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Can we talk scuba diving for a minute? Because we are officially certified open water divers. This past weekend, we went to Lake Ouachita for Ocean Extreme's Padi Open Water Diver course. Two days, a ton of fun. Here are our weekend's highlights:

• First off: breathing under water. Have you done it? I have and I loved it. It was the most freeing experience I've had to date. You should definitely try it.
• I had a little trouble with the full mask flood skill but practice makes perfect (or at least definitely improved, in my case). I've heard that a lot of people have trouble with this skill (it's called diver's reflex) and that it's actually purely psychological, so that makes me feel a little better. I will continue to practice it until it is second nature to me.
• We both really enjoyed the navigation part of the course. It felt a little like we were treasure hunters. 
• After we were officially "certified" we got to free dive for about an hour. I explored a sunken ship (with a canon!) and we picked up a few quartz rocks from the bottom as souvenirs.
• Did you know that just sitting at the bottom breathing burns 500 calories an hour? No wonder we were exhausted after about 8 hours of diving. We slept for 12 hours both Saturday and Sunday nights. 

It was really a lot of fun. On the way home, we were already talking about taking the adventure diver course next. Because we like going on adventures. Before we even got home, I was already talking about inventing some kind of doggie scuba apparatus so that Tillie could partake of the fun. And look what I found, a scuba diving pup:

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Now that we're official, we've been looking at different places that we want to dive. Of course the Caribbean and Mediterranean are on our list but we're thinking we'd like to explore Devil's Den in Florida first. It's closer, cheaper, and I mean, come on! It's an underwater cavern! 

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