She's back and has new boots

So good to have J back and we celebrated the 30th birthday with Glynn, Sue, Ollie and Alice over at their place with a roast beef on the webber! After a good night out at the C Restaurant (did anyone know Perth had a revolving restaurant?!? Now you do).

Then when not looking (of course) Janice finally found the boots she has been looking for at a bargain price, thanks to some birthday money too!

Diving off Rottnest, about time...

After a trip over to Melbourne for work the winds were looking pretty calm, so decided to take a much overdue dive trip off Rottnest. Booked with Dolphin Scuba and we left Hillary's at around 9am Sunday morning. An interesting mix of guys on the boat, as they were running a tech course of advanced nitrox and decompression (still not convinced there is a real call for that unless you are a wreck junkie!).

I buddied up with two guys who had been out a lot and were the classic underwater photographers who jumped in the water and basically ignored each other for the whole dive, so I just hung around one of them, just in case. The first dive was more north-westerly of the island and a good dive with a lot more life than the in-shore reefs and better visibility although there was still a good swell coming through. The BIG downer was coming up and being told a Minkie Whale was swimming just around the boat and we missed it......

Second dive was better, over a good section of reef (Roe reef) that had some great swimthroughs and of course some of my favourite little critters, nudibranchs :) Including this tiny, tiny (approx 5mm long). Next time I have to take my camera! Dropped down straight to a scorpion fish too, just don't get too close. A good range of coral, sponges, ascidians and seaweeds hard to identify half of them. Several types of filefish, leatherjackets and some fun boxfish hiding under crevices.

Great just to be out on the boat out on the sea as well. Something very calming about it :)

Probably not going diving this weekend, looks like it's going to be golf with the lads!

Weekend of diving

Not that J would stop me diving, but with more time on my hands I took the opportunity to get some more diving in. Out with Marc diving in the river along Blackwall Reach on Saturday, which was all good until we jumped in for our 200M surface swim and discovered the tide was going out and so quite a fast current.... next time check the tide tables! So we dropped under as it was easier going and made some good headway, collecting golf balls as I went (ended up with a pocket full). Then surfaced not too far from the buoy we were heading for in the first place which we then took down to the wreck. But of course the cruise back to the entry point was a breeze :)

Then I booked on with Mindarie dive to go out with them sunday morning. The wind was light (offshore too)but some decent sized swells coming through so we couldn't get out to the outer reef. So ended up at Burns Rocks and "the clumps" some small bommies only about 1/2km out from the marina. Fun dives with two guys I'd just met (as you do) but not great viz due to the swell. But we found a new anchor on the first dive, which one of the guys was very keen on, so let him take it up and have it for his boat. And a cool little lined dumpling squid (I think) was something different to spot!

Tis the night of J going to Canada

So off she goes to Canada tonight, leaving me to fend for myself.....beans, beer and diving it is then ;o)

Off back to Guelph for her birthday, her dads and various other parties and of course to see the new babies.

So looks like I'll have to keep busy playing on and under the water, with a little bit of housework in-between for balance!

The latest update on the house is the bathroom being painted by "yours truly", which was fun for the first 2 coats as it's been ages since I've painted. But another 2 coats later to cover the stupid $%#$%# gold swirls that the previous owner liked was not on my master plan. But does look a lot better and lighter, I hope you'll agree!

Burn baby burn

As we are both partial to some open fires and to look appropriate for our new house, we just acquired a "chimnea"! Now if you're like me and haven't been to Mexico you may not know what that is, so here you go.....

A big terracotta chimney like pot, that gets nice and warm, which we thought would be a great idea for this time of the year. Obviously excited about burning stuff we had a go tonight, but have realised why it recommends some sand and tiles in the bottom to raise the fire level up a bit, so you can get to it more easily and it heats the top section more quickly.

So just need to go scavenging for wood from everywhere now :)

Day trip out to Mundaring and York

The view of Mundaring reservoir from the Dam wall! As much as I'd like to claim this one for myself, Janice took it.... With my excellent teaching of course!!

The rest of them are on the picasa site with some of York, as we went exploring round there after Mundaring. It was a good day to get out of Perth for a day and test out the new car (called Frank....thought Kath would want to know) on the open road.

House warming party

Before we had been in the house too long we wanted to have a house warming party, so organised it for saturday afternoon. We thought the afternoon would be better as we could use outside, because it's getting cold as the sun goes down.

We had a good turn out with the crew coming, Phil our old next door neighbour, quite a few from my work and one person from J's as most of them were already booked up. But we hadn't made it clear enough that we wanted to cater for everyone, so most had eaten or had to go onto other things that evening, so we had loads of food left over and I won't need to visit the bottleshop for a few months :)

Really nice to have people over and the fact that we could actually have the party for our first home!!!

The 4 hour guide to a business meeting in Karratha

A meeting today in Karratha, so we flew out at 7.30am arrived at 9.30, had toured round the "town" and seen all the sites by the time we started the meeting at 11. Then the meeting ran a bit shorter than expected, so finished by 12.30 and rather than wait around (great exploring as a tourist or going out on a boat, but not in your business clothes) we managed to get back to the airport and change to the 1.30pm flight, so back in Perth by 3.15.... Got to be the quickest return flight to somewhere I've ever done :)

It was good to get some sun and heat for a few hours though!

This time prawns were on the menu

So after convincing Marc to come diving this week with encouraging words like "dark, freezing and you'll be attacked by weird looking critters" (divers are a strange lot.....). We took to the water with the "big" torch working as expected :) and my new wetsuit top with integrated hood, toasty!

We headed straight out to the area where we hoped we would find a mix of prawns(as I had a prawn net this time) and crabs(thicker 5mm gloves on). The prawns were definitely harder to catch as they are small and fast, then even when you think you've snagged one on the bottom, they burrow into the silt and vanish! I managed to grab one good size crab for Marc and then he got another, but unfortunately while helping me with the "savage" prawns the catch bag came open and his crabs scuttled off... If you want to know how much you can hear people when they are laughing underwater, it's a lot!

All in all, we wouldn't survive long in the stone age as hunters gatherers (three prawns and one crab), but it was fun and warmer this time too.

Apparently there are some seahorses to spot when you're not scrambling round chasing critters for the catch bag, so we might take the more leisurely route next time to check them out. Will let you know!

The proof is in the pudding (if crabs were made of pudding)

So after last nights dive for a feast, we wanted to try out the crabs while they were fresh after being stored overnight in the fridge. And of course, the longer they were there, the more creeped out Janice would get!

So Janice cooked up a lovely red wine and shitake mushroom risotto and I got the "big pan" out with some water boiling for the crabs. With a quick peruse of the internet for some cooking tips, we decided to go with the same basic plan as the lobster and just boil them for about 8 minutes.

Popped them in looking all blue and they turned out all fresh and cooked, like so....

 And it was worth the cold, pain and effort as they were yummy indeed!! Just like a sweet version of crayfish, maybe even better..... And after the battles with crayfish and eating them this was a lot simpler now we have a system and easier to get rid of all the leftovers too.

They are planning some more dives for the coming weeks, so might do it again I think. With thicker gloves and go after the REAL BIG ones this time, ha ha! Well sounds like a plan anyway.