Sharks.

I may have mentioned it before, I may have not, but my wife wins.  I blew the surprise because I'm an idiot who just randomly shoots his mouth off.

It'd been a birthday surprise she'd been brewing for months, but whilst digging around in my "Stuff From America" box when I wasn't looking, she wasn't able to find my dive certification card, which she needed to set up my surprise.

Then, sitting on the couch one Saturday with the toddler on my lap and my pajamas still on at 3 in the afternoon, I was watching some "Travel West Australia" show and saw the host diving in a cage with sharks.  Being the jackass that I am and watching the host spack it like a fruitloop, I said loudly (and what I thought was sarcastically) "Geez honey, I'd hate doing THAT!"

She turned slowly in her chair, "Doing... what?"

"Swimming with Sharks!  If you're like, planning a birthday surprise for me that involves swimming with sharks, you can Forget It!"

A slow, stunned look crossed her face before I got the frowning of a lifetime and she said in a low growl, "How did you find out?"

My cheesy and hapless grin faded when I started to cotton on that I'd done something big and wrong.  A full minute passed while I sat there thinking I was funny and she sat there trying to figure out how I'd figured it out.  Then, when I actually started the dialogue again and the jig was up, I broke out into monumental smiles and hooting.

Toddlecurl got so excited she started whooping too, and it was ON.

I guess I'd known that she'd had something planned as a surprise, but I simply had no idea.  None.  Not that I couldn't believe that my wife was that cool, I just couldn't believe that she'd surprise me with something that cool.

I couldn't find my dive card, so I instantly went and ordered one off the website and paid the expedite fees even (and I'm a cheapass, so that's saying something) because the blood thundering in my ears in excitement was driving my actions.

We wrangled sisters-in-law and even popped kids from school and all headed down to AQWA to Dive With The Sharks.  I needed to wee about 3 times after we got there and even went again after the nice li'l divemaster got me all suited up.

The family was all ready down in the viewing tube and started watching the divers descend, only to see me plunk down in the water and then pop back up.  Then plunk back in and then pop back up onto the ledge.  Damon, my oldest, told me later he thought I was scared and didn't want to go and wife confessed that she'd thought I'd lost a step or two and had forgotten how to sink.

This was actually kind of true, but turns out that I've always been a highly bouyant guy (not flambouyant, doofuses) and they kept packing weight into my vest to get me to sink.  See, to keep out of the fish's way (and to not get eaten by the sharks) they need you to be negatively bouyant so that you're stuck to the bottom of the tank at all times and not floating around like chum.  When I unloaded later, I found about 12 kg in one pocket and 2 in the other, making my floundering and flailing on the bottom of the tank make a bit more sense to spectators than wife saying, "Oh, he's just a bit of a nimrod." (she didn't really say that (she totally made me say that (no she didn't but she would have))).

SO... here we go:

Lots of beautiful little fish in the giant aquarium that you forget about.  Most of them are snapper and trevally, or as I like to call 'em "Shark Food", but there are some really cool little ones that will swim up and around your head in curiosity.

Okay, there we go.  That's one big mutha.  I was told during prep that there were 4 Grey Nurse Sharks in the tank, 3 females and a male named "Dopey", the largest at 3.8 metres, a female named "Munchkin".

This is probably "Dopey".  He doesn't look dopey, he looks quite killy if you ask me.

HEY!  There I am!  I was actually watching for the divemaster through the tube thingo and not being surprised and/or angry at my wife for taking my picture.  Visibility into that thing was amazingly good, even if I look a bit weird when looking out of it.  I s'pose I look a bit weird anyway.

Scuba masks make you ANGRY.  And SURPRISED.  And smudgy.  Is that you wife?

Holy cats, those stingrays like to swoop and cruise things.  We were told that their eyes on are top of their head, so they like to cruise over things and sort of... glide.  Someone in the group asks, "Are their barbs removed?" and the divemaster gal stifled a laugh and told us that all the things in there are about as nature-tastic as you can get.  "Don't worry, they only barb you if you piss 'em off or step on 'em, NEITHER of which you'll do today."

Yeah, reassured.  Sure.

This li'l guy was really curious and cute and I remember thinking, "Aw, he's just a little guy" and then remembering that he's 3 times the size of any of the hundreds of fish I've got in my house.

Perspective is everything.

Not sure what I'm doing, but apparently I think I'm quite awesome.  OR I'm simply a ham.  I've been called both, though "ham" outnumbers "awesome" by about eleventybillion to one.

Yeah, my eyes are actually legitimately bulging out of my head in this one.  You're not supposed to touch the animals, but it's so damn tempting when they're RIGHT THERE.

We had to traverse the tube a few times, putting us up close and personal with the folks underneath, and if I'd known that my crotch was going to be smeared across the viewing area so many times, I would've done a dance or given it a wiggle or something.

The turtles don't see so well, we were told, and this one kept swimming right at me, causing me to have to move out of his way.  He was HUGE at approximately 200 kg, and there's more about turtles later...

Cute li'l guy who's a teenager in turtle years at 35.

THIRTY FIVE?!?!!?  I'M THIRTY FIVE!!!!

I knew I felt like a teenager for a good and proper reason.

The divemasters were fairly strict on moving quickly across the tubes so that you stay out of the fish's way, but I figured I had enough time to fart around a bit.  There's always time for that.

"Sharks?  What sharks?  I'll moider 'em!  I'll pulverize 'em!!"

I think I'm actually threatening sis-in-law Nicole and telling her that she's lucky I'm in there and she's not a shark.

"holyshittheresreallysharksinhere!"

For reals you guys, there's some really big and mean and bitey and swimming-at-me sharks in this tank with me.

Waitaminnit, I PAID for this?!?

Heh.  I remember thinking, "Geez that's a big fish... that could eat me..."

Seconds before this, I was tooling along the bottom happily and felt something nudging my leg.  Thinking that I was just a bit too slow for the diver behind me, I went to kick a bit and then felt something nudging and rubbing along the insides of my thighs.  To be honest, I got a bit arced up thinking that the other diver was being quite inappropriate with my personal and private areas, 'til I looked down.

This blind li'l sucker came from right out between my legs, paused to stare me right in the eyes and then kicked away.

If turtles could look embarrassed, I reckon that's the expression he had, and I giggled my ass off into my regulator.

After I checked my nuts were alright.

They're so streamlined and... deadly looking.  They are just awesome to watch swim.

Okay, here's where I admit that I wasn't actually watching him the entire time simply because they are so captivating to witness.

I wasn't turning my back on those rows and rows of teeth.

'Course, there's 4 Nurse Sharks and 3 somethingsomething sharks whose name I can't remember... wife has handed me a book... why can't I remember such a simple name?  Sandbar!  SANDBAR shark.  Who can't remember that?

At several points during the dive, I remember looking in and seeing my neice Imogen and wife pointing frantically with both hands somewhere behind me.  Given that the visibility in a dive mask is poo, I frequently had something large and predatory swim by me while I was looking elsewhere.

Meh, at least I found two of their teeth in the sand on the floor of the tank.  The divemaster said we could keep whatever we found, and Jo said there was some no-it-all grandpa in there answering his grandkid's questions of what we were doing in there with "See!  They're cleaning."  To which, my spitfire sis-in-law Nicole said loudly, "I THINK THEY'RE DIVING."  Bless 'er.

Sometimes, I just can't resist it.

The weird ghosting effect of Jo's camera inside of the viewing tunnel actually detracts from a few things.  One of which is that the glass distorts for distance, meaning the closer you are to it, the larger you look... and the farther away the smaller you look.  This means that I look sort of normal Judd-sized, and the shark looks like it's about the size of a big dog and is about 12 feet away.

Whereas it was actually about 6 feet away and was roughly the size of a garbage truck.

Worst part was that I couldn't see that he had a clear path ahead of him, and I thought he was up against the rock wall.  He'd swam in above us in curiosity and then slowed right down, turning several times to look at me.  Right.  At.  ME.

Wife commented later that while it didn't seem as if I was shrinking back into the sand and weeing in my wetsuit, I did appear to be wishing very much that he would just move along.

She's right.  No weeing, but lots of wishing.

The Smooth Stingrays were amazing in that they're so... well... smooth.  They just glide cleanly over everything and occasionally come right over your head where you can watch the bubbles from your reg get caught under their belly as they cruise above you, blocking out the light.

Of course, in the water, no one can hear you, especially through your regulator.  But, if you could, you'd hear me singing, "Ohhhhhhh, let's name the zones, the zones, the zones, let's name the zones of the deep blue seeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaa!!!"  When I realised that not only could anyone hear me, and therefore my singing was wasting air, but that it's slightly silly to be in a huge and wonderful sea adventure and singing songs from "Finding Nemo."

Of course, reminding myself to actually act like a grown up never seems to work, as I watched him swim away I could hear myself singing, "There's mesopolagic, bathyal, abyssalpelagic..."

I'll never grow up.

But with a family like mine, I don't ever have to.

Thanks Wife, you WIN.  Happy Birthday to me indeed.

EDIT: Wife reminded me to put some pics of the shark teeth.

That's the bigger one, that even has a chip on the end.  Wife was all "pity it's chipped" and my response was, "But the chip happened IN THE SHARK'S MOUTH."

That is awesome.

This one's litter, but very pointy and sharp.  I'll make a necklace out of it when I want to puncture holes in my neck.

Here's me drinking Toohey's Extra Dry watching Collingwood lose badly in the AFL semifinals.  Dickheads.

I'm still in my PJs and it's... 8:34 in the PM.  This is why weekends without kids freakin' RULE.

I'm going to eat croissants and an old waffle for dinner, with another beer.

Did I mention this weekend rules?  Wife wins too.

Posted by JuddHole

This blog was the one that changed everything in my life, so it stands to reason that it continue to do so. I hope it starts with my underwear.

Balingup 2009

For those of you that don't know how hard nerds can nerd, for Medievalists in Western Australia, it doesn't nerd much harder than the Balingup Medieval Carnivale.

For those of us in Grey Company, we start talking about, and planning for, the past weekend since roughly 11 hours after the last one ended, and you betcher ass we're already planning next year's.ok  Bigger and Better is an ongoing goal and we're all about it.

Let me just take this moment to say, it wasn't easy, but it was the awesomest fun ever.  For starters, wife stayed home, because of logistics of life and logistics of a million different types of fish (fish that make money people, so back off) and volunteered to look after not one, but two incredibly naught toddlers.  Jade and her cousin Corbin had the house to themselves for the weekend, with only brief visits from cousin Imo to keep them from completely destroying the kitchen counters and stuffing anything and everything edible into every available crevice in every available piece of furniture.  I can only imagine, but I'm pretty sure they are a LOT of work.

So, with Piehead Georgia at The Others (biologicals) it was just the boys, me and Damon, all weekend.  And did we have a time, I tell you.  Me and my boy had a killer weekend and MAN is it fun to just hang out and spoil that kid.

So wife wins, and I told everybody in Balingup that would listen, and about 17 that wouldn't, how much wife wins for staying behind and minding the turdy ones while the rest of us ran off to play for an entire weekend.

She is awesome and I thank her with all I'm worth.

But, without further adoin', here's some pretty cool pics.

A long-ass drive complete with highway's not finished (that we thought were) and a Navman that usually tries to do right by me landed us in a valley that has no mobile phone reception.  No shit, unless you're up on a hill, you're getting nuthin' without standing in the middle of main street with your left foot 26 inches off the ground and your phone in your right hand.  I found this out the hard way, with a rusty old ute cruising around me and asking where the pub was.

There's always a feast put on by the organisers on the Friday Night to kick off the festivities.  The poster advertised good food, good wine, singing, dancing and fighting.  Sam graciously volunteered a couple of us for the fighting as well.  Which turned into just he and I, which turned out to be ALL the fighting that night, AND we had to follow immediately after the belly dancers.  MEH.

Another prime chance to ham it up, and for Sam to kick the crap out of me again.

(photo courtesy: Fabian Doerner - only the "e" has those little dots above it that mean it's Ze Cherman)

Yep, he slapped me and Yep, it connected.  Wandering around drunkenly in the middle of a crowded feasting hall hurling insults and slapping each other in the face is the best way to start a fight.  Only drawback is that I'M the one who always gets slapped.

(photo courtesy: Fabian "Nomnom" Doerner)

MY dukes are up, I'M ready to fight, yet as we both drunkenly sway and measure each other up, he keeps his mug long enough to block a punch or two and slap me again.

(photo courtesy: Fabian "Nomnom" Doerner, 'cept he spells it "Namnam" because he's foreign and silly)

Smacko.  I shouldn't have had those last 7 hard ciders.  Whoops.

(photo courtesy: Fabian "Namnam" Doerner - See, it sounds like "NAAM NAAM" which is either that small Asian country or a mispronounced Indian frybread)

He's thrown the rest of the contents of his mug in my face, splattering the audience and majority of the cameras pointed at us (those of you in the first 3 rows WILL get wet).

(photo courtesy: "Nomnom")

So I reminded his silly ass that he'd done brung a mug to a Knife Fight.

(photo courtesy: "Nomnom", he's just Nomnom from now on, I've forgotten his real name because of too many umlauts)

And I missed again.  And he punched me again.  And I didn't get up agai... well not again, not at all.  The little girls next to me were at our table and were gigglingly impressed with my falls.

Turns out that all that falling I practice on grass needs to be lessened when done on hardwood floors.  When I went for a pull off a Balingup-local hard cider (actually my first, for pretend drunk is the best kind of drunk) my wrist tweaked and made me cry a little.  Sam bandaged my wrist, too tight as usual, and cleared me to fight the next morning.

The potential conflict of interests in my own GP wanting me healthy just so we can beat the shit out of each other on the battlefield is not lost on me, but he reckoned I'd be alright with the wrap... only loosened.

(I handed the camera over, but was still in control, so no picture credit.  In fact, I'm pretty sure it was my son or somebody seriously short because the other 3 pictures of this pose all cut my head off)

The day begins with too much chainmail, a round of pictures from fellow reenactors waving at the camera and shouting "Hey Jo, wish you were here!" and a happily underslept grin.  Plus a camel growing out of my right ear.  I swear I clean 'em, I just forgot the last few days.

(photo courtesy: Andre de Montsegur)

I apparently got captured tippin' the ol' kettle back for a bit of a breather.

(photo courtesy: Andre de Montsegur)

And by "breather" I mean "I gotta talk to my agent about this."

Strangely enough, not actually talking on the phone, but artfully scratching my nose.  Or picking it, its hard to tell with a bandaged wrist.

On a more prideful note, I made that helmet from scratch.  "Scratch" actually meaning a flat sheet of steel and some rivets and also what happened to the "cross" on the cheek when I was carving it out.

Bloody hard to breathe in that bugger lemme tell you.

(photo courtesy: Chris J. Bartle)

Having seen precious little photos of our Third Crusades fight on Saturday, I hadn't actually noticed that A) chainmaille makes me look fat and 2) when two lines clash in a large-scale fight, it's a fabulous idea if they actually stick together instead of having some idiot go galavanting off in front of them all.

What a knob!  No wonder he ends up frickin' dead as.

(photo courtesy: the real marx)

Damon and I were hanging out between fights and watching one of the other clubs perform.  As they actually use rattans or ducttape-covered sword-shaped sticks they get to hit as hard as they can.  In the head.  Ouch.

Hence my expression.  Dames was just enthralled, and reckons he wants to do that more than showfighting even.  Traitor.

(photo courtesy: David Barron)

Wearing all that armour tuckered me right out.  Oh, and the drinking and the dancing and the staying up late.  That too.

(photo courtesy: Ze Cherman, who thinks he's "massiv")

Enjoying too much mead, which I first employed for medicinal purposes for the wrist, and then later employed so that I could go out into the yard and fight with some flaming swords.

You heard me.  Swords.  Fire.  Fire Swords.  Some pom makes them and was selling them at the Carnivale as well as staying at the Rec Centre with the Greyco folks, so me and Sam and a couple others got to go outside and fight with 'em.  He had a couple axes, a sword and some katanas, all of which we were able to douse in turps and fight with.  Freakin' COOL.

No pics as yet, but working on it.

(photo courtesy: David Barron)

Not many pics from the first fight of the day on Sunday, because of the early rains and the early hour there wasn't much of a crowd.  Sam and I got to drunkenly punch it up with each other again though, and then join forces to... um, punch it up with each other again, only we got 'hired' to do so, right before the serving wenches revealed that they actually work for our arch enemy and choked the sh*t out of me before trying to steal my boots.

(photo courtesy: Lilian Evil)

Me and the Doc, looking excellent.  Him in his fantastically shiny shinyness and me in all the stuff that he'd worn before he bought his suit and the stuff that I'd made in my shed (yep, from "scratch" - a flat sheet of steel).  Personally, I think we should all just pick somebody that's got nicer stuff than us and just follow them around until they buy new stuff and the old stuff just falls off.

Works a treat.

(photo courtesy: Chris J. Bartle)

This picture is just pure awesome.  They've already got it in use on the BMC homepage.

That's Doc in the front, closest to camera, and his middle chidler Beanie ratatat-tatting out in front.

(photo courtesy: Chris J. Bartle)

I only posted this pic because I'm vain and wanted to show that I was actually IN the march.  That's me with the stoic and mildly constipated look, wearing the armour there... with the big pikey thing... SECOND ROW MIDDLE.

Best part about the march was that I couldn't find Damon when it was time to head up to the mustering point.  No, losing my kid isn't the best part, he'd been instructed to hang out at the Greyco tent whenever he wanted to touch base, so that's what he did.  When they'd told him that we'd all gone up to the March, he took off to find us.  Not wanting to leave the Carnivale grounds (mustering point is up the street about a block) he just made his way to the main stage of the Carnivale and tugged on the pant leg of the dude with the microphone.

Lost?  Hell no!  He wanted in the bloody parade!

So, "We need the father of Damon Exley to come to the stage... again, Damon Exley's Dad, please come up here and get your boy..." echoes over the entire grounds and 3 different Greyco folks all go up there to get him and I look like the detestable errant father.

Only afterwards did I explain to folks that he wasn't wandering around all lost and lonely, he just didn't want to miss the march and was hoping that the head dude with the mike would get him in there.

It worked.  Despite the fact that we were marching trooplike and Porting our weapons and Charging our weapons and Advancing our weapons on order, he got escorted in and marched right out front.  That's my boy!

(photo courtesy: David Barron)

One of our first fights where I get beat up by chicks again, such to the point that I got hit in the eye with a carrot, nearly knocking my helmet off.

(photo courtesy: David Barron)

My one-on-one with Kenny worked out pretty well, where I hollered at him from across the sawdust and told him how killy I was feeling.

I also asked that he not mention that the grey fabric I used for the codpiece on my pants doesn't really match, and draws way too much attention to my unit.

(photo courtesy: David Barron)

Instead of honouring my wishes, he laughed at me, and then hit me in the head a few times with his pike.

So I chopped him.

Except I didn't really, he blocked it.  Then he stabbed me.  Hard.  I died.  I die a lot.  I'm quite good at it.

(photo courtesy: David Barron)

I want T-shirts made of this one proclaiming my Badassitudinosity.  In fact, that's all they'll say, "Badassitudinosity".

Unfortunately, badass or not, I'm pretty sure I died in that fight too.  Maybe I'm just too cocky?  Or maybe I only ACT that cocky so that it plays better when I do die?  I'll leave it to you, the people that don't get to go to these shows, to be the judge.

(photo courtesy: Me... Sucka!  'Cept I used wifeage's Camera of Awesomeness, so go Wifeage!)

Did I mention how much fun me and my boy had?  My tentative, somewhat scared, li'l guy from a couple of years ago had all but disappeared when he strode up and asked if he could go on a camel ride.  My eyes nearly popped out of my head because of the back pressure of me holding back a "Holy cats, WHAT!?!" as I calmly dug out the money for him and then followed him over with his mum's camera.

I was practically bursting with pride as I snapped about 75 shots of him whilst following the camels around.  His nervous little face gradually shifted from "I think the saddle's come loose" to "this is actually pretty damn awesome" by the end of the ride, so we celebrated with freshly made little cinnamon donuts while waiting for his cousin Beanie to have her turn.  When she was up, they were out of kids and still had a seat left, so the gal came over and told Dames he could get on for another ride, for FREE.

Boy did he light up then!  He's in the yellow helmet while Beantastic is in the front.  They had a blast!  Beanie, in her quiet and demure way was hollering "Yah mule!  YEEEA-HAHHHHH!!" the entire time, such to the point of the camel-wrangler asking me "you claiming this one?"  To which I replied, "she's my neice... so NO.  I'm claiming the quietly grinning one in the back."

Seriously, look at that smile.  That's my boy!

(photo courtesy: this is tiring, I tire of this crediting thing)

Packing up the tents and he insisted that we get a shot of this before we left for the weekend.

I'm glad he did, because I'm so using this shot to entice his younger sisters into better behaviour.

YEAH, that'll work.

(photo courtesy: My son, who is still awesome)

This one is more for the wife.  I'll use it to remind her that I actually can, and do, beg a bit.

That's all for now, thanks for tuning in.

I'll have more pictures when more of the Grey Co folks get me CDs and such for the official website, and I'll also try and actually write about life things sometime too, though that's not as fun.  Alright, I usually make it fun, but I've got other stuff to do right now.  Like put on "Faireez" for the eleventy billionth time today for the 2-yo.

Maybe I'll dress her in my armour and take pictures.  Maybe I'll just put silly things on her and do the same.  We'll see.

Until next time, keep your socks dry and stay out of the stocks, and here's a hug from me.

-Smewches

Posted by JuddHole

This blog was the one that changed everything in my life, so it stands to reason that it continue to do so. I hope it starts with my underwear.