just so you know...

...here is a short list of things i have learned since coming here to hawaii:

1. all the gas pumps here have that little latch disabled. you know, the one that allows you to let the gas continue to pump without you having to squeeze the handle. i don't know why.

2. i'll be damned if i can find most street signs at intersections. they are often nonexistant, hidden behind a tree, or so tiny that i can't read them until it's too late.

3. costco is even more awesome in hawaii.

4. geckos are in a constant and epic struggle for prime window territory every night. and by 'epic' i mean 'really cute.'

5. if you ship books via the US postal service, they will f@#$ up your stuff (this is what a box looks like after they tear it open to inspect it, then carelessly throw all your books back in the box randomly and totally ruin your beloved "chronicles of narnia" box set that you've had since you were a kid:

excellent documentaries

got the chance to see these at the Hawaii Conservation Conference in august. they are both FABULOUS. i highly highly recommend them. :)

The Real Dirt on Farmer John:


The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil (the trailer kind of sucks - the film is a million times better that this, I promise):

this n that

...because i got a new camera and can't stop attempting to try and capture how awesome our view is.




who's that peeking in my window???


got to play good samaritan this week when we found a wallet with someone's entire world in it, including over $1000 cash, under the table at a restaurant in waikiki. we were able to return it to its rightful owner yesterday. that's one grateful canadian there, eh?

pigeons!!!

Yesterday we went to the other side of the island for a pigeon show!!! Last minute we found out about the Hawaii All Breed Pigeon Association's show, and off we went. It was pouring rain, and we found ourselves hanging out at He'eia Park, under a metal and wood picnic shelter with a bunch of pigeons and some really friendly pigeon people. They tried to give us free pigeons, but we declined for now. :^P

a 'modena':
ken with a new friend:

a 'headless' pigeon:

mr fancy with the black and white puffiness:

a male modena putting on a show for a lady pigeon in the next cage:

one month later...

extended hiatus from posting, due to moving/starting work/digital camera dying on me.

work's been good. moving into our place has been filled with drama and excitement (and by 'excitement' i mean bugs). can't beat the location, view or price. i just got a new camera yesterday, since my old one seems to be dying a slow and painful digital death. here's a bit of what the view looks like from our living room (excuse the mess!):

howzit!!!

i did sort of a crappy job of taking video of obama's speech at keehi lagoon last week. it was cool to get to see him up close (sort of) and in person. we've **almost** crossed paths with him and his entourage several times in the last week. we never find out how close we've come until we watch the news each night and realize "doh!!! we were 2 blocks away!!", etc. yesterday i was on the punahou campus at the same time that he was playing basketball in the punahou gym. argh!

a few pics

Finally got around to uploading some of the pics and videos of our time here so far:

i heart the post office

Fun activity of the day: going to the post office here in Honolulu to pay an additional $85 in postage on 5 boxes that we already paid postage on. To say that they take their "media mail" seriously is an understatement. Either that or they have nothing better to do than rifle through our stuff and find any excuse to charge us more money.

One box was full of books (like 40 lbs worth), but had 3 Sharpies and a post-it pad which happened to contain some writing on it. No soup for you!!!

Another box contained all books and one spiral-bound notebook which apparently had a return envelope to WaMu that was supposed to be mailed like 2 years ago. Give us more money!!! No media mail!!! No soup for you - ONE YEAR!!!!!

It was good times, to be sure.

The real highlight of the day was eating a randomly perfect meal in a totally unexpected place - Big City Diner at Ward Center. We were both really hungry and shuffled like zombies into their establishment, and it was easily the best meal we've had since we arrived. Ken had what was, apparently in that moment, the perfect burger. I had a yummy portobello mushroom sammich. We splurged and split an unbelievable brownie sundae. My fat ass totally didn't need it, but damn it was gooooood.

speaking of squid...

If you've got a few or seven minutes to spare and find yourself in need of an odd, somewhat creepy and enchanting love story set to the soothing sounds of Andrew Bird, check this out. The animation style is really intriguing, and I love the music. The story is totally weird but I kind of like it.

tourist or local?

More like somewhere in between the two, but definitely still much more on the tourist end of the scale. It's weird to constantly remind myself that I "live" here now - even when I say it out loud or type it, it doesn't seem real. I guess it doesn't help that I've been living in a hotel in the middle of Waikiki for nearly two weeks.

I had intended, way back when, to chronicle the whole moving process in this blog, but it turns out that the moving process is a bit too involving to leave time to blog about it. Also, it's a pretty traumatic experience on the whole, and doesn't tend to leave one wanting to relive it by writing about it. Best left behind, I think. So I think I'll leave out all the nasty bits about mailing 40 HEAVY boxes via the US Postal Service. I'll bypass going into detail about how bad the household goods shipping experience was (REALLY bad). I'll spare you (and by "you", I mean "me" since that's probably the only person who will read this) the details about lizard adoptions, and long-term cat-sitting by amazing, saint-like friends. Well, I may write about that last one as it's an ongoing saga.

So far, we've been doing a lot of the tourist stuff, mostly on foot or by city bus. In no particular order, we've done:

• Ala Moana mega-mall several times (food court is pretty bomb)
• hiking to Manoa falls (beautiful! birds! jungle! mud! mosquitoes!)
• a city bus trip around the entire island, which consisted of us sitting for nearly 5 hours on a circle-island bus - a great way to see the island, but kind of makes your butt fall asleep)
• Hawaii Conservation Conference Film Festival (more about that later)
• Waikiki Aquarium - hawaiian monk seals, lots of gorgeous fishies, 3 cute squid and one saucy, flirty octopus:
  
  
• amazing public lectures by renowned oceanographer Sylvia Earle and 'master navigator' Nainoa Thompson - more on that later
  
• Honolulu Zoo
• walking through an industrial wasteland to get to Sand Island to pick up my car (got to see the Hokule'a, though, which was an unexpected treat)
• hanging out at Sandy's Beach - tons of bodysurfing going on.
  

owl gone wild!

sweeeeeet:

maybe i don't need an apartment

Here's an interesting article on homelessness in hawaii. I guess there are worse places I can think of to be homeless... I think I would tend to agree with some of the people interviewed in this piece - if I had to choose between tenting it on a Hawaiian beach or living in a crowded shelter, I'd easily choose the beach.

the backstory

I've never really had anything interesting to blog about, since pretty much all I seem to do these days is work, eat, sleep, and watch Battlestar Galactica episodes. Moving to Hawaii seems pretty interesting, at least to me...

Applied on a whim for a job opening at a school in Honolulu, way back in March 08, thinking "yeah right...I'll never land that job." Now here I sit, with a pretty decent job offer that I've accepted, and an apartment full of crap that I need to sort through and decide what's worth loading into a freight container and shipping to Honolulu.

Boyfriend to come along - also has apartment full of crap to sort through. Many many boxes of books and paperwork and magazines (oh you sweet, sweet boxes of Modern Drummer, how I love thee...) to be sorted through.

And then there's the cat. Oh yes, the cat.

And her rabies vaccinations, and her rabies titer (sp?) test that has to get sent to Kansas for analysis, and her microchip, and her second rabies vaccination, and her 7-odd other vaccinations to protect her from the other quarantined animals once she arrives in Hawaii. She is by far the most complicated part of this whole process, and most people probably don't think it's worth it, but I'm telling you, she's awesome. Totally worth the hassle.

Unfortunately one of the casualties of this move will be our two reptiles. I went through all of the unrealistic imaginings of how we might smuggle them onto the island, but about 2 seconds of googling the subject lets one know that the consequences for doing so are dire. Something like a $200,000 fine and a couple of years in prison. Reptiles are strictly prohibited on the island. Bummer.