Not for the first time, I thought I’d share a tidbit featured over on First Person Irregular. Made me smile!

Thanks JohnO!

- Kelly

p.s. Life here’s good. Working on wrapping up the December issue, and getting super-excited for my first on-island Christmas – I ordered my tree the other day!!! : )

Hello intertubes!!

I am back from my birthday mini-break, and have brought back (admittedly paltry) photographic evidence. It was a great trip, and I definitely look forward to going back to Tortola again for some more exploring. The coolest part was that all of an hour elapsed between getting on the ferry in St. John and parking my rental car at the seaside hotel. Awesome! : )

Anyway, here’s the pictures:

Tortola Mini-Break

And for next time, the things I intend to document include:
- The super-beautiful north shore road – you’re liable to get splashed by the steadily crashing surf as you drive along, all unsuspecting.
- Smuggler’s Cove – my beach of choice for this trip. Great sand and shade. Perfect water. A ramshackle, but full-service beach bar. Ideal.
- The Tamarind Club’s nifty swim-up bar. (They serve a mean fish & chips.)
- The view out across Beef Island to Virgin Gorda from the Ridge Road. Holy cow.
- The inventive and elegant Dove restaurant in Road Town. Also, their food.

But for now, I hope you enjoy the panorama shots!

Cheers,
Kelly

Fact One: I miss autumn.
Fact Two: I want to make this so hardcore.

Fact Three: I am really looking forward to my birthday – I will be getting off this rock and visiting another rock for a couple of days. I will not be able to use my cell, nor have internet with which to obsessively check my email. I will sleep in. I will get tan. I will drink refreshing rum drinks and do nothing that even resembles work. I realize a lot of you think that this is all I ever do, but you are mistaken, and I am REALLY looking forward to acting the tourist for a couple of days. Like a lot. *contented, anticipatory sigh*

Fact Four: I’m going back to work now. Have a nice night, y’all.

Kelly

So I might have to rethink this whole Italy thing…apparently, it’s country full of CRAZY people! Or at least, it was back in the ’70s when this was made:

I’m literally speechless…
Kelly

This photo album may cause feelings of ickiness and terror! (Really. There are scary bug pictures – look at your own risk.)

Click for a small album of my bug-hunting adventures!

Killing time while we wait for the printers to get back to us with final proofs! Halloween issue, FTW.

KellyO

Alright, so the internet is distracting me still, but I had to share this one; yes, even with you insect-phobes who’ll be visiting. My co-worker Alex and I had a close encounter the other night… with a Tarantula Hawk. (How’m I s’posed to sit on a story about a bug with a name that cool!?)

So you can Google the sucker if you like, but most of the pics you’ll find won’t look like the kind we have in the Caribbean. (Ours is just a different, apparently seldom-photographed, variety.) A Tarantula Hawk is a wasp. A four-inch-long wasp. Whose thorax is as big around as my thumb. So I’m standing in the surf shop with Alex and we had one of those moments where I’m listening to him talk and then suddenly my eyes focus on something behind him and go all wide. This wasp flew into the store, attracted by the lights (it was nighttime) and started just sort of buzzing around. Wasn’t aggressive or nothin’, but there was no one in the store (slow season is boring) and so Alex and I spent a good 20 minutes checkin’ it out.

As insects go, this sucker was beautiful. Its (giant!) body and wings were irridescent blue-black and it’s little feeler/antennae were bright orange. It got itself tangled in some cobweb, so we had lots of time to look at it while it wrestled free.

It wasn’t ’til I got home and Googled the sucker, though, that I discovered how horrifying it is. Not only is the sting of the female reputed to be the most painful wasp sting in the world (though not deadly), but their namesake is super-gruesome. The female captures a tarantula and paralyzes it. Then, she drags him back to a burrow – either one she’s built, or the poor tarantula’s own – lays a single egg, and seals the whole thing up with the paralyzed tarantula inside. That way, when the egg hatches, the larva has a nice warm meal waiting for it. O_O Augh! Poor bastard.

Island living is never boring, I’m here to say. No one I’ve talked to has run into one of these before, though, so don’t be thinking (you know who you are!) that these things are everywhere. We just got lucky. : )

Back to work (and then to sleep)!
Kelly

p.s. I just discovered - thank you, Wikipedia - that the Tarantula Hawk is the state insect of New Mexico. Obviously.

My uncle Rick sent this link out to the fam this weekend – totally killed me.

Working a TON this week at the surf shop then managed to procure the weekend (what!? two in a single month!?) to finalize the Fulbrightness. I will only let the internet distract me briefly, this week, see if I don’t!

Kelly

Man, I love days off. I feel all revitalized and stuff! I accomplished a great many small things with these two days – I had Japanese food with a new friend, took an EPIC afternoon nap (glorious!), cooked delicious things and then had the time and energy to give the kitchen a thorough cleaning afterwards, spruced up my blog, started to use Twitter in earnest, kicked ass at Facebook scrabble… Like I said, little things. Now I’m sitting on my bed, listening to the rain and enjoying the accompanying temperature drop and smell of the bay rum trees. Not too shabby.

Plus, I’ve got a working draft of my personal statement for my Fulbright application (due in just weeks now – yipes! O_O). Slow but surely, though, my to-do list is being winnowed down. Deep breaths.

What else do I have of note? Oh, go listen to Imogen Heap’s new album: http://www.imogenheap.com/ellipse/ No, seriously. Go. It’s fabulous.

Oh! I really love my new wallpaper:

It’s very summery, I think, though it does make me pine for decent produce. Oh heirloom tomatoes, I miss you so. (This came, btw, from interfacelift.com. If you haven’t been, you should.)

Until next time,
Kelly

Today was downright lovely. We finished up the Sun Times‘ September issue right on time, completely finished at 2pm. This. Never. Happens.    Ever.    So that was good. I made honey and vanilla madeleines (thanks, Mum, for sending my pan!) while we waited for the printer to review the files and then took a nap with Ella’s new puppy sleeping on my tummy. Adorabizzle! (She even has super-short hair, so she doesn’t give my allergies trouble! Bonus!)

On top of the good work juju, Bill is swirling safely by out in the Atlantic, which is a relief. Check out the updated version of the sat imagery:

He’s still one scary-looking storm (nearly 600 miles across!!! O_O), and his influence is significant enough that we’re getting some fabulous winds across the mountain, and these incredibly intense – like, surreal, almost mystical – bands of stormclouds interspersed with patches of sun. Not bad. Plus, Ana scrubbed the Sahara dust from the air, so we’re back to crystal clear sunlight and stunningly blue skies. Not bad, at all.

But enough of weather. The real news is that I have TWO WHOLE DAYS OFF! Like in a row!! I’m beside myself. I’m going to do some writing (only minorly work-related), loads of cooking (pasties stuffed with chicken, apricots and rice – some might call them darioles, though they’d be totally wrong… -_^), and most importantly, I’m going to finish my application essays for Fulbright and study some Italian! Come on weekend – I’m ready for you! : )

It’s possible there may be more posts in my near future. You never can tell…
Kelly

So the biggest damage dealt by Ana was that I didn’t get much sleep last night, listening to her blow through. (Well, plus a coupla trees came down – but what’s that compared with the loss of my beauty rest?) The sky at dawn was the most unsettling shade of orange I’ve ever seen. Weird weird weird. The thing that’s strangest to me about storm season is how surreal it is when there’s a storm tracking in your direction. I’m sure it’s just ’cause I’m still not used to it, but I get all keyed up and keep looking at the horizon, as if I could see it coming, even when it’s still days out. Anyway, Ana’s well past us, but Bill is looming, in the classic, super-menacing sense of the word. Check out this satellite image:

Seriously. I mean there he is, all spinning and gathering strength out to sea, busy being as big as our entire friggin’ island chain. Sheesh.

Chances are still real good that he’ll bear north before he has a chance to give us any trouble. (Bermuda’s on their own, though…) But still, given its size, it wouldn’t take much of a course alteration to put us back in its path. So cross your fingers for us!

Serendipitously, in mostly-non-weather-related news, our print deadline for this issue of the Sun Times got unexpectedly pushed up to Wednesday, instead of Friday. This was momentarily stressful, but actually may work out real tidy, like. If Bill is going to be on our doorstep, he’s due around Thursday, after we’ve got the issue off our desks. Beats the heck out of Omar, last year, when we only abandoned production when the office began to take on water. : ) Good grief.

So, I know most of y’all that are reading this also have blogs. Let’s hear it from your lives!

Two posts in three days!? Bam, said the lady.
Kelly