Black Glass

Been surfing around Anglesea lately. I seem to end up there for sunset surfs. Tomorrow, once again, there will be a late pulse of swell and an evening 'glass off' (meaning the wind turns light and offshore) so I'll head down for another end of day surf. I hope it is as good as two week ago when I had a great session next to the Urquarts Bluff cliffs in glassy head high surf with just a handful of other folks out. I stayed out there by myself after the sun set and it started to get dark. Just after everyone else went in the full moon came out from behind the black clouds on the horizon, adding its faint white illumination to the tail end of dusk. I was sitting out the back for ages squinting into the blackness waiting for a set to come through so I could catch a wave in. Eventually, a dark wave loomed up in front of me and I turned, took off and bottom turned into a left of perfectly smooth black glass - until the wave closed out in an explosion of suddenly bright white foam.

The Key to the Keys to Timezone

Got it! Finally. My E-3 visa arrived on Wednesday. Once I had all the paperwork from the ACLU, it was lightning fast. I had my interview within a week and my visa only two days after the interview. This is a huge relief for me. Even though there was no real reason to worry, I couldn't help but fear that I would miss out on my dream job on some immigration technicality. Anyway, everything has turned out fine.

Now everybody has to come visit me in Santa Cruz. No excuses.

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A couple of links:

The Monkey Chow Diaries - I have been disappointed with the present qua future for not providing convenient pellet or tablet form meals. Ok, the internet is cool but weren't we supposed to be eating meals in tiny capsule form? How cool would that be? No cooking, cleaning, etc. Anyway, this guy has tried to solve the problem by eating Monkey Chow; a dry pellet diet that provides all the nutrients needed by primates. Brilliant. And very, very amusing.

Florida recently passed this bill into law. It provides:

"(g) The history of the United States, including the period of discovery, early colonies, the War for Independence, the Civil War, the expansion of the United States to its present boundaries, the world wars, and the civil rights movement to the present. The history of the United States shall be taught as genuine history and shall not follow the revisionist or postmodernist viewpoints of relative truth. American history shall be viewed as factual, not as constructed, shall be viewed as knowable, teachable, and testable, and shall be defined as the creation of a new nation based largely on the universal principles stated in the Declaration of Independence."

This must be one of the most hilarious laws ever. My favorite bit is the "history shall be viewed as factual, not as constructed". So true. So very true. So true, in fact, that it's the law.