Cozumel Dive Trip, Day 2 ctd: Down, Down, Down.

By the time dawn broke the next day, the wind had died, the seas had calmed and John and Matthew had learned a valuable lesson about conmingling Cohibas and Coco Locos. (Okay, they were margaritas, but there's no alliteration there.)

The dive boat, which was supposed to leave at 8:15, left at 8:45, because Mexico.

No wind, no waves, not a whitecap in sight!

Next stop: Palancar Bricks at 80 feet.

 John hovering over the deep blue. Cozumel has spectacular reefs between 35 and 100 feet,
 then the bottom drops out, all the way down to 3,200 feet. Swimming to the edge and
looking into the abyss is always a humbling experience.

 Matthew, happy to be alive.

 Twiddling my thumbs as the world floats by. A strong current runs north along the west coast,

 making every dive a drift dive. Very little swimming to do, you just float through the

 constantly-changing wonder.

The reefs around the island have been protected environments for a very long time,

so the coral is incredibly profuse and healthy and the marine life is abundant. We saw turtles,
a couple of free-swimming, five-foot moray eels, barracudas, huge lobsters and crabs,
as well as all manner of dazzlingly-colored reef fish. Just before we came up from the
second dive of the morning, a five-foot nurse shark swan right past us.

Normally, the two morning dives are over in time for lunch. Aqua Safari, however, has a very slow boat, so it took us about an hour and a half just to get to the first dive site, while watching other boats crammed with divers zipping past us. Every day, between 1,500 and 2,000 divers descend on the reefs around Cozumel, so there's a lot of boat traffic. The reefs are so expansive, though, it never feels crowded. 

We finally got back to port at 2:45, starved for lunch. Donna at Aqua Safari recommended a little place close by called Sabores.

It turned out to be someone's house with a beautifully funky backyard. Everything is cooked
 fresh with mostly local ingredients, including coconuts from the garden!

Look at that deliciousness! First round of margs already consumed.

Happy to be alive.

Cozumel went from a Mayan-era population of around 40,000 to under 100 after an epidemic of smallpox. For a while it was a notorious pirate hangout. now it's a tourist mecca, mostly for divers, but also for cruise ships. San Miguel now has piers for as many a six giant cruise ships, and much of the town is geared to cater to the passengers: tourist bars and restaurants, Cartier, silver and souvenir shops, and, of course, Cuban cigar stores. Behind and around the tourist strip, however, there's a charming, sleepy, shabby/funky (in a good way) Caribbean beach town geared more to locals, with cheap and delicious food. Sabores is one of the best, and we returned there many times over the course of the next few days. Especially when we found that the made the island's best pina coladas. From scratch.

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Cozumel Dive Trip, Day 2: My Son The Commie.

I don't know how it happened, though I suspect malign influences in this RED state, but John has developed suspiciously socialistic behavior patterns lately.

I'd like to deny it, but there's photographic proof.

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Cozumel Dive Trip, Day 1: Too Windy, No Diving.

Last year, John, Matthew, and I decided to take a dive trip sometime this winter to somewhere warm and sunny. We chose Cozumel, an island of the Caribbean coast of Mexico, one of the best-rated dive destinations in the world. We were very excited to get into the water, and we were very excited to spend some males-only time together. Matthew and I had been to Cozumel before (separately), In fact this would be my fourth trip, but John had never been.

 Our first sight of azure tropical waters only heightened the excitement as we flew into Cancun, just across a narrow strait from Cozumel. The first sign of trouble was the ferry trip to the island from Playa del Carmen. The seas were running high, pushed by high northwest winds, a weather pattern that is fairly rare; the prevailing winds are usually from the east, making the waters off the island's west coast a tranquil oasis for divers.

Not today. As the ferry rolled and wallowed through 6 to 8 foot swells toward the port of San Miguel, the only town on Cozumel, we began to suspect that our prospects for happy diving were slim.

The next morning at 7:30, we checked with the dive shop and found our prospects even further diminished: the harbor was closed indefinitely. They asked us to come back at 11:00 just in case. The winds were strong, and we were skeptical, but we went for breakfast and discussed Plan B.

At 11:00, the winds were still high, so we put Plan B in effect. We rented a car and drove south to find a snorkelable beach.

We found one, along with lunch and too-sweet pina coladas at Playa Palancar. The beach was protected from the wind, and the water was warm and inviting. The visibility was outstanding and the sea full of colorful fish. It was wonderful to finally get in the water.

When we rented the car, the guy at the rental counter had pointed us to a bar on the east side
 of the island "where American girls flash you."
And here it was! Coconuts!

Alas, no flashing while we were there, but there were a few faded reminders of flashes past.

There were however large and powerful margaritas.

As well as large and powerful parrots.

As night approached, we returned the car and found ourselves a swingers' bar.

This unfortunately ushered in a night of bar crawling that was regretted
 in the morning by many (I was the lone, virtuous exception).

As I crawled into bed, the wind continued to howl unabated, and I could only wonder what the next day would bring.

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Sounds of Other Minds.

Last weekend I drove to San Francisco for a music festival. The Other Minds Festival is an annual event that I used to attend when we lived in SF, but I haven't been able to go for many years. This year was Other Minds 18, Looking back at the history printed in the program, I realized that the last festival I attended was Other Minds 5 in 1999!

OM is a celebration of cutting-edge music from around the world. This year's offering were as varied and eclectic as ever. The two-hour concerts took place Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights at the new(ish) Jewish community center at California and Presidio.

I was surprised and pleased that what was once a shoestring operation has grown to a somewhat grander affair with nicely printed programs and a much larger venue. Charles Amarkanian who has run OM from the beginning, hosted the concerts, which were co-sponsored by the Djerassi Foundation. OM also has a record label and a web site that includes a radio stream that includes recordings from earlier festivals, as well as of Amarkanian's 25 years of radio shows for KPFA. Check it out: http://www.otherminds.org/

The concerts featured a wealth of new music. The following were my favorites.

The Danish trio ‘Gáman’ opened the first concert. The trio plays violin, accordion and recorder, but their music, inspired by the folk music of the Faroe Islands, was quite different than you might expect. The tunes were short and simple, haunting and mournful. The accordion was using mostly as a continuo, stretching notes out as a bed for the other instruments to play over, while the violin was often used pizzicato as a percussion instrument.

Friday night began with the world premiere of the music theater performance piece, ‘ARA’ by Korean-American artist Dohee Lee.  Lee designs her own costumes and instruments, and sings and dances while she plays.  The Eye Harp (seen in the above photo) is an instrument she designed that is played by bowing and plucking strings. It is connected to electronics as well. Her performance was odd and mesmerizing.

Next, Anna Petrini, a Swedish recorder virtuoso performed three pieces for an instrument called the Paetzold contrabass recorder. The square contrabass recorder is a modern design
that augments the traditional sound of the recorder with electronic processing. For the first piece, all the openings on the instrument were taped shut, so all that could be heard was the performer's breath and the clacking of the valves. These sounds were amplified and looped to produce a very untraditional sound.

The second concert concluded with a stunning solo piano performance by Craig Taiborn.  Billed as a jazz pianist (he has played with many well known jazz groups), his sound in this performance was not traditional jazz in any sense. He started with a few simple, widely spaced notes, then gradually developed the piece into a fierce, mutli-layered, complex explosion of sound. His playing was both incredibly rapid and extremely precise, so that even when the piece was at its most complex, it never became muddy. A very exciting musician.

The close of the last concert was Pamela Z's arrangement of Meridith Monk's Scared Song. Ms. Z, uses proximity-triggered devices and looped voice to perform Monk's complex vocalizations. I saw Monk perform at an earlier OM festival, so this was a fitting close to this musical adventure.

A comment I overheard from one of the other attendees sums up my fondness for OM: "I never know what I'm going to hear, but I know it's always going to be interesting."

I'm looking forward to next year.

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Comparative Theology.

Yesterday, we took Luciya and Mirabel to the Center for Spiritual Living in Boise for the Sunday service.

On our way the the center, Luciya pointed out a Mormon temple and opined that would be more convenient if we went there since it was closer to our house.

We agreed that it would be more convenient, but O remarked that she wouldn't want to go to that church.

"Why?" asked L.

O thought hard. "Well, I don't agree with some of the things they believe in."

"Like what?"

O thought harder. "Well, mostly grown-up things."

L. contemplated this for a bit. "I think it's because Rev. Jackie (minister at CSL who L. adores) always says nice things."

We agreed that that was true.

L. thought a bit more. "For example, she would never say something like 'Everyone poop in their seats right now.'"

We agreed that Rev. Jackie was unlikely to say something like that.

But who knows about the Mormons.

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Stalked By Mountain Lions.

Just before we moved to our new house, we heard reports that a mountain lion had been spotted in the section of the greenbelt/river trail where I ran every morning in the pre-dawn hours. At the time I was too busy getting ready to move to do much running anyway, so I thought little of it. After we moved to the other side of town, we heard of more sightings near our old neighborhood, but shrugged them off.

Then a couple weeks ago, we heard of a mountain lion being sighted on our side of town. Next there was a dog mauled by a lion just across the river from us. The cat had jumped a six-foot fence to shut that yapper up. A little spooky, but you have to admire that kind of enterprise, and besides, there was a swift-running, icy river between us and the feline menace.

Yesterday, though, two mountain lions were spotted on our side of the river, strolling through the development not four blocks from our house. At 1:30 in the afternoon!

So, for now, morning and evening walks by the river are off our agendas. We may be old and stringy, but I think they're following us.

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Our True Colors.

Thanks to my thrifty mom and the very low real estate prices in Idaho, we were able to buy a house here. 3br, 2.5 ba, good size yard, half a block from the river, 5 min. from John and Emily, 5 min. from work for both of us, and only 5 mi. from downtown.

The place needs work--new roof, new bathroom, etc., but it has good bones, including a nice kitchen and good layout. Though it appears typical on the outside, it has a lot of interesting angles and custom features on the inside.

So we've been adding color, trying to recreate some of the vibe of our old SF house.

 Here's a view of the entry.

The view from the entry into the living room.

Looking down the stairwell at the entry.

Looking from the living room through the dining room into the kitchen.

The kitchen from the family room. The dining room is just beyond.

The breakfast nook and family room.

The family room.

The hallway and library.

We move next week. We are so excited to have our own place again. 

Thanks, mom!

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Along Came Smith.

So Luciya has decided that she must be called Smith.

Tonight she came over after a day at pre-school summer camp, and we asked what she had done that day.

Us: So, Smith, what did you do at camp today?

Smith: I pooped and pooped and pooped and pooped until I died!

We never had that much fun at camp when I was wee.

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Lovely Lake Tahoe

We took a long Fourth of July holiday and drove from Boise to the Bay Area. We spent a blissful few days with family and friends, eating and drinking and laughing, with side visits for our favorite SF haunts. On the way home, we decided to break up the long drive with a delightful visit with our friend Doug who has a condo in Lake Tahoe.

 The weather was lovely, so of course there were drinks on the deck of the Big Water Cafe, where we enjoyed an awesome view of the lake through a crack in the trees.

It was definitely a Fourth to remember.

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The Most Obscene Aristocrats Joke Ever.

h/t to Jon Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution:

DAVID BROOKS(where "David Brooks" is a stand-in for most any "centerist" Establishment apologist): Okay, so our act starts with us inflating a giant internet bubble. Then that collapses, taking the country's economy with it, just as we massively cut taxes on millionaires because, we say, if we don't the government will have too much money. Right after that we blow off warnings about terrorism and let 3,000 Americans get slaughtered. We use that as a chance to lie the U.S. into invading a country that had nothing to do with the attack, killing hundreds of thousands of people and turning millions into refugees. In the middle of all that we borrow torture techniques from the Inquisition and use them on people in secret sites around the planet. Then we make billions off another financial bubble, the biggest in human history, and do nothing as it collapses, plunging the world into the greatest economic calamity since the Great Depression. To fix that we open up the national bank vault and shovel out money as fast as possible to all the criminals who made it happen in the first place. Then—as the amazing finale—we refuse to prosecute anyone for that, for the war, or for torture, and we start killing U.S. citizens with flying death robots.
[LONG PAUSE]
AGENT: ...That's a hell of an act. What do you call it?
DAVID BROOKS: The Aristocrats!

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You Know You Want One.

Dutch ingenuity.

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Babysitting The Pterodactyl. Now Updated With NSFW (or anywhere else) Bonus Link!

The squawks are frequent and ear-splitting, prehistoric in their intensity. We're babysitting the Pterodactyl again.

Lovely Mirabel in a previous life.

That would be our youngest granddaughter, Mirabel. She's the world's happiest child, and sometimes that happiness becomes so great that it must be emitted in one or several loud and heartfelt yawps. Emily was the first to notice the resemblance to the pterosaur's hooting, and the name stuck.

I've even written a little ditty about it, to the tune of "You Talk Too Much."

You squawk too much, you worry me to death.
You squawk like a pterodactyl that is strung out on meth.
You squawk, squawk, squawk, you squawk too much.

You squawk about stuff that you don't know.
You squawk like a wooly mammoth with a trunk full of blow.
You squawk, squawk, squawk, you squawk too much.

You squawk too much, you quack and you quack.
You squawk like a struthiomimus that's addicted to crack.
You squawk, squawk, squawk, you squawk too much.

The squawkin' struthiomimus

BONUS LINK! WARNING! Not safe for work! Not safe for children's ears! Not safe!]

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Know Thyself.

Over the weekend, Luciya confided to us: "Dairy makes my toots awful!"

Then she proceeded to prove it so. Repeatedly.

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L'il Future Nobel Prize Winner.

It took William Harvey until 1628 to propose the theory of blood circulation.

Yesterday, budding scientist Luciya placed a the hollow end of a water glass on the inside of her elbow and laid her ear on the other end. "I can hear my blood smushing and whushing in there," she announced.

She's not even five yet.

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Dora The Tootin' Explorer.

Tonight was our usual night for watching the girls. Luciya wanted to watch a movie, so I sat down in the TV room and let her climb into my lap with her giant rainbow slinky. We soon found ourselves watching "Dora the Explorer" on Nick Jr.

For those who have never experienced it, this is an interactive show where Dora periodically asks the audience to respond to various questions. Luciya helped her take pictures of wild animals, choose the correct path to avoid a rain storm, and find the roof to Benny the Bull's house.

At the end, Dora asked us what had been our favorite part of the show.

"When she tooted up her nose!" chortled Luciya. (She knows very well that this is expressly against the Rules of Tooting.)

"That was my favorite part, too," Dora agreed.

"I don't remember that part," I said.

"Yep," said L, with immense satisfaction, "she tooted up her nose and in her eyeball!"

I don't know how I missed it.

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Exercising In The Dark And Cold.

One of the hardest things to get used to in Boise is that the sun comes up so late. At 7 am it's still dark these mornings, and it will only get worse when we switch to daylight savings time. Rousing myself to get up and exercise in the morning is difficult, especially when the temperature is in the low 20s. 

But I decided I'm tired of being house-bound, so this morning I got up and braved the dark and cold. I drove a half mile to the Boise River and walked a little over two miles. As I got back to my car, the faintest trace of day had begun to light the eastern sky. 

I drove home, had an espresso, and looked out the front door.

Looks like I just got home in time.

More of the same tomorrow.

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Phyllis Jane, August 4, 1915 to February 14, 2012.

My mom died last night, peacefully, at home after 96 and a half years full of life.

I mourn her absence, and I'm relieved that she went quickly and painlessly at the end.

We should all be so lucky.

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The Rules Of Tooting.

We were watching the girls this evening, and, at dinner, Luciya asked for some milk.

"Milk makes me the tootiest!" she exclaimed proudly.

"Ummm," we replied.

"My daddy told me the rules for tooting," she said, glorying in the extent of her knowledge of the world.

"That's good," we replied.

"Never toot in someone's nose, because then they can smell it," she said wisely.
"And never toot in someone's eyeball!"

Surely those are rules we can all live by.

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Beauty And The Bitch.

It was hard to believe. After all these months, we finally got some snow.

 But I looked out the back door, and it was true.

The story was the same out the front door, too. A truly beautiful sight.

But as with most beauties, there was a downside.

A long, snow-choked driveway faced me and my new orange snow shovel.

It was a bitch, but I got it done. And still the snow came down.

But then it turned to rain and the snow turned to slush. Not so beautiful, but easier to deal with.

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My Old Mom.

She's almost halfway through her 96th year, so when we got an email from my brother last week saying that she was in the hospital again with a poor chance of recovering, we got on a plane immediately. Southwest, with some prodding from O, was gracious enough to let us change the tickets we had for later this month to the very next day at no upcharge. Thanks, Southwest.

When we first visited her, she was emaciated and incoherent, but her face lit up when she recognized us. She can barely talk, but she managed to ask, "How are you?"

"We're good," said O.

Mom scowled. "You're not good. You're well," she croaked, an English teacher to the last.

O and I smiled at each other and said simultaneously, "She's back!"

Phyllis Jane in happier days.

Over the few days we were there, she gradually got better, with more moments of lucidity, and a slowly improving appetite. Now, a week and a half later, she's been moved out of the hospital into rehab, where they hope to get her eating and walking again.

But it's touch and go. She still isn't eating enough to sustain herself, though her appetite is better. The doctor says she'll be in rehab for two weeks, then we'll have to make a decision about next steps. If she recovers further, she can go to a managed care facility, or even home, though that's a long shot at this point. If she continues to decline, then she'll go into hospice care--at home, we hope.

So we wait and see, wait and see.

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That Word Does Not Mean What You Probably Think It Means.

I love the many misuses of English generated by Asian English users, but this example from a Japanese department store is one of my favorites.

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Eat Your Boogers!

It might be good for you. Check out this link. Even if it doesn't convince you to start snot gobblin', you'll learn far more about mucus than you know now.

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If The Snow Won't Come To Us...

No snow in Boise so far this season, other than a sprinkling one night last week. Everyone tells us they've never seen it so dry. There's enough static electricity in our clothes to power a small town.

Now we're not big snow fiends--don't like driving in it, shoveling it, or scraping it off the car--but WTF happened to our White Christmas? I mean, if you have to live in the cold you should at least have that to look forward to.

Alas, it was not to be. Christmas day was cold and clear and brown. So when our lovely friends the Smiths invited us to their cabin in Sun Valley for New Year's Eve, we hoped rather forlornly we might get to see some of the white stuff after all.

The night before we left for the mountains it rained in Boise, so our hopes were high for snow at higher elevations.

 And indeed there was a light blanket of powder on the peaks. The downside was that 

the roads leading to Sun Valley were a bit treacherous, but we drove slowly and carefully

and eventually reached our destination.

 After an excellent lunch, Steve and Jeanie drove us from 

their house to the Sun Valley Lodge. The snow was pretty light 

even here, but we were grateful for what we had.

 We enjoyed a delicious dinner and a happy New Year's Eve with our friends. 

The next day, we walked with them to the river which runs close by their home. 

The path was slippery, but the scenery was worth the effort.

That afternoon, we drove back to Boise. Most of the ice had melted from the roads, so we made good time. Thanks, Smiths, for a very happy, and snowy,New Year!

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