December 2015

Have coffee.  Can blog.

Of course, I’m doing this from work so there won’t be any photos attached right now (unless I rip them from my Facebook page) but I can tell you all the tale of December.

The first week of December was spent slowly decorating for Christmas and getting the house ready for my first visitor, Craig.  He arrived December 7th or 8th and stayed until the 19th.  Or 20th.  This coffee has not kicked in yet.

The visit was lovely.  We spent a lot of time in the ocean snorkeling and exploring.  We frequently saw the same turtle at Spotts Bay and nicknamed her Lucy.  We found a pretty little isolated beach with a small cave that we explored.  Except I don’t know if you would really call it exploring because it was very small.  There were a few winged occupants, but I wasn’t worried as Cayman is a rabies free country.

For my birthday, we hosted a party at my house (although Candi was promoting it to my friends/coworkers as it being her idea).  I kind of outdid myself on the food spread and we had leftovers for days, but it was a good time.  We danced, we sang, we ate delicious rum cake (that Candi DID pick out).

The next day, Craig treated me to a sailing trip to Rum Point.  I had heard that Red Sail Sports was an excellent company and their trips were well worth the money.  We departed their dock at a little after 8am and headed to Stingray City on a gorgeous catamaran.  While underway, we chatted with this couple from Chicago who were on vacation.  Turns out, the woman and I had the same birthday.  We stopped at the sandbar at Stingray City and checked out some of the locals.  It was quite pleasant until all of the other tourist boats showed up.  Some of these vessels held at least 50 people.  The waters were soon crowded and then it was time to load up and head to Rum Point.

Part of our package included lunch at Rum Point, but first, we had some time to kill so we went for a bit of a swim to check out some of the coral heads in the area.  The current was a bit strong at the end of the pier, but luckily we had started far enough and we were able to drift by the majority of the coral with little difficulty.  Afterwards we had lunch and enjoyed a brief rain shower.  We hit the water for one more snorkel and then loaded back up on the boat.  It was a beautiful sail back to the dock which we enjoyed with Rum Runners and Caybrew while relaxing in the netted area of the catamaran.  Turning 34 was an excellent experience and I am glad that Craig was able to come down for a visit.  He stayed for a few more days so we were able to snorkel and check out the Christmas light displays on the island.

The rest of December was mediocre for the first most part.  There were some good points like finding a car to purchase!  However, Christmas was hard.  It wasn’t my first Christmas away from home but it was my first Christmas without finding what felt like family.  However, after cooking steak for both Candi and myself, one of our friends showed up with leftover traditional Christmas dinner for us.  It was quite the nice surprise.

I wrapped up December by ushering out the not-so-fabulous ’15 by attending the NYE party at Camana Bay (although I did act like a responsible adult and leave early to avoid horrendous traffic) but was able to watch a delightful fireworks show from my back porch.

So far, Sweet ’16 is a much better year.