kera

HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!!

It's now time for the promised more substantial update.
Scuba diving in the Keys was perhaps the best way I've spent the week before Christmas ever. I hate the holidays, starting around Thanksgiving and ending after New Years. Three Kings Day has always been the only one I can even tolerate. My family is insane, and except for my brother it's like torture to have to spend that much time with them....and this year was no exception.
My mother brother and I shared a hotel room (one single room) in the Keys and that was a little too close for comfort. I've lived alone for the past three years: no roommates, no boyfriends, no family. Spending seven days in one room with two other people was about as far from that as I could have gotten, and I'm surprised no one was killed. I think the great diving had a lot to do with that. The water was a bit colder than I'd expected, I ended up wearing a full skin, a 3 mm long suit and a 2 mm short suit on top of it, plus boots and a glove (yes, a single glove because I couldn't find the other one) and still got pretty cold. But we did some incredibe wrecks - the Spiegel was great - the wreck didn't start until 90 feet under so there wasn't a lot of growth, but huge schools of barracuda swimming around. We did an amazing pass-through starting at the top of the gunners deck and descending vertically three stories down into the bay where they carried smaller ships to launch. As we came out into it, at about 110 feet, it was so dark you couldn't see the ocean floor, or the walls of the bay, just a glow where the exit was. Really surreal.
On the down side of the trip my mother blew a red light and t-boned another car at about 50 mph on our second day. Pretty scary, but lukily no one was hurt badly. It just makes me worry that my mom won't be able to care for herself much longer. That's even more scary.

So Christmas was uneventful. My best friend, Kel, who is in the army and scheduled to deploy at the end of January is currently in town visiting. She's leaving me in charge of all her finances so that I can pay off her debt while she's away - apparently I'm good with financial matters. She's also giving me power of attorney which puts me in charge of all her affairs if she comes back not so alive. We've been joking about it all week, because, really, what else can you do? A friend of mine who gave her this tattoo yesterday

heard us doing it, and told me I was being callous. Probably because I made a comment that went along these lines: "You're going to die face down in the sand....or the grass, or perhaps a puddle of water, or maybe mud....or in someone else!" Which was funny to us, because she's been saying this for years. Maybe I am callous, I don't know...I just find humor the best tool for dealing with anything.
So it's been good to see her. I realize that no one on this site could possibly care enough to read all of this. And yet I'm going to keep writing.

New Years was spent at my brothers, and here are some pictures from it:

And I'm completely addicted to a cartoon called Clone High which was on MTV years ago. They cancelled it because it was offensive to the grandchildren of Mahatma Ghandi - which is awesome in and of itself. But it is one of the funniest things I've ever seen.

All in all, I'm feeling pretty good. Despite, or perhaps because of the fact I'm single. I mean, sexually frusterated as hell, yes (I really need to verb the adjective nown)....but generally loving that I have time to myself. Maybe this is the sign of my maturity kicking in, but I'm actually quite happy. I'm going to be graduating this year, as my father pointed out, and I'm starting to look forward with anticipation to the next phase(s). I feel as though I have endless possibilities to explore, and I just can't wait. A great start to the new year.