Jon

Went scuba diving today. First drysuit dive. Skills went well. We tooled around a bit and I tried to get used to the suit. It's probably going to be five or ten dives before I begin to feel comfortable and can pay attention to the dive and not the drysuit — but it sure was nice being warm and dry when I got out of the water.

Unfortunately, the dive ended with me ascending rapidly due to air in the drysuit. Not atypical for a first drysuit dive, but still frustrating. I had started an accidental feet-first ascent, swam out of it nicely, and bled air — but I bled air from the BCD, not the drysuit. Whoops.

But it was a decent first dive. Hopefully I'll be able to get the hang of it soon. Plus it confirms that the drysuit can actually keep me dry, which saves me worry and/or money, and means I can keep diving all winter long.

After coming home and washing my gear, my thoughts turned to dinner. Laura was headed out to a girls-only party with friends down in Tacoma, and so I figured I'd cook the spare ribs that were in the freezer. I thawed them in the sink, seared them with garlic, ginger, and hot pepper, sauteed some onion, and braised it all in a mixture of mushroom stock, soy sauce, and lime juice.

When the ribs were done, I took them out and cooked up some rice noodles we had in the cabinet. I reduced the sauce, adding a little mirin and a little extra sugar as it was quite tart, then re-warmed the ribs in the thickened sauce. I cut the meat off of half the rack of ribs, chopped it into bite-sized pieces, and served it on top of the rice noodles with a healthy dollop of sauce. Tasty!

This week, we'll take the other half of the ribs, cut the meat off, and put with cabbage into the wonton wrappers we have in the fridge. The leftover sauce could be a dipping sauce for that, though maybe we'll just want hoisin.

So, awesomely, my team successfully completed our rescue diver course dives today. Definitely worth taking a day off of work to go diving.

I celebrated by buying spring-straps for my fins. The normal straps have a terrible habit of getting tiny pebbles stuck in them, which makes them difficult or impossible to adjust, and they're tricky to put on. The new straps seem much easier to get on and off, but should hold the fins tightly enough. Laura says that my fin straps have been a thorn in her side, because not only does she need to help me every time, but she then struggles with the straps herself.

On the downside, one of my friends was just laid off from where I work. He's a smart guy, and I'm sure that the cost-savings makes sense for his department, but at the same time I wish they'd found another role for him where he fit. He's an awesome talent that I hate to lose for the company.

I've put off dinner and cooking in order to buy Jerry drinks and console him. (Need to ensure it's a bar with decent food.) I'm a bit surprised by how bummed I am by his misfortune.

But, still, rescue diving completed successfully. Despite having the dream last night where I show up to take the final exam ("French 4") and realize that, as it was the last class of the day, I'd forgotten to go all semester long. And spent two hours trying to match the terms on one side of the page with the descriptions on the other. And then, after the teacher suggests just giving up, having the conversation with her where I explain that, somehow, I failed to go to class all semester, and "it's just like that dream you have where..." I'm a touch surprised that said realization didn't actually bring me any lucidity, but oh well.

I'm not fully rescue-certified yet. Have to finish / re-finish my chapter conclusion test answers, and take the CPR class later this month. But I've done the open-water dives, which was the part I was concerned with. Yay!

The bad news is that my team in the rescue diver class completely botched the rescue on Saturday. I'll be taking time off of work next week to try to do better. Sunday we didn't dive, as it was snowing and all three of us were in wetsuits. Hypothermia is not in my dive plan. (If I had infinite wealth I'd really, really want a drysuit, but even if I felt like I could reasonably spend $1400 on one right now I would rather use that money to pay down the last bit of debt we have or to save it for baby expenses.)

The good news is that issue 1 of The Ne'er-Do-Well arrived. Yes, my fiction is really and truly in print. I received two copies (plus one I need to autograph and send to my dad), and know where the copy I'm not keeping is going. Still, need to get going on that.

The other good news is that the pizza Laura and I made for dinner Saturday after my rescue diver class was probably the best we've ever made. Nothing fancy, just good mozzarella, tasty tomatoes, and fresh basil on top of a regular tomato sauce -- but exceptionally good nonetheless. Sunday we made a mushroom casserole out of The Enchanted Broccoli Forest (one of the Moosewood follow-ons), which was also completely delicious but a whole lot of work. (Washing and chopping two pounds of crimini mushroom caps is something that I'm not very fast at. The rest of the process put together took less work.)

As far as movie-watching goes, we've been on a Criterion Collection kick since they started releasing on Blu-Ray a few weeks ago. I think we plan to buy The Third Man at some point, and we also enjoyed Bottle Rocket and Chungking Express. I wouldn't say I enjoyed The Man Who Fell to Earth, but I was definitely fascinated by it.

This weekend we watched The Last Emperor, which was beautiful and entertaining but I'm not sure that it was especially deep. That said, even the first fifteen minutes of the commentary track were enlightening: the title sequence was created by Maurice Binder, who did the James Bond titles -- after which the sequence looked more like a James Bond opener than it did one for a fancy foreign film! The opening fifteen minutes of commentary on Chungking Express gave some details that explained the film to me in a way that it made sense: I now understand that Wong Kar Wai's relationship with the old, disappearing Hong Kong parallels the cops' relationships with women in the film. That's something I wouldn't have picked up on otherwise. (If I had the same infinite pile of money that let me feel like I could buy a drysuit, I'd probably 'subscribe' to Criterion's Blu-Ray releases.)

Last night we watched Roger Ebert's commentary track on Dark City. Turns out he recorded a new commentary track for the Director's Cut, which is on the same Blu-Ray disc but which I've never watched. I'll have to plan to watch the new version, then the other three commentary tracks at some point soonish.

Today's going to be my first day back in the water since, oh, August, when viz was miserable. Tomorrow I may dive more.

Next week I take the rescue diver course, with checkout next weekend.

Spent most of this morning prepping and checking my gear. Everything looks good to go -- I did have to change the dive computer battery, hopefully I did the excellent job I tried to do and it doesn't leak and get ruined. (I definitely want a new computer, but I was thinking maybe next year if somehow I fall into a giant puddle of money or something. Even if I did have the cash around collecting dust I think I'd rather just hold onto it right now. Of course, if I don't have any dive computer, that's a little bit different.)

Since August, life's been too busy to dive: Laura's rescue diver course (which meant me not diving then), the initial pregnancy news, moving, a million work trips (you don't believe a million? Okay, only 52 days on the road last year for business), and the holidays. Really last weekend was probably the only time since August that I'd have been able to schedule a dive.

Still, I think that I need to establish a regular monthly dive with some group of people -- it would mean I'd do it, if I had a regular schedule and group. Honestly I'd love to dive twice a month, and the roadblock has been (other than the horrendously busy fall) the organizational effort. I need to work on that this year.

I didn't write about the one dive that ironheadjane and I took last Sunday, at Redondo. Twenty-five minutes or so underwater, and I really felt that I'm getting back in the groove regarding buoyancy control and general underwater comfort. So tomorrow's not a bad time to start pushing my boundaries: it's the first dive of our Advanced class, a night dive at Redondo.

Unlike my previous night dive in Bonaire, I'll have a really decent light, and I've dived the site before. That should help, a lot. My previous night dive was a bit confusing, and a little stressful, but very exciting: everything underwater looks different at night. I can hardly stand to wait another twenty-four hours.

I also didn't write about Easter dinner: neutrinoj and zetreehugger came over for lamb (which I braised in red wine using the crock pot while Laura and I dove), gravy, and roast veggies (which zetreehugger made). We played a round of some card/word game whose name I forget, which was entertaining. It was nice and low-key, and tasty, too. Monday I took much of the lamb leftovers and made lamb jalfreze again, which was yummy.

It's been a crappy week for food since then, for the most part: I've been training on the Eastside for work (ITIL v3 Foundation certification), which has meant junk food at lunch (burritos, McDonald's, pizza) and exhaustion at dinner (plus a non-dive Scuba class last night too). Right now, though, I've got ham in the oven, greens on the stove, and I'm prepping for ham-and-bean soup for tomorrow night before diving.

Tonight I'll have to put my dive bag together, so that we can eat, grab bags, and go tomorrow. I can't wait.

Finally, today would have been Michael Jackson's 66th birthday. Raise a glass to the Beer Hunter, if you don't mind, in honor of his memory.

My first (and second) Puget Sound dives today, my first dives in cold water, and my first dives in three and a half years (not counting the pool session last night to review skills). More importantly, my first dive with ironheadjane as my dive buddy.

It's definitely frustrating to be stuck again on the technical bits -- weight, buoyancy, equipment familiarity, and so on. But I'm still comfortable with most of the core skills, and the rest seem to be coming back already. Part of the challenge was new equipment -- 7 millimeter wetsuit with hood, gloves, new boots, new fins, new mask. (Same snorkel, regulator, computer, and BCD.) Part of the challenge was the cold water -- it took me a long time to warm up again, though it didn't feel too cold in the water itself, even if it was 46 degrees at the bottom and only fifty or so out of the water. Really, most of the challenge was too long out of the water.

Cindy, our very awesome dive instructor, noted that it was rather sterile out there today, due perhaps to large classes out on the beach today, and dive activities yesterday. We did see a number of fish, tons of starfish, a bunch of pretty large crabs. (And one tiny, translucent crab scuttling along the bottom that I first mistook for just a small piece of debris someone had stirred up.) Saw what I think were lingcod eggs, a starfish with egg sacs, and a beautiful sea cucumber.

Dives #29 and 30 overall, with 19 hours and 51 minutes of total bottom time. It's great to be back in the water -- I look forward to our Advanced Open Water classes in two weeks, by which time I'll have a new, warmer, wetsuit of my own, and Laura will have her own gear. I'm looking forward to the night dive, which will be only my second night dive. New lights, new dive knives, rash guards, and more, and more. Laura's serious about this: we're buying weights, wetsuits both for here and Hawaii. We're thinking about tanks -- it'll be pretty much the only gear we lack. All we'll need are air fills, and we'll be able to dive together all year long. I'm very much looking forward to that.