Nothing like Finding Nemo

And this is a picture of the jellyfish that hitched a ride on my BCD when we made our great escape.  They are called Portuguese Man O War.  They were not my squishies and they were not my friends.

Battle scars

My arm got the worst of the jellyfish.  My hand actually had the imprint of the tiny body of the jellyfish with a tentacle that wraps around.  I don't know if you can see it all that well in the picture.  But it makes an S shape.

The Scuba disaster

This is the beautiful beach we went to for diving.  I thought, "wow, this is so pretty I can't wait to see what lies beneath."  To think this is right on base, too and I never knew it.  The end of the rock is where you dive, so you have to swim out a bit.

We got our gear and went into the water.  The dive is out a ways so you have to swim to it.  No problem.  I've done that before.  The first problem was those rocks are covered in algae and slippery.  The second problem is it is pretty shallow for a ways out so swimming is difficult.  But the ground is not even because it is coral so you can't walk.

The next problem were these waves.  Trying to snorkel out became impossible because the waves would cover the snorkel and then you had a snorkel full of water.  Supposedly snorkels are designed to not have water get in them, but they are essentially an open tube so they can only do so much.  After having my snorkel fill up unexpectedly several times and inhaling water, I took it out and tried to time my breaths between waves.  That turned out even worse.  Face full of water.  My friend, as I coughed vigorously, said "don't worry about inhaling the water, there's plenty in the ocean."

This is a sea urchin, which is has poisonous spikes.  They were on the bottom of the shallow coral, which is another reason you didn't want to walk.  They were everywhere.

My friends invited me diving Saturday afternoon, which made me really happy because diving is fun.  So we rented what we needed and headed to Old Wives' Beach.  Cool, I thought, I'd never been there.  We go out and things are going wrong from the start, but don't worry, once you are under the water, everything will be fine.  And they were just minor annoyances, not real problems.  Well things took a turn for the worse when one of us said, "does anyone's skin feel like it's stinging?"  We were like, ummm, and I mentioned my hand stung a bit because I cut it to pieces on some coral on the way over the rocks.  No, that wasn't it.  Then I felt my skin start to sting.  Then everyone felt it.  Turns out there was an entire pod of very tiny jellyfish right before we reached our destination for diving.  Suddenly it's like we couldn't escape them!  They were everywhere, but they were tiny so we couldn't see them.  All we could see were their tentacles, a couple feel long, wrapped around our arms and faces and wherever else they reached.  They looked like thin hairs.  And you knew they were there because it felt like electric current burning your skin.  We abandoned our dive at this beach and headed for shore.  It was a long way back.  I ended up abandoning the swim part way in and taking my chances with the coral because we had drifted a bit to where it was even shallower and I kept hitting rocks.  When I say hitting rocks, I mean coral, which is sharp and I was bleeding from a lot of tiny scrapes.  My hand had the worst of it, but that happened early on.  I also had bloody knees and then ankles as I walked in.  Luckily the felt bottomed dive boots are great for coral.  So it wasn't so bad.  It was exhausting, though.  The waves would knock you over and then you had fifty pounds of scuba gear on your back and you had to get up.  Your balance is all wonky and I was tired.  I hadn't really eaten lunch and didn't sleep the night before due to my neighbor working on his truck at all hours of the night like he sometimes does.  So it was a tough journey back.  Not very difficult but difficult enough to be unpleasant.  I kept thinking that it wasn't so bad and I wasn't so tired but all I wanted to do was make it to shore and take the scuba pack off.  At one point I realized I didn't know where my friends were so I took a quick look and they were struggling just like I was but doing fine.  Then I felt bad that I had focused on myself getting to shore instead of thinking how they were doing.  But like I said, it wasn't too difficult, just enough.  Now I have red marks over my arms and neck from the stings and my hand hurts from a relatively deep cut.  We ended up diving a different beach and that went fine.

Chicken adventures

My friends have chickens.  The have fluffy chickens and regular chickens.  The top two pics are their fluffy chickens and a baby chicken that was born to one of them.  They both laid eggs, but only one hatched into a tiny chicken.  The bottom picture is a wild chicken and her two babies.  One day while over there, a neighbor's dog attacked some baby chickens.  He killed one before my friend chased it off.  Then she got a bucket and for the next half hour or so she and I and a couple others chased two baby chicken to catch them and save them from the dog.  Baby chickens run really fast.  Like really, really fast.  And they are small so they can hide in very small places where you can't get them.  Well the mama chicken heard her babies after we caught them and came to get them. Problem was they were in a cage.  So my friend opened the cage and mama chicken jumped in to get her babies not really thinking that they couldn't get out.  Chickens are not very smart.  So we closed the cage on her.  Now my friend has more chickens.  Problem is mama chicken is really mean.  Really, really mean.  So they are going to catch her and release her into the wild somewhere far away.  The babies are good and big enough, so they are thinking they will keep the babies and add them to their small flock of chickens that they have.  And those are the most recent chicken adventures.

Frogs, lizards, and ants

The frogs are outside someone's house.  Most houses on Guam do not look like that one.  He lives in a very nice area.  The lizard is one I caught living near my sink.  The like to go under the spice rack I have and hang out and eat insects.  There is another one there now.  I don't know how they get in, but I've had several that I've caught and released.  The ants are a constant problem.  I finally got ant traps and they are working rather well.  All the black ants have died and are no longer a problem.  The fire ants don't take the the poison as readily and I'm still having issues with them.  I'm surprised at how well seven dollars worth of ant poison worked.  This will become the new normal because finding ants quite literally everywhere was getting old.

Golf Outing

To welcome some new people, we all went golfing.  It was fun.  I'm still really bad at it, but it's nice to hang out with people outside work.  The guy in the blue shirt is one of the new people.  He lived in Raleigh for a while and attended NC State for a year.  He is not adjusted to Guam's climate in this pic and that's why he is struggling with the heat.  His entire shirt was soaked through by the end and he borrowed sunscreen from me.

I'm Baaack!!

I know it's been a while since I blogged.  So in case you forgot what I look like, here is a giant picture of my face.  Your welcome.