what a day!

so, today was pretty much the best day in a long time.

to start, we had a great night of love song sing a longs and all the girls found cute hand made valentines left on our pillows which was super adorable. we suspect jamie and andy as they are rumored to have spent quite a while in the office yesterday afternoon... haha

today was beautiful and calm - not a wave crest in sight. i went out on the first wave (i love first wave, it's so early and pretty and quiet) and it was just beautiful. there were flying fish everywhere on the way out and the reef was so alive and interesting. i saw my first mantis shrimp and measured a pretty awesome patch of dendrogyra cylindrus (pillar coral). it was a brilliant day and i was so content getting back on the boat that i almost couldn't believe it when our capitan told us that there were DOLPHINS so i quickly got my mask fins and snorkel back on while we were driving and sure enough, there were 5 dolphins playing a little ways away! so i flung myself off of the boat and had the most awesome 15 minutes or so of dolphin fun. we were pretty much chasing them for most of it becuase they were on their way somewhere or other, but they came really close (about 3 feet away at one point) and it was so cool to hear them all underwater, hearing their clicks and whistles getting louder and then seeing one rocket up from the depths....awesome.

we finally figured it was time to go since we were already late for wave two, so i switched over my gear in record time and we jetted out with Raph to LM, one of my favorite sites where we did several awesome swim throughs, saw a huge green moray and a lionfish and a huge black grouper and a ray. it was an excellent dive, capped off by an epic battle at the safty stop involving our measured pvc "cc poles" and purge buttons. haha.

the rest of the day has been unremarkable, but it has just been a gorgeously chill amazingly beautiful day.
ahhh. i love life.