Adventure of the month

I'd toyed with the idea of getting a proper underwater camera for a long time. I'd bought the disposable kind that you have to take into the store to get your photos developed... like a fucking cave person. I'd bought a cheapie one that produced meh photos and gorged on batteries that I never seemed to have on hand. It was a mess. When I made the decision to go to Fiji and swim with sharks- check out the last post for more details- I finally broke down and bought a GoPro. For the unfamiliar, this is a tiny but rugged camera that is generally associated with very physically active people. I am not that person. If you ever see me scaling the side of a mountain, know that there is some really scary shit is coming up from below. Honestly, I am surprised they even sold it to me. Anyways, all that aside, I now had an underwater camera. That same motivating factor, swimming with sharks, got me back into diving. I realize by phrasing it this way, it could be implied that at s

In our last episode, our quarantined blogger looked back on happier times and began a list of the her favorite Fijian escapades. It has now dawned on this blogger person that even with the benefit of too much free time, this might be too ambitious an undertaking. There were a lot of great times in Fiji. Like a lot a lot. There is no possible way to list them all. Instead, this blogger- me, we are talking about me- will continue to try and hit some of the more memorable highlights. One that comes to mind right away was my birthday. Why was it so special? Well, for starters, I was in fucking Fiji!  On my birthday! That's pretty special. Add to that, my friend Iliana, who had just flown in from Miami. Which leads me to a story. Back in February, I had an airline voucher that was about to expire. I went on the AA website and started plugging in a bunch of "dream destinations" to see if I could make any of them work. I saw that for $1200 (minus my $800 voucher), I coul

Full truth: This post will appear as if it was written in April 2019. It wasn't. Today's date is actually April 5, 2020. I, along with sensible people everywhere, am "sheltering in place", trying to ride out the Covid-19 epidemic that has brought the planet to a standstill. It is jarring and hard to believe that exactly one year ago, I was about to embark on a truly once-in-a-lifetime adventure. On April 9th, 2019 I landed in Nadi, Fiji. My co-workers and I were supposed to stay for an undetermined amount of time or more specifically as long as it took to get the Boeing Max up and flying. We all figured we had a couple of weeks, at best, before having to return home. We ended up staying until July 24th. The Max still wasn't (and still isn't) fixed but we ended up living in paradise for three and a half months. In that time, I took advantage of being based in this far-flung part of the world and dropped in on Vanuatu, Samoa and Tonga, all of which I pos