Black Rhombus

I've gotten all of the videos uploaded to YouTube, & all of the photos uploaded here.  Friday nite pretty much sucked.  There was no power, & Drew & I spent a good deal of the evening in waist-deep water trying to save Irie from bashing herself to bits against the boat lift motors. As you can see in the video, the water level was such that she'd slipped her starboard mooring lines, & was getting beaten in by the storm surge.  The video below is of one of the boats we saw float past us on its way upstream.  Keep in mind that the water you're seeing is usually a very calm, very small creek.  Both ours & the neighbors' docks are fully submerged.

You can see the rest of the videos here , & the photos here . Needless to say, I've got some fiberglass work to do.  I don't envy the cleanup job my dad's gonna have to deal with this weekend.

Well, it’s finally over.  Drew & I successfully passed our PADI certification this past weekend in beautiful downtown Lake Rawlings, VA .  It was hot, there were a ton of people there, & the water wasn’t as clear as I imagined it would be, but it was worth it.  Next time we go on vacation somewhere nice, Rebecca & I will finally be able to dive somewhere together.  Thanks to Drew, who went through the class w/me as my dive buddy, & put up with my ear problems all weekend.  Thanks to Drew, Janet, Mandy, Fab, Devon, Johnnie, Matty, Leena, Kurt & Rebecca for the dive class as my birthday present.  Yes, the class was two months ago, but we finally passed.

I was able to make use of our underwater camera housing (another previous group bday gift!); checkout the rest of the photos here .

Oh & be sure to wish Matty a happy bday today… the latest member of the old-man club

The only thing I can see to disagree with on this woman's summarization of  the current situation with regards to the clash between Islam & the west is that I don't think you can blanket-categorize every Muslim in this way.  Just the same as you can't lump every Christian into the "born-again-televangelist" category.  She makes a hell of a point, though…