Beowabbit

sionnagh is renting a four-bedroom house on O‘ahu. If you live there and you are a really nice person, you should totally rent one from her! If you don’t live there, but you would like a place to stay for a visit, you should still rent one for her. (At $175.00/week, it’d be a lot cheaper than a hotel, and you’d have access to a kitchen and the company of a very nifty person.) From her post here:

Aloha,

Jay suggested that I post that I still (and again) have a couple of rooms for rent here on Oahu. I'm asking $600 a month, or $175/week. It's very close to the bus line, which will take you around the entire island. If you're interested, I can send pics or more info. I'll probably keep at least one of the rooms for this sort of thing through May.

Hugs,
Tigris

[EDIT: As of December 30, the rooms are still available.]

Thursday and Friday, we went to Mokuleia Beach on the north shore (of O‘ahu). Very secluded and stunningly gorgeous. For sheer natural beauty, it may be my favourite of the Hawai‘i beaches I’ve been to, largely because of the green mountains looking like folds of very fertile fabric that face it. It was a bit windy (pleasantly so) and wavy. We didn’t go out very far for fear of undertow, but we got some good swimming in.

On Thursday from the beach I got to talk to plumtreeblossom on the phone — that was a delight!

Thursday night I also made it to a meeting of the Honolulu poly group.

Today we’re going to a water park and a Mardi Gras party, and tomorrow (my last full day) to a flea market and to a games night that sionnagh organized for me.

Having a delightful time, and loving the time with sionnagh, but also missing my people back home. I’m soaking up sun to bring back with me for you all!

I’m here and happy! On the way home from the airport, sionnagh took me to a Japanese curry house. Two choices of sauce (mild or spicy), a choice of how much rice they serve it with, several bases and toppings to choose from, and that’s the menu, aside from a few salads. Really good; I’d love to find a place like that in Boston.

We got to catch up over dinner and in the car, and then there was a wonderful reunion with all the wonderful dogs!

I slept really well and woke up energetic and happy and hung out with the dogs a bit. When sionnagh got up we went out to brunch and then met her friend T. and two of T.’s daughters (4 and 14, I believe). We went to Chinatown, under the misapprehension that there was a lunar new year’s festival still going on, but we wandered around a bit and ended up having dim sum.

Now I’m hanging out at T.’s house with her kids while she and sionnagh are out at a meeting. Fortunately, the 14-year-old is good at translating what the 4-year is trying to say. :-)

Have I mentioned that I wore sandals, shorts and a T-shirt today? Yay!

So, when my last post was so rudely interrupted by the boarding call for my plane, I’d gotten to...

Friday: As I mentioned, I didn’t get to snorkel at Lanikai Beach, since I couldn’t get my mask to seal properly. Actually, it was fine for the first five minutes and then it developed a weird gap at the temple that I couldn’t figure out how to fix. That also meant I didn’t make the anticipated use of the cheap underwater camera I’d bought, but I did end up taking it out and taking a bunch of pictures while swimming. sionnagh and I tried to take some underwater pictures of each other; we’ll see how those came out. (Getting film developed! How quaint!) I had a great time swimming, though, and sitting on the beach writing cards.

After the beach, sionnagh and I went to a place called Lucy’s Grill and Bar, where we shared the mixed grill for two which was really yummy. It had a lamb shank, chicken, um, some other stuff that I can’t remember, and some really excellent sauces.

Then we went to the waterfront (don’t ask me what water we were in front of, because I don’t know exactly, but there were boats moored there) for fireworks. See, there’s a hotel that puts on a fireworks show for their guests every Friday, and of course it’s visible over a wide area, so people go watch. Every Friday. Fireworks. You’d think I was in Las Vegas or something.

Before the fireworks started, I wandered around and took pictures. My favorite is of the sunset through tree branches. (I’m antsy to get some pictures posted, but sleep might come first.)

Then we ended up at a nice little gathering where I got to re-meet some of sionnagh’s friends I’d met on earlier visits.

Saturday/Sunday: Saturday was mostly about packing and flying, but I squeezed a final order of spam musubi in between them. :-) My return trip was in two legs: HNL→DFW and DFW→BOS. The HNL→DFW leg was long, almost eight hours, and on a crowded plane. I’d been hoping to get some sleep on that flight, but I didn’t manage to. I did nap a couple hours on the DFW→BOS flight, though, but that’s all the sleep I had last night (and I lost six hours of the night to time-zone changes). I think at this point my best bet is to try to stay up until 10 or so and get a good solid night’s sleep tonight.

I landed in a grey, rainy Boston whose weather is almost, but not quite, completely unlike Hawai‘i’s. Evidently it was like this all the time I was gone. I don’t generally mind grey skies and drizzle, but it sure feels good to have dosed up on sunshine.

And that’s what’s been up with me. How are all of you?

PS — Expect new userpics soon.

I'm in an internet café, because the only consistent net I have at home is on my phone, and the web browsers on my phone have Limitations. So, quick summary:

Sunday: I'm sure it was fun, but I don't remember what we did. :-) Oh! I know I had spam musubi at one point, though, so that was good.

Monday: Lunch with our friends K. and T. from Pali Paths. Then a fun games night at sionnagh's friend Ceecee's place. There were yummy barbecued ribs and meatballs, and a couple neat board games whose names I can't remember, and very good company.

Tuesday: Ko 'Olina beach, where I took lots of pictures and did some swimming. Then dinner at Moshi Moshi Tei, which has been one of our standbys since sionnagh (and docorion) originally moved to O'ahu. Then a Happy Pagan Movie Night at the house of some friends of sionnagh's. We watched Red Dragon, the prequel to Silence of the Lambs, which I hadn't seen and very much enjoyed, although I wouldn't call it a Happy Pagan Movie. :-) Had a great time.

I've had lots of time with the dogs — Hamlet of course, but also his sweet housemates Lakima (an elderly white pit bull) and Star (a young lab). And of course I've been enjoying the weather. Wonderful trip so far.

By 3:00pm on my first full day here, I’ve already had two spam musubi, fresh pineapple, a malasada, and shave ice. Oh, and lots of doggy kisses. Life is good.

(1) I’m not so fond of opera, but I have to say, it speaks well for a neighbourhood Italian bakery when you go in in the morning for your cup of coffee and they’re playing opera.

(2) I’m going to Hawai‘i soon! Yay! No promises, but if you want a postcard, leave your full postal address (including a name the USPS knows you by) and I might mail you one. Comments are screened; I will not unscreen or reply to comments which have addresses in them (but I may unscreen and reply to comments that just talk about opera or illness).

(3) I have the vague sense I might be coming down with a cold. I hope not; that would not be fun.

(4) Here’s my itinerary, so you know whether that plane that went down in the middle of the school of rabid sharks in the Pacific had me on it or not:

( itinerary, now with 25% more information! )

Happy birthday to sionnagh, marvellous island muse! I hope your birthday, like all other days, is full of warmth and sunshine and puppy lovin’s!

(sionnagh doesn’t read LJ regularly, I think, but I'm sure she’d appreciate email or phone calls from her friends.)

(1) Luna moths! Two in the house. Pretty.

(2) Monarch butterflies! These flocked through my home town in Illinois each year when I was growing up. Now I know where they spent the winter.

(3) I just came back from a talk by “Doctor” Masaru Emoto. We thought it was going to be about quantum physics. Instead, it turned out to be considerably less coherent than a Dr. Bronner's soap label (PDFs), except delivered mostly in Japanese, with a translator, and with the speaker’s wife filling in when (as often happened) the translator had trouble. As I told sionnagh and her friend, afterwards I wanted to open my skull, find all the parts of my brain that had any of that lecture in them, scoop them out into a blender, fill the blender with gasoline, light the gasoline on fire, turn on the blender, and bleach the the inside of my skull and any remaining brain there.

(4) Remind me to post pictures of the Robot Garbage Truck of Doom!

(5) Lovely day at White Plains beach. Remind me to post pictures of the Hawai‘ian Monk Seal basking on the beach with a large cordoned-off area around it.

(6) One very minor disadvantage of travelling to a tropical paradise as a very short-haired person is sunburn on the scalp. (Not bad at all, just slightly amusing.)

(7) Sleep now.

Good thing the sun finally came out, after yesterday’s rain! Otherwise it would have been too cold to swim in the pool this afternoon. But, what can you expect for the middle of winter?

(I’m really going to get it when I get back to Massachusetts, a’n’t I?)