An attempted summary of a couple slow days

It's been almost a week since my last post so, even though it's late and I'll potentially pass out while I type this, I wanted to give anyone still listening to me a brief update.  The past few days have been on the slower side due to high winds which have prevented us from going out into the field too much.  When this happens our daily work takes an unfortunate turn toward the boring and mindless, with tasks such as repairing gillnets for hours, checking and fixing longlines, and data entry...exhilarating.  Sometimes, as was the case two days ago when we hauled massive cinderblocks out of the lagoon and dumped them in the channel to get them out of harms way, certain jobs can posses a strangely satisfying quality.  However, for the most part, high winds mean high levels of labor intensive and shark free fun for everyone.  With winds in excess of 25 knots (the speed), tomorrow figures to be one such day and has me feeling grateful that I will be on duty and thus able to avoid the inevitable gillnet repair requiring what always seems like 25,000 knots (the kind you tie).

On a completely unrelated note, we have a lot of free time here at the end of the day and between multi-lingual pictionary games, bonfires, rock band nights, and watching movies, i've been doing a decent amount of reading.  Currently, mom you'll be happy to know, I'm reading and really enjoying a book called The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon.  The book takes place in New York City in the late 1930's and early 40's during the golden age of comic book.  The plot revolves around two cousins, Sammy Clay and Joe Kavalier, who create several widely popular comic book heroes and explore WWII era Americana with the monetary and social proceeds or their work.  While it may sound a little lame, the book won the Pulitzer prize and is extremely engaging and well written.  Plus, if you have or are planning on taking the GRE, SAT, or any other relatively useless standardized test with a verbal section, Michael Chabon employs a vocabulary which is guaranteed to both educate and make you feel retarded.

Shit pit is looming in the next few days...bet you're curious what I mean by that.