Vacation

It has been awhile since I last posted, and for this I apologize. What have I been doing? Well, lets find out.

I went down to the Florida Keys on vacation, timing it perfectly I might add for we got in between hurricanes. We camped in Key Largo and Bahia Honda and even drove down to Key West for an afternoon. The water is beautiful; a little too blue to be emerald green, but none the less pretty. I think the hurricanes played a part in that, blowing in seaweed and clouding the water close to shore. I know last year in the Bahamas the water was gorgeous; being only sixty miles from the Keys the water is most likely similar. Blame it on bad timing. One problem I noticed was the immense commercialization occurring on the islands. The Keys are small enough as it is without cramming row after row of rundown buildings and shops. This only was present on certain Keys though, while others remained largely uncommercialized. Perhaps larger portions of these were privately owned. Do you know you can buy a Key and build a house on it? Now how cool would that be. Some islands are just large enough for you to put a comfortable sized house on them and a dock out front. All the ones I saw were conveniently located near a large island. You could take a five minute boat ride to pick up your groceries then be back before afternoon. Also with the amount of sun they get down there you could install some large solar panels and have free electricity for your house as well. Sounds like a great place to retire to if you're looking for solitude and don't mind the extra living requirements. Sounds like fun really.

Anyway, we spent nearly two weeks snorkeling and island hopping. In Bahia Honda we swam off Cannon Beach, a cove where six recovered authentic Spanish galleon cannons and two Spanish anchors are arranged on the ocean floor in the shape they would have appeared while on a Spanish ship. Extremely shallow, you could easily dive down or even stand on them while taking pictures (underwater disposable camera). Since a coral reef runs through the Keys, many of its numerous inhabitants can be found near the shore, especially where we were swimming. Many Parrot fish, Grouper, and Angel fish skimmed the bottom, feeding off of and finding shelter under the algae covered Spanish weaponry. Dozens of fish would squeeze themselves under one cannon and then explode in a furious cloud when you stuck your head down with them. Hopefully the pictures turn out, we haven't gotten them developed yet. If so I'll see what I can do with posting them online.

We got home in one piece after a great vacation and I was off to my college freshman orientation. I am going to love college. It is such a drastic difference from any kind of schooling I have done so far, so I am very excited. So much freedom, countered by new responsibilties. I chose the 15 / 16 orientation sessions, and now wish I hadn't. Freshmen get last dibs on choosing their schedule, and I was part of the second to last group of Freshmen to get to choose from what remained. I started this a week ago, and I still have not found a perfect combination. They recommend waiting until the week of drop / add, and I suppose that's what I plan on doing. We log onto a program online and are given ninety minutes a day to browse courses offered and make our selections. Two days ago four stat classes filled up in five minutes...I snagged a political science class which had one opening for only a few minutes. I was very glad I kept what I had...I'm trying to keep my classes as close to each other as possible - I don't wish to wander over a campus this large every day. But while it's a work in progress, I think I finally have an upper hand. I have a schedule which could work if I can find nothing else, but I'm trying to find the same classes at different times and different buildings. Hopefully luck will come my way.

BTW, before I left on my trip I watched the Daily Show and listened to Jon Stewart's spill on how useless hurricane reporters are. He went through a list of network feeds, and ended it with the same clip of Geraldo being pelted by wind and rain that I had watched on the news. Coincidentally, Stewart feels that flying debris should have hit Geraldo and saved us all from having to experience the torture of watching him. I was screaming at the t.v. with approving shouts of glee upon watching that. I must not be the only one who realizes his apparent ineptness. I'm going to bed.

Until later,
Tommy