I was flipping through Maxim a couple days ago, and in the front section where they usually have letters and things like that there was a picture from the Cayman Islands. This isn’t the first time the Cayman Islands have been featured in a Maxim/FHM-type of magazine. A year or two ago someone sent in a picture of a cube truck from down here that has always brought a smile to my face:

Harry Bush trucking. (When I find my copy of the picture I’ll add it in here.. it’s always good for a few laughs)

This last month’s issue had a picture of the front doors of the KFC in George Town with a few chickens in the foreground. The caption was something like “in their hearts, they knew the boycott would fail” or something like that. Even without the caption, it’s pretty funny to see actual chickens hanging around the front doors of a KFC. There are chickens everywhere down here… I would compare them to squirrels or rats in other metro areas.

Everton and I stopped in to KFC for lunch today and in a silent salesman on the counter was a notice that everything that normally had tomatoes in it would not have tomatoes in it until further notice.

Foster’s and Hurley’s both have pulled tomatoes off the shelves as well and the distributors aren’t bringing any more in, either. I can see why, 90% of our imports come out of Florida and they’re one of the suspects of where the outbreak started.

According to the countdown timer on my Facebook profile, 76 days remain until my final work permit expires and I hit the road (the air?) for Canada… At this point, BC Hothouse Tomatoes are just one more reason to look forward to it!

Back in 2005, before I bought my Vespa LX125 I was in my Jeep full-time. It took me over 60 minutes each morning to get in to work and 45 to get home at night. it was, how you say… Le Suck? On top of that, the A/C crapped out!

I took it in to GT Automotive and they topped up the freon (or whatever it’s called now) and put some dye in it so they could see over time if there was a leak in the system. They also replaced a relay that was burned out. That relay was the cause of the warm air. The compressor was still working and spinning, but this relay was preventing the air from blowing cold. They told me that the compressor was drawing more current than it should, and that’s what caused the relay to blow.

Less than 24 hours later, I stopped at Foster’s on my way home from work with that sweet, sweet luscious air conditioning blowing cold on my knees. When I came out of Foster’s and started back up… it was warm and stayed warm. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

At that point, I decided I wasn’t going to keep dropping $65 on parts & labor to replace this relay over and over and that it must be the compressor. I waited, thinking that the compressor would be an expensive repair. Then I switched to the Vespa and the Jeep became secondary transportation at nights and on weekends, when it wasn’t so hot or I wasn’t wearing “business casual”.

Of course, last summer I was hit by that jackass in the roundabout and totaled my Vespa which put me back into the Jeep temporarily as my primary and as it turned out permanently. Still, it was fall and winter and the lack of A/C wasn’t that big a deal.

On May 1st, it was like Mother Nature flipped a switch and it got HOT out. Bleah. I had also already made plans to repatriate back to Canada and sell my Jeep, but the A/C was a selling point so I should really get it fixed finally. I’ve been thinking about getting it fixed for over a month now, and was starting to make calls around to see where I should take it.

This morning, after I popped into Paperman’s at the Strand (a 30 second drive from home) it was hot and muggy in the Jeep. Thinking that warmish air was better than no air, I reached down and turned the knob for the A/C which controls the blower and… WHAT THE DEUCE??? COLD AIR??? Surely it must be a figment of my imagination! Maybe it’s just the cool morning air in the pipes from having been parked in the shade… but no! It got colder! It stayed cold! It stayed cold all the way to work!

I’m going to give it a workout over the next week or so and see if it was an anomaly or if I’ve been sweating and feeling all gross by the time I get to work the last year or so!

Update: Well it's not working again. For a couple days I thought I had it figured out: make sure you turn the A/C off before turning off the engine but during my not-so-scientific-method of testing it, I shut off the engine with the a/c on and it hasn't come back on yet. I can't feel the "pull" on the engine when the compressor kicks in, so I think all things considered it's a wiring issue rather than anything REALLY major like a compressor because when it blew cold it was ICCCCCCCE cold! Time to break out the anti monkey-butt powder!

Middle of May... Victoria Day in Canada, Discovery Day in the Cayman Islands and this year, my 35th birthday. Do I get a cane or something issued to me now? Fortunately I don't have the camera handy or there'd be a pretty ugly picture attached to this post.

Last night I was in the bathroom and looking in the mirror after washing my face and thinking "Hmm. I need to shave..." and no it probably did NOT have anything to do with seeing the "party in my nose" Edge Shave Gel commercial thirty times yesterday during the 6-0 bodyslamming of the Flyers by Pittsburgh.

I came out to the sitting room and said to John "I think there's something wrong with the light in the bathroom."

"Which one?"

"The big bathroom" I said.

"Why, what's wrong?"

I smiled and said "Well in that light, there's a lot of stubble in my beard that looks really light... like it's gray or white or something..."

He didn't even answer me, just flipped me the bird over his shoulder :)

This morning I slept in because duh it's a bank holiday. I logged on after brushing my teeth and Darlene IMd me:

[10:34] Darlene: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
[10:34] Darlene: Whacha doin today?
[10:34] Mark: thanks :)
[10:34] Mark: just woke up
[10:53] Darlene: you took the day off?
[10:53] Mark: it's a holiday
[10:53] Darlene: haha which one/
[10:53] Mark: Mark's Birthday
[10:54] Mark: the Queen called and woke me up... she forgot about the time zone thing
[10:54] Mark: AGAIN
[10:54] Darlene: LOL

So back to the temperature. It's hot out there, damned hot. I went out to get a coffee at Paperman's Coffee House over at the Strand and then went into town to take care of something. When I got back, the house was hoooooooot. I opened the windows and turned on the fans and opened the doors to get some breeze going but it was sill sweaty and still.

I decided to break out a notepad and a thermometer and see how well (or how bad) the AC works in this house. At 12:30 the thermostat was reading 89f. I turned on the AC and set it for 80f. I took my digital thermometer and put it on the coffee table in the sitting room and the temperature went UP to 90.4f

at 1:30 the temp in the sitting room was down to 85 and the temp in the living room was down to 90.1f

At 2:30 (now) the temp in the sitting room is 82f and the temp in the living room is 87.4f. In other words, the AC is useless, even with two floor fans blowing the cooler sitting room air into the living room. The good part is that the ac vent is right above where my computer is set up, so it's almost chilly enough to warrant putting on a t-shirt here, but as soon as you walk through the archway into the living room... bleah.

I'm going to let it run until 3:00 and record the "final" temprature and use that as a yardstick to measure whether it's even worth the effort and electricity to run the AC in the main part of the house or whether to just retreat into the bedroom for the rest of the summer where the temps are more civilized :)

Update: I popped out for lunch at 2:45 and shut off the ac. The lowest the temperature dropped was 87.4 in the living room and 82 in the sitting room. In the one hour and fifteen minutes that I was gone, the temp in the sitting room went back up to 86 and in the living room back to 90. ugh.

PRESS RELEASE
5th May, 2008. For immediate release.

SIX BLUE IGUANAS MURDERED IN BOTANIC PARK

Six critically endangered Grand Cayman Blue Iguanas were killed by unknown persons late on Saturday evening, in the QE II Botanic Park. The crime was discovered by volunteers with the National Trust’s Blue Iguana Recovery Programme, shortly after 9am on Sunday morning.

The iguanas appeared to have massive internal injuries, as if they had been stamped on violently and repeatedly. Some were also cut and partially dismembered. Three were found dead inside their breeding pens, two had been carried out of their pens and left in the tour area outside. The body of the sixth is still missing, but entrails on the trail outside his pen are a grim sign of his fate.

Department of Environment enforcement officer Carl Edwards was on the scene almost immediately, fast followed by the Royal Cayman Islands Police who began forensic work and have commenced an investigation. Dr. Colin Wakelin from the Department of Agriculture closed a large gash in one of the surviving victims and began making arrangements for an autopsy to confirm the causes of death, which will probably take place later today.

Dead on Sunday morning were the adult breeding males “Yellow” (sponsored by Caribbean Publishers), “Pedro” (sponsored by Websters Tours), “Digger” (sponsored by Simon Hicks), and “Eldemire” (christened by Kent Eldemire). The grand matriarch of the captive facility, “Sara”, was also dead. “Jessica” had been thrown out of the neighboring pen and was in shock, but still moving. Both females had been preparing to lay eggs.

The effort to save Jessica’s life went on into the night, but despite specialist advice by telephone from the Wildlife Conservation Society and Dr. Wakelin’s resourceful and determined attempts to stabilize her, she passed away during the night.

The persons responsible may have broken into the Park after closing hours, and found a way into the fenced-in captive breeding facility. No motive is known for this act of extreme violence against these unique and much-loved symbols of Cayman’s natural heritage. Anyone with relevant information is asked to contact the Royal Cayman Islands Police.

Last week I arrived home one night to find a plastic bag hanging from the doorknob. It was the 2007-2008 telephone directory from Cable & Wireless. My first thought was "great, now there's going to be another 50,000 old phone directories in the landfill" but I just couldn't bring myself to throw it in the bin. It felt... wrong.

I sent an IM to a friend who works at Cable & Wireless and asked if they had any takebacks or recycling program for telephone directories. I didn't think they would, recycling is woefully non-existent in the Cayman Islands but it never hurts to ask, right?

The next day I received an email from her with the following:

Cable & Wireless has partnered with the non profit organization Global Green Caribbean to collect old telephone directories for recycling. Other partners in this initiative are CayShred and Fosters Food Fair. We have added our Anderson Square and Galleria Plaza stores as drop off points. The drive to collect old directories will last for the next week. Persons dropping off old directories will also get a green bag while quantities last. So please help support this very worthy effort and bring in your old telephone directories to either of our store locations and tell a friend.

Well shave my balls and call me Harry! I took my old telephone directory and another one I found lying around and put it in the plastic bag the new one came in and put it in my jeep to drop off. I was in Foster's Food Fair at the Strand last night getting some Borax for my running clothes (to say they smell like goats is an insult to goats the world over) and I didn't see a box, a sign, a table, anything saying "drop your old phone books here" and I forgot about it.

Today I stopped by the Galleria Plaza Cable & Wireless store to drop it off. I wandered around, no bin, no signage no nothing. I asked the cashier and she referred me to one of the CSAs, so I waited in line until it was my turn. She knew what I was talking about, took my directories and even gave me a green reusable grocery bag. Sweet!

If I had not asked someone who worked at C&W, I never would have known this program existed.. and is it over this week? They REALLY could have done a much better job of letting the public know about this... Mount Trashmore is high enough already without adding literally tons of easily-recyclable paper on top of it.

I'm glad Cable & Wireless is trying to make positive changes and offer recycling, but I'm a bit cheesed off that they didn't really make it very public. Of course, I could be wrong, it HAS happened before! It could be that they're gearing up for it this week and going to kick it off next week and advertise is in the newspapers, their website and on the radio...

Tonight I finished Week 5 of the Couch to 5k program from Coolrunning.com. Week 5 was the first week to end with a sustained run, in this case two miles/twenty minutes without stopping. I've been apprehensive about it all week, and was almost to the point of dread and nervousness all afternoon leading up to the run tonight.

I walked over to the John A Cumber Primary school playing field and started the week five podcast, did a lap around the playing field to warm up and then started the two mile "clock" at the corner of Hell Rd and Town Hall Rd. I jogged along Town Hall Road to the fork and turned right and went up Northwest Point Road until I hit Watercourse Road (Crack Alley). I turned there and followed Watercourse back to Hell Rd and turned back up towards the school. I got to just about Club Inferno (get it? a bar in Hell called Club Inferno? no? well neither did anyone else and it's been closed for a few years now) and then walked it out from there back home.

When I got back to our carpark, I ended the workout and (not including the walk and the warm up) it came out to 2.52miles, 27 minutes, average pace of 11'09" and 330 calories burned. Once I got into the run, I started thinking ahead to finishing it, not 'oh my god I'm going to die' or 'my lungs are on FIRE!'. I planned to raise my arms up over my head and let out a big whoop when I hit two miles, but things didn't quite work out according to plan. :) Since I was running around 9:15-9:20 per mile and the podcast was timed to a 10 minute mile, my iPod clocked two miles about a minute before the podcast did, so I actually did 2.1 miles before cooling down.

By the time the podcast told me to slow it down to my brisk walking pace to cool down, I was so out of gas that I didn't have the energy to raise my arms! :) My legs were a little rubbery, and I kinda felt like puking a little. By the time I got home, stretched out and took off my shoes, my heart rate had returned to something resembling normalcy and I was able to have a little whoop!

That's the farthest I've ever run in my life.

I've also been watching what I eat lately, too. As I wrote earlier, six weeks ago when I started exercising again after the accident, I could feel my whole front: belly, moobs, everything sloshing around as I ran. Now things have tightened up a little, but I'm still clocking in at 174.5lbs and 24% body fat. I can't imagine what my stats were six weeks ago if I'm visibly skinnier now! Anyway, since tonight was a milestone (literally) I think I'm going to celebrate a little and break program and have some dessert. I'm undecided if it'll be a brownie a la mode at Legendz, or seeing if Decker's still has their almost-orgasmic chocolate fudge caramel pecan pie or maybe just pop a little further down towards town for a little gelato at Giancarlo's Antica Gelateria.

On a side note, I've had gelato all over the place, and by far the best gelato I had was at a little shop in Florence called GROM. Hands down the best gelato, ever. SECOND best gelato is a tie, between Antica Gelateria here in Cayman and Dolce Amore on Commercial Drive in Vancouver.

Tomorrow's a day of rest and then Monday I hit the road again for Week 6 of the Couch to 5k. Normally today would have been a day of rest too, but last Monday was a holiday, and I wasn't feeling well either so I switched to Tue-Thur-Sat this week. If I keep on-task, I should be hitting Week 9, which ends with the 5k/3m goal while I'm in Tampa for training, so I may repeat one week between now and then, considering i'll be on a treadmill in the hotel fitness center that week and aim for 5k before Christmas!

As bad as I look with facial hair, I'm going to participate in Movember this year.

I'm also cheating a little bit. I have yesterday and today's growth of hair already, because it would take me all of Movember to grow a molester moustache of peach fuzz as it is. I got enough ribbing for taking 3 weeks to grow a noticeable beard after Hurricane Ivan.

There's a Facebook group for Movember in Cayman, and there's a kickoff party tomorrow night at Calico Jack's. If you don't know what Movember is all about, consider yourself pageslapped.

Oh yes, I'm still running. I'm into week three now and going strong. MOre to come on that soon... I promise. :)

Helmets are mandatory in Grand Cayman. I don't really see why it has to be a law, it's in your best interests to wear a helmet on a bike or a seatbelt in a car. Not so much in Florida. It always used to amaze me to see people cruising around on choppers with their mullets flowing in the breeze, but at least they were just cruising... 25, 30 mph something like that.

I learned the hard way on August 4th that even 25mph is pretty damaging if you're hit by a car and take a tumble from a two-wheeler onto the asphalt. Fortunately I had on my new, full-face helmet at the time. Based on the scratches and whatnot on the helmet, if I had a half-face helmet I would have had some nasty road rash on my face, or worse. As it was, I ended up with (eight weeks later) some purple scarring on my knee underneath the healed skin. It's kind of creepy looking, you can see how thick the skin it on top of the purple scar. The rest of my road rash has cleared up and only left little white flecks in my tan where the scabbing was. My left foot and my left shoulder (rotator cuff) are still giving me some issues and the Doc has me on Arcoxia still.

A couple weeks ago I was up in Miami for the week and one night I was driving back to my hotel on 836W (Dolphin Expressway) and a guy FLEW past me on a crotch rocket. With no helmet. Now maybe it's because I've had a "strong sign" but I remember thinking "jeeze Louise, what is he THINKING?" A couple nights later on the same stretch another crotch rocket whizzed past me on the Expressway, this time with a passenger, and both with no helmets. USUALLY whenever you see people who ride those kinds of big bikes, they've also got full leathers and full-face helmets, but this guy had on jeans, sneakers, a t-shirt and no helmet. Unbelievable.

Just a few days ago I was IM'ing with my brother and was telling him about my accident a couple months ago. He asked me if I was wearing a helmet and I said "DUH... of COURSE I was..." and then told him about the two bikes on the Dolphin Expressway a few weeks ago.

Then this morning... as I'm waking up the local news on the radio announces that on that same stretch of road, at LeJeune, right by the airport, a motorcyclist lost control. He went down and he and his passenger skidded along the ground, hit and then WENT OVER the embankment on the exit ramp and fell onto another exit ramp below. Both were pronounced dead at the scene. Turns out that they were two people from here in Grand Cayman, one was an RCIP officer. Weather conditions weren't mentioned, nor was any specific reason for causing the loss of control, but it doesn't really matter. It happened, and two people died because of it. Would it have made a difference if they were wearing helmets? Maybe, maybe not but it certainly wouldn't have made anything worse.

Seriously, even if you're on a bicycle, wear a helmet. There ARE worse things than dying.

This morning while I was at Vespa Church at Paperman's Coffee House at the Strand, the Cayman Islands NHC issued a tropical storm watch for Grand Cayman. That means we could get TS conditions within 36 hours. We're on standby at work, waiting to see what happens over the next 12-24 hours to see what develops. As it stands, we're going to be far enough away to avoid pretty much everything except shitty weather for a few days and maybe some high seas and waves for a day or so. More to come...

Sent from my BlackBerryR wireless device from Cable & Wireless bMobile

Two weekends ago we had a little brush with Hurricane Dean. Nothing major, lost a couple shingles but a huge disruption to the normally care and stress free existence that's kept me down here so long.. ha! Anyway, in the lead-up to the storm's arrival, we went through the checklists and steps to preparation. I still have a checklist, but it's pretty much all in my head now because we've been through it so many times... test and tune the generator, inventory and stock the food that needs replenishing, prepare a go-bag in case you need to GTFO of Dodge, document prep, off-site backup of data files (thanks, Stacy for pointing me to Foldershare) fill up the cars with gasoline (A full bunker is a happy bunker) and all of that sorta sorta.

Our landlady didn't think it was worth the trouble to board up or anything because "it did fine in Ivan". Every storm is different, if it comes from even 1 degree different angle it can mean the difference between a safe house and being perpendicular to coconuts, shingles and anything else that gets picked up and blown around and through windows. Ultimately, it's her place, so whatever.

Since it was the first threat of the season, the food supply was pretty low-to-non-existent so when I went shopping (two days before the mad rush) I spent $89 on food & water. most of it was hurricane supplies, but some of it was just regular groceries that I needed as well. I topped up the tank on the Jeep and made sure that Scott's car (that I brought and parked up here for safekeeping) had a good load of fuel too, in case we needed it later on to run the generator).

Since then, I've been driving around on that fuel in the Jeep and had to fill up late last week. I actually let it get right down to fumes and was lucky enough that I rolled into the gas station on momentum! Power Plus (the cheaper stuff) was $4.31 a gallon late last week. Fumes-to-full on the jeep was 12.25 gallons so I was really sucking the dregs from the reserve of the fuel tank. $53.00 later, the tank was full. $53.00!!! That should get me about 350 miles or so,  I'm going to be running this tank down to fumes again to see how far I can stretch it, mileage wise to work out in my head when I need to fill up again.

Compared to my poor little Vespa (which is sitting behind the shop, starting to rust awaiting it's fate from the insurance company) which only took about $5.50-$6.25 to fill up with the good stuff, it was a tough pill to swallow. I guess I have to compare that to the trauma I went through last month and all the medical bills and laying in bed for a whole week and then it's not so bad, but from a purely financial point of view, cars are getting way too damn expensive to operate. It's times like this that I really feel sorry (well not that sorry, no one twisted their arm to buy it) for people who are running around the island in their Suburbans and Expeditions and other silly V8-powered SUVs that are only ever forced to navigate the treacherous puddles after a rain shower.

it's 7am, the closest point of approach isn't for another two hours, but I don't think it's going to get much worse than this. I woke up at 5 to thunder, lightning and pounding rain, but now it's mostly just windy. I would venture a guess (without getting out of bed and going outside) to be 40-50mph winds.

I took a 10 second video clip just for you, Derek, but it's pretty lame, so I didn't upload it anywhere :) the trees are doing aerobics, but they're green leafy trees, not palm trees.

I've opened the blinds now, so I'm laying in bed watching the tops of the trees bob around. It should continue to get worse until about 9am and then start slacking off til about 5 or 6 tonight. As it swings past us and the winds shift around to the south, the waves will start to pound the south coast and the southern-facing West Bay peninsula which is where I live, but I'm inland.

If you want to look on Google Earth, the coordinates of the trees I'm looking at is in the kmz file attached below. From there you can poke around the rest of Cayman seeing where things are in relation to where I am.

It's midnight now. Water is off, power is on. I went outside to take a whizz (no flushing toilets, it's good to be a member of NO MA'AM sometimes.) and check on the conditions a little while ago and get this: the sky is clear and there are lots of stars out. Every now and then you could see a lightning flash wayyyyyyy far away but so far away that you can only make out what general direction it's coming from.

It's windy outside, but not terrible or anything, yet. Trees are moving, bushes are rustling and my anemometer is spinning around much like I'm sure John's bed is now after he drank a whole bottle of red wine on his own and then decided it would be a good idea to open the new bottle of Jack Daniels :)

I'm exhausted from all the work over the past few days, so I'm going to sign off here for the night and get some sleep. If the shit hits the fan in the middle of the night, I'll post it here when I get a chance, but I have a feeling the next post is going to be something like "it's 11:00am, I just woke up and according to the storm track, it's as close as it's going to get. I'll be back in awhile after I go cook some breakfast" or something like that.

It's dark out, and the lights are on still, so the only thing you'd see in the window pane is the reflection of "300", The Transformers, Oceans 13, or whatever else John picked up at the little pirate movie shop down at the corner.

I did set up the Weather Jeep earlier, but I had it mounted 90 degrees off, and because it's in the courtyard of our apartment complex, it mostly spun in circles, but the speed reading was about right. Pressure, temperature and humidity were more or less accurate as well. The batteries are probably low in it and the wireless signal was a bit weak, but it works. I plugged it in to my desktop computer (it's old and only has a serial connection, rather than USB) and wondered if the software would with Windows Vista, and it did, sort of.

The interface software worked, but the jpg creation/web wasn't talking to the interface software. I dowloaded the upgrades and then NOTHIN worked! :) I played with it for a few hours and then said fuck it. :) I have the receiver/display unit, so I'll post data based on that, it just won't be automated.

caymanprepared.ky had a press release saying that Cayman Water Company was waiting until the 4:00 NHC meeting to decide what they were doing. After that they decided to cut the water off at 9:00. I had already taken a nice long hot shower and then filled the tub. Nothing about CUC proactively turning off the power though.

Right now they're expecting 60-70mph sustained winds, and 1-2 inches of rain between 2am tonight and 5pm tomorrow. By then the winds should drop below the 35mph tropical storm threshold. I think what's going to happen is I'm going to wake up tomorrow, after sleeping in, look out the window and say "Shit I missed it!"

From the NHC:

HURRICANE FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 60 MILES...95 KM...FROM THE CENTER...AND TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 205 MILES...335 KM.

From Stormcarib's "How Close Can It Get?" applet:

Results for Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands (19.28N, 81.35W):
The approximate Closest Point of Approach (CPA) is located near 18.4N, 81.6W or about 63.7 miles (102.4 km) from your location. The estimated time of when the center of the storm will be at that location is in about 25.3 hours (Monday, August 20 at 12:18PM EDT).

I guess that's like being strapped down to a table while someone holds a circular saw 1/4" away from your face... you're going to feel it, but you're not going to get hurt by it. Or so the thought goes. A lot of people are perkier today thinking that we might be spared completely, but the tropical storm force winds extend out 205 miles, so that's a storm diameter of 410 miles. At 18mph, that means from the time we start feeling the effect to the time that it clears up again is 22 hours at up to almost hurricane strength winds, with of course higher gusts. Storm surge is also a concern, the last update says seven to nine feet so if we're right at the edge of the hurricane wind field, we should have minimal surge, but still pretty massive wave action.

Of course, it could wobble close enough to throw the entire previous parargraph to the wind (haa, I'm funny, I know) and bring that buzzsaw ashore here in Grand Cayman.

What is it about hurricanes that makes me quote Jack Burton so much?

Hurricane Warning has been issued for the Cayman Islands which means we can start feeling hurricane-force winds within 24 hours.

Game on.

We're still under a watch, it'll be updated to a warning overnight because it's expected to hit early Monday morning. There's not much to post, there's only so much weather channel and NHC NOAA web pages you can read. They're all the same. Impending doom. I was looking for a picture of the clock in the Harry Potter books that points to MORTAL PERIL but I'm so friggin tired I just can't be arsed at the moment.

I went by the airport today... holy sheetrock! Probably not the best week to stop sniffing glue if you're an ATC operator. There was a steady stream of planes, jets, private jets and corporate jets coming and going and going and coming all day long. There was a press release this morning announcing six more flights from Little Cayman to Cayman Brac and later I read a press release saying that the Governor had ordered the complete evacuation of Little Cayman by tomorrow noon.

Last night there was a press release from Cayman Airways listing six extra flights to Miami today, from 0100 last night all the way through to 0150 tonight, three to Fort Lauderdale, one more to Kingston (why you'd want to head IN to the storm, I don't know), an extra jet to/from Cayman Brac and six flights from Little Cayman.

At the bottom of the press release was flights under "Sunday 19th" but really that's still tonight for the poor people who are at work checking people in for the flights instead of at home preparing for the shitstorm. 0100, 0950 to Miami, 0700 to Tampa and 1230 to New York.

The Gov has enacted the Emergency Powers Law, so starting tomorrow evening there's a curfew and "I can reassure the community that the RCIPS is fully mobilised and there will be a strong police presence in all the districts during and after the storm. Should they be needed additional law enforcement reinforcements from outside Cayman are on standby."

I stopped by The Strand this morning to grab a coffee at Paperman's on my way in to work (and I'm still there 13 hours later and counting) and the dentist's office a few doors down had a sheet of paper on the door that said "Attention looters: there are no drugs or cash on these premises, thanks" hehe! I took a picture of it with my phone, but I don't think it turned out too well.

Update Holy shinto! Another press release from Cayman Airways with more flights! 2230 tonight, 0110, 0450 and 1150 to Miami. I don't think I've ever seen this many extra flights from Cayman Airways in any of the previous hurricane evacs I've seen since I moved down here. Maybe AFTER Ivan, taking people out and bringing supplies in, but wow.. that's like, an extra 450 people.

I've added my cell phone number to my contact info on my Facebook Profile. Those of you who really know me well know what a shock that is, as I'm usually very private about telephone numbers.

When cell networks are swamped it sometimes takes 20-30 tries to get a call through, and even then voice quality suffers.

What can you do about that? Use SMS.

SMS doesn't put nearly the load on the cell switches and system that voice calls do and they are queued for delivery, so it will keep trying on your behalf so you don't have to.

I thank you in advance everyone who says be safe, good luck and those sorts of sentiments, however PLEASE do not inundate my SMS inbox with those types of messages. Write them here on my wall or leave a comment on one of the posts over at www.docjely.com and I'll get them when I get back online.

SMS is going to be my primary mode of communications for the next few days, and if you're trying to reach other people in the Cayman Islands, I urge you to use SMS rather than voice.

If you're like me and a cheap bastard, go to http://www.cw.ky/internet/products/mobile-services/data-services/text-messaging/send-a-text-message.php and use their web interface. It's free and doesn't cost you a thing, however it will come from +555 so make sure you leave room to sign your name

Emails sent to 345XXXYYYY@cwmobile.com will also be forwarded via SMS to the  number where XXXYYYY is, so keep it under 160 characters or it will get truncated.

Be safe and we'll talk to you next week
-M

Main email: mark at docjelly.com
ICQ: 1656823
MSN: kmancowboy at hotmail.com
Y!: docjelly or markfaccin
GoogleTalk: mfaccin
AIM: Docjelly73
BB Messenger PIN: 20623D4C

In a field one summer's day a Grasshopper was hopping about, chirping and singing to its heart's content. An Ant passed by, bearing along with great toil an ear of corn he was taking to the nest.
     "Why not come and chat with me," said the Grasshopper, "instead of toiling and moiling in that way?"
     "I am helping to lay up food for the winter," said the Ant, "and recommend you to do the same."
     "Why bother about winter?" said the Grasshopper; "We have got plenty of food at present." But the Ant went on its way and continued its toil.
     When the winter came the Grasshopper had no food and found itself dying of hunger - while it saw the ants distributing every day corn and grain from the stores they had collected in the summer. Then the Grasshopper knew: It is best to prepare for days of need.

Nothing much to report yet. Gov't hasn't even issued an alert yet, which means 72 hours stand-to, then a tropical storm watch, which means TS conditions COULD be felt within 36 hours (or maybe 48, but I'm pretty sure it's 36) and then a TS warning which means TS conditions WILL be felt within 24 hours. Sometimes they double them up and issue a tropical storm warning AND a hurricane watch at the same time. Hurricane warning is like when the sirens go off in the midwest. A twister has been spotted, take cover NOW. Hurricane warning means you have 24 hours or less until the effects are felt, but that also means you'll be in the middle of Tropical Storm-force conditions.

Plans have been set in motion both at home and at work. I'm anticipating a lot of hours this weekend, whether I'm at work or not! I don't want to sound too cavalier, but I don't think we're going to do too badly with this storm. Hopefully those don't become 'famous last words' because there's the potential for this to truly be a shitstorm of magnificent proportions. Preparing for the worst and hoping for the best is the mode of operation this weekend.

Tomorrow, or maybe even early this morning the gov't will issue the alert, and then start to progress through the watches and warnings based upon the actual track of the storm. I'll update the little flag up in the corner as they're released.

On a completely different note, the sky was brilliantly lit up by stars tonight. There's still a lot of light pollution just from the fact that people live here, but you could clearly see the Milky Way tonight. The nights AFTER Ivan, before a lot of people started firing up generators and turning lights back on was by far the prettiest nights for stargazing I've *EVER* seen, period.

"Stan's Uncle Jimbo and his war buddy