Diving Key Largo

My brother Michael and I started our day bright and early, meeting at his hotel at 7am for our ride down to Key Largo. It was a perfect day for diving - sunny, no wind, no current, small group. We had a thirty minute boat ride out to our first site which was at the Christ of the Abyss. It is a bronze statue that was placed out in the reef in 1965. It has a pretty interesting story - read more about it here. We had to have our photos with it of course (aside - thanks to my roommate for letting me borrow her amazing underwater camera!!), but once we did that we were pleased to find that the surrounding reef is really nice with lots soft corals and finger reef formations. We had an hour of diving there and then moved to another reef nearby called Dry Rocks. Again lots of soft corals but this site had more fish. We saw quite a few barracuda (including 5 little ones about a foot long prowling around together), a goliath grouper and schools of others. A great morning of diving! For more photos see Michael's Fotki.
No big plans yet for tomorrow but I'm sure we'll find something exciting to do....

My New Profession - Travel Agent!

Well at least I've been feeling like one lately planning fabulous weekends for Michael and Tine. But unlike a travel agent I get to do the things I'm booking - I'm really excited! Michael and I are diving on Saturday in Key Largo and I'll be heading out to the Everglades with Tine next weekend. I may need a weekend to catch up after these two, but after that - who's coming to visit??

Luckily I survived my Biometrics exam on Wednesday and may have even passed. Not without three study sessions organized and taught by...us, the students. Sunday we were at it for five hours, and we only made it through about half the material. Anyway, that pretty much consumed my life for the first half of the week. Now I can focus on the grant applications that are due at the end of the month. After the weekend. I've got my priorities.

Goodbye 'Lady'

Thursday night I was officially welcomed to Miami when my car was broken into - in my driveway! - and my GPS (named Lady) was stolen. I was taking the trash out Friday morning and discovered glass all over the driveway. Great. For those of you thinking "Well Katrina, you were asking for it leaving Lady up in the car" I had hidden it under the seat. I'm pretty sure they were after my CD player but they couldn't figure out how to get it out (they broke it but it's still attached) , so I guess they starting looking around and found Lady. They also swiped my ashtray that had mostly pennies in it. The glove compartment was open and emptied all over the place but there was nothing exciting enough in there to take.

I know of at least two other people within a block that have had break-ins in the last couple days. And I haven't seen any cops in the area. At all. They could just drive through on their way to the doughnut shop but I guess that's too much to ask.

In other news, my Biometrics class sucks and we've got a test this week. The class is meeting Sunday to try to teach ourselves everything since our professor can't do it. Luckily I'm enjoying my other two classes, Environmental Law and GIS...