Real 4th of July

I had a good time yesterday on the real 4th of July. I went kayaking with my roommates in the morning. I only had my disposable underwater camera so I can't post any pictures of that. Same goes for the afternoon. The people doing coral reef research wanted me to help them out. They have a bunch of little plots where they are studying the effects of sea urchin grazing on the coral, so they have to remove all the sea urchins from those spots. I helped out by swimming the urchins over to a new home far enough away that they won't crawl back. It was a lot of snorkeling but I saw some cool fish. As I was waiting for looking at some fish, I felt something scratching my snorkel, I thought it was a loose piece of plastic, but when I looked up, there was a young albatross biting it. He swam away once I looked up, but he was curious and followed me around for a while.

Last night the band played at the All Hands Club. We also had 2 birthdays and a going away party for a guy who's been here about 2 1/2 years. He's out of here on the Friday plane. Overall, it was a pretty good 2nd Fourth of July.

Here's something to look at:

Here's our beautiful mall. I'm still waiting for a McDonalds and JC Penny's to get here.

Here's one of our Battle of Midway memorials. This one is right by the mall.