Trip to Ogunquit and last few weeks

So my plan to blog more often kind of fell apart. The problem is free time, and also the amount of time that I spend on the computer at work. By the time I get home, the last thing I want to do is log on and stare at a screen some more.

Ogunquit was a beautiful, charming town. The only problem was the hills... for this flatlander who is quite pregnant, they were a lot for me!

This was the view on our beach day. We had pretty much the place to ourselves! The water was freezing, but Jay jumped in anyway. I did manage to get in to about halfway up my thighs, but my legs were numb when I got out. The water there was unbelievably clear and beautiful.

I got to pick my dinner!

This is a view of the coast a little farther south

Another beach view from Marginal Way

One day we went to get ice cream at the Scoop Deck, where you also get a free pickle if you're pregnant. Their ice cream cones were HUGE and Jay and I both ended up throwing them away halfway through. Yes, it's true. I wasted ice cream.

This was the place that we stayed, Unit 303 in the Lookout Condos. We got to sleep on a Queen sized Murphy Bed, which was pretty cool. However, I was very happy to get back to my King Size mattress at home.

I finally had to take off my wedding ring while we were on vacation. One of the days was pretty warm and my fingers were swelling up. A bought a cheap band from Amazon when I got home because my finger felt naked. It's 1.5 sizes larger that my wedding band, so hopefully I can wear it for the rest of my pregnancy. It is pretty loose right now.

The weather was rainy and kind of crappy the day before we left, which drew some surfers down to the water. We spent a few minutes trying to watch them, but after seeing surfers in Coolangatta, it was pretty disappointing. Obviously not on par with the surfers Down Under. 

Wedding selfie from a wedding in NoVA at Zion Springs. Although the food and music were great, the layout was horrible. They only had two unisex bathrooms available for all of their 150+ wedding guests. So I spent the bulk of the evening waiting in line for the restrooms. It was literally a 20+ minute wait each time. So that sucked. The dance floor area was also open to the elements and was a brick patio, which I found a bit odd. 

And my first attempt at making a cake from scratch went awesomely. My mother came over this weekend and for dessert, I made Julia Childs's chocolate & almond cake from her book Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The recipe can be found here. Yes, it's true. Until this weekend, I had never made a cake from scratch before (except for a pumpkin cheesecake that I made probably ten years ago). I'll tell ya what, the recipe says that it serves 6-8 people, but there's not much of that cake left.

I have a little less than two months left of my pregnancy. I'm tired of being pregnant for sure and am in some ways eager to get it over with, but I'm also rather apprehensive about becoming a mother, oh, and that whole process of getting the baby out. That's rather terrifying. We are also not done the nursery, which we have finally decided to decorate in a Star Wars theme, partially because of some awesome posters we found on vacation. Originally we hadn't planned on painting, since the room is already blue... but it's not a very nice blue. We are going with the color baby elephant, same color as this laundry room post. I will post photos when it's all done.

That's all for now, I suppose. Perhaps I'll have some time this weekend for posting, since it's a long weekend!

Wordless Wednesdays

Happy Thanksgiving!

I posted this photo from the Pub the night before Thanksgiving. I honestly don't even remember doing it.

On Wednesday night I checked off an item from an earlier 101 list item - #78 - Sing karaoke with a local celebrity. I got to sing Bohemian Rhapsody with Niki Barr. I of course wanted to sing my go-to, I touch myself, but she wanted to sing that awesome monstrosity.  

Check out her new band, The Last Year... and their new single, Sugar. I can't get enough of it!

Actually, while you're at it, go buy the album. It's awesome.

I still haven't seen the new band live, but I'm hoping to check them out soon. 

Wordless Wednesdays (kinda)

Friend at Lake Rawlings

We also made friends with Monkey, the camp dog

AOW Trio

This is what happens to your tent pegs when you try to pound them into solid rock

My Open Water Certification card FINALLY showed up on Tuesday, now that I have my Advanced Open Water Certification. I doubt I'll see my AOW card before we leave for the DR.

This SCUBA thing is getting out of hand

So we have all of our equipment except for our tanks and weights.

The rationale was that if we have our own equipment, we will dive more and won't have to spend money renting everything. We'll also be used to our own equipment and be safer divers that way. By my calculations, it will take us about 14 days of diving to make up for the cost.

Depending on a few things, I would like to take a long weekend trip to Florida sometime between January and March and either dive with the manatees or finally take another trip down to Key West and stop in Key Largo for a few dives on our way down. Then of course dive a few wrecks in Key West. We can transfer our credit card rewards to Southwest and get a much better deal for flights than what the rewards mall site is offering. So at least our flights will essentially be free, and we can also use rewards points to pay for hotels. Or use Hotwire or Priceline.

Of course, we will also be diving next month when we go to the Dominican Republic. We're planning to do a two tank dive in Rio San Juan with Merlin Divers one day. I would really love to dive the Zingara while we're there, but it's below 100 feet. Even though I'll technically be an Advanced Open Water Diver after this weekend, that doesn't mean that I should be diving that deep yet. I think that we'll probably try out the Airport Wall dive, which goes to 80 feet. 

I found one of the Merlin instructor's blogs... I think that we will get along quite well with that group. They have an after-dive bar at their shop. I know that our resort is all-inclusive, but I think we'll probably enjoy having a few beverages with these folks.

That's enough dive talk for one day... we are off to Lake Rawlings this afternoon for camping and our AOW certification class. I'm bringing our favorite divemaster Cathy a bottle of wine for putting up with us.

One final thought: how gorgeous have the sunsets been this week?

Wordless Wednesdays

Another fun weekend at Chicken Knock farm

Photos to learn about my weekend...

Yes. There is always plenty of bacon here at Chicken Knock Farm.

Obligatory selfie in my new wetsuit and Aqualung Pearl BCD! Loooove this thing! I can't wait to dive it. Way more comfy than the rental Sherwood Zodiacs I've been diving.

And Sean is visiting. Hence the fire. Punkin Chunkin in twelve or so hours.

Oh. And ridiculous glow in the dark necklaces. 

You're welcome.

Weekend fun

So I finally broke open the winemaking kit that Jay got me for Christmas last year! It's much easier than I realized. Kinda makes me want to grow my own grapes.

At the very least, the first stage was pretty easy. After a few more days, we'll read the specific gravity of the mixture to make sure that the fermenting is ready to move on to the next stage. The wine will go into the carbiner and get some stuff added to it next. It should be ready to bottle for aging in early December. It will make over two cases!

This morning I ran the SeaWitch 5k. It was lots of fun... very low-key and a great course. Nice scenery and most importantly, it was flat. I felt that I was much faster than last time but not according to my running app. Then again, I was running in costume and had to stop or slow down to nearly stopped a few times to put my dagger back in the holder or fix my skirt. 

The exciting news is that I ran for the entire first mile, which I don't think I've ever done before. I ran the first mile in 12:41 according to my app. I wish that I had paced myself a little better, but overall I'm proud of how I did. I haven't seen the official results yet, but I'm expecting to be around 40 minutes again.

                            

We're badass pirates. 

                           

This was post-race... look, we don't even look winded. We could just keep on running... HA!

There are a few more runs in my future... I'm definitely planning on the Turkey Trot next month. After all, it's only two miles. Hell, I might even be able to run the entire time. The week after the Turkey Trot is the run for hospice in Easton. Of course, that's assuming that I'm off work on that day. We'll see I guess.

Oops, we bought a car

Meet our new Forester! 

You might recall that we have been in the market for a car. Both of our vehicles are getting long in the tooth (Roxie has nearly 300k miles on her) and we need something dependable. Since Jay is 6'3", we needed something comfortable for him. We also wanted something that would be good for our future dog (which we are STILL waiting for, but that's a story for another day). Oh, and also big enough for future children and all the crap that comes with them.

Over the weekend, we decided to test drive the Subarus on our list (Outback, Crosstrek and Forester). We had a party to attend in Columbia and thought that since we would be on the other side of the bay, it would be a good time to do it. We weren't planning to buy a car until later this year and we still had the CRV to test drive. 

As you can see, the Forester won us over. It's a 2014 Subaru Forester 2.5i Premium with all-weather package and some other wacky package that cost extra. There's a light that shines down on the ground from the mirror? 

We purchased Fanny the Forester from Wilkins Subaru. Like all car buying experiences, it took the better part of a day. However, the people there from sales to finance were all wonderful. Obviously, we were three hours late to that party on Saturday.

Yes, Motor Trend just named the Forester the SUV of the year. US News and World Report ranked it #1 in Affordable Compact SUVs. Consumer Reports ranked it #1 in Best Small SUVs.

These are a few of the reasons that I love our new Forester:

• Great gas mileage (32 highway)
• CVT (continuously variable transmission - this contributes to the gas mileage)
• All wheel drive
• Acceleration 
• Handling (Fanny has a tighter turning radius than my Civic)
• Safety (ABS, a multitude of airbags, IIHS top safety pick)
• Panoramic moonroof
• Super comfy heated seats <3
• Alloy wheels
• Large cargo space
• Adjustable drivers seat

I can't say how much I love this vehicle. It's so much fun to drive... she makes me want to go on an adventure!

That bumpy dirt road to Lake Rawlings will be nothing for Fanny to tackle!

Wordless Wednesdays

My Week

It's been a very busy week at work and home. So not much time for posts.

Had to put up this sign at work... people here have problems closing the fridge door 

Yesterday I performed surgery on our laminating machine. File this under "other duties as assigned."

And some leftover bananas from our trip to Lake Rawlings that never made it out of the back window of my car. Yuck.

This afternoon I'm off to Lewes, DE for a stress-free weekend with many of my favorite ladies. I am looking forward to margaritas and slutty pumpkins. We are planning on relaxing, drinking and stuffing our faces. And maybe a run on Saturday at the park and some kayaking.

I am debating whether it's worth it to bring my camera. I'm sure there will be lots of opportunities for photos, but I don't think I want to deal with anything bigger than my iphone.

Who has two fins and her PADI OW certification?

It's official: I am now a certified PADI Open Water Diver. 

Unfortunately I have no pics of me in gear... although wetsuits aren't all that attractive, so maybe it's for the best. The quarry was the perfect temperature, about 72 degrees (although under the thermocline was a chilly 57) and with a 7mm wetsuit, we were comfy for most of our dives. Sadly, the visibility wasn't the best - only about 15'. John said that he's only seen it that bad after a hurricane. It seemed that there were a lot of students there to stir up the bottom. So I guess it was all my fault that the visibility was bad. :-P

We are debating whether we will do our Advanced Open Water course before going to the Dominican, while we're there, or some other time next year. Some students were doing their AOW checkout dives this weekend. Saturday night they were doing their night dives, so we went down to the dock to watch. 

Watching the lights underwater was neat, but also a bit eerie. It was funny to watch the navigation portion of their dives as the buddy teams strayed 90 degrees off their course, ending up on the other side of the dock somehow. We had our navigation skills to do the next day, so we probably shouldn't have had such a laugh at their expense. 

Nearly half of our OW class from AACC were there to do their checkout dives, so it was nice that we knew some of the people there. Oddly enough, we ran into two of our classmates at a rest stop on I-85 on the way down. We ended up camping next to them and hanging out with them for the weekend. We dubbed our group "Future Facebook Friends." Fortunately, the four of us ended up in a group together for our dives and we were all pretty comfortable with our skills (unlike a few of our classmates who failed their classroom test - yikes!!!).

The skills we performed over the weekend were: setting up gear, pre-dive safety check, regulator recovery & clearing, clearing a partially flooded mask, mask removal, replacement & clearing, alternate air source use, buddy breathing ascent, deep water entry, snorkel & regulator exchange, BCD oral inflation (at depth & at surface), cramp removal, tired diver tow, scuba unit removal & replacement at surface, controlled emergency swimming ascent, fin pivot, hover, and navigation at surface & underwater. I think that's it!

On Dive 4, our Divemaster dubbed us Team Awesome. Of course, that might be because the weekend before she had taken out a group of kids who weren't quite ready for their checkout dives. Apparently one of them spit out their reg and bolted for the surface. One of our members even had their mouthpiece break and then calmly switched to their alternate air source. I'd buddy with any member of Team Awesome any day.

And my favorite pics from the weekend:

The next time we dive at Lake Rawlings, we will leave early on Friday and arrive on Friday evening. Getting up at 4 a.m. on Saturday, driving four & a half hours (then after arrival, hiking down to the quarry from the campsite wearing 60+ pounds of gear) was a bit much.

So that's all for my weekend adventures! More adventures to come next weekend... I am headed to Lewes for the weekend with a bunch of awesome ladies. 

Checkout Dives

This weekend I will knock another goal off of my 101 list.

Forget 6 feet under, I'll be more like 40 feet under. 

We're also camping for the first time in a few years. We set up the tent this week to make sure that we wouldn't look like complete fools in front of our new diving buddies. 

I'm hoping for no cell service this weekend. I need to get away and decompress. 

Life has been stressful this week and I think that the peace of nature will bring me back to where I need to be. Floating along weightless under water is calming as well.

My prescription for relaxation this weekend:  8 hours in the car with my hubby, The Hero of Ages, four trips underwater, campfire s'mores, and perfect fall weather.