Tuesday, June 13, 2023

Diving And Dining On Vacation

Well, I have only the scantiest of evidence that I went in the water here in St. Thomas, so I might as well share it with you now. Enjoy?

My GoPro flooded and died almost immediately. It's rated to 33' without a housing and because life has been so hectic, I hadn't remembered or checked if it needed one when I packed. The thing didn't make it to 20'.

I suspect that its seals dried out from the arid heat of San Diego plus having used it to make dashboard videos while driving in the South. Oh well. I'll recharge the battery and see if it still works today.

Update: It didn't survive. It didn't take a charge and drops of brown water came out of it when I shook it, suggesting corrosion. Not surprising, considering its immersion in salt water.

The diving was lovely and I really regretted not having put it in a housing. There were lots of colorful fishes that seemed more tame and relaxed here than other places I've dived. They let me get up close to them while they did their fishy things.

The reef structure was more rock and weed than Grand Cayman, but the diving was still excellent. Because there was no serious current and the guides took us on a slow cruise, I was able to work on my skills and by the end of my fourth dive here, I felt very comfortable and relaxed. All in all, it was a great trip, GoPro or no.

I just spent a few minutes looking for a representative St. Thomas diving video on YouTube, but didn't find anything I liked. Oh well.

Cooking On Electric Stoves With Rubbish Pans

Our VRBO has an electric stove and absolutely rubbish pans. The stove takes forever to get hot, overshoots the temperature you want and then takes forever to cool down. The pans are glorified aluminum foil. The result is that everything touching the metal burns.

Cooking being one of our hobbies, wife kitteh and I discussed how to plan menus in the future for places like this. My thought was that black-eyed peas would be fine under these circumstances. Cook some diced bacon in a pot, use the hot grease to sauté the Holy Trinity with the Pope, then add black-eyed peas that you soaked overnight and some store-bought beef stock. The liquid would eliminate the threat of burning. Toss in some seasoning meat like smoked turkey and the cooked, diced bacon, let it simmer for an hour and serve over rice.

Casseroles would work, too, but we're not fans of casseroles. We used the oven to make the morning sausages and that worked fine. The first night here, I baked some seasoned chicken leg quarters and sautéed some green beans and served that with rice. It worked fine, again because the green beans had water in the pan to help them steam. Anything touching thin pans on an electric stove is doomed to charring.

Putting Trump In Jail Is An Act Of Political Hygiene For Conservatives

The girls are still sleeping, so I have a little time to bloviate about the Bloviator In Chief. I'm completely in favor of him being tried, convicted and put in jail. Here are my reasons.

National security uber alles. Do you want Hillary to be an aberration that we all point to ten years from now and say, "Never again!" or do you want Hillary plus Trump to set the precedent that allows powerful people to throw classified documents out the windows of their limos as they drive around town?

Trump is an idiot. He's never going to "drain the swamp" or anything even close to that. All of this was self-inflicted, motivated by his infinite ego. He knew the people he had driven mad were looking for any reason at all to take legal action against him. There was no reason to take anything other than his personal goods from the White House, but there he was with boxes and boxes of classified documents.

Trump is pure electoral poison. He is probably the only Republican capable of losing to Joe Biden in 2024. He would wreck the down ballot elections as well. See also: John Fetterman, election of.

2020 was exactly what Joe Biden said it was. It was an election for the soul of our nation. Satan won that one. Children's Hospital in San Diego is now mutilating and poisoning little girls on purpose and our Democrat political leaders cheer for them.

2024 could be an election for a return to normalcy if Trump isn't in it. DeSantis would be the perfect candidate for that. If Trump is the nominee, it will be demons shrieking on all sides. It would be the Pride Demoniacs vs. the Trump Vengeance Harpies. Oh goody.

The sooner Trump goes away, the better.

4 comments:

Mostly Nothing said...

The world would be a better place if Joe, Hillary, and Trump were all in country club jail.

But the democrats would still have there star chamber to rule over whatever semi-sentient being they would choose to be their figure head.

K T Cat said...

"The world would be a better place if Joe, Hillary, and Trump were all in country club jail."

Amen.

tim eisele said...

I suppose bringing your own favorite frying pan (mine is cast iron) would be a bit heavy and hard to explain to the people inspecting luggage at the airport. Although, you could get a copper or aluminum disk about quarter of an inch thick to sit on the stove burners and even out the hot spots. That would be a bit more portable.

And yes, it is pretty clear that Trump is about as dangerous to his "allies" as to his opponents. He's kind of like trying to use a ball of flaming tar as a weapon, it sticks to everyone who touches it and sets them all on fire.

K T Cat said...

Tim, when we take a driving vacation, we always take along our biggest cast iron skillet.