St. John Talk Blog

Today’s progress photo, hot off the CompactFlash card.  Happy Friday everyone.

Tonight’s sunset was particularly beautiful in light of all the recent rain and lack of sunsets.

This huge blob of evil, currently called Invest 93 and possibly soon to be called Tropical Storm Kyle if it continues to strengthen, has dumped no less than five inches of rain on St. John over the last 24 hours.  The storm is eventually expected to head north and west towards the East coast of the US, but is currently moving at a snail’s pace and has wrought havoc on Puerto Rico with some areas getting in excess of 20 inches of rain.

The storm has resulted in landslides in areas of steep terrain.   Above is a photo just from our driveway.

The photo above is of a river of rain rushing along the side of the steep road down to our driveway.   And finally below, the soil runoff into the pond near Chocolate Hole (yellow arrow) and the extent of runoff into Great Cruz Bay (red arrrows).

Just when you think that reason is returning to the legal system, this happens.

Kinda looks like a paparazzi shot.

We’ve been teaching Casey to play hide and seek over the past couple of weeks.  She sort of gets the idea, but can’t quite grasp the concept of the need to conceal her ENTIRE body.  Any suggestions?

Yes, it’s that time of the week again when we look at the 7 day progress that has been made on the Pond Bay construction site.   Here ya go.

Today was Matt’s birthday.  I think he’s not telling anymore, so don’t ask.  We spent the day with our friend Colette on Jost van Dyke, where this photo was taken.

Hopefully, the birthday present I got him will arrive before his next birthday.

Here’s the scoop from The Tradewinds News online:

http://www.stjohntradewindsnews.com//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2665&Itemid=1

A while back we posted a photo of St. Croix as seen from our house on St. John on a really clear evening.  Well, Vieques is about as far from St. John as St. Croix, 40 miles, and can also be seen on a clear day.  Here is a photo of it taken this evening.

Stay tuned.  Someday we’ll post a photo of El Yunque on Puerto Rico, about 65 miles from here, only seen on super clear days, a few times a year.

At least we don’t have to pay this one.  And yes, you read correctly.  This is the tax bill for 2006, NOT 2008, fresh from our mailbox last week.  That is how far behind the Virgin Islands government is with property tax collections.

Here is a brief synopsis of this ridiculous situation for those not aware of it:

The VI government was taken to court in 2000 by commercial property owners claiming unfair assessment values which were based on replacement value rather than actual value.  The court agreed and and the government was ordered in 2003 to conduct a complete revaluation of all properties, something which has been done but is still hotly contested due to the method in which the revaluation was done, particularly on St. John where property values have increased dramatically since 1998, the year which taxation values have been based and frozen since our last bill for 2005.

The government has been prevented by court order since that 2003 ruling from issuing new property tax bills for 2006 and 2007 based on the reassessed values, which have not yet been approved by the court.  Nevertheless, they proceeded to mail out 2006 tax bills in August, due September 22.  This is ours above.  It is about 325% higher than our last paid bill in 2005, largely due to a highly overestimated market value of our property (the tax doesn’t even take our house into account as it was not finished until earlier this year).  The government is in deep financial doo-doo and was depending upon this tax revenue (despite going against a court order preventing its collection) to help bail it out.  However, earlier this week, a Virgin Islands District Court Judge ruled against the government, holding them in contempt of the 2003 court order and demanding that they rescind the newly issued 2006 tax bills.  I guess we’ll just frame ours somewhere so we can tell our grand kids this story.  Maybe it will become a valued collectible on EBay.

So, on Thursday, we went on a dive at Kiddel Bay with our friend, Colettte, and two clients of hers.  It was Howard’s first dive since November 2007 and only my second dive since then.  It was also the first time I used the relatively new camera and underwater housing.  Unfortunately, the video is not so good because  condensation developed inside the housing as we went deeper and the temperature got cooler.  I’ve think I’ve solved that problem so, hopefully, future videos will be better.  The solution involves silica gel packets or tampons (yes, that’s true).  Enjoy our first efforts:

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Sticker shock?  No, just our last monthly electric bill here on St. John.  Think you could live here?  Better have a lot of money or don’t plan on having air conditioning, pool, hot tub, hot water heater, etc.

Highway robbery?  How can it be?  There are no highways on St. John.   We’ll just settle for robbery.  It’s cheaper to run our generator 24/7 than to pay for local utilities.

The latest look at Pond Bay.  They are just moving right along with construction.  You can’t stop progress, I guess.  If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you will see one of the sailboats that got beached by the storm surge from Hanna last week (yellow arrow).

All the rain we’ve been getting lately has been great for filling the cisterns.  It’s also been good in promoting the growth of lovely musrooms in our outdoor flowerpots.  My question is…why can’t we grow portabellas as easily as this?  Why are they always the (presumed) poison type?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?

This concerned citizen is concerned by the proliferation of rainbows.  Indeed, “20 years ago we never noticed these rainbow effects so prodominatly [sic].”  Apparently, the “new phenomena [of] rainbow[]s near the ground” is cause for alarm.

Check out the video for yourself and get ready to laugh:

[Hat tip to failblog.org at http://failblog.org/2008/09/08/conspiracy-fail/.]

We are completely for environmental awareness and against the intrusion of big government, but you gotta do a little research first.

To the woman who made the video, check out some of these resources:

• Wikipedia
• Dartmouth
• Canon

This effect can happen even low to the ground.