SCUBAfreshed

Hello all (Mom)!

I am back... my apologies for taking over a week off from blogging. It's been a busy two weeks!

I took my refresher SCUBA course last Tuesday evening at a dive shop in Bellevue (about 30 minutes north of Seattle), and it was super fun- I am so excited to get back into diving. I have been extremely lucky in that the people I currently nanny for (the Duncans) are huge divers, and the mother (Lesley) can no longer dive due to some complications during her pregnancy, so she has been urging me to use all of her amazing equipment and dive as much as possible before I head to South Africa. The Duncans even bought me a Drysuit course for my birthday so I can learn to dive in cold water. SO, last Thursday night was my Drysuit course and it was craaaazy- you literally feel like you're being vaccuum-packed in the suit once you go underwater. The neck and wrist seals are extremely tight and made of latex, and to even get the suit ON you have to sprinkle powder all over the seals and stretch them REALLY wide to get over your head and hands. Once you have the suit on you look like you're about to push a button and take off for the moon.

THEN you go underwater with all of your equipment on and you experience what is called "suit squeeze"- the entire thing suctions to your body suuuper tightly. The best word to describe the feeling would have to be "violating". Then the trick is to figure out how to maintain your buoyancy using the air in the drysuit (controlled by two different valves) instead of using the air in your BC, which is what you'd normally use when diving in a wetsuit. WHEW! It's nutty. But soooo cool. And I am so happy I'm now certified with a Drysuit so I can see all the amazing stuff that the Puget Sound has to offer. Plus, the waters off the coast in Cape Town will also be pretty cold, so it'll be a great thing for me to have once I arrive in S.A.

Speaking of S.A., below is a link for the program that I will be participating in, called Volunteer Abroad Corps. The first one is just a general link to the overall program, and the second and third links are for the actual internships that I will be participating in. Nothing has been confirmed for sure yet, since the staff at VA Corps are really busy getting set for their biggest group ever during the World Cup this summer, but hopefully these positions will be confirmed over the next couple of weeks so I can get even more excited about it! Here are the URLs for the websites; I couldn't get the links to paste correctly:

http://www.vacorps.com/

Save Our Seas Shark Research Centre, where I will be doing shark research:

http://www.saveourseas.com/sossc-za

Cape Centre for the Rehabilitation of Wildlife, where I will be doing wildlife rehab work with baboons and a few other species:

http://www.baboons.co.za/

Besides the SCUBA courses and doing some more planning for South Africa, I have been up to the normal shenanigans.. hanging out with babies, hiking, maintaining my tolerance for alcohol, and annoying brother-in-law Dave as much as possible. Oh, and the Duncans are in Hawaii this week, so I am house- and pet-sitting for them, with the amazing added benefit of unlimited use of their backyard hot tub. Even nanny jobs come with some sweet perks!

Here are a few photos from the last two weeks or so, enjoy and I will blog you soon!

Me in front of an absolutely amazingly massive tree on the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River Trail


I love my trees


Beautiful view during our family Vashon Island day trip


This one's for you, Mom. I know how you love your sea glass...



Will tired out after his first hike ever!



Mt. Rainier from the ferry


More to come...

It's raining cats and dogs (and raccoons and squirrels and bears and bobcats and seals)

So! I slightly lied in my first post. It was just a cream-colored lie, really, not even a white lie. I said that currently I am volunteering at a wildlife rehab center. The TRUTH of the matter is, I WILL be starting to volunteer at a wildlife rehab center VERY SOON. I actually just got home from my orientation (three and half hours long, mind you), and it was SOOOO COOOOOL!

This place is aweeeesooommmme (for those of you reading this who really aren't into the whole nursing animals back to health and picking up lots of poop and smelling of animal fur and disinfectant, you may not think it is aweeeesoooommme, but you can at least think it's pretty neat-o). It is the only wildlife rehab center combined with a companion animal adoption shelter in the entire state of Washington, and it is one of the very few in the entire United States. It's called PAWS, which stands for Progressive Animal Welfare Society. They were founded in 1967 by two women who realized there was a huge problem with the overpopulation of cats and dogs in the area, and geniously (probably not a word) realized that encouraging people to spay and neuter their pets would help ameliorate the issue tremendously. Of course, animals starting showing up on their doorstep right and left from owners who felt they could no longer care for their pets and knew these women would give them a good home, and eventually PAWS was formed.

Anyway, I won't get into all the fun facts that they spewed at us tonight, but I will say that the facilities are amazing, the enclosures that the wildlife are kept in are tremendously naturalized and the care seems to be top-notch. They do their best to minimize human-animal interaction with the wildlife rehab center, since they don't want the animals to become used to humans and look to them for food and shelter upon release. They do, however, bottle and syringe-feed the orphaned baby animals, and during the summer (when I will be volunteering) there is lots of hands-on work with baby birds, squirrels, raccoons, rabbits, and even sometimes bears and bobcats (several of which they are housing right now). The companion animal shelter is also one of the nicest I've ever been to (and trust me.. I've been to plenty. I like to browse and fantasize about owning all of the adoptable dogs in every city I move to). It broke my heart to see all of the dogs and cats needing homes, but you could tell they got walks and playtime every day, and many of them were even participating in daily training sessions, which a LOT of shelter animals will never be lucky enough to experience with such limited resources. These dogs get quality care, and every volunteer I met tonight seemed to genuinely want to give their love and time to these animals.

I will stop with all my mushy animal nonsense, but one last plug.. if anyone is looking to adopt an animal and lives in Washington, go to PAWS! Pretty sweet place. I can't wait to start volunteering.

ANYWHO... onto very different types of animals... when I was thinking about names for this blog a few days ago I googled several different things that I thought may represent me in some way or another: "odd-looking animals", "awkward animal names", "strange sea creatures", just to name a few. Here are a few of the pictures that came up:



Fathead Fish (I may add this guy to my aquarium)

Also:



Wolf eel. Stuff of nightmares. Poor guy.

Another unfortunate fellow:



Sea Pig. Hmmm...

Yet another:



Aye-Aye. Absolutely terrifying.

And lastly:



Yeeesh.

That's all I got for now! Stay tuned for some more tasty bits in the coming days (Mom, I'm talking to you).

In the words of Bonnie Swanson:

"Bye now!!"

First timer!

So! Here I go. I have been thinking about starting this thing for quite some time now, and considering many of my favorite people in this life jumped on the bandwagon long ago and I LOVE to see and read what they're up to, I figured it was time to give it a shot! Plus, I have lots of people asking me what I am up to moving from here to there and back again, so it will be good to have some way for people to keep track of me and my shenanigans!

For those of you who enjoy following my older siblings' blogs, this will not be nearly as exciting, since my brother is a talented creative writer, and my sister is a devoted mother to an adorable new baby, both of which I am most definitely not. This will be more of a "little-sister-trying-to-make-sense-of-the-big-bad-world-and-figure-out-what-to-do-with-her-life" type of thing. I hope it keeps someone out there interested and entertained, and if not, then at least my mom will be able to keep tabs on me!

I'll probably throw way too many pictures of my life up here, considering I inherited my mother's paparazzi tendencies and spend over 50% of my time snapping photos of everything going on around me at all times. I will also most likely be including many pictures and blurbs about things I find fun, funny, weird, ugly, exciting, or otherwise interesting. Usually this includes dogs, hikes, dance moves, strange looking sea creatures, my new nephew, travels and/or new food I'm excited about. So be prepared. Here is the first of many:



(This is my nephew, not a sea creature.)

I've called this blog A Squid's Ink because I am a pretty big fan of anything that lives underwater, I dream in squid vision and if this were back in the day I'd be writing all of this in ink. Also, lets be honest- my brother thought of it and pretty much everything he comes up with is genius (except for the dance moves he steals from me). Also on that note... if anyone can find a job for an animated, brunette, late twenty-something male who enjoys Snickers, Subway sandwiches and tight clothing, let me know. Us sibs have to look out for one another.

Anyway, here is some of what I'm up to right now: Hanging out with lots of babies (nanny by day, Auntie by night), hiking with big W whenever possible (Big W, of course, being Worden, my sister's dog), attempting to hone my cooking skills, attempting to retain some of my beer pong skills (on occasion), getting back into scuba diving (with a drysuit- Puget Sound is chilly!), volunteering at a wildlife rehab center, and planning my internship excursion to Cape Town, South Africa in September!

(Oh, and just a philosophical side note for those of you who happen to be post-grads still hoping for a real job someday: It's ok if your plans for grad school get sidetracked by crabby old professors who don't want you until you get some "real-world" experience... just hop on a plane and try another country for a bit o' time. No shame in that!)

So, I'll leave you with this extremely thrilling video of myself and Worden frolicking on the beach at Lincoln Park. Mr. Mustard also makes his debut, but you will have to watch to find out who he is! Oh, the suspense...



That's all the super exciting extra juicy gossip for now, kids (and old folks and everyone in between)! I will ink again soon...