2009 Dive Trip

Erin and I were recently lucky enough to spend a week aboard the Turks and Caicos Explorer II dive boat. It was a successful trip packed with 24 dives and numerous sea creature encounters. We're still swaying backwards and forwards and trying to adjust to life back on solid ground.

We're rinsing our dive gear and starting the process of sorting through almost 1000 photos, amalgamating dive data, and plotting GPS locations.

More details to come.

New Mantel

After living in the house for a year, we decided it was finally time to install a mantel in the living room. The fireplace had been built with a marble surround, but no mantel.

We thought it would be really fun to build a mantel using an oak tree that fell down over the summer. Unfortunately, we don't currently have access to the tools needed to turn a massive log into a handcrafted piece of art, so we went to out local fireplace shop, selected a mantel, and placed our order. About two weeks later, the mantel arrived and the installation process began.

Dan handled the installation, I did the painting,
and voila a beautiful new mantel!

Chopping Wood

We had a guest join us on the ranch a couple of weeks ago and we quickly put him to work chopping some wood.

We now have enough wood to keep us going for a while (probably several years at the rate we burn it). But don't worry - there's still plenty left to chop for the next visitors.

The Fallen Tree

A few weeks ago after an especially windy night, we discovered that a huge tree off to the north of the house had fallen over. The tree was about 30 feet long with a circumference of 8-10 feet at the base and needless to say, it made quite a mess. The following photographs were taken during out clean-up effort.

Clean-up required steady nerves, monkey-like tree climbing, and a saw....

It also required some creative positioning in order to tackle hard-to-reach branches...

But at the end of the day the tree was mostly down and we have a fresh stack of logs to turn into firewood.

Waterproof Digital Camera

Canon is soon releasing a waterproof camera, the PowerShot D10.

The specs include:

• 12.1 megapixel.
  
• Waterproof to 33 ft or 10m.
• Cold resistant from 14-104 degrees (F).
• Shockproof from 4 feet.
• 3x optical, 4x digital zoom.
  

This is quite exciting, especially for someone who often finds themselves trying to take photos in wet conditions such as rain or snow, and is also prone to dropping their camera.

The depth rating is not quite enough for scuba diving where depths may reach 100ft, but it's certainly enough for playing in the shallows as well as a variety of other activities.