Well, it’s dark and I’m going to work. The sunset was very red this evening, there is a lot of clouds and the wind is starting to pick up.
It looks like the hurricane won’t hit us too bad but we’ll definitely get some tropical storm force winds.
I went swimming this evening and the water was nice and calm. My dog, Ditto, went swimming too then had a double shampoo shower, toenails trimmed, and is coming to work with me. Another girl is bringing her dog too. My dog is well trained (militantly, I’m afraid) and was at the station for the last hurricane with no complaints (to my face) and many compliments on being so well behaved. I’m afraid that dogs will no longer be welcome after this with her dog there, a little hyper, poop and pee all over the place, teeny tiny curly haired fuzzdog. But who am I to complain? Nobody, that’s who!
I am aware of a feeling that this is NOT the last hurricane of this season!!
Anyway I’m taking my laptop and all my electronics (camera, mp3 player, external hard drive with tons of moovies, chargers, etc) and some clothes and a cooler and my rebreather of course. I am NOT taking my tent and camp stove and stuff like that! Hoping for the best.

What did they do 50 or 100 years ago? tonight is a beautiful night, soft breeze, stars, crystal clear skies.
If it weren’t for technology, no one would know that in 24 hours, a hurricane will be bearing down on us. There’s no way to tell.

It’s Friday again, and it looks like another rainy weekend coming, to put it mildly. If Emily stays on her path, it shouldn’t be THAT bad. Huge waves wrecking the south side of the island as the storm approaches and huge waves wrecking Seven Mile Beach as it leaves, that’s if we’re lucky. If the storm turns to the right even a little bit, it will be much much worse.
I’ve been stocking up on supplies all week. I have a lot of water and canned goods and stuff. Since my landlord never fixed my apartment, I expect the roof damage to start where it left off after Ivan, so I plan on getting all my valuables out of there.

They cancelled the Half Mile Sea Swim scheduled for Saturday. Wimps. It’s just a category 4 hurricane. I woulda swum!.. swimmed, swam?
Heres a picture of my rental car. It’s not bad anymore. I’m getting used to it. I took the pic with my phone camera in the grocery store parking lot last night. It looks pretty good in the picture, but if there was a person standing next to it, you’d see that the top of the roof only comes up to about their knees! Its a tiny clown car! (I’m joking, it’s not quite that small!)

I called the repair place and told them I didn’t think it was a goner. Their receptionist told me that their transmission mechanic was off the island. Hmmm, so who said I needed to replace it? Turns out they drove it to the end of the driveway and said,”needs a new transmission” and never even looked at it. Once before the owner told me my transmission was “perfect”. I started wondering how it went from perfect to needing replacing with nothing in between. So I started asking questions….

Here’s how its supposed to work:
Hurricane season starts June first. Anytime after that, these little depressions start forming off the hump of Africa and either fizzle out or strengthen to Tropical Storms then Hurricanes as they curve north up the center of the Atlantic.
Then as Hurricane Season progresses, these depressions may gradually start forming further and further west of the hump of Africa and start their northerly curve later and later. As this happens, the chances of Hurricane activity in the Caribbean goes up and up.
Towards the end of the Hurricane Season, here in Cayman, it may start raining, then as the rainstorm moves away, it may become a tropical depression, tropical storm, then Hurricane.
This year, however, the storms are forming much more westerly than usual and are heading more directly west and are reluctant to curve north. As a result, the storms are entering the Caribbean and even worse, heading straight HERE!
The early storms this year,Arlene , Brett, and Cindy acted like typical end-of-season storms that you would see in October or November. They formed so far west there’s no more room to go! They had to head almost straight north! Dennis was like a mid season storm, August type I think.
Adrian was a freekazoid of a storm, that started in the Pacific and tried to cross Central America to head straight for Cayman, before the start of hurricane season!
Emily‘s track is taking her way down low, where it’s nice and hot, she’s gathering energy, getting ready to pounce! Compare Emily’s Projected Path to the path of Ivan, a record breaking Hurricane in many ways. They’re almost identical.
I think we gotta watch out for Emily! <—– Link to most recent position and projected path

I just left a photo club meeting.
First I felt weird because I was the only single person in the room, everyone else came in couples or groups.
I felt like the only amateur in a room full of pros.
The only one there who doesn’t know anyone else.
I actually didn’t just leave, I fled.
This guy I never met set up half a room of lights and shit. Then he looks right at me and says “who wants to go first?”
Nobody even said what was going on. I said I didn’t want to go first.
Intimidating.
I go up there first and he tries to plug this half a room of lights into my camera.
None of the shit works. My Nikon D-100 doesn’t even have that kind of connector.
Now I’m supposed to take pictures of this girl. Nobody told me.
He puts this other (small) flash on my camera, I say “I’ve got one of these at home, no one told me to bring it.”
The girl asks me what I want her to do. I say “I dunno, say CHEESE!”
The flash doesn’t work.
I say “look, I really don’t want to go first.”
He calls the next person.
I said “take this off my camera.”
He’s trying to plug his half a room of stuff into the next persons camera.
I unplugged his flash and set it down.
I walked to the back of the room.
I check my camera, it seems to work fine.
I picked up my stuff and left.
Social failure.
I felt extreme, way over-intense, intolerable insecurity beyond description.

I can’t wait for the next one!

Just kiddin’
but they want to replace the transmission for $2200 and I probably won’t have it done. I saw a 4Runner for sale on the way to work, I called and they want ten grand for it. 1997. hmmmm
I have a rental car now. A teeny tiny P.O.S.
What I’m thinking is “simplify your life, just ride your bicycle, be one with nature”. Then I think“Ya right! be for real, How’re you going to carry around a rebreather and sidemounts and scuba gear? on your bicycle?” (I talk to myself like this all the time). Next I say say to myself, I say “you just need your basic no frills transportation.”

What do you think? Just a ‘lil pickup truck like this?!??!!

Actually, there’s a remote possibility I can get a transmission out of a junked one that has been sitting for a long time. I sure don’t want to spend any of my savings buying a new car.
Time will tell!! Soon!

Woke up this morning, took the dog out and was surprised by the red sky. It had rained and there were a few tall red smokestack clouds against a blue blue sky.
Red sky at morning, sailor take warning, red sky at night, sailors delight.
Last night I spent a lot of time working on a post, it came out really well. It was completely finished and posted but I went to make some minor changes and got that stupid non specific warning about cannot publish post. I then selected ignore errors but the post was messing up the whole blog, so I deleted it.
I decided I’ll hitchhike to work. Last time I got picked up by a girl named Carol and we had a pretty good conversation. As usual, I got out of her car without asking for her number, and have been kicking myself in the ass for it ever since. Maybe she’ll pick me up again. She had a very nice toenail paint job.
7-11, that’s what the date thing says on my watch. That’s my birthday. Whoo-pee! Hopefully nobody I see today knows and I can make it through the day without being hassled.
I feel kind of aggressive today. I hope everyone justs leaves me alone.
I want to go diving.

My Vehicle clik to enlarge

Yesterday my vehicle started messing up, when I am driving down the road it slowwwwly seems to go into neutral. Yep, you guessed it, transmission. So today, my mission is get all the scuba gear and other stuff out, put my bicycle in the back, and take it down to the garage, and ride home, stopping by the beach repeatedly. The garage is closed today, but I don’t have time to fool with it in the morning traffic and this way it will be there when they open tomorrow.
I think the transmission filter is clogged, it has fluid, but isn’t flowing properly. I can drive a little, stop, drive a little more and stop. Here is a picture of my car and I, it’s a 1990 Toyota Landcruiser, 2 door (not available in the US), with the straight six engine. I love this car, but worry about how much life it has left in it… When I bought it it had 68000 miles on it, now it has 138000.
Well, gotta go!

I remember when I started this blog, I couldn’t even find anyone else’s page. Then from the dashboard I found, “Blogs of note” from there I would hit the “next blog” button and I could cruise through blogs that way. That’s how I found a lot of blogs I regularly read.

But I kept noticing more and more ads, inactive old blogs, and pages of weird crap.

I have found a better way to travel. I click on a blogs comments, pick an interesting one, and go to that persons blog. From there, I find an interesting coment someone else has made and go to their blog. This way, I jump from cool blog to cool blog and I seldom, if ever, come across any junky ones.

It’s also fun to follow the “tags”. When a person “tags” someone, it’s like they are given an assignment to answer questions or something, and then tag someone else. It travels around and around from one person to another and one can follow the tags in either direction. You find a lot of stuff, and you find loops, that take you around to places you’ve been before. A while ago I followed a tag all the way around to myself! That was cool, things started getting familiar but I was still surprised to see my name and page pop up! (By the way, I tagged Anduin a long time ago but she apparently hasn’t found it yet! (scroll down, way far!!))

When I first started my blog, I was searching out to find out how it was done and what it was all about. Now that I have a circle of friends here whose blogs I regularly read, my circle tends to quit growing, maybe even to shrink. I try to always search for a while for new stuff, as well as maintain my regular “rounds”.

One pitfall is that this tends to make you spend an ever increasing amount of time online, which I do not recommend, almost anything outside is better than being on the computer. If I am online, it is because it is cloudy and/or raining, dark outside, or (don’t tell a soul) I’m at work. Right now it’s cloudy and there’s big waves from the storm that passed, so no beach, no diving.

Its the same on this island, it tends to shrink with time. When I first moved here, I knew only one person. I went out, met people, and got a circle of friends. Then, having a circle of friends, I kinda quit actively looking. Over the years, people from my circle leave the island and they are not replaced. So my circle of friends slowly gets smaller and smaller. One tends to become more and more isolated. I think this happens in larger communities too, but it’s easier recognize it here.

I think it’s important to not let this happen. And it takes ACTION!