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!
Friday, August 15, 2008
Saturday, August 9, 2008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, August 4, 2008
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:
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.
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