Help save the net for US, don’t let them take it over!
PHILADELPHIA Classic Cheesecake Recipe – Kraft Recipes.
I don’t know about you, but I LOVE cheesecake! I have a cookbook at home with recipes for about 100 different kinds and I could eat it every day. 🙂
I haven’t been too impressed with the cooking over here offshore Africa. I thought at first it was because it must be really hard to get good ingredients. I’ve heard since that other rigs do manage somehow to have the usual excellent food we’re used to working out here, so now I’m not sure what to think.
Our cooks here have been making a dessert lately. It is like cheesecake in a pan. It doesn’t have a crust, which IMHO is no great loss. Probably saves some calories even. It doesn’t look anywhere near as impressive as the picture at the top of the post, but it does taste just like a classic cheesecake. 🙂
Yesterday, I’ve been here for 28 days. That doesn’t count the 2 days travel time and the day we spent in Mauritius in a safety meeting (ALL day).
It’s been non-stop since I got off the plane. I thought it might slow down when we finished our acceptance trials (we had to show the client that we could do everything we said we could- test all equipment, etc). The auditor left a couple of days ago. But now we are preparing to go to work and things are still moving a mile a minute.
A new ship is nice, but there are always bugs to work out and lots of extra stress getting everything working the way it should. I hope things will get closer to normal in the next couple of days.
Most of the crew I came with left the ship to go home yesterday. I sure wish I went with them!!!
Here’s another Song of the Sea for your enjoyment. 😉
Let me know how you like it.
Here’s a sunrise for the Daily Posts Weekly Photography Challenge. This week, the challenge is to show a photo “taken in the early morning light”. Be an “early bird“.
I’m most definitely NOT an early bird! Last time I can remember really enjoying early morning was as a kid getting up for Saturday morning cartoons. 🙂
I was always a night owl. I used to stay up ’til 2-3 in the morning. I used to go out partying a lot. Or, I might stay at home reading a good book. Sometimes I just couldn’t put it down ’til I finished.
I’ve cut back a lot on keeping those kinds of hours now a days. Mostly because I have too much to do now. Things that have to be taken care of during normal business hours (9-5). Now I try to get to sleep by midnight (and it really isn’t too hard to do anymore). 😉
I only see the sunrise when I’m working the midnight to noon watch like I am now. I haven’t seen many good sunrises (or sunsets) this trip yet. Since we made arrival off Congo, it has been overcast. It clouded up a few days before we got here and hasn’t cleared up yet.
I took this photo while I was working on the tuna boat a couple of years ago. We were coming into the lagoon at Tarawa. The sunrise was just stunning. I had to run and get my camera.
This is one of my all time favorite ‘sun’ pictures. I keep one of my others as my header.
If more people knew and understood the truth about our system, we would not be stuck with obamacare now. We MIGHT actually still have a decent health care system! I wish more people would pay attention to what goes on in the world around them, maybe we could make things better instead of worse.
Here’s my entry for the Daily Posts Weekly Photo Challenge: Afloat. I have LOTs of good pictures for this one. I’ve spent most of my life at sea. I’ve already posted a few photos, here are some of my latest ‘home’ afloat.
These photos are from my latest ship, the Ocean Rig Apollo. I’m actually aboard right now. We’re delivering the ship from the shipyard in Korea to it’s first job offshore Congo. I joined the ship with the rest of the crew onboard right now in Mauritius about 3 weeks ago.
These are some pictures from our voyage. The first one is our departure from Port Louis, Mauritius, the ‘cliffs’ are the coastline of South Africa, after we passed Cape Town (I was asleep for that so missed getting any pictures from there).
Here’s my entry for the Daily Posts Weekly Photo Challenge: Afloat. I have LOTs of good pictures for this one. Here are some pictures of the kinds of ships I see daily while I’m at work.
Yeah, they’re all afloat, tho I sure don’t know how a couple of them manage it. 😉
Here’s my entry for the Daily Posts Weekly Photo Challenge: Afloat. I have LOTs of good pictures for this one. Here are a few sea creatures to start off with. 😉
Celebrate International Dark Sky Week! | Today’s Image | EarthSky.
I didn’t know this week was anything special. Good thing I looked at some of my emails this afternoon. 😉
I always loved looking at the stars on night watch. That’s one of the things I miss the most about working in the oil field. There are always too many lights on to be able to really see the stars at night.
They’re posting some absolutely gorgeous photos on this site. Check it out.
I saw this challenge from Sue over at her ‘A Word in Your Ear’ blog. The word of the week is: arid. I don’t have many photos that would fit this weeks word, since I spend most of my time at sea. But I did happen to have a couple on my computer.
I took these last summer, we hadn’t had any rain for a while and everything was drying up. I was on the way back home from Galveston. I always like to drive the beach road, especially when I’m not in a hurry. It’s a nice drive, right along the beach with some pretty scenery and some good places to stop and enjoy the day. 🙂
Isn’t it cool? I think it’s neat, that I can be at work thousands of miles away from home and meet someone who lives less than a mile from my house.
That’s one thing about being a sailor, it’s a small world out here. I almost always know someone onboard, or we might have worked with the same people in the past, or on the same ship at some point. It gives us a good starting point to talk about.
People we know, ships we’ve sailed, ports we’ve been to. It’s nice to have that commonality right from the start when you step aboard thousands of miles from home on a new ship with a new crew.
One of these days I’d really like to try this!
These ships all look fairly new, I kept wondering why the hell they’re being scrapped. Seems like a huge waste to me. 🙁
They didn’t say it in the video, but I bet this was filmed in Alang.
Here’s my entry for the Daily Posts’ Photo Challenge: Blur.
Normally, I wouldn’t have kept these pictures, they’re too blurred. They work great for this challenge tho. 😉
I took them at the ‘festival’ going on next door to our hotel in Mauritius. The belly dancer was very good. I never did get a decent picture of her while she was dancing. I was lucky, I saw her later and she posed for me. 🙂
Here’s another ‘Song of the Sea’ for your weekend enjoyment. 🙂
Hey,
It’s been pretty busy on here since we left Mauritius on Saturday. I thought it would be a nice, quiet cruise for a few days. Instead it’s been one thing after another. I haven’t really had any time to myself.
Today we’re sailing South of South Africa. We passed by Port Elizabeth a couple of hours ago, we’ll pass the Cape of Good Hope and Capetown sometime tonight or early tomorrow. I’m on the midnight til noon watch, so I’m hoping to be able to see something of it when we pass by. I hear the view from the ocean is beautiful.
I wonder if we’ll see anything of Africa before we reach Congo?
Is this STILL not enough yet? WTF is it going to take for people to wake the hell up and put a STOP to this shit!?
I’ve been pretty busy for the last few days. We got on the ship and left pretty quickly. I really wish we could have stayed a little longer. It was a beautiful little island. Here’s a photo I took from the bridge so you can see what I mean.
Port Louis, Mauritius
I’ll post more pictures later, as soon as I can get caught up with everything here at work. I still gotta admit, no matter how much things have changed for the worse out here, there’s still nothing to compare to the view from my ‘office’ windows. 🙂
Here’s my take on the latest prompt from the Daily Post (Ephemeral).
I chose these photos for 2 reasons. The paper origami boats are themselves ephemeral, and I took the pictures earlier this evening in Port Louis, Mauritius.
Why does that make it ephemeral? Because I only got here yesterday afternoon after a looooooong flight (too tired to go out). Today I spent all day in a ‘workshop’ with the rest of my new crewmates. Tomorrow morning (early), we will be leaving to join the ship. So my time in Mauritius sped by and was very short-lived.
It looks very beautiful (I’ll post more pictures later). I hope I can come back again someday. 🙂
Today’s prompt from the Daily Post…
Have you got a code you live by? What are the principles or set of values you actively apply in your life?
I don’t usually think too deep about that kind of thing. But after I thought about it again, in response to the prompt today, I realize that yes, I really DO have a code I live by.
That code is simple:
LIVE AND LET LIVE
I’ve always thought that philosophy would make the world a MUCH better place if more people would live that way.
I thought when I was growing up I was alone in my thought processes. For so long, it seemed that everyone else around always thought for some strange reason that someone else (god, family, state, etc.) had some sort of ‘right’ to dictate how others should live their lives.
It was very encouraging for me to learn a few years ago that there are actually a lot of other people who think the way I do. Who believe in the philosophy of liberty and value freedom for all (actually, Americas’ founding fathers thought the same way and tried hard to form a government that would protect our rights to live this way- too bad their vision has been totally destroyed in only 200 years).
I only found out about the libertarians when my local Texas congressman Ron Paul was running for President as a Libertarian. It was SO nice to find that there were other people I could talk to who actually agreed with me. 🙂
(On most things- or at least the basic principles. Of course, if you’ve ever been in a room full of libertarians, you’d never believe that since we can argue for hours over the minute details of some proposal.)
But, the BASIC principals are not really an issue.
Self ownership: YOU own your life! No one else!
Everything else comes out of that most basic principle. Things like personal responsibility, honesty and respect for others. Everything comes together in a very sensible, ethical way for people in society to live. Each person is free to chose how to live their own lives in the best way possible for them (live according to their own values), taking into consideration their personal circumstances, and remember that they’re free to do whatever they choose as long as they don’t hurt anyone else while doing it (and, that they’re responsible for their own choices/actions!). That brings up a biggie.
There is also the non-aggression principle. Here is a good explanation of that by Dr. Mary Ruwart…
QUESTION: What is the libertarian “non-aggression principle” (or “non-aggression axiom”)?
MY SHORT ANSWER: Libertarianism is based on a single ideal, the non-aggression principle, so libertarian rhetoric tends to be remarkably consistent.
Libertarians oppose the initiation of force to achieve social or political goals. They reject “first-strike” force, fraud or theft against others; they only use force in self-defense. Those who violate this “non-aggression principle” are expected to make their victims whole as much as possible.
This “Good Neighbor Policy” is what most of us were taught as children. We were told not to lie, cheat, steal, not to strike our playmates unless they hit us first. If we broke a friend’s toy, we were expected to replace it.
Most of us still practice what we learned as children with other individuals, but we have grown accustomed to letting government aggress against others when we think we benefit. Consequently, our world is full of poverty and strife, instead of the harmony and abundance that freedom (i.e., freedom from aggression) brings.
Simply put, libertarians take the non-aggression principle that most people implicitly follow in their interactions with other individuals, and apply it to group actions, including government actions, as well.
You might have heard the Libertarian Party (LP) referred to as the “Party of Principle.” This is because the LP bases its programs and policy positions on the non-aggression principle.
Yeah, I really DO believe in these principles and yes, I do live by them.
If I haven’t gone too far off the deep end for you, and you’re interested in learning more, try taking the quiz (that’s why I keep it as a sticky first post on my blog). Check out the links in this post, or try the Advocates for Self-Government or the International Society for Individual Liberty, they’re both full of good information and more links to other resources for the liberty movement around the world.
Have you ever heard of libertarians before? Do you agree with these principles? If you don’t mind me asking, why or why not?
(Yes, I am hoping to start a discussion here). 🙂
Here’s my entry for the Day 18: Edge assignment. I think it’s ‘edgy’ in more ways than one. 😉
I took it at the Houston Museum of Art. It’s in the tunnel between the 2 parts of the museum. It changes colors (slowly) and it’s really neat to watch when people are going through it.
I haven’t seen anyone fall off the edge yet, but I checked it out and you wouldn’t fall very far. 😉
Seems like I’ve been home for such a short time! I guess that’s because I’ve only been home for a little over a week and the 1st couple of days were totally wasted just trying to catch up on sleep!! So I HAVE only been home for a short time!!
These long flights are really getting old. Especially when they make it so there’s no way to even TRY to upgrade! I started trying to upgrade as soon as I found out I would have a 15 HOUR flight! (And that’s only the FIRST leg to Dubai, I still have another 6 1/2 flight to Mauritius after that!) It would be nice to show up somewhere and not be completely exhausted for the 1st few days you get there.
I don’t have enough miles on this airline (Emirates). They don’t allow use of miles from another airline. I tried to BUY an upgrade, they wouldn’t even tell me how much it would cost!
All this because I’m on a ‘seamans’ fare’, not that it’s really any cheaper than I see online every day. What a rip-off! They USED to be good for a good rate for sailors that had to get to/from their ships on short notice. Not the same anymore, they’re more than the online tickets now.
I could possibly upgrade through my travel agent, IF I could contact them. Seems that is just not possible. I tried calling, emailing, and filling out their online form. Been trying for a WEEK now. STILL no response from them.
So, I guess I need to psyche myself up for a 15 hour long flight with no sleep. I WISH I was one of those so-lucky people that can sleep while sitting up!
I just hope there are no seat-back kicking kids or screaming babies nearby. 🙁
I’m still trying to participate in the Photography 101 Challenge. Today’s assignment is: glass.
I’m leaving for work tomorrow and pretty busy, so not able to get out to take any more photos. I took these when they sent me to Aberdeen (Scotland) for a lifeboat class. I had enough time after class each day to wander around town a bit.
I love the creativity of the little fisherman’s cottage in the top row. Tom, Dick and Harry 😉 and the model ships behind glass.
I got to try a glass of whiskey at the Glenfiddich distillery and the brew at the Moorings Bar.
I didn’t get to see the inside of the stained glass windows, they looked like they would be gorgeous with the light shining through. Maybe next time…
It’s too bad more people don’t understand. This is worth taking a look at.
I’ve always loved this song. Maybe because I always loved the ocean and everything in it. I also love to SCUBA dive and thanks to Cousteau for that!! I’ve been lucky to always live near the ocean and even to work on the water. 🙂
John Denver wrote this song as a tribute to Jacques Cousteau and his expedition ship “Calypso”. I think he did a good job (I wish the youtube video was better!).
I remember watching Jacques Cousteau on TV when I was a kid. I loved seeing his voyages on the Calypso.
I thought about this song when I saw the post on the Old Salt Blog the other day about the sad situation the Calypso is in now.
I hope someone will come to her rescue.
In the meantime, here are the lyrics to the song (in case you want to sing along).
“Calypso”
To sail on a dream on a crystal clear ocean, to ride on the crest of the wild raging storm.
To work in the service of life and the living, in search of the answers to questions unknown.
To be part of the movement and part of the growing, part of beginning to understand.
Aye, Calypso, the place’s you’ve been to,
the things that you’ve shown us, the stories you tell.
Aye, Calypso, I sing to your spirit, the men who have served you so long and so well.
Like the dolphin who guides you, you bring us beside you
to light up the darkness and show us the way.
For though we are strangers in your silent world, to live on the land we must learn from the sea.
To be true as the tide and free as a wind swell, joyful and loving in letting it be.
Aye, Calypso, the place’s you’ve been to,
the things that you’ve shown us, the stories you tell.
Aye, Calypso, I sing to your spirit, the men who have served you so long and so well.
Aye, Calypso, the place’s you’ve been to,
the things that you’ve shown us, the stories you tell.
Aye, Calypso, I sing to your spirit, the men who have served you so long and so well.
Here’s an interesting link to Jessica’s blog where she gives a very good rundown on Jacques Cousteau and his Calypso (along with some diving to whet your whistle). And another one on Cousteau. Check ’em out! 🙂
I haven’t been able to get out to get many new pictures lately, so I’m looking through some old ones for the Photography 101 Challenge: Moment.
The idea is to ‘”capture a fleeting moment and experiment with blur and movement”.
I did try this last time they ran this challenge, but I found some different pictures this time. I took these at the Brazoria County Fair a couple of years ago. I don’t think these turned out as good as the earlier ones I just posted. It was SO hard to get a good shot of the cowboys once they came out of the gate on those bulls!
I’m thinking of going to the Houston Rodeo tomorrow tho, so maybe I’ll be able to get some better ones this time. I really love going to the rodeo. I’m lucky to be home for this one. I’m in Houston tonight anyway, so might as well do something here in the morning before I go home. It’ll be either the rodeo or the zoo. 🙂
I haven’t been able to get out to get many new pictures lately, so I’m looking through some old ones for the Photography 101 Challenge: Moment.
The idea is to ‘”capture a fleeting moment and experiment with blur and movement”.
I did try this last time they ran this challenge, but I found some different pictures this time. I took these at the Brazoria County Fair a couple of years ago. I think they get the idea across, don’t you? 😉
I thought I’d try to do this Photography 101 project again, since I wasn’t able to spend much time on it last time and missed a few assignments. Here is my post from last time.
I thought I would have more time this go ’round.
It doesn’t look like I will, but while I’m home, I’ll try to participate. Here’s my entry for the ‘architecture’ challenge. I’m trying to find some good ones I can make black and white.
Here are a couple of shots I took a few years ago when I was in Argentina for vacation. I really loved it there. I wish I could have spent months there instead of only couple of weeks. These photos are both from Buenos Aires. The first one is looking down the neat old spiral staircase I found at my first B&B. The bottom one is looking up into the skylight of a market
I think they both show some great ‘bones’. I have some other good photos of architecture from that trip, but most of them look better in color. I don’t usually think in black and white.
Do you think that might help to get better photos?
PS- the ‘featured image’ is also from Buenos Aires. I took it while I was wandering around down near the river one day. I don’t have any idea what the building is.
Amazing! I only got home from Angola late Thursday, and Friday I got an email from work asking me to go to Mauritius!
I’ve never been there before. I LOVE going to new places. I just hope to have at least a little bit of time to see something of Mauritius. I’d hate to go straight from the airport to the ship. The pictures look gorgeous! Here’s one I found on google.
I’m going to meet one of our new drillships and bring it around to the other side of Africa and hopefully stay to get it started on its’ first contract. This will be the first time I’ve actually gone anywhere on a ship for months. That will be a nice change.
I’m excited to be able to sail a ship again, instead of just keep it sitting in one place, which is what I’ve mostly been doing for the last few years. Here’s a map of Africa. You can get an idea of where we’ll be going. Just find Mauritius (East of Madagascar) and head South around the tip of South Africa and then back up North to Congo on the West Coast.
Looks like we’ll wind up not too far from where I’ve been working off Angola for the last few months.