I couldn’t let last week’s disastrous scuba outing keep me out of the water for too long, so I was back on the ferry again Sunday morning for another trip to Catalina Island. This time the seas were smoother and the diving conditions friendlier and we managed to stay dry on the boat and get wet at the dive park — as it should be. I set a personal depth record on my two dives — 93 and 92 feet, and more importantly: I got wet and had fun.

One of my dive buddies took his camera down with him and got some great footage of us swimming through a school of fish so thick you could hardly see through them, but I don’t know how to post it here and don’t think I’d want to give up the 26 mb of storage space if I did. So instead I’ll post a still shot of me on the same dive. Sharper-eyed viewers among you might notice that I’m tilted to the right even after you account for the tilted angle from which the picture was taken. I’ll be blaming the new hooded vest Beth gave me, which I’m modeling in the picture. The vest adds some buoyancy so I had to carry another 3lbs, and you try to divide 3lbs to distribute the weight evenly. Go ahead, I dare you. In the meantime, I’ll just list slightly to one side — about 3 lbs worth.

There was an added complication to last week’s dive that I never got around to mentioning, so I guess I’ll mention it now that it’s been cleared up. Last Sunday morning, as I was making coffee at 5:45 am in preparation to try to go diving, I heard a scary noise coming from the water heater on the kitchen side of the house. It sounded just like water gushing from under the water heater that supplies the washing machine and dishwater and guest bathroom. I investigated and determined that it was water gushing from under the water heater, and I did the only responsible thing I could do: I turned the water to the water heater off, woke Beth up with the words “Honey, we have a problem”, and then I left to go diving.

One of the guys in my dive club is a fireman, and if you know anything about firemen you know that they are all about doing construction-type jobs on the side — building decks, laying brick, doing plumbing repairs, building fences… Did I mention plumbing work? So I called Mark and asked him to come take a look at it for me. His diagnosis: you need a new water heater.

So all of last week, we’ve been living without that water heater while we waited for Mark to have time to come put the new one in. Fortunately we have a second water heater that supplies the master bathroom where everyone showers, but the washing machine and dishwater on the other end of the house were out of commission. So for the last week we’ve been doing dishes old-school: boiling water on the stove and filling the sink with it. It’ll do in a pinch, but I’m happy to have hot water come out of the faucet again. You can keep your pioneer days scrubbery to yourself, thankyewverymuch.

Mark left a few hours ago and we are up to our elbows in hot water and suds now and couldn’t be happier. And best of all, Beth can stop being the Dish Nazi and insisting Zoe and I eat off paper plates and use plastic knives and forks.

And as an added bonus, I think this proves that scuba diving isn’t the expensive hobby Beth claims it is, but rather that it makes good financial sense to do it: it’s how I met Mark, who saved us a ton of money we would have spent on a plumber. I think it’s clear that the more I go diving, the more money we’ll save. I’m not doing it for me, it’s for the family.