More details and pictures to come, but:

I won 1st place in the Kona Classic video competition!!

There was some stiff competition this year: 7 videographers competing against each other, instead of split into “open” and “locals-only.” Dave Husted, my mentor and camera-housing-loaner, took 2nd place after 3 years of winning 1st place in the open category. Jeff Leicher, the owner of Jack’s Diving Locker, walked away with an honorable mention instead of his usual locals-only 1st place – I suspect he sort of phoned it in this year, not wanting to compete against his customers. But I’m in some pretty amazing company; I still have a lot to learn from those guys!

I’ll make a DVD with a full-res version of my three-minute video, and hopefully some of the other winners as well. And of course, it’ll include a slideshow from Jeff – who took an honorable mention in macro, 3rd place in wide angle, and 1st place in the new photojournalism category! He’ll be published in Sport Diver later this year.

For those of you who just can’t wait, a web-sized version of my video is here:

Dive Buddies

Questions on my mind these days:

• What have I forgotten to buy for our Hawaii trip next week?
• Can I fit the tripod into a dive bag so it doesn’t take up space in a suitcase?
• Can we possibly squeeze all our clothes and extra stuff into a carry-on bag, so I can check my video housing instead of lugging it through security and being forced to disassemble it?
• How are we going to have any space to carry new things home with us? (Even if we win nothing, there are lots of random goodies given away during the week)
• Why isn’t Jeff concerned with how the hell we’re going to manage to pack 2 sets of dive gear, 2 pelican cases with camera housings, 2 laptop bags, 2 cameras, a tripod, the extra pelican with his macro lens, and all our clothes and sundries?

Questions on Jeff’s mind:

• Why is Anna freaking out about all this stuff when we don’t have to pack until Friday night?

We’ve had two SCUBA milestones this month. First, Jeff and I finally made it to Farnsworth on our fourth try. And second, our club president Kaz finally made it to Santa Barbara on his seventh attempt, on a trip that was his birthday present from the club. It’s been a lucky month!

Farnsworth was a bit of a disappointment, mainly because we didn’t hit it on such a great visibility day. We did, however, finally get a glimpse of the famed purple hydrocoral:

Sadly, the wind chop started making people pretty ill, so the captain opted to only do one dive at Farnsworth. We finished out the day with some really gorgeous dives on the frontside of Catalina, and even had an easter egg hunt at the last dive site (Jeff won a snorkel).

This past weekend’s trip out to Santa Barbara Island was far more memorable. There were about a dozen members of the Sole Searchers on board the Great Escape, which was actually chartered by Reef Seekers – they’re always a pleasure to travel with, and tend to have terrific DMs on board. Although our first dive was uneventful, the second two were fabulous.

Dive number 2 was at Black Cavern – and I would just like to say, WOW.

There’s this enormous cave cutting through a vertical wall, with openings at about 85 and 95 feet. The cave bends halfway through, so you can’t see the exit when you go in. However, it’s very roomy inside, so not too creepy (well, a little creepy once the divers have kicked up enough silt to make it extra dark). It was a really neat swim-through, although we didn’t have nearly enough time to poke around when we were that deep!

My favorite thing about this dive was spotting my first Electric Torpedo Ray – known for giving unsuspecting divers nasty shocks. It was scared out of the cavern by the first group of divers that went in, and cruised right by my video camera.

Jeff’s favorite sight was the Wall Of Nudibranchs above the cavern opening, where we tooled around offgassing for a while before our ascent. He took this picture of a hermissenda crassicornis:

For our last dive, we moored by the sea lion rookery. This was what Kaz had been trying to see for all these years, and he wasn’t disappointed – we had dozens of sea lions come check us out and goof off.

While they’re always fun, I have to admit the novelty is finally starting to wear off after the sea-lion-intensive year Jeff and I have had. I was much more interested in the Angel Shark that a divemaster pointed out (or rather, poked with his spear gun to make it swim out of its hidey hole in the sand and right towards my camera).

On our way home, Kaz broke out some non-alcoholic champagne to celebrate his success, and to thank the club for his trip. The trip home was marginally spoiled by the presence about about three billion flies which migrated onto our boat from the island, and completely covered you anytime you tried to stand still.

The captain says it can take about 2 days for the flies to completely clear out of the boat after one of these trips. Yikes!

Farnsworth pics here; SBI pics here; dive logs here.

I am not an assiduous brusher. I give my teeth a once-over in the morning, never floss, and rarely bother to brush again at night. (Amusing aside: the first week or so that I stayed at Jeff’s, we both brushed our teeth every evening. After a little while of this, I started to suspect we were just doing it for show, and asked if this was the routine. Turns out he was just a morning brusher too, so we quit the facade.)

The best part about my lax oral hygiene is that I have fantastic teeth. Every six months after my dentist cleaning, the dentist and assistants all ooh and aah over my perfect teeth, and tell me to “keep doing what I’m doing!” No doubt they assume I brush after every meal and floss regularly.

I like to consider this a consolation prize for my genetic predisposition towards clinical depression and chubbiness….

… really does not describe my latest business trip.

Bruce (my boss) and I landed in Kona at about noon the day before our meeting began. With a whole afternoon to kill, I somehow managed to talk him into his first attempt at snorkeling; we headed south of Kona to Kahalu’u, where I practically tripped over a turtle (which Bruce missed). There were lots of fish out and about, but all I had was a little disposable underwater camera that I haven’t had developer yet. (I mainly brought it for evidence that Bruce actually went snorkeling, but I probably won’t post those pictures, in the interest of keeping my job.)

I let Buce pick the next activity; we cruised on down to Captain Cook to visit Greenwell Farms coffee plantation. We skipped the full-on tour, but loitered for a while in the coffee-tasting shed, sampling different brews and petting the ancient dog that lounged there in the shade.

We finished off our “free day” with pizza at the Kona Brewery (Best. Pizza. Ever), and headed up into Waimea, joking that our vacation was over and it was all work from now on.

Thursday was, in fact, mostly work, aside from our evening jaunt into Kawaihae for dinner.

Friday, however, was practically a vacation day.

It started out like work in more ways than one: I got up extra early to go for a jog. I’ve blogged previously about jogging in Hawaii, and how it’s so much easier than exercising on the mainland! It’s just such beautiful scenery; you want to be out and about at 6am. On this particular day, the wind was whipping around Waimea something fierce, and had picked up to 30+ mph gusts by the time I walked/jogged to the small Waimea airport and back. Still, it was a gorgeous trip – aside from the extremely dead cat lying in someone’s driveway, well into the point of mummification. Yum.

Next we sat down to more of our business meeting – but to my delight, we ran out of things to work on around 11:30am, and no one seemed inclined to force the issue. So Bruce and I were left to our own devices for the entire afternoon!

Our first stop was Mahukona, a small boat harbor north of Kawaihae that I’d been told had decent snorkeling. The entry is a small metal ladder of the pier, into a channel that can get a wee bit surgey if the waves are going (which they were starting to do when we arrived). I stayed close to the harbor, since the wave action sucked me back and forth quite a bit, but still had a pleasant swim. Bruce got totally nailed by an enormous wave that splashed up onto the pier right after I exited the water.

Next up: Spencer Park, just south of Kawaihae. This was a great spot for surf wimps like myself: TOTALLY FLAT, sandy entry, and some halfway-decent snorkeling. There were tons of coral heads with juvenile fish, and I even spotted a little eel on my way back into shore.

Our final beach visit was near the Mauna Lani resort. We parked at the “beach access” lot, and started walking down the access road. We walked, and walked, and walked. We walked past lava fields, under trees, and by enormous lava tubes. We walked past a golf course, by some private residences, next to a lagoon, and finally out to the beach.

After all that walking, I was initially disappointed to discover that the visibility at this cove was totally crummy; I could only see about a foot, and there wasn’t any coral to be had. Of course, as soon as I dropped my camera back by my towel and hit the water for a camera-less swim, I landed on the world’s friendliest sea turtle.

Seriously, this guy wouldn’t leave us alone. I first bumped into him in about 5 feet of water, and he kept cruising right up to my mask. I had to dodge out of his way several times. Then he headed into shore, and amused himself for about half an hour bumping into kids and checking out those of us with masks and snorkels. At one point, I was basically lying down on my back in the sand and about 2 feet of water when he SWAM ACROSS MY LAP. Talk about not being shy.

We finished off the day with another trip into Kona to stuff ourselves with the delicious Kona Brewery pizza before we had to head back home the next day.

That’s what I call a good business trip.

They always know how to find me.

Last week, while I was workout out on the elliptical machine in the gym, I felt something tickle my upper arm.  Figuring it was just a stray hair, I batted at it with my other hand – and came away with a spider dangling from a string of web.  I guess it dropped down from the ceiling.  I just about killed myself falling off the machine as I flung and scraped and shook it off.

This morning, I sat down at my desk and pulled the keyboard closer (it tends to slowly migrate further in on the desk during the day).  And a chunky-looking spider came RACING TOWARDS ME from under the keyboard.  I let out a shriek that could be heard through all of IPAC, and scootched back in my chair so hard I wedged it under the lip of the desk behind me.  It was early enough, however, that none of my usual spider-killers were anywhere to be found.  Luckily, I was rescued by Martin the custodian, who no doubt now thinks I am a crazy person.

And now the underside of my keyboard is all cobwebby.  Gross.

The rains came too late this year for a repeat of last year’s wildflower performance in Southern California. Nonetheless, with the help of desertusa.com, we tracked down a thick patch of poppies and other flowers in Lancaster, just a little north of the Poppy Preserve.

I headed out Saturday afternoon with A2, Caroline, and Sachin (both of whose names I’ve most likely just misspelled). The drive up was green at first, but by the time we passed the aqueduct and headed into Santa Clarita it was just brown, brown, brown. It was hard to believe anyone had reported good wildflower photography anywhere in the area, and it still looked brown as we exited the freeway and drove past the Poppy Preserve. The hills that were covered with orange and yellow last year were brown. The sides of the road where we found all sorts of blues, purples, and random patches of poppies? Brown.

But when we passed the Poppy Preserve to the west and turned north, we saw it: a splotch of yellow and orange in the distance that was shockingly bright next to all the brown around it. We headed over dirt roads and around mud puddles, attempting to follow the vague directions from the website, and finally discovered this:

I spent a lot of time crawling around on the ground trying to find good angles to shoot from, and waiting for the wind to pause for a split second. I decided I might as well get a cute picture of me out of all that wriggling around in dirt, so I pestered A2 to come snap a few shots.

A little further to the south, we found a fun convergence of joshua trees and wildflowers.

The rest of my pics are here.

My father, the incomparable Robert Clower, only made it FIVE WEEKS into being an octagenerian before doing possibly the only cliche thing ever in his life: he broke his hip!

Luckily, it was just a minor fracture of a tiny piece of bone, easily replaced in a simple surgery. He’s apparently happy as a lark in his hospital room, chatting up the nurses and making friends as usual. Mom says no one will believe her that he just had hip surgery – and in fact he should be able to walk within a couple of days.

I guess this could have been a serious health scare, but I have to admit I’m more amused than concerned. It’s just so unlike Daddy to be predictable (turn 80: break a hip). And so funny to hear Mom describing his cheerful in-hospital demeanor.

In other family news, Jeff and I spent the weekend in Tampa for Tammy’s senior recital – the only time we’ve actually gotten to see her perform! She pulled off a great mostly one-woman show, with about 10 songs from various musicals and 2 dance pieces that she choreographed; impressive work, and it must have been intimidating to perform with your entire family sitting 5 feet from the stage with cameras!

Of course, we picked an unusually cold weekend to visit Tampa, so we didn’t get to take advantage of the beach. We did, however, take advantage of the BUCKETS of Long Island iced teas that are available at the bars along the waterfront. University of Tampa kids know how to celebrate in style!

When I finished jury duty, the other jury panel was still deliberating over the verdict for the shooter. There was always a chance that he might be found not guilty, even though our guy (the driver) was convicted.

Although I understand the reasons for keeping the trials separate this way, it bothered all of the jurors that this possibility even existed. We felt like if the driver was convicted, clearly the shooter should be held responsible as well. Inversely, if the person who actually fired the gun was found not guilty, how could we in good conscience convict the driver?

The LA Superior Court keeps an online index of convictions, which you can search for about $5 a pop. I gave it a few weeks for the information to make it in there, and performed my search this afternoon.

I was hugely relieved to see that the shooter was convicted; in fact, on the same day that we finished our deliberations. I suspect it would have gnawed at me for a long time if I saw “acquitted” on the screen.

I wound up with an appointment at the Red Cross this afternoon. See, I finally got around to giving blood last November (for several years prior, I’d managed to have a cold every time they came on campus), and now I’m on their list. And since I’m B-negative, I’m on the Extra Special List. I can now expect to get a phone call every other month that goes something like this:

“Did you know California is currently experiencing a severe shortage of donor blood?”

“Er, I didn’t know that.”

“And did you know that B-negative is the rarest blood type?”

“Huh, I didn’t know that either.” (ok, this part I won’t be able to use again)

“And that it’s now been more than 45 days since you last gave blood?”

“Yeah, that sounds about right…”

“Great, so, when can we schedule an appointment for you? Is tomorrow good?”

Since I really have no excuse NOT to give blood as often as possible, and in fact rather enjoy the excuse to scarf down some cookies and skip going to the gym for a day, I’m pretty much a sucker for this sort of mild guilt trip.

My bloodletting was uneventful as always, although I really think I could have bled faster with a little more effort. It took me a record 7 minutes this time to fill a bag – that’s hardly enough to qualify as the champion gusher I know I really am.

I had a bit of a gross-out moment while the nurse was taking everything out of my arm. I suddenly felt something rather warm – actually, pretty darn hot – against my hand. Puzzled, it took me much longer than it should have to realize that the tubes coming off the blood bag, themselves full of blood, were hot. I was feeling the heat of MY OWN BLOOD.

I don’t know why I found this disturbing, or even surprising – I mean, what did I think “warm-blooded mammal” meant? Part of my brain must have assumed that blood just defies the laws of physics and instantly cools upon leaving the body, or that the surgical tubing has some sort of magical insulating powers.

Anyway, I shook off my discomfort with a very cool exclamation along the lines of “Oh! That’s hot! I guess that makes sense, right? I mean, it is blood.” The nurse nodded and smiled like she’d heard this dozens of times (no doubt she has), and continued wrapping up the bag and tubing into a big pile of warm rubber.