almost anniversary time

I've been in Madeira for almost 1 year. I arrived on October 14, 2010 so only 11 days before I can have a party of one to celebrate the anniversary :-)

Seems my left thigh is getting old and injury prone. After the July injury I pulled (separate) muscles in that thigh over the past 2 weeks. Interestingly, it only happens when I kick the ball, not while running, turning or whatever. While it's good that I've learned to use both legs for soccer while I was a teenager it's hard to avoid the automatic action to kick with my left leg when the ball is perfectly placed in front of my left foot. Either way, I'm taking a break for a few weeks from playing soccer now. If I pull yet another muscle in my left thigh the next time I play then I'll go see a doctor.

It's good that despite the thigh issue I can still scuba dive without any problems. I guess I use different muscles to kick my fins underwater which don't hurt or cause injuries :-)
We did a fun shore dive on Saturday while the waves were pretty strong and the swell kept shoving us left and right, back and forth. I felt pretty comfortable though and getting more and more into my buoyancy. We stayed underwater for about 54 minutes which is quite long. Although our maximum depth was 14 meters we stayed in shallower depths (around 7/8 meters) for most of the dive.

Since it's been a while since I did any speciality scuba dive course I will start doing the digital underwater photographer course on Wednesday and probably finish it on Saturday. After that I'd like to do the night diver and underwater videographer specialties. Once I have done those I will do some more challenging courses: search and recovery diver, cavern diver, and rescue diver. Each of these 3 more advanced courses consists of 4 dives while the usual specialty course is 2 dives.
Finally, after I get the rescue diver certificate I'll go for Master Scuba Diver which is "the highest non professional level in the PADI System of diver education". I don't expect to go pro after that but the top level of fun diving seems pretty effin good in its own right!