Cathedral

My motivation has been lacking recently, in many different areas of my life, which is why I still have a couple of Hawaii posts planned a month after we got home, though I will admit, writing about the vacation, helps keep it present in my mind, like something that actually happened and not the dream it feels like most days.

One Sunday morning, my feller and I were up early for some diving in Maui, and we passed a church already holding services, and I felt a pang that I wouldn’t be in church that day. And I decided to spend some time in worship while under the water. Appropriately enough, that was the first day we dove off Lana’i, and we got to visit the First Cathedral.

On the boat ride to the island, a huge pod of dolphins swam alongside us. We stopped the boat and enjoyed them for maybe half an hour. It was amazing. There were so many dolphins surfacing and swimming, completely surrounding the boat, and there were many adorable little babies. One little guy kept FLINGING himself out of the water and flipping around in sheer joy for being alive. It was amazing, and I wish I could show you all how awesomely cool it was, but the dolphins were too fast; we got no pictures. It was one of those times when you look at the world around you and marvel at God’s creation, and I wanted to be jumping for joy with that baby dolphin.

The Cathedral was magical, and looking at the pictures of it now, it reminds me of Aerial’s grotto in the Little Mermaid. It was beautiful and totally worth the boat ride out to Lana’i. The next day, we were back out there for the Second Cathedral, whose big attraction is a huge growth of albino black coral that looks like a chandelier. Also, it’s much larger than the First Cathedral, so there more arches and tunnels to explore. It was epically cool.

Diving in Oahu

Getting ready for Hawaii required hours of planning, and since my feller had a lot going on at work which kept him occupied all day, most of the planning for activities while we were there fell to me. Which is not always my favorite part of vacation. By which I mean, I kind of hate PLANNING stuff. But I spent a ton of time researching diving companies on Yelp and checking out websites and calling places and figuring out the schedule and and and.

And I found this diving place in Oahu that had great reviews on Yelp or at least decent reviews and for God’s sakes after awhile, after you’ve looked at SIX MILLION businesses on Yelp and checked out their websites and called them and they all have BASICALLY the same reviews and similar schedules, so it comes to a point where the price is the only thing doing the talking. And how nice people are on the phone. Surly people don’t get my business (like the one lady who told me not to bother with a nose piercing if you have any allergies, to you, my allergic nose that has been pierced since 2005 says Eff You).

Which is basically how I wound up planning on using Rainbow Scuba for our Oahu diving, though I was a bit worried when they told me their boat was in dry dock; however, I was assured that it would be fine and they would be able to work something out for us. Which is why I was so shocked when I called them the day we arrived to arrange our dives, and I was told that Oops! Their boat was in dry dock and there was nothing they could do for us. And I was so shocked that I just said thank you and hung up the phone.

And immediately, FRANTICALLY, started Yelping more diving companies and began the process of calling them. THANK GOD, the first company I called, while not being able to accommodate us, gave us Captain Bruce’s number, who SERIOUSLY, NO JOKE, saved our Oahu leg.

Mark (or possibly Mike) bent over backwards to hook us up with two AMAZING days of diving. He was understanding about our inexperience and made sure he had a scuba instructor for us on our first dive, which happened to be a 90 foot deep night dive. We hit up the Mahi wreck and then hit the LCU wreck, and saw some AMAZING little critters.

They were SO amazing, and we got to see the LCU again the next day.

We also visited the Makaha Caverns and saw more turtles and so many fish, and I saw my first little eel poking his head out of the reef.

I seriously, honestly, no way can express how AWESOME Captain Bruce was for us. They were understanding and accommodating and patient and wonderful with a couple of newbies. They saved the first leg of our trip, and I am so appreciative for everything they did for us. Awesome, and completely worth the hour drive from Waikiki.

(Also, my Flickr photos were all taken by my feller and are in no order whatsoever. Sorry about that.)

Scuba Diving

So I’m in Hawaii, which is awesome, and I’m typing this on my phone which is less awesome, but thank God for the Droid keyboard, and I’ve been thinking about scuba diving a lot, mostly while underwater with nothing better to do, and it seems to me that diving is kind of a crazy thing and crazy cool.  Because I realized the other day that people are often all “yeah, diving.  It’s cool.  Swimming with fishes,” like it ain’t no thang, except what they don’t really tell you is HOLY SHIT, SWIMMING WITH FISHES.  LOOK AT ALL THE FISH!!  (You know what’s a bad idea to do while diving, ESPECIALLY when it’s dark?  Look out into the vasty ocean and think about how big it is and how many critters are out there that you can’t see and that can swim faster than you and eat you.  That is not a smart thing to do.  Just focus on what’s in front of you.)

My feller’s been getting some AMAZING pictures, and I cannot WAIT to see today’s after visiting an awesome reef with probably thousands of fishes, and I’m looking forward to sharing some of those with y’all when I’m back on a real computer.  I’ve been posting quick updates mostly at Twitter, though I must warn you that my Twitter stream is sometimes less than family friendly.

Diving is totally magical and surreal to be essentially spying of fish and turtles and spotted eagle rays and sharks and shit in their home. We’ve done a ton of different, cool diving at night, during the day, off boats, from shore, on scooters, seeing wrecks and reefs and SO MANY FISH.  The feller has actually had requests from people for pictures of the land, we’ve been doing so much diving, which was the main point of this trip, but we are going to get some land stuff in before we go, and there’s so much to do and so much we want to do, we’re gonna be busy, busy bees for the rest of our week here.  We’re having a great time.

MON-EH, it’s a gas

I’m going to Hawaii in three months, and my biggest concern, besides trying to make my wobbly bits less wobbly, is money. This is pretty much going to be the most major vacation I’ve ever been on; my family didn’t take a vacation that didn’t include pitching a tent and not showering for a week until I was in high school, and in college, I spent so much time working hard for the money that vacations were practically out of the question. Most of the major trips I have been on were school related, not that I’m knocking that! I had a GREAT time in NY, DC and Italy on those school trips. This trip is a Big Fucking Deal for me, is what I’m saying. (Not that I’m going to go all Crazy and have really high expectations or devolve into a crying mess when things don’t go as planned or anything; I’m just REALLY EXCITED like a hyper puppy with a new toy, like Sirius in that one Shoebox Project (the relevant part starts pg 27) where the Marauders are thinking like their animal selves (and I TOTALLY just outed myself as a COMPLETE nerd), so DON’T WORRY.)

And I’ve become kind of obsessed with finding ways to save money. Like if I work three more hours a week, I earn an additional $60 before taxes. Or getting cash for the farmer’s market from my bank instead of the convenience store ATM saves me $4 a week. Or getting 1 DVD from Netflix instead of two saves me $6 a month. And while all those little things are great, more of a dent would be better. Like, I want to be one of those people who never spends money on toiletries. I’ve been reading Get Rich Slowly recently, and he has a ton of great information and resources and get posts and stuff, like this lady who lived on $12,000.00 a year (this article has A TON of interesting links). And I have a list of other blogs and posts to read, like Frugal Babe, The Krazy Coupon Lady and Common Sense with Money. I’m gonna start buying the Sunday paper for the coupons and paying more attention to mailers because if I can put a little bit of work into it and save some money, it’s totally worth it.

Additionally, I’ll be doing a STUFF purge. I’m gonna try to sell the books I will never read (bye bye The Two Towers and 1984) because even $5 for a stack of books helps; that’s a cheap lunch. I wish I knew of a place to sell used clothes close by (and also, that I had nice enough clothes to be worth selling) because I have SO MANY shirts and pants and skirts and STUFF that I don’t wear!

Also, I need to put that $35 currently living in my sock drawer in the bank.