Photos (finally)...

I finally got around to dumping all the photos (Golly! Maybe a whole two dozen!) to my laptop to see what there was to see among the pixels.

By far the best photo opportunities were provided during our sunny day on Grand Cayman. By the time we got to Cozumel, it was about all we could do to simply walk along the waterfront (where the most imposing, memorable image was that of a garrison-sized Mexican flag waving in the brisk wind), and what few photos I took made no sense at all. At the other extreme, our tour of Jamaica took place during a cloudy day, and if my photo record of the day was any indication, the highlight of the tour of Montego Bay was... Margaritaville?

Ye gods.

On Grand Cayman, we got to see a place called "Hell" (so named, I think, by a fellow with little imagination) and toured a turtle farm. The photo above shows yours truly shortly after getting the critter in my hands calm enough to be photographed. Cute as they may be, they do have a certain aroma that tends to cling to the skin and the clothes. In this particular case, in my fresh-from-having-tried-to-walk-though-a-glass-door stupor (a trick I tried a little earlier while looking for Galina... not recommended!), the aroma was almost too much; after putting the animal back into its pool, I took off to find a wash room.

* * *I forced myself to go to sleep last night with only two alarms set for 6 am, so as not to be late for the 7 am telecon. You see, my best client is a bit particular about in-person support: They expect you to be where you're supposed to be 15 minutes before the appointed time (and pay for the time, BTW). They maintain a record of how many days it's been since someone showed up late (surely, you've seen similar signs near plant entrances, proclaiming stuff like "783 days without a lost-time injury!" It's the same idea, but a different spin, dig it?). Lots of people who do the same kind of work go to sleep with three alarms.

I don't mind the alarms so much; it's waking up in the middle of the night wondering if you've overslept (if your assignment starts while the sun is down) or (if you know your assignment is a daytime one) how long you have until the alarm goes off. And then waking a second, third, etc. time. Last night, I did fairly well, waking only three times before getting up on my own 6 minutes before the alarm was to go off.

The telecon went well. Soon after getting home, however, I was offered an opportunity to get some EVA interpreter training at the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory, which is the giant pool in which astronauts train to do space walks. I accepted, thinking the session would last only an hour or so. Five hours later, I got home. I learned some interesting stuff, but missed lunch (normally not a problem, but I hadn't eaten breakfast, either).

Thank goodness for TM programs. I cruised through the last third of the item on my plate in a fraction of the time it would have taken if I had to retype the material from scratch, which left time for me to go in and polish the internals. I've since sent off the item, leaving my plate clean (except for invoicing... and three small pages due Monday... heh!).

The rest of my vacation pictures - the best of the best, so to speak - have been posted to my Flickr account.

Cheers...