back to the blogosphere

sorry for my absence. a lot has happened since i posted last, and i don't really know where to start. first let me link y'all over to chris's blog so you can see some of the fun stuff we did. (i thought about creating an Identiblog and just cutting and pasting from his site, but that would be Lame.)

the one thing i don't have a picture of is the chameleon my boss found on thursday trying to cross the road! yes, a chameleon. with crazy cone-y eyeballs and sideways feet and the whole chameleon dinosaur weirdness. he puffed up all big and scary when we picked him up, and one of his eyeballs was checking out ppl on his left while the other one was looking for a way out. i wish i could look behind me and in front at the same time. anyway that was the one day i forgot to bring my camera. won't do that again! chameleons, like most things here, are not native, but there is apparently a population of them hanging out in the jungly rainforests.

chris and i did a loop of the island by car and one by little airplane. we went playing in the tidepools and saw urchins and eels and teenage sea turtles and pretty fishies. we also drank lychee martinis (YUM!), ginger-lemongrass vodka with pomegranate juice, and ate our weight in sashimi and poke. y'all got to come down here and try this poke stuff. it is so freeking good. we also drank 'awa, the narcotic tea the hawaiians drank before there was booze, and it got us kinda mellow and giggly. doesn't taste very good, but it's kinda fun.

chris got to experience Hilo's rainy reputation firsthand. it got sunny when he left, but it was kinda miserable the whole time he was in Hilo town. we went to a bar one night and met a young man, quite soused, who explained that he had been depressed from the rain and had gone to check his mail earlier in the day. when he had no mail, he decided to go to the nearest bar and drink seven gin and tonics to make himself feel better. i explained to chris that hawaii attracted a lot of people from the mainland who were trying to get away from something, and chris cannily deduced that the thing they are trying to get away from is themselves. i don't feel like that's what i did, so when i meet ppl like that, i'm like, okay BYE. god bless'm. as blake told me my last night in nawlins, wherever you go, there you are. for some ppl that's no fun, i guess.

then i had to go back to work. we have another intern now, molly, so the boy to girl ratio has decreased and the ladies now outnumber the fellas. this coming week everyone but me, melody, and kulai are going up to Hakalau Forest Refuge to do some fieldwork. the week after that, i get to go! then we'll alternate weeks. that should kick my ass even more than the fieldwork we've been doing. it's halfway up Mauna Kea and very remote. I can't wait to see it! we have to be very careful to check the car and ourselves for seeds, bugs, anything that might establish itself in the virgin forest. shd be interesting. i'll keep you posted.