Snorkeling in Hondoras

I recently went on a cruise with Larry, his brother Sonny, his sister Connie and a few of Larry’s coworkers. Our ports were The Grand Caymans, Cozumel, Mexico, Belize City, Belize, and Roatan, Honduras. Between the four of us we started out with 1,206 pictures total for the seven days. I deleted 414 so we now have a grand total of 792. I have posted several on Facebook for your viewing pleasure.

THE GRAND CAYMANS
We took a tour. It looks like any other port in the Bahamas, nothing I saw really stood out. You will see a picture of me kissing a turtle. Connie, a recently retired registered nurse, freaked out. She said, “Tonya, don’t! salmonella.” It was pretty funny. I kiss anything animal.

COZUMEL, MEXICO
We took a tour. As far as I’m concerned, they can keep Mexico. Most of the shopkeepers were extremely aggressive, they did everything but grab our wallets, remove the cash, and hand us our merchandise. There was a lot of pressure to buy. Most did not want to take credit cards and sometime there was a different price for cash or credit. I wasn’t impressed.

BELIZE CITY, BELIZE
I liked Belize. We took a tour and an airboat ride through some kind of lake/marsh. We saw a lot of birds and a baby crocodile.
The shopkeepers were much more laid back. I didn’t get the impression that this was as poor a country as Mexico.

ROATAN, HONDORAS
Wow! Honduras looks completely different than what you normally see on a cruise. It was very mountainous. A lot of trees, shrubbery, waterfalls, cactus, vegetation, etc. We went snorkeling and visited a botanical gardens with parrots and monkeys. I would love to go again and just explore the whole country. I’ve been snorkeling once before and it was not a positive experience so I was not looking forward to it, but it was in the package we were doing that day and I got outvoted. I spent the first 10 minutes trying to get my breathing under control (I am a bad hyperventilator when snorkeling) and then I was fine. Seeing the coral reef I have heard and read so much about up close was a highlight.

The next to the last day of the cruise Larry and Sonny came to our room to get the luggage that Connie and I would not be able to carry off ourselves, and Larry pointed to a large black suitcase at the foot of Connie’s bed and asked whose it was. Connie and I both pointed at the other. It turns out it didn’t belong to either of us!!!
The first day, I had gotten to the room before Connie and rolled our luggage in. Since it wasn’t mine I assumed the suitcase was Connie’s. Connie figured I just needed more room and had placed my suitcase on her side of the room. The luggage tag was away from us, flat against the wall, so we didn’t see the tag until the day before we got off the ship!!! It belonged to the husband of the family in the very next stateroom!!! We returned it immediately and I explained what had happened. The poor guy had no clothes or underclothing the entire week while we were using his suitcase as a table. Connie and I can’t look at each other to this day without bursting out laughing at how stupid those people must have thought we were!!!!

Other than that everything else went real well.

January 12, 2009

It’s been a bad week.

FAMILY
January 3rd my grandma was hospitalized with an infection. She almost didn’t make it and it’s not looking good at the time of this writing. The sense of helplessness being so many miles away is one of the worst feelings in the world. But then, if I jumped on a plane and stayed there for a period of time I would feel like I would be interrupting their way of doing things, kind of “pushing my way in.” I feel like I’m doing the wrong thing either choice I make. So I stay put.

On a happy note, my cousin is pregnant again. She is due around the time their only daughter starts kindergarten. That timing didn’t surprise me. I am so glad they had more than one child. I can only speak for myself of course, but I HATED being an only child. I’m happy for Haevyn.

ANIMALS
On Wednesday, I decided to put my last cat to sleep after a long illness (please see my past blog for details). The death of any of my “children” affects me as greatly as losing a human.

FUN
With as stressful as this week has been, Larry surprised me by arranging with an army buddy of his for us to rent their vacation home in Fripp Island, South Carolina for a three-day weekend. I’d never been. That whole area is stunningly gorgeous!!! It had a sub-tropical feel to it. It felt to me a lot like Miami. Lots of palm trees and water. The island itself was a deer sanctuary. Larry is a deer hunter so he counted the horns on every buck he saw, and jokingly lamented that he didn’t bring his bow. (Yes, I smacked him up :)). There’s not a lot to do in the area so we drove around a lot and took pictures. It was wonderful to spend some quality time with Larry. The holidays are so busy with family and friends, and shopping.
The only negative was apparently the house had not been rented in a while and the water supply had a sulpher buildup, making the water literally smell like rotten eggs! Fortunately by Saturday night we had run the water enough so that it was tolerable. Other than that it was a wonderful weekend.

The weather (for January) was great with only a light sprinkling on Sunday morning. I guess the island was as sad to see us go as we were to leave.

My First Blog

My first non-school blog. This is pretty exciting. Now the big question: What to write about?

Knowing me, it will be anything, everything, and nothing.

My life pretty much revolves around five topics (in no particular order) Animals, School, Work, Relationships, Fun

Time to back up and tell you a little about me:

I was born in Milwaukee WI, July 25, 1970. I was raised in Rhinelander, WI. I also lived in Payson, AZ. I got real tired of the Wisconsin winters so I relocated to Macon, Georgia 15 years ago. I have never been married and have no children (no I’m not gay).

RELATIONSHIPS (Macon, Georgia)
Larry – Landlord and “honorary family member”.
Vivian – Best friend for the past 14 years.
These are the two people I will write about the most.

FAMILY (New Mexico)
Grandmother – Leona Killoy, 94. She raised me.
Aunt – Colette Boyer
Cousins – Laurie, Jimmy, Aaron, Megan, Haevyn, Josh, Stacy, Nicole, Jonathan

ANIMALS
I currently have two dogs.
Savannah is an eight-year-old black Pug. Her only talent is sitting in my lap at every opportunity.









Jordan is (approximately) a pitbull / bulldog / Great Dane / huntin’ dog mix. He’ll be (again approximately) two in February. He showed up on my front porch July 1, 2007. It took a little bit of convincing to get Larry to let me keep him, but hey . . .
Jordan is an excellent, excellent, excellent watchdog. I’ve been real pleased with him.





I recently lost two cats within two weeks of each other.

Hunter (so named because it took him two days to kill a fly in the house when he was a kitten) died December 19, 2008. Larry saw him Thursday around 3:30 p.m. and said he was fine. I found him pretty listless around 5:15 p.m. He enjoyed a good cat fight pretty routinely, so I immediately figured that he was scraped up, but upon carefully inspection he was still in one piece. Thinking he might have broken bone(s) I carried all 12 lbs of him into the garage and watch him for a while. He would crawl around snake like, which increased my suspicion of perhaps a broken leg. My vet is closed Thursday afternoons, so the next morning I had Vivian take him in. She left him for observation and I got to the vet’s about 4:15 that afternoon. They had taken xrays and found his lungs filled with fluid and his stomach filled with air. He passed away about 20 minutes before I got there. The vet thinks that he maybe fell out of a tree directly on his chest . . .

I lost Tristan January 6, 2009. Tristan went into the vet the day before Thanksgiving with a huge growth in his mouth. I assumed it was cancer, of course, but it turned out to be a salivary gland backup. I would take him or have Vivian take him to the vet about every other to every three days to get it drained. Then it progressed into a double “cyst”, then the growth would be back as big as when I took him in as soon as we got back home. After three months of this, I decided to do the best thing for Tristan, and have him put down.

I love all things animal, well, except for spiders, they pretty much creep me out. I won’t kill ‘em though; I just sweep them out of the house.

Vivian teases me that I would take an injured mosquito into the vet.

SCHOOL
I would be a professional student if I could. I am obsessed with learning and education.

I started out as a Nursing Major/Spanish Minor. It just got too difficult. I switched to a Psychology Major/Criminal Justice Minor. The thing I love about this field is that there are so many avenues I can take. There is a great deal of flexibility. Right now I am interested in legal mediation, drug + alcohol counseling, and research. I look forward to seeing what other fields interest me as I further my education.

Spring semester starts for me January 12, 2009. I will be taking Probability + Statistics, Introduction to the Law, + Introduction to Criminal Justice. Not a math person, I’m scared.

WORK
I have been the Office Manager for a Civil Engineering firm in Macon, Georgia since July 7, 1997. I am extremely fortunate. I actually enjoy my job, coworkers, and boss. I live 10 minutes from the office. Sorry, no drama to write about.

FUN
I love travel, photography, and videography. I guess technically I collect tiger photography (well, anything tiger, really) and T-shirts of all things.

MY VIEWS ON:

I’m not saying my views are right or wrong, they just belong to me.

ABORTION – Murder, it should NOT be legal.

DEATH PENALTY – I have no problem with it. It should be an option for those who have committed heinous murder(s) if we are 100% sure that the defendant is guilty. I think all those appeals are bulls**t. People on death row for 10 to 20 years???? WTF???????

RELIGION – I was raised by my grandparents, who were devout Jehovah’s Witnesses. It’s certainly an interesting religion, but it consumes your life. I sincerely appreciate the invaluable Bible training I got. After 23 years of meetings three times week and field service (knocking on doors) as often as possible, I guess I just got burned out and had to take a step back.
When my grandmother and I talk she has eight topics of conversation: religion, religion, religion, religion, religion, the weather, her health, and family. I would love to get to know her as person before she leaves us, I know about religion.
Needless to say, I will not be writing much about religion in my blogs.

POLITICS – Not really into politics as far as Republican/Democrat etc. Someone’s got to run the government, we might as well do the research and vote for whom we think is the best person for the job.

ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES – We need to save the Earth, it’s the only planet with chocolate. In all seriousness, I do what I can. I conserve water, for the most part don’t use aerosols, print on both sides of paper, use a dry erase board instead of scratch pads, etc. It’s important.

What other topics do you want my views on?

That’s pretty much me in a nutshell. I’ll keep ya posted.