beach day (local kine)

oink oink

so yesterday i decided to hit the Garden Snack Club. I haven't had a restaurant meal in a while, and I wanted green papaya salad. But I was so hungry that I also ordered the sticky rice with mango, even though it only comes as a "Family Size" order -- you know, the *big* square takeout container. Well. That was less than 24 hours ago and it's almost all gone. Good thing papaya salad has, like, zero calories.

i'm a little piggy.

but i went up to Hakalau this week so I earned it, I think. We got to our field cabin on Tuesday, and learned from the nene intern, Ryan, that there was a total lunar eclipse that night. And there I was, halfway up the biggest mountain in the world, to watch! I have some pictures but, as always, they fail to convey the Awesomeness Of The Event.

Friday night I got to go to my boss's wife's dodgeball tournament. It was so much fun! A little scrawny team of barefoot math geeks went up against a team of buff, solid hawaiian guys -- and while Team Math did not win in the end, they played an amazing game. it was the dodgeball equivalent of the napolean dynamite dance.

so now i'm off to the beach. it's a little hazy today but if i see any good photo ops i'll takem. i'm coming up on my 1st anniversary, and i thought i was going to need to move to save money, but my landlord has graciously reduced my rent so that i'll stay. that makes me happy, cause i hate moving, and i do love this little apartment. i've started a garden now that i know i'll be around for a while, and who knows, i may even get some furniture!

happy sunday, everybody!

beach day: kikaua

welp, the guidebook wasn't kidding about this beach not being crowded -- happy president's day to me!

it was a beautiful day in hilo town, but i just had to take a little road trip. you just don't get this kind of beach on the hilo side of the island. it was utterly lovely, the pictures don't do it justice. it is heavily manicured, for sure. but that's exactly what i wanted today. you have to get a parking pass b/c this beach fronts the Four Seasons resort, but all beaches in Hawai'i are public property, so anybody can crash the rich ppl's party. i think i'll crash the mauna lani resort people's next time.

i kind of wanted to go to Mauna Kea and touch the snow on the "way" home, but towards the mountain it got really cloudy, plus that's a trip in itself, so maybe this weekend i'll finally hit it. there is SO MUCH snow up there since that last rainstorm. i'm going up to hakalau this week, but that's only halfway up. maybe stargazing this weekend. we'll see. i might have beach fever now, today really hit the spot. i am once again "lucky live hawai'i".

i also got to eat a vietnamese noodle bowl, something i haven't done since nawlins, and got a vietnamese po-boy to take home with me. spicy lemongrass tofu. damn tasty.

here's a pretty little waterfall i found along the way. above it was this magnificent vista:

i make monkey noises when i catch glimpses of the snowy mountain. all that snow just activates the Snow Day response, or something, it just makes me happy. Glimpses of a particular shade of turquoise ocean also elicit monkey noises, as well as other random sights.

and here's some cryptic graffiti:

someone should write a short story about that.

Coming home through waimea it got really cloudy and creepy, and then i saw this huge thing. in the mist and grey it really looked like it could have been from the film-within-a-film in The Ring. spooky fo sho.

that's it for me kids, i'm pooped. hope everyone had a lovely president's day. i would like to note that i will (probably) be happier Next president's day. There were a bunch of Obama supporters in one town I went through having a rally. Our caucus is tomorrow. We call it a caucus instead of a primary for some reason. the cuteoverload lady posted about a telephone message she got from stevie wonder telling her he just called to say he loves her, and to vote for obama. she titled that post "holy target audience, batman" or similar. stevie wonder has not called me. hmph.

this just in: boy will be moving back to New Orleans! Not only that, but belle is flying up to oregon to meet him and be his travel companion on the way back. i cannot WAIT to see the posts that ensue. i get a hangover just thinking about it. cheers daahlings.

hawai'i says: when life gives you water, make waterfalls

well, i thought i'd go check out what all this water was doing to the lovely waterfalls in the Greater Hilo Metropolitan Area, and lo and behold, they were lovely. I've been to Rainbow Falls when it was a mere trickle, and this link has some interesting pix of it at the peak of our deluge. Today, though, it was Just Right.

I also had to pay a visit to the Boiling Pots and Pe'e Pe'e Falls (that's "peh-eh-peh-eh", now quit snickering. come visit and take pix of the street sign -- they omit the 'okina so it just reads Peepee Falls) and whatever the falls above Pe'e Pe'e are. Don't laugh, it's hard to keep up with the names here! Don't even get me started on beach names.

After the waterfalls I decided to check out Kaumana Cave, which I'd never visited before. I'm glad I did.
after all that, it was time to go shopping. i got my tax refund and, while i gots lots of bills to pay, i had to treat myself just a tiny bit -- I went bikini shopping. Look! it's a fleur-de-lis bikini! yes, i am still totally gay for nola and all things nola-esque, got stickers on my car, suitcase, &c. Anyway it was a red-letter day for bikinis -- I managed to get 2 and 1/2 of 'em, more than doubling my current repertoire! I didn't want to model them for you, tho, because doodle's not the only one that's not at bikini weight, ahem. luckily now that it has stopped raining, the fieldwork is jumpin' again, which means I'll drop a few pounds. i hope.

oh, and the muzak revolution is official -- i heard elvis costello at the Ross Dress For Less!

i'm going kona side tomorrow, dammit. i love the east side of this island, but i need me some Conde-Nast-Award-Winning-Beach-Action for my holiday. some powdery white sand. a mango smoothie. i may stop by mauna kea on the way home to play in the snow. i hope it's clear so i have lots of good pictures for you! I've decided that i need to work my way systematically through the beaches. what a chore. i need help. hint hint.

speaking of smoothies, i guess it might be a little early for some of you to be craving cool frosty snacks, but i stumbled upon a kickass smoothie combination today. i didn't have much so it was whatever i could scrounge up, and talk about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts! here goes:

handful of frozen banana slices (apple bananas were tasty but cavendish would be too)

handful of frozen seedless red grapes

1 container haupia (coconut) yogurt

splash of tamarind nectar (look in the mexican aisle, jumex makes it for 79 cents)

juice from a smallish knob of ginger

blend that sucka and enjoy!

happy president's day, and happy birthday to Mandy!

oh now you have *got* to be kidding me

i'm glad i don't speak german. seeing it is bad enough without having to hear the justification for its creation. James Bond, my ass.

kalakaua park chinese new year celebration

hooray for chinese new year!

happy v.d., y'all

it's funny because it's true.

not to be *too* much of a cat lady, but cuteoverload.com just re-posted this little gem, and wasn't i just saying how i get no sleep on account of Herr Doodle? Enjoy!

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you: Jabba The Doodle, aka Walrus Basking In Sunshine

I was just telling boy this morning that Doodle has gone supernova, so i thought i'd better back that up with some visuals. He is *so* not at his bikini weight. Apparently our lovable doodle is entering his Orson Welles phase. Not only is his belly enormous, but his attitude is a LOT snarkier than it used to be. he's obviously acting out and has an eating disorder. i have yet to find the right rehab program for him, though. he misses his neighbors in NOLA that used to snorgle him without mercy and spoil him rotten.

(okay, 90% of the time he's still the same old snuggly Doodle. but he hasn't let me sleep a night through since we came here almost a year ago. i guess his circadian clock never re-set.)

anyway, we had sunshine today for a change! thanks god. and i may start a new blog called "weird yard flowers". Today's came off a tree. any botanists in the crowd?

well i guess that's all the news for today, except that my car is possessed by demons. i went to the grocery store and it locked me out. that's right. i could not get into my car. then finally the passenger side door opened, so i got to crawl into the drivers seat that way. i thought maybe it was the powerlock fuse, which might have fried because of all the stupid rain, but guess what?? you can only get to the fusebox if the driver's door is open! so i messed with that for an hour or so and then it just sort of fixed itself. very strange.

so shenaynay, that's what held me up from calling you this afternoon like i'd planned. sorry honey! this week? i'll do my durndest. we been playing phone tag for months.

Geekin' out

My boss and co-workers just got a paper published in Biological Invasions! All I did was help proofread, all this stuff was way before my time. But if you are so inclined, you can check it out to see what goes on at the Avian Food Ecology lab. It's about alien domination. yeeee-uh. now where my raygun at?

for my fellow academicians out there: check the turnaround time on this. is that not incredible? received to published in 2 months? damn, we're good.

I myself hope one day to be published in the International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos.

enjoy!

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

Happy Chinese New Year! It's the Year of the Earth Rat! Woo!

muzak revolution?

is this just a hawaii thing? i have heard: Belle & Sebastian at the Ben Franklin; the Ramones at Long's Drug Store; and, perhaps most surprisingly, New Order at Ace Hardware.

wtf? are mainland stores moving away from the "I Will Always Love You" school of sap as well?

well okAY then.

so i'm sitting at work yesterday at about 3:00 when somebody says, "Hey, does anybody know who won the Superbowl?" nobody. that was in a roomful of girls. So I hollered the question to the boys, to the response "Who was playing?"

(An aside: We couldn't ask the interwebs because rain and lightning knocked out our connection and our phones.)

Y'all sports fans will call me a loser. but this truly is heaven. with maybe a little too much rain.

Aaaanywho. Look at this shiznit!!! Hilo hasn't had this much rain since 1969, the year I was born, strangely enough.... This photo remind you of anything? reminded me of something. on a smaller scale. and there's no hurricane. or levee. but still. it's kinda freaky. The boss brought in the newspaper with the rainfall amounts: almost 48 inches in 72 hours. An apartment building on the river (see: yesterday's pic) partially collapsed. Streams flowed through people's houses. One lady had to swim to the kennel she owns to free the dogs, whose kennels had 6 feet of water in them. good thing they all knew the doggie paddle.

Even the desert flooded. The Jeep has now been dubbed "Queen McSteam" because it has a leak somewhere and I have to keep bailing it out. I am white as a larva. Next year I'm going on vacation for the month of february. I mean, this is obviously an anomaly, but Feb. is one of the rainiest months here, historically speaking. of course, if rain/monsoons/hurricanes follow me wherever I go next February, I'm going back to Nawlins to get the juju offa me.

so i wussed out on justin's cake -- after slogging around in the rain for a few hours i lost my artistic motivation, so he just got a chocolate cake with little caterpillars and butterflies on it. i know i promised, but oh well. i do have this lovely photo of a mangosteen, though, to please your little eyeballs. Mangosteen is a fruit which complements the Doodle nicely:

the pics of the inside of the mangosteen aren't real pretty, cause i ate it about 2 days after its peak. i must confess that this is not my first mangosteen. the mangosteen, in case you haven't heard, is the "Queen of Fruits" (the king being the nasty ol' Durian) and the new pomegranate, or something. it's in expensive drinks and perfumes and seems to be the It Girl of the fruit scene right now. but my personal Fruit Monarch is the atemoya, which is huge and juicy and tastes like a pina colada. Mangosteens are good but they have this bitter chalky rind that holds about 3 grape-sized fruity things with big seeds inside. I think the seed-to-fruit ratio should be very small. who cares how good it tastes if it's full of annoying seeds?

wow, it's way past bedtime. just one more thing. anybody else think this is kindly racist? it's california rice, and i think somebody had to talk somebody else into removing the railroad from the background:

okay, hawaii out. special message for billy: HBD!!!!!!! hope you got my card in time.

aloha,
k

yikes with the rain

this is the Wailuku River a few blocks down from my house. The first picture was taken yesterday from the upriver (flat) bridge, the second I took last April from the downriver (arched) bridge.

that means, dear readers, that the rock ledge you see on the left in the April picture (which includes Maui's Canoe) is the shelf of the big flat honkin waterfall on the right yesterday's picture.

yes, i know you can't have a rainforest without the rain, and i love my rainforest. but an inch of rain an hour for five days in a row is getting a little much for this sun-worshipper to take. i was gonna head over to Kona, but the stupid roads are flooded. i think there's a flash-flood watch on all the islands. Rain is a lot messier than snow, btw.

so it's just me and the doodle and the 'Watch Now' option on Netflix. I very much enjoyed Robert Rodriguez's segment of Grindhouse ("Planet Terror"). Didn't dig Tarantino's so much. I watched my first Fassbinder film, which I see was an influence on Hedwig. Madame Bovary translated to film much better than Anna Karenina. Factory Girl was better than I thought it would be but not exactly good. I can watch no more! Today I'm going out to get soaked and run my little errands. I'm getting a baskin-robbins cake for Justin, whose birthday is on Valentine's Day but he's going to Australia for three weeks on Tuesday. (we love a birthday at work and being gone is no excuse for no celebration.) so the mission is to turn the cake (roll-style) into a parasitized caterpillar, cause that's his thing. pictures to follow!