Non Fluffy Wicca

Today's Underwater pictures are at this happy fun link.

Yet another beautiful day on Bonaire. I don't quite understand how anyone could have a "bad" day on such a fabulous island as this, even if it pours with rain. Today I switched to wide angle while Wes shot macro. We went out on the reef in front of Habitat (which we still think is the finest reef on Bonaire) for a time, then went out to the Salt Pier with Netto. Netto is one of the divemasters who has been here forever, knows everyone and everything about the island, and is kind and open to tourists. Most Bonarians are quite nice to your face, but would rather not deal with you if they don't have to. Rather similar to Americans in that way :-). Netto, however, is an exception, sharing with us all kinds of interesting information on island life, island regulations, laws, etc. One of the Bonarian sayings, "don't hide and throw stones" is quite an interesting one. He explained how when you hide and throw stones, they can still tell where the stones came from and know who did it.

We had a lovely dive at Salt Pier where I had a French Angel who must have been a professional scuba model because she would go to every place I pointed to and pose. At the end of the dive, we became part of a bait ball. That was a truly interesting sight. Thousands upon thousands of anchovies, swimming all together in a circle. As we came up to them, they surrounded us, still swimming in circles. It was truly beautiful. As we climbed out of the water, we found the pelicans were swarming, getting ready for an anchovie feast. It was a lot of fun.

When we got back, we barely had enough time to shower and get ready for our trip to Casablanca, an Argentinean restaurant with a MASSIVE amount of really great food. It was hard to believe the quantity of chicken, steak, ribs, blood sausage, etc. that we had. The meal was great, the company was wonderful (Luv Monkeys, Eli, Dan, and Karen the divemaster and her husband Bud.) and we ate entirely too much and fell into bed for a very nice sleep.

Posted by mikki at 01:02 PM | Permalink

Today's underwater photos are right here

Another happy fun day on Bonaire. I could get use to this. Went out to two dive sites today - Windsock and Small Wall. Both were beautiful. Windsock is by the airport (go figure) and had some interesting cleaning stations, LOTS of juvenile spotted drums, and lots of eels. Small Wall had two frogfish in the same coral head. That was really cool.

We got to see our friend Walt, the tech diving instructor who was our rebreather teacher. Really nice guy and fun. Our other pal, Jason, was not on the island this week, and we missed him. However, we will survive and continue to have fun despite these little stumbling blocks :-)

Silly me got too much sun yet again, so I had to take a long afternoon nap. Nap was broken up by Wessipooh wishing me to get my arse out of bed to go to dinner at Capricios, our favorite restaurant on the island. It is an Italian restaurant that has some of the best wine in the Caribbean, having won the Wine Gourmet award every year since 2002 or something like that. Anyway, the food as always was fabulous, the deserts more so, and the wine, even the "house wine" was yummy.

Posted by mikki at 01:01 PM | Permalink

So here we are on the island of Bonaire, located approximately 75 miles off the coast of Venezuela, part of the "ABC" islands of Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao, "owned" by the Netherlands. This beautiful island is a diver's paradise, however, although diving is one of the main income sources for the island's economy, the government is highly aware that the future must be preserved. They take a very active role in ensuring that the underwater world is as strong as it can be, constantly patrolling dive sites and looking for signs of stress in the corals, critters, etc. They have no problem closing a dive site that is under stress, and allowing it up to 10 years to recover.

Despite our Bungling Baboon in Chief's stupidity regarding global warming, the effects can be seen SO clearly under water. A few extra degrees in water temperature, and you begin to kill coral. It becomes "bleached," devoid of all color. Dead coral can't support the symbiotic life that is the essence of the underwater world. And, unless we forget, land based life depends on underwater life, and vice versa.

Life is precious, whether it be the mantis shrimp I annoyed by taking pictures, the octopus peeking out at us from his rock, the cats that hang out here at Captain Don's Habitat who get taken care of by Karen the divemaster who buys their food and medical care with her own funds, and has for longer than most people can remember, or even the goofy people on the dive boats, life is still precious.

Nowhere else in the world is as unspoiled and close to nature as the ocean. There are no roads, no human habitats cut from the earth, no vegetation being trampled underfoot. And nowhere on the planet do I feel closer to Goddess than here. Even when the critters try to eat me :-)

Posted by mikki at 10:08 AM | Permalink

Today's underwater photos are at this happy link

As usual, we really don't want to leave the Island, although our time is growing short. I am recovering from the whatever bite, and was actually able to do a bit of diving, which is always a good thing. Did a boat dive and did not die, although I DID jump in without my weight belt. (Gee, why can't I descend.... I wonder what's going on.... ooooops). As always a quick trip back to the boat to ask nicely for one of them to hand my my belt yielded much better results than hanging out on the surface all day :-) I got to be the day's "disaster diver." *snicker*

Today's boat dive was at a site called "Knife" on Klein Bonaire, which had been closed for many years and recently reopened. The Bonarians take preservation of their coral reefs VERY seriously, and periodically close sites that look like they have taken damage through storms, overdiving, boat problems, etc. in order for them to recover. Although there are many dive sites on Bonaire, it is always interesting and fun to see one that we have never seen before.

Every time we come here, we seem to spend time plotting and planning how we can eventually LIVE here. We have all kinds of ideas in the works, and we will see if one day they become more than dreams.

Tuesday night is lobster night at the Lion's Den (the restaurant next door to Habitat where we much prefer to eat :-)) and we had a magnificent dinner with John, Deane, Eli, and Dan. They are all fun people who are good to dive with.

Only 2 1/2 dive days to go :(. Bummer central. You can't dive to close to flying, since the change in pressure can possibly do bad things to any residual nitrogen in your system, and you may get bent on the airplane. Not a fun thing to do, so we will be good and follow all DAN (Divers Alert Network) guidelines like good little people who wish to live a long time :-).

Posted by mikki at 01:00 PM | Permalink

Today's underwater link is right here You may notice that today there are not as many different photos. There is good reason for that. I spent the entire day, except for a short jaunt to town for fluids, either in bed or in the bathroom. You see, I was the victim of some type of bite overnight.

The locals aren't sure if it was a spider, a scorpion, or whatever, but whatever it happened to be, it knocked me for a LOOP. Add to this a certain person's snoring all night, and I had no sleep and was very sick. The bites on my hand were itchy, large, and starting to have icky dead spots in them. I couldn't keep down any food or liquid for most of the day, but I am much better now, thank you.

Hopefully I can find the dive doctor tomorrow to make sure I'm ok before hopping into dah water again. Happy bubbles to all, and to all a good night.

Posted by mikki at 12:59 PM | Permalink

We are in Bonaire, a fabulous island in the Netherlands Antilles, located off the coast of Venezuela. I will post some of our stuff from my mundane blog here to the witchy blog because it's so fabulous being underwater.

Today's underwater pictures are right here

The slow season continues, as we are preparing for our 2pm boat dive. Today was mostly just relaxing, peaked with a moment of uh... almost pissing ourselves :-). Wes' water glass spontaneously exploded, glass and water everywhere. Now I know that my reflexes are not those of James Bond, because I didn't immediately dive under the table in fear that a sniper with a silencer was taking aim. Although I was rather tempted to raise a sign saying "We are really CANADIANS." :-).

It is indeed strange being here on the anniversary of 9/11, since we were actually HERE on 9/11 itself. You can see what happened that day if you are interested at this handy link. Today, on the other hand, our biggest fear was avoiding the "disaster family" who is on our 2pm boat.

As it was, the disaster family stayed away from us, the dive was beautiful, and you can see the pictures on the portal page at Cyberdive.org

After a fabulous dinner at Lion's Den (I had the shrimp and lobster combo) we went off to attempt to collect the Luv Monkeys at the airport. I say attempt because when we arrived, we hung out and hung out and hung out, until a nice taxi driver told us that the flight had not left San Juan yet. When we went back to the hotel to check the information on the Internet, we found that the flight is SCHEDULED to leave at 10 pm, which would get it into Bonaire around 12:13 am. This means that the Luv Monkeys sat in the airport in San Juan from approximately 11 am until 10 pm. American Eagle SUCKS. Just plain SUCKS. *sigh*

Posted by mikki at 12:59 PM | Permalink

Today we lost an American Icon, albeit one we might want to throw things at when he was on tv. Gilligan, the Skipper's "Little Buddy," perpetual inhabitant of Gilligan's Island, passed away today.

All of us over the age of 30 or so have memories of Gilligan's Island, whether it be re-runs or even those first run programs. One of my personal favorite memories was when I worked for WMUR-TV, Channel 9 in Manchester, NH - the seemingly "All Gilligan, All The Time" station (when we weren't doing the comedy News 1/2 hours :-)). As Gilligan was walking across the island, and I was passing through the control room on the way back upstairs to the newsroom located in the attic, our chief engineer, Maurice Wynn, was under the audio control board, yanking wires out like nobody's business. Unfortunately, one of the wires he pulled was the one that made the booth microphone "live." For those who have never heard of a "booth microphone," the booth was where you put the actual human called the announcer, who said things like "this is Channel 9, WMUR-TV, Manchester" when you didn't have enough technical capability to use recorded station identifications or tag lines to commercials. Anyway, the booth mike was live, as Dave Meuss said all too clearly, "What the FUCK is he DOING?"

The phones lit up (all three lines) with people whose small children had heard the evil words during such a wholesome and cherished bastion of clean television as Gilligan's Island. To make it worse, our hero himself, happened to be on screen at the time. And thus, the Gilligan's Island audience in Manchester, NH in approximately 1980 lost its innocence.

Gilligan, Goddess-speed on your next journey. Just make sure it's not a three hour tour.

Posted by mikki at 03:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

CNN just ran yet another story about people who refused to leave their homes because the evacuators could not or would not take the pets along with them. Before condemning people for not evacuating when they "should have," think about all the thousands upon thousands of pets that have been left behind to starve or die of lack of clean water. Think about how much you care for your familiars, your loyal pets, these parts of your family that mean so much to you. Then decide whether you could leave them behind.

As I write this, Bushi, one of our dogs came over and laid his head on my knee, looking up with big brown eyes as if to say "hell no, you can't leave me. I'm too damn CUTE.

To a lot of people, their pets ARE their family. They are loyal, loving, and would do anything they could to help you. When you are called upon to help THEM, can you just turn your back and leave? I couldn't. We have 3 parrots, 2 cats, and now 10 dogs, and I am not prepared to leave any of them behind if we are told to evacuate.

This pair who didn't leave were twin nuns who would not leave their parrot and their dog. Rescuers could not take the animals as well, so the Sisters refused to go. It took many days for people to come back, but they did come back, and they took their animals with them.

If the ASPCA had the resources to get all of those animals and house them and feed them and take care of them while their humans evacuate, that would be one thing. Unfortunately, humane societies are strapped for cash during the best of times because we, as a society, treat our animals so damn poorly that there HAS to be organizations to take care of them when we do not. They're doing the best they can, but unless we help them dramatically, we can't be certain they can handle what is clearly our responsibility to handle ourselves.

Bottom line is that if you are going to evacuate people, you MUST make allowances for them to take their animals with them. Otherwise, many will choose to stay. We should not condemn them when they make that choice.

Posted by mikki at 12:51 PM | Permalink

When not busy making statements about murder, Pat Robertson has set up this lovely "Operation Blessing." Hopefully they are really helping, and taking care of people, but given Mr. Robertson's track record, it would likely be a much better bet to donate to secular organizations like the Red Cross, despite their screw ups in New York.

Posted by mikki at 09:19 AM | Permalink