The Death of the 'I got beef' Dance

Otherwise known as "Glurgh".

I think I'll be going the route of partial veggie for a while... chicken will seep in soon, I suspect, partially because I have chicken occupying my freezer that I don't want to waste, but I think I'll be giving red meat a pass for a while.

You would think that a veggie lifestyle would be difficult to maintain in such an environment, but I'm finding obtaining meat to actually be *more* of a pain in the butt, with the exception of fish, meaning I'll be getting *very* healthy. And with the sheer numbers of vegetarians and fishavores around here, I'm ending up collecting cooking tips, so that all works well.

My roommate is a tolerant fishavore, which meant as I grilled up my rarish hamburger last night, she didn't complain about the beef smell filling the dorm and I dived in with the enthusiasm of a red meat addict who has had beef once in the last month.

Mis-take! Imagine my surprise when I was awakened in the middle of the night by Carib's revenge among other things. And I didn't even drink any Jager. It was not a nice night, nor a nice morning, nor a nice decision to miss one of my suggested-mandatory histo labs this morning because attending lab would have meant being more than 20 feet away from the bathroom, a proposition my body found unacceptable.

I have a question for all of you out there though, whether you've been struck by Grenadian food poisoning, Jager-fever, or the plain old flu: what IS it that is so appealing about bathroom floors? The dorms are not *that* big; I was 20 feet away from my nice soft bed, yet nothing felt as soothing as lying down on the tile with my cheek against it, while moaning. This is the other reason it's also good to get sick in your own pad. Nothing says "hitting bottom" like putting your face against the floor of a public restroom. Fortunately, this isn't one of those dorms where an entire floor shares a bathroom.

Fortunately, my roommate is awesome, text messaged my lab partner in histo that I would not, in fact, be presenting on the loose connective tissue in the ileum with her, turned on the air conditioning without being asked despite the fact that she gets cold easily, didn't say "I told you red meat was bad for you, idiot", offered to get me water, asked if I needed anything and then left quietly for her class after putting my newly acquired Digicell phone next to my bed in case I needed to call her.

Considering the number of times she's also cooked for me, I'm going to end up leaving this term owing her a kidney.

But I'm all better now! And was better enough to go to my histo and biochem lectures in time to fall in completely platonic love with our new biochem instructor who speaks slowly, punctuates her lectures with nice pictures of the island to give us a mental break and uses analogies to describe enzyme catalyzation. Where have you been my whole life, awesome biochem instructor?

But diving!! I went diving yesterday!!!!!!!

My gear now occupies a section of "Dive Grenada", a really nice shop on Grand Anse Beach near the Flamboyant Hotel. They're storing it for me so long as I dive semi-regularly. Darn, there's a commitment I'll have trouble keeping. I went with them because at orientation they seemed the nicest, and I value nice. The dive shops here don't seem to sell much (though they rent all gear) because they have to pay import fees. I did discover that Phil, at DG, is another taxonomy buff so he lent me his Fish ID book to page through for an hour while I was getting some of my gear together and being chatty.

Okay, so for some of you Caribbean divers, I'm going to be unnecessarily exuberant because this is the *second* time I've ever dived warm water, so I'm not sure how Grenada holds up against the rest of the Caribbean or in other warm water parts of the world. I've dived in the Philippines and California. That's it.

Dive Grenada has a little boat; all the dive sites are close by, though they say Carriacou is worth diving, so they offered to refer me to some dive shops over there. They come back between dives, which is really nice because it means I can do *either* a morning or afternoon dive (or both) without feeling like I have to do both if I have major studying to do. It also means on lab-free days, I can grab a dive before class! How cool is that?!

Dive #1 was Windmill Shallows. I'm afraid I don't have pictures for these dives because I like to orient to a new place before I look at it through a viewfinder. It's a pretty reef featuring some massive irridescent blue sponges and, since I'm not great on my fish id yet, I'll just say a buttload of fish. I recognized that many were varieties of squirrelfish, as well as seeing a bunch of princess parrotfish and juvenile stage spotlight parrotfish. Two spotted morays on the dive, and a big stingray that the divemaster pointed out toward the end. The safety stop was in a field of comb jellies! Whoa! Never seen those outside Monterey Bay Aquarium. There are also huge schools of creole bass.

Dive #2 was the wreck of the Veronica L. She's a fairly shallow wreck of a coastal freighter that has a crane to play with and since the top is open, you can 'penetrate' the wreck in the sense of swimming around inside without being in an overhead environment. I saw a smallish barracuda chilling in the water column above it as well as a bunch of horseeye jacks, which I had previously seen at the fish market, thus brining a bunch of horseeye guilt. Sorry guys; you taste good.

About twenty minutes into the dive, those of us not taking pictures (for a change) grouped up with Mick and headed off into the reef, and were rewarded for the effort with tons more pretty coral/sponges and brightly colored fish, but also the resident 6' green moray! Holy hell! I didn't know you guys had them over here. Well done!

On the way back to study studiously (in the study), I was walking on Grand Anse Beach about a half mile to the bus stop (tough life, that) and ran into Jesse who prooffered a bottled Carib and a ham/faux cheese sandwich with some fellow students. Sidetracked! But I ended the day fighting with my increasingly noncompliant Dell, and studying histo slides until the... hamburger incident.