Sunday, December 23, 2007

Do I know you?

Since moving to Pacific Grove, I've been told about a half dozen times that I "look familiar". At various times since high school I've been told that I resemble Boris Becker and Seth Green, but I haven't ever had so many people give me the same double-take you give a person when you're pretty sure you went to Elementary School with them. It's kind of wierd, actually. I keep thinking that there must be some television personality around here that has the good fortune of looking like me, but so far I've not been able to identify such a person.
I'm finally starting to get my name known and respected at the various dive shops and whale watching operations in Monterey. It's a really rewarding feeling to volunteer to work on a boat for a day, for no pay, as a sort of working interview, and at the end of it have them tell me that "you can work with us anytime". That's happened three times now, and I'm excited about the prospect of getting a lot of work once the holidays are over. It's really rather ironic that the diveboats all struggle to get a full guest list during the wintertime, when here in California that is by far the best time to dive. Just today, I went out for the first time with a boat and wound up leading a buddy pair for their two dives. The visibility was between 50 and 80 feet and we were the only boat out there! Overall I am very happy with the way things went, both with the crew and with the guests. I kept one woman from bolting to the surface twice, including when she "suddenly" ran out of air (how that goes unnoticed is beyond me, since prevention involves simply looking at your air gauge every so often), I handled the boat lines and anchoring system well, and even managed to grab six golf balls from the bottom. We were about 300 yards offshore, so I don't know who the hell is hitting the balls out there but maybe they ought to call up the PGA. We also saw three sea otters, and were escorted underwater by a young sea lion for awhile.
All in all, things are looking better. There are still a couple of things that concern me (the housemate situation, the drunken neighbor who keeps leering at me and saying, "If only I were 30 years younger...uh!", the fact that I no longer have a bed, etc.), but I'm hoping that these things will become irrelevant or dealt with in time.

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