Day 10 (Sat., Sept. 10)

First I want to say thanks to all of the people who replied to my massive e-mail this morning asking for a critique of my latest photos on the web site. I am sure not everyone got to see the e-mail because I sent it out on a weekend day. But, for those of you who replied: thank you. If you are one of those people that got an e-mail from me, I asked for your mailing address so I can send a postcard to y'all. That was this morning before I headed out to an eventful day.

Turns out I went to the beach and had a good jog before dipping myself into the ocean for the first time down here. If you look at the photos that I shot during my trip to the beach, which is really close to my house, they kinda look like postcard photos. So, it seemed fitting because of the fact that I sent out that e-mail this morning.

Man, look at all these photos. The water seems so cool. If you are a Californian like myself, you know that the water is never this color out there. California sand is rocky and rough, not cool like it is over in Florida. I hung out at the beach for quite a while after I ran three miles. Then, I swam a little bit.

The swimming in the ocean was limited, however. That's because I was given a nice welcome to the Atlantic Ocean by a sea creature. As I enjoyed the water, which made my body temperature cool off after my mid-day run, I realized there was a lot of twigs in the water. I did notice some sort of long item looking like a twig. Then I nearly peed pants as I realize what the twig was. Turns out that was a pipefish. At first, I had no idea what I was looking at. But it freaked me out as I saw its tail end flap as it swam toward me. I was like "what the heck?!?!?!"

It was scary seeing this thing because I had never seen such thing. The fish is long and thin. When I first saw it, I thought it was a strand off a palm tree leaf. It kinda reminded me like those palm leaf strands that are handed out when you attend Palm Sunday Mass to start Holy Week. But when I saw its behind flap and move toward me, I nearly screamed like a hysterical womyn who just saw mice. I wonder what kind of look I had on my face as I back-stepped onto the beach. The pipefish was long and it stood about eight or nine inches long with an inch-wide body. It was weird as I saw its facial features. Its eyes stuck out and it had some sort of whiskers. It looked a lot like shrimp. A long and scary shrimp who decided to give me something to think about. Unfortunately, I could not get my camera in time before it swam away. So, no pictures of it. But I am sure you can find those online somewhere. Yesterday I talked about how cool it is to work at Borders because you can do some online research. Well, I did not have much luck finding out what kind of fish that was by doing an interne search. But a quick trip to the "nature" section of the bookstore and a couple of books later I knew this thing I saw was a pipefish. Thank God for books.

So, browsing through books taught me something new. I learned that pipefish belong to the seahorse family. There are 190 species of pipefish throughout the world. Twenty-eight species are in the United States of America oceans, with 21 species living on the waters on the Atlantic. It was cool learning something new. I love to learn something new every day. W/ that in mind, I forgot to tell you about something I learned yesterday. In doing some research for a photo story I plan to work on this fall, I came across the word "iota". Someone used it in a quote on a story I was researching yesterday at work. The word iota means "small amount". Cool, I learned something new yesterday. I love to learn. I never look at something w/ a boring eye. I believe there is something to be learned about anything that you encounter in life. For example, I think I learned a lot tonight while watching the Texas vs. Ohio State college football game.

First, however, I had to battle through getting reception on my television. The area encountered two significant tornadoes tonight, so power went out and the reception on the local channels also went away. Turns out 9,000-plus residents in the area ended w/o power tonight, according to a local news source.

The reception on the tube came back just in time as I was able to enjoy most of the Texas/Ohio State game. This was, as the announcers called it, a Historic Showdown. It was the first time these two universities ever played each other. Texas, my team, stood ranked No. 2 in the nation while the Ohio State Buckeyes were No. 4. Only the University of Southern California, also my favorite, stood in front of Texas in the standings with a No. 1 ranking. The game between Texas and Ohio State was no usual non-conference match-up, it was more like a Bowl Championship Series title game, only the game was in September, not in January.

My Longhorns won 25-22 to hand Ohio State its first non-conference loss at home in 37 games. That was quite an accomplishment. Quarterback Vince Young had another come-from-behind victory over a Big-10 Conference school. The last time he played a Big-10 school, Vince was the Most Valuable Player on a come-from-behind victory over Michigan in the Rose Bowl game on Jan. 1. Funny, that game was the last time I saw the Longhorns play. Well, almost. I remember looking for a place to watch the Rose Bowl game as I visited family down in Mexico City last winter. I was able to slide in front of a t.v. w/ the game at my uncle's home in San Juan Teotihuacan. I caught the last half minute of the game, which was enough to see a field goal give Texas the victory. Tonight's game was pretty close, anId was happy as Robinson recovered a fumble with just over two minutes left in the game to seal the victory for Texas. Woohoo. Vince Young secured his run for a Heissman w/ the victory, which was played at the famous "Horseshoe" stadium in Columbus, OH. There were 105,565 spectators at the game, which was a school record. I was glad to spend the day watching this game. I had a long day today, but the game sure made me relax and put a nice ending to a harsh day. At one point today I had a head ache that would not go away. I just worry too much sometimes. I watched tonight's game w/ a different eye. As I told you on Day 1 of this journal, I had a lot of free time to read before heading to Florida. The book that I read from cover to cover is Backyard Brawl, which talks about the rivalry between Texas and texas a&m. I became more of a Texas fan after reading all 240-plus pages of that book.

So, as you know, we had two tornadoes go through around here. Since my t.v. was out of service for a while, I decided to do some photography. After all, I am here in Ft. Lauderdale to shoot photos, not watch college football. Here are some of the photos I captured during the storm.

It rain hard and I didn't have to go far from home as I shot some weather photos from my front door.

In the backyard you can see a small strand of lighting as it hit over the South Florida sky. Quite a change from the pretty, sunny photos I shot this afternoon at the beach.

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