Blog Guilt

 I'm feeling blog guilt.
I follow a few blogs and when I check in after a few days and see nothing new, I wonder what's up. What's up with us is my parents are visiting and we're spending our days being tourists: riding buses, eating in restaurants, shopping in tiendas... I've barely even had the camera out. And with deadlines looming, most of my writing has been the money earning type.
But today we're boat bound. We're battening down the hatches and waiting for another wild weather system to blow through. I haven't got any great stories to share, but I do have a TED talk. We knew about TED, vaguely, before we left. But since we started travelling TED talks have been a constant on the Ipod (along with our favourite CBC podcasts...)
Podcasts make all the difference on night watches. My three hour shifts are less lonely (and I'll admit, less anxiety provoking) when I have something fascinating to listen to (and distract me from spooky night time sailing noises). Whenever we're in port, and have a decent wifi connection, we head to itunes and start clicking. I usually download a few hundred podcasts at a time.
I'm not a big forwarder or sharing type--but if you love the ocean, this TED talk  by Sylvia Earle is a must (if you don't have 18-minutes now, save it for later). She was one of last year's winners of the TED prize, an award that gives the recipient $100,000 and the opportunity to make a wish to change the world. What would you wish for if you could change the world?
Earle's wish is to expand a global network of marine protected areas. The stats she gives are shocking: we've killed half the coral reefs and eaten most of the big fish. But her message is hopeful--and her presentation is gorgeous--although on night watch we turn off the pictures to save our vision (so we can see other ships, and I can get all anxious about them running us down).