More whales!

More whales!

Different this time though. We just heard the blow, it being dark and all. For some reason, though, I actually was more impressed by/enjoyed more/felt this one deeper than the sighting. I don't know if it's something about the metaphysical nature of darkness, my expectations being different, or just that they were clearly SO CLOSE. I mean, so, so close. It was absurd. Chris Siddon, the speaker on king crabs and other invertebrate fisheries and a colleague of Denny's at Shoals, joined us for dinner tonight, and just as he went out the door he popped his head back in to tell us we could hear whales. I went out and listened to them for a bit, Denny and Liz as well, then I came back and managed to round up Brenna, Ahn, and Kanako. Vince was out there on the phone, too, so he heard them as well. David and Sigrid came out a bit later, Sigrid just heard the last one. I heard quite a few, and... wow. It was just utterly amazing. I'm not even sure why, but wow. Just standing there, in the dark, listening, was fantastic.

On a lighter note, we had two huge bowls of salad along with our dinner of quiche tonight (followed up by ice cream: chocolate moose tracks, chocolate chip cookie dough, and mango, I partook of the first and last myself). At one point everyone was pounding on the table urging Jacob to eat a last bit of salad, it was almost like they were trying to get him to chug a beer. They all clapped when he was eating it, it was hilarious. (I think someone else put the little bit on his plate). I had two helpings of salad and called it “doing a public service.” So now we're just finishing cleaning up the shrine, Ahn is gleefully vacuuming, the dishes are all done excepting what we'll eat out of in the morning, people are packing up everything. In less than 12 hours, I'll be en route to Maui. Talk about a fast pace.

Wednesday, January 13th, 9:40 PM