Wednesday, February 28, 2007


I'm sitting in the same seat I was sitting in almost a week ago, posting on my blog again. I'm on my way back to Cayman Brac, this time just for the day. i am sure that our sound will be better than last time. pretty sure.

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Dodged the bullet-for a while, or, "Beware the Ides Of March!"

My tooth broke, I went to the emergency dentist yesterday and he sent me to another dentist. He made a call and got me an appointment this morning, and I thought I was getting a root canal, what I got was an appointment for a root canal in the middle of March. I've never had a root canal before, and I can't help but thinking of Shakespeare "Beware the Ides Of March!"

Monday, February 26, 2007

Back At Work



I had a good day off on Cayman Brac yesterday. We went to Peters cave, saw the OI Girls friends and had a good but busy day.
We came back this morning and went straight to work from the airport.

Heres a pic of a little kid who was sitting in front of me on the plane. He liked the taking off part best I think.


Cayman Brac Synagogue

went to see the Cayman Brac Synagogue and I attended a service there as well. It is very small and perfect for the Cayman Islands. It was a joy to see after hearing so much about it and not knowing where it was.
Heres a few pictures I took.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Big Time Screw Up

Yesterday, at the Agriculture Show, our sound sucked. I was using a cell phone to send the signal back to the station, and there was a problem with the equipment there, as well as a problem with the audio feed I was getting from the AgriShows stage.
There was a horrible distorted echo at the beginning, for the most important parts of the broadcast, the opening ceremoy and all the speeches by all the politicians.
My cell phone was ringng like crazy, everyong saying " sounds like shit" I need to record this and it's not gooe enough" "The other station sounds crystal clear", and more.
Talk about stress and that sick-in-the-stomach feeling!
In my own defence, I was calling the studio for a solid half hour before and was getting no answer because the announcer was "out". And although I can't blame the announcer in any way, But because they were not answering the phone, I didn't get to do a good sound check on the line from the stage that was giving problems.
It was really bad, that first half hour. The other three and a half, by comparison, weren't too bad. 30899

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Todays a day

I'm here, on the Brac, had a good productive day yesterday. I am looking for todays Agriculture show.
I've got pictures that have been on my camera that need to be transferred to my computer.
Yesterday, a picture that I didn't get was one of a cat drinking out of the swimming pool. There are a couple of hotel cats here. It reminds me of the OI Girls cat, who I wish could be one of these hotel cats. I went looking for her three times and nover saw her. After the OI Girl moved in with me, her old neighbor had the same thing happen, their cat just disappeared. There must be a whole secret society of cats living over there in dogsville.
I still miss Tica the cat.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Birthday

I sitting at the airport in Grand Cayman, getting ready to go to the Brac. I'm glad I'm glad I'm going. I'm working there today and tomorrow. The OI Girl is coming Sunday and we're both coming back Monday morning. I think I said all this yesterday.

Wednesday of next week I'm going back to the Brac for the day.

Today is the OI Girls Birthday. I gave her a half a cup of coffee. And a necklace.

I'm pretty tired of those word verifications. A lot of times I know I get it right and it says I'm wrong. I think blogger has it wrong on their end. Someone has to match up those stupid letter pics with the text, ya know. I think that sometimes they can't read it either.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Yesterday and Tomorrow

Yesterday I worked, first we broadcasted the 40th Annual Agricultural Show. I took my camera and took a lot of pics but I left my camera at home so I can't show you the pics.

Then there was the National Championships Football Finals. We broadcast that and it made for a pretty full day. When I say football, I mean football, not American football, which is completely different.

Tomorrow morning I'm going to Cayman Brac for the weekend. (Work) then I'm coming back Monday, only to go back for the day on Wednesday.

I need to join the frequent flyer club!!

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

Text Twist


Have you ever played the game Text Twist? I have it on my cell phone and play it a lot. I was doing pretty good for a long time, it seemed I could always figure out the word. All of a sudden, I can't. The word just doesn't come to me. Like a piece of my brain went inactive. At the same time, the ability to study went away too. I got a 78% and a 76% on my last two tests. I can pretty much say good-bye to my decent average.
I gotta get my feet back on the ground.

Monday, February 19, 2007

Short but good

I worked Saturday, but it was fairly pleasant. We had a broadcast from East End and we took the long way back around when we were done. So we had a pretty nice island tour and it was OK
But Sunday seemed like Saturday and I'm ready for another day off.
Yesterday the OI Girl and I went to the beach and I didn't wear a hat and my head is red and I have a sunburnt nose. Then in the evening it got cloucy and really cold, so cold it was warmer in the apartment than outside and we opened the windows and there was a good cool breeze blowing though. And it rained. I was out walking the dog and it started raining and I was pretty far from home and it was COLD! We ran back and got pretty wet. How come you can take a dog swimming and give him a rinse 0ff (with no soap) after the beach and he smells fine, but a dog that gets wet from rain smells like a wet dog?

Today is theOI girls first day at work. I'm pretty sure she'll like her new job. I frikkin hope so!

Saturday, February 17, 2007

work on a Saturday

Here I am, at work on a Saturday. Next weekend I'm working on Cayman Brac. I have a ticket for the OI Girl, but I'm not sure she can go, she starts her new job Monday.

Friday, February 16, 2007

Working to get more work.

Well, the OI Girl is back, let me tell you, it is great to see her.
I spent all day yesterday, back and forth with the Port Authority, trying to get them to release some broadcast equipment. first they sent me back to the station to modify some papaerwork, then they rejected the paperwork they had me modify, even though it was exactly what they asked for.
Anyway, I have to go back today and try to finish up. Working to get more work.

I guess nobody understood me joking about feng shui yesterday.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Fing Shoey

Tonight the OI Girl gets back. She's been gone four weeks and two day.
She's been studying Fing Shoey, and she's going to rearrange the furniture when she gets back.
After work tonight I'll be cleaning and then be at the airport at about 7:40.

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Darion

There's a girl at work, our receptionist. She just had a baby about two months ago. Last night I went into work late for an outside broadcast. She was sitting there, waiting for her husband to pick her up and take her home. She had been waiting an hour, like every night, when he is supposed to pick her up. He treats her like shit. He doesn't work, he just fucks off. I always get so mad when I see her waiting every night for him to pick her up.
She acts like you think she's going to act. If you think she's lazy, she's lazy. She acted not-too-bright, but I could see the intelligence in her face when she talked to her childeren. I always knew that if I asked her to do something, she'd get it done, and she always did. I liked her. She is someone who I think grew up being squashed by everyone she knew. Defeated. But she still had the spark in her.

Last night when I saw her, I noticed she looked younger and calmer and more serene than normal. Very relaxed.

This morning, she passed away.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

scatterbrain

This morning I spent almost the whole study time trying to make a math formula work that wouldn't work. There's an example in the text that doesn't come out, the answer they give is not what I get when I enter the same numbers on my calculator. I guess they think nobody's going to check. There is a test question using the same formula and the answer I get isn't even close to any of the four choices given. Fortunately, it's a three part question and the other two parts come out spot-on, giving me what I hope is a lucky guess. I guess I'll have to call the school today and get them straightened out, put them back on the right track, help them see the light, if you know what I mean.
It is very frustrating, and I hope it doesn't reflect how my day is going to be. Today I will be going to customs to get my 640 pound box.

This is a picture I took last Saturday, it is a wrecked ship and a not wrecked ship.

I rekkon I'll be buying the OI Girls airline ticket today. Allegedly her new boss will email it to her today. I'm broke, she's broke, everybody's broke.

A lot of days I can't think of anything to post here, today I could go on and on.

The coffee was very good this morning.

Monday, February 12, 2007

Look


Well, I switched to the new blogger this morning, it seems to have worked ok. It seems faster. I don't like that it says "KY" under my name in my profile, before it said "Cayman Islands"

Yesterday I had a pretty good day. I went with a builder to my property and he said it was a good piece of land and quoted me a price at the upper end of the expected range. (the last builder I talked to quoted me double what I considered acceptable, and more than double what I would pay). So now, I'm going back to the architect and officially purchase the plans/blueprints. then I went to the beach. I think my main dive buddy left the island for a while. He said he was going to, I just didn't pay attention to when.

It was very hard to wake up this morning. I took a couple asprin to thin my blood and breathed some pure O2 from one of my "empty" rebreather bottles and I feel a lot better. O2 is some good stuff, too bad air only has 20%. Staying up late and waking up early sucks.

This should be a very busy week. I will be starting some transmitter work as soon as I track down a 640 LB package that should have arrived last Thursday.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

nada mucho

Today I am meeting with a potential builder for my house. Then hopefully diving or beach, then I'm working tonight.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

Lets Go Already!


I'm ready to be done with this online course I've been taking. I have about 29 lessons left to go out of 95. At first I was knocking out a lesson a day, then it was a lesson every other day, now they're lasting a week or so. It's that they're getting more and more difficult, and my motivation and concentration are going down.
And the math. . . I make the math more difficult than it is.

I get up early to study and put in my time, but i feel like I don't accomplish much, like, after two hours I feel like I could've done what I did in 10 minutes.
I just want to finish!

Friday, February 09, 2007

Freediving Fins

I'm glad it's Friday, it's kind of hard to be here at work today, like said yesterday, It felt like Friday then. I'm working Saturday and Sunday, just for a few hours each day.

The OI Girl got her work permit approved! She should be here next week.

When she gets here, I'm going to teach her how to freedive. She asked me to teach her. I'm working on getting her some fins. I'm getting a pair of footpockets in her size. I own both Mares Attacks and Sporasub Radical freedive fins. I'll put the blades from one of those in her footpockets.
I got some replacement blades for my soon-to-be empty footpockets. The Dive Shop had some c4 blades at a very low price. I've been eyeballing them for a long time. I got them yesterday and now I have:

C4 Carbon Fiber Freedive fins.

All have interchangable blades and I've been after some C4's for a long time! The C4's are basically designed to go straight down and straight up, while the others are more suitable for snorkeling and freediving.

On Ebay right now, there is a Monofin for sale, I'd like to have one of those someday!!!

I'll be glad when The OI Girl gets here!

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Thursday feels like Friday

Almost every Thursday I feel like it's Friday, then I keep exeriencing unpleasant "jolts" as I remind myself again and it's Thursday. My body thinks it's Friday, and keeps convincing my mind it's Friday. I get all excited about the day off tomorrow and then realise I'm working.

Then they come tell me I'm working Saturday too.

It seems like all my shirts are disappearing. I'm not loosing them, I'm not taking them off and leaving them anywhere. They're disapearing in the house somehow.

For Christmas/Hanukka, I bought the OI Girl a Yoga DVD. Yesterday I watched it. I didn't try any of it, mind you, I just watched. It was so painful looking I didn't even make it all the way through.
YOW!

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Pissing On The Porch

I feel sorry for that astronaut girl, things are looking really bad for her. She's got some big time premeditation and preparation to account for.

Let me get it straight, she found out the other girl was flying to Orlando, so she got in her car, and made it there as fast as the plane?

Anyway, she's probably sitting in jail thinking, "Oboy, I fucked up. How could I ever have thought like I was thinking to get me here? My problems were small and my life was great until yesterday. What was I thinking?" It's a hard lesson in perspective.

Before it all started, she was probably spending a lot of time alone, delving deeper and deeper into bad reasoning and insanity. Insanity which she came out of when she got arrested.


When I joined the Navy (in 1979) I went to boot camp at North Chicago. There was a guy in my boot camp company from a town about 3 miles away. I was a big doper in those days, and two Saturday nights in a row, he and I and one other guy snuck out at night, climbed the fence, and met some of his friends and partied. The second Saturday, we got a quarter pound of marijuana and hid it off base under some railroad tracks, saving it for when we got out of boot camp. Later, someone found some pot in the bathroom, and although it wasn't ours (I don't think), there was a big investigation and many people told NIS about us climbing the fence, and coming back drunk. We got busted big time. I thought my life was ruined. I thought I was going to get kicked out of the Navy. I don't know why I didn't. Any time sooner or later, I would have. I rekkon the military was swinging between Viet Nam rules and the "Zero Tolerance" policy that came out soon after we got busted.
Fresh out of high school and busted in the Navy. I thought I failed my whole life instantly, barely after I left my parents and got on my own, I ruined everything.
What a fuckup I was. The shame.

I spent 17 weeks in an 8 week boot camp, and I know someone, somewhere, saved my ass from The Big Chicken Dinner, The BCD, Bad Conduct Discharge.

Anyway, I bet the astronaut girl feels like I felt.
End of the world.
Except for her, it probably is.

Another time, I was about 3 years old, I peed in the neighbors carpark, on thier steps. At the time, it seemed like a really good idea, I could save myself a trip inside the house, I could blame it on the dog. Nobody'd think it was me! When they said the dog ran away weeks ago, I remember thinking hmmmmm, I haven't seen that dog in a long time. . . . Same thing. . . .
Doomsday.
Ruination.

I had to scrub their stairs with a brush and a bucket of soapy water.

Maybe it'll work out for the astronaut girl, I hope it does. Maybe she'll come out of this better than when she went in, but I'm afraid she's too old to be learning what I learned at 3 years old and again in boot camp:
Sometimes you gotta stop, and ask yourself,
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?"

My life today is damn good, but I can mess it up quick, I'm aware of that. It only takes a second to piss on the porch.

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

Multi post

Yesterday I climbed the tower to hang a spare antenna. I got blisters on the palms of both hands and it doesn't look too bad, but it stings!

I have a broadcast tonight so today is a split shift. I need some beach time!

I'm kind of sad today because the OI Girl has been gone a month. Four Tuesdays. What am I going to do if her work permit is denied?

Monday, February 05, 2007

Broken Traditions!


Every year, our receptionist and I bet
ONE DOLLAR

on the super bowl.
Every single year, she has won.
Until this year! Whoo HOOO!
I won the Super Bowl bet
For the
FIRST TIME!!!

Also, I won $5 from a guy in our sports department!

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Happy Anniversary To ME!

I've been living in the Cayman Islands for Ten Years now! I arrived to live on February 4th 1997. I have loved every minute of it! I came here first on vacation in July of 1996 and fell in love with Cayman instantly. I didn't want to leave! I went back to the US, sold almost everything I owned and was living here six months later.
Thanks to those who made it possible!
I hope to stay forever!

Saturday, February 03, 2007

Saturday Non-Subject

I was sound asleep last night when I was awakened by a loud knocking on the door. It was a fellow employee, telling me we were off the air. It was a little before midnight. Everyone had been trying to call but I didn't hear my phone at all. I got up and dressed, put the dog in the car, went to work, got my tools and keys, and went to the transmitter site. I have a weird problem, I think it's an intermittent relay. It was easy to fix, but the difficulty lays in finding the cause. I replaced the relay and if it screws up again, I'll replace the other one. My dog hates the transmitter room.
Anyway, I got home after one AM and listened to some shortwave for a while and went to sleep. Now I am awake and drinking coffee but haven't studied. And it's hard to study because my schedule says now is not the time for studying.
Today I wanted to go to the beach but it's cloudy.

Friday, February 02, 2007

There's A Moon In The Sky . . .

click to super-size this pic!
It's called the Moon!
Name that tune!
I took this picture last night, I found that the lens of my little Canon Camera fits neatly in the eyepiece of my binoculars. It was a very beautiful, perfect full moon.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

First Time

Yesterday, I was driving home around sunset, after working the split shift. I considered stopping to swim the half mile, but didn't because it was almost dark.
I should have.
When I got home, there was this "dude" in our apartment parking lot. He had one of those little mini racer cars with the ghetto-blaster-super-stereo. I really didn't think much of it, he didn't seem to be doing anything wrong, except for annoying too-loud music.
I went in, and put the dawg on his leash for a walk. When we came out two minutes later, the "dude" was walking towards my neighbors apartment, with my neighbor who had pulled up while I was inside. My dog and I walked past the "dude" and my neighbor like normal, but as soon as we were passed, my dog did a quick U turn and bit the "dude" in the back of the leg, at the bottom of his calf.
I couldn't believe it! I said my dogs name in such a way that he went over on his back, feet up, as passive as a dog can get. I hit my dog and yelled at him. Then I apologized to the "dude" and made sure he was OK. Then I yanked the dog back inside and kicked him in the butt when he hesitated going through the door. First time I ever kicked my dog. I was so mad and the dog was so scared he peed on the floor, another first time.
It didn't really hurt the guy, it didn't break the skin or make him bleed. I guess my dog was watching him from the window before I arrived and didn't like him or the music.
Now what? I can't trust my dog any more?
If I had stopped for that swim, it wouldn't have happened.