Hobie Bravo around Union Bay for a little bit. Matt finally showed up and we spent some time screwing around the carburetor on his engine. We did some checks on the ignition system, too, since I thought the spark looked a little weak.
Around 1 or 2 in the afternoon we decided we were hungry so we ordered take-out pizza from Papa John’s. Papa John’s is by my house, and I needed to stop by there anyway to pick up a floor jack and other tools to install a trailer hitch on Adrian’s car. There’s a nice little tree covered area parallel to the north docks at the WAC, and we parked our three cars there (Mine, Matt’s, and Adrian’s) and stood around eating pizza and just generally enjoying the beautiful day.
It turns out that getting some of the bolts installed for a trailer hitch is a real pain. After half an hour of fighting with the bolts, we finally got them in. It turns out a piece of string can sometimes be more effective than telescoping magnetic retrieval tool. Who knew? 
However, Adrian’s car had recently been rear-ended, which pushed the bolts into positions they weren’t supposed to be in. After a little bit of fooling around we came to the conclusion that we weren’t going to get it on until the collision damage had been repaired.
So, failure on that project, but at least the most troublesome bolts are in position, and that’s the hardest part.
Around 4 the batteries for Matt’s boat were charged, so we went back to that project. After a fair amount of fooling around (turns out there was an ignition problem, and we’d mostly been going after fuel), we finally got it to run for about 15 minutes (this thing had been sitting for 6 months). Once the engine had warmed up we tried adjusting the idle speed and ended up stopping the engine. We couldn’t get it to start after that, and there was oil coming out of the ignition coil, so I’m guessing we cooked it.
That’s it for the weekend. If only all my days were that productive…
I don’t even know where to start. This is why I should not be allowed to interact with other human beings.
I’ve decided to push this since it isn’t going to get any better rotting on my hard drive. Apologies in advance.
So…way way later than I meant to, I finally get around to posting on the UCF fall retreat.
Many weekends ago (Oct. 28-30) I went on a retreat with UCF (University Christian Fellowship–student group at UW) to Whidbey Island to hear Gordon Fee speak. Dr. Fee currently teaches at Regent College in Canada, and he was a major figure in the NIV translation of the Bible.
For some reason, speakers frequently can’t hold my attention. Maybe I find preaching boring (actually…I know I do, anything requiring me to sit still while someone else does all the work, is going to bore me). This was not the case with Dr. Fee, he had my attention most of the time, and I was even riveted at times. He is a very good speaker, not only good at speaking, but he knows his Bible extremely well. Obviously because of his background, his grasp on the Bible is far better than that of most people. I also enjoyed his comments on the translation committee and the decisions they made (”I lost this battle, I wanted to translate this as….”).
OK, writing this so long after the retreat, my recollection of the theology is sketchy at best. I’d written part of a paragraph not too long after the actual event, I’ve included it below…maybe it will make more sense to you if you went to the retreat.
Dr. Fee covered Philippians. I don’t remember half of what he talked about that actually applies to our lives today (yeah…I was paying more attention to his technical details on translation). However, he did go into humility. In Chapter 1, Paul talks about how despite the fact that people preaching the gospel for the wrong reasons is not a good thing in intself, the end result is that the *gospel is preached* and that’s what really matters. Christians get caught up in this a lot. Here is Paul rejoicing because the Gospel is being preached “even of envy and strife” (Philippians 1:15, KJV). Modern denominations have bickered over less.
There were some great Quotes from Dr. Fee:
“God is not like us.” (duh…I guess it sounded a lot better coming from him)
“Every other deity on Earth has been created in our image.”
“We become like the God we worship.”
“You have to be careful with a guy like Paul–if you let him out in the world, he’ll turn the world upside down. If you lock him up in your palace, he’ll turn your palace upside down” (see Philippians 1:12-14 for context)
And an amusing anecdote:
[Just as Dr. Fee starts speaking, the windows start-up chime is heard from somewhere in the audience]
Dr. Fee: I recognize that sound…I may be old, but I have one of those, too!
I also had a very inelegant theological argument with someone from UCF…ok, so it wasn’t actually an argument, I just dismissed the subject outright with a very nasty comment…but, yeah, definitely NOT my finest moment. Usually I try to make real arguments but…yeah. Bad Matt. If you want to hear about it, ask me and I might tell you…I don’t want to post it.
Pictures from the retreat can be found at the following URL:
http://www.macadamfamily.com/gallery
So yesterday (Wednesday) for lunch I went to Burger Hut, I was picking up a burger for me and one of the guys at work. The guy at the counter was reading the paper and we got to talking about the Tacoma Mall shooting and concealed carry…he was like “Yeah, I had a concealed carry license in Florida and I need to get it transferred here…I need to do that with my food handler’s card, too…”
Uhhhh….well, at least he has a food handler’s card in Florida. 
The sad thing is, it didn’t register with me that he didn’t have a WA food handler’s permit until I was halfway back to campus. I didn’t really care, though…I don’t put much stock in the food handler’s permit, really…I could teach a monkey to get a food handler’s permit.
So I’ve been looking at my website traffic reports. Apparently people actually read my blog….or at least, they visit it…the traffic reports can’t tell me whether or not they actually read anything. Anyway…I find this interesting. I’m wondering if maybe people would like to comment on things, but don’t because I’ve had commenting cranked down to registered users only due to comment spam. I’m thinking this is probably wishful thinking on my part. Even so, I’ve decided to remove the restriction that only registered users can post comments. 
I’ve installed a spam blocking plug-in for wordpress that should eliminate most of the comment spam…we’ll see how well this works. In the meantime, enjoy your commenting freedom.
Monday: Yacht Club Meeting. Ugh. I don’t want to talk about it. Anyway…so after the meeting I called Becky and she was with Barbara and they wanted to come to dinner with us afterwards. I think the meeting must have really messed with my head, because in my right mind I would never have inflicted the Washington Yacht Club upon two nice girls. Anyway, so a couple weeks ago I’d mentioned to the Yacht Club folks that I’d been hanging out with this nice, cute girl, but I didn’t know where it was going…of course, the Yacht Club, being the Yacht Club, decided that she’s my girlfriend. So I show up with Becky and Barbara and everyone is like “Oh so this must be your imaginary girlfriend and mistress (mistress referring to Barbara)”. I’m not sure how Barbara felt about being my mistress, but Becky seemed to be OK with being my girlfriend…so now she is. Yeah, so in case you didn’t catch that, Matt has a girlfriend, and she’s not imaginary (and I don’t have a mistress…the Yacht Club is just stupid).
Becky later informed me that she and Barbara set me up, figuring something like this would happen. Clever girls.
Tuesday: Went to Math section, ate lunch with Becky, walked with her to the Forest Resources payroll office so I could laugh at the payroll people (my experience with payroll coordinators from working at C&C has lead me to believe that they are highly trained monkeys, but the Forest Resources lady was far more competent that I expected…I was sure they all drooled…). I hung out with Becky on the HUB lawn for a little while and the went to class so she could actually get some reading done. Went with Becky and Barbara the U-village to study…and Barbara promptly ditched us to go to a vegetarian restaurant with Tammy (for shame…vegetarian food…ick).
Saturday was Opening Day of boating season here in Seattle. The Seattle yacht Club is the sponsor of the event, and they invite all the Commodores from area yacht clubs to participate in the opening/closing ceremonies. So, even though the Washington Yacht Club is hardly a real yacht club, I still got invited. Anyway, I figured it might be kind of fun so I got the proper attire together and attended. Yeah…so I now own a pair of white oxfords, which I’ll probably never wear again. Anyway…so I went to breakfast and I was like, “huh, I’m the youngest person here by at least 20 years…”. After breakfast was the commissioning ceremony where they raise the American flag and the burgees from all the attending yahct clubs. The American Flag was raised by Navy ROTC people from UW, so they were probably close to my age, but I was definitely the youngest Commodore there…it was kind of weird…I was always half-expecting someone to say to me “ok, who are you really, and why are you here?” There were a lot of VIPs at the commissioning ceremony (Seattle mayor, police chief, UW president), but I didn’t get to meet any of them.
After the SYC stuff I walked (yes, still dressed up) to the Waterfront Activities Center at UW, where we were having our own opening day party. It’s only a 15 minute walk…but I’m sure I was quite the spectacle. We had burgers and chips and cake and stuff, and I managed to eat lunch without getting anything on my white pants or shirt.
After our party I took a nap on the couch in the conference room, then headed back to SYC for the “Commodore’s Reception” and closing ceremony. So yeah…they know how to do food over there. Bacon wrapped scallops are really good. I want some. If you know how to make them, please tell me!
Sunday I had lunch at Azteca with Preston and some other folks with UCF since he was heading back to wherever it is that he comes from. Then I went home for Mother’s day and had dinner with the family…at Azteca.
Oh yeah, there are pictures of me dressed up for opening day…I’ll update this entry with a link when I get them posted in a permanent location.
I’m debating whether or not I should comment on my weekend. I’m hesitant to do so because if I do, it means I’ve become a real blogger and I will be filled with self-loathing. On the other hand, it was a good weekend….
Yeah…so I’m just updating this so Becky will leave me alone.
Honestly though, I don’t see how it’s all that weird that I hang out at work when I’m not working…I mean I don’t have internet access where I’m staying, so it’s perfectly natural that I’d go someplace where I have a nice computer already setup for me (I have Thunderbird and GAIM all setup there). Plus, the people there are all as nerdy as I am and…yeah…OK, maybe it is weird…but I’m weird so it’s OK, right? Of course right. And I’ve been listening to too much Fiddler on the Roof, but that’s another story.
Yeah…I really need to get internet access at home…I was carrying my phone around text messaging back and forth with someone for 45 minutes or so yesterday. I’m lucky I don’t have carpal tunnel in my thumbs…
ooooh, quote time:
Me: Gordy, what do you do with your socks?
Gordy: In what context?
Weekend was good. I was teaching a catamaran class most of the day Saturday and Sunday…my nose and ears are sunburned, but not badly…I found my sunscreen, though, so that won’t happen anymore (right…). Anyway, the students were good, everyone was happy (catamarans always put big smiles on faces…they go fast!).
On a separate note:
If I ever get stuck in a room again with 3 girls talking about bridesmaid dresses, I swear I’ll kill myself…or cry…or something….
It has also been brought to my attention that I’m a Marshmellow Peep Bunny (of the blue variety…not pink). I’ll let y’all think about that one. That reminds me of a funny website: Peep Research.
I was introduced to Facebook at work. This is bad.
It’s also kind of interesting, particularly the function to look up people from your high school. I guess they aren’t all as clueless computer-wise as they used to be. It’s cool to see what they’re doing now, because I was considered a geek in high school, and now I’m cooler than them. Revenge is sweet.
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