aloha oy!

Who are you? Where am I? What year is it?

2009-01-09T14:17:00.000-08:00

Shoots. Happy 2009, y'all!

Since I last blogged waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back in what, October, let's recap wha-tall has happened (big kine)...

- Went to Cambodia and Thailand for a month

- Went to Kauai for thanksgiving with G's family

- Went to Honolulu for New Years (real fireworks in the street! woo! Grant's brother Kyle brought these aerials for the finale.)

- Oh yeah, and I lost my job (funding ran out! booo.) My old lab went from 7 people to 2 people. :o(

Yup, that's all you missed. Exciting! Pix are going to be on Flickr and Facebook, I can't keep up with all this interwebbage no more!

Grant's building is getting to the final stages of done-ness now, and he's crazy busy trying to juggle a full schedule *and* keep up with the zillions of little details that revolve around opening a brand new practice (with optical shop, which he didn't have before). So instead of laying around watching Oprah and eating bonbons, I've been trying to help out with that as much as I can. So I don't *feel* unemployed, I just, err, am.

Yeah. I'm going to use my time helping Grant, planting things, and doing things round the house that have been neglected for-evah, like fencing doodle's yard, lol. Oh yeah, that's another thing that happened -- Doodle moved outside! He now has a house of his own and my only worry is the bad dogs will get out. (They have killed 6 of our chickens and, worst of all, a teeny baby kitten they found in the yard. That was my christmas heartbreak kitty. don't want to talk about it.) I would love to have Doodle inside safe and sound, snuggle-able 24/7, but in the three months he was inside, he refused to use the litter box and made life more than a little difficult. And the way the house is set up, the dogs have full run of the perimeter, so there's no way to sneak him outside to do his kitty business. So there ya have it.

So I did the best thing I could think of for my outdoorsy little guy. He's even got a lanai to sun himself on! Pix of El Casa de Doodle to come.

I'm also getting to cook more than I have since I moved here. After eating some delicious onaga (just one of many delectable dishes) at Grant's family's New Years celebration, I found out from G's mom that Aunty Marcia used a Sam Choy recipe and have devoted myself to getting his cookbooks and trying out some new dishes. Choy's recipes are famous for being ono *and* easy to make. That's what I'm talking about! For my birthday one of my presents from Grant was Audrey Wilson's What The Big Island Likes To Eat, so I'm cooking from that as well. Oh and for Christmas "Santa" brought me a musubi maker, so I get to make my own Spam Musubi!

I'm also wishing somebody would come visit! It's great that I have time on my hands now, but with Grant working ~18 hours a day, not much playtime is happening. I need a fwend! All mine are working! (Losers.) Okay, Grant and I did stop at Honaunau to snorkel on our way to his belated holiday staff dinner in Kona last sunday, which was great. There was a huge puffer fish (about 18 inches, biggest i've seen up close) that kept coming around me, right up by the surface. Of course I had to chase it and try to get it to puff up. But i guess it thought playing was fun so it started following me! there were also turtles and parrotfish and the usual suspects, but puffers are my favorite :o). Of course I forgot my camera, too. old well.

So, maybe I'll have more time to blog and maybe not (you would not believe the amount of work Grant has to deal with, just the runoff I get is nuts). But I'll try to be better! Facebook seems to be the venue of least resistance these days. And I'm so far behind on Personal Communications it ain't even funny. (Right, Timmy? Oh yeah, I'm dead to you. sigh.)

so pixtures, maybe, soon. Links to them, at least. here's one, anyway, from Mauna Kea at the end of the first snowfall's life (we got lots more snow the week after).

okay, once again, happy new year! I'll try to blog again before 2010!

i didn't fall in no volcano

2008-10-18T16:32:00.000-07:00

but if i did it might look something like this:

at the "dollar plus" store

2008-09-14T01:06:00.001-07:00

naptry, we hardly knew ye

2008-09-13T14:58:00.001-07:00

yes, it's true, i moved and have and disassembled the Naptry. See?

This ephemeral occurrence also went extinct. Much like this old Edison phonograph the Salvation Army was selling. (no, i didn't buy it. it was tempting though!)

But now I have more time to do fun stuff like go to the Naalehu music festival, where I got to see Ledward Kaapana (with his nephew Ikaika) and other great slack-key guitarists. There was great food too. And hula!

Here are some ali'i for you. They're very fancy and important.

After the festival, we enjoyed a late lunch at this cafe, Hana Hou. It is the southernmost restaurant in the united states, and if you come visit me I will take you there for their incredible desserts. (See the sign? "Eat Dessert First"? Awww yeeuh :)

And look, here is some hawaiian sovereignty bling i found at the mall!

And in job news, this is what a *good* day at work looks like these days. That rocky stuff is a'a, the crumbly, hard-to-walk-on version of lava. (Pahoehoe is the smooth ropy variety -- much easier on the feet.) This is Melody atop the a'a mountain. The view of the sulfur dioxide plumes coming out of the volcano vents was amazing from up there (~6000 feet).

I know you're wondering: How is the doodle transitioning? Well, apparently he hates it here too. He has his own room, an assortment of kitty toys, gets a lot more snuggles than when he was a latch-key kitten, and seems to be quite happy. He hasn't been outside in two weeks and seems fine with that, so this is Kitty Retirement Home!

um.

2008-08-20T22:10:00.001-07:00

this awesome little dude, Sungha Jung, will be 12 next month. he started playing guitar less than three years ago.

Great White Shark off Honolulu

2008-08-16T18:58:00.000-07:00

Get This Widget!TOPP.org

HCC/Oahu trip

2008-08-11T20:36:00.000-07:00

Okay, where to start?? Let's start at the rental car agency, where they upgraded me to a convertible (the HaoleMobile from that moment forth). Red Chrysler Sebring. You'll meet her in a moment. So my first stop is picking up Heather at a sushi joint where she has already befriended a young man. (She flew in an hour before I did.) I broke up the happy couple to get us both to Kailua, where Corinna graciously hosted us in her mom's house.

This is a random family taking a souvenir shot at Lanikai "Beach" on Oahu at high tide.

Luckily Krina, being all local and stuff, knew that if we just kept walking we would find some sand. That's her and Heather strolling t'wards the briny blue. Quite different from the feel of our Big Island beaches, that's for sure.

I set up my poster that evening with the help of some generous Velcro-toting co-presenters, then we had a mai tai (what else?) and some dinner at a beachfront bar in Waikiki, and headed back to Kailua for a good night's sleep before Presentation Day at the Hawaii Conservation Conference.

I can't show you my top-secret poster presentation (rules rules rules) but I will tell you that it was well-received. This year's conference theme was "The Year Of The Reef" and Sylvia Earle was there so I'm lucky I got any play at all. (She's the one who put the fear of God in me about eating sushi, btw.)

Okay, so I moved to my swank $84/night hotel near Diamond Head (close to the beach! a bargain, actually. Look, I could see the ocean from my room... kind of, if I leaned out over the lanai). I couldn't bear another city-locked Ala Moana hotel after last year, so I chose beachfront property. Enjoyed another day of conference (even though it was rather depressing to hear about the state of the ocean these days, people did try to keep it positive and focus on what can still be done to preserve what we have left), picked Grant up, and after one more night in the ghetto, moved to the slightly more upscale Moana Surfrider hotel in Waikiki.

And here is the new view from the new hotel room. No neck-craning necessary. But the service was TERRIBLE. Okay, at checkin they gave us leis and cold drinks and cold cloths for our sweaty brows. But after that? Fuhgeddaboudit. Housekeeping knocked 3 times when we had the do not disturb thingy up, failed to clean our room on the first day, and was generally unresponsive to all our requests. But yeah the view rocked and the bed was huge and comfy. :)

And here's Grant in the Haolemobile. He kept saying "Okay, get out of our way" and "Get out of our way, we don't know where we're going". He makes quite a good haole, actually. I got to meet his folks, who live in Pearl City and are very nice. They invited me for Thanksgiving! I think I passed the test. Or maybe G bribed them, I donno.

We hit First Friday in Chinatown and saw this theater, where I think Tom Waits should seriously consider playing on his next tour.

And here are my favorite souvenirs (Doodle modeling my favorite)

Let's take a closer look at that...

Mom and Dad happily on vacation... while the kids are in puppy jail....

I've been meaning to post an evacuation sign. I heart them.

Okay, running out of time and steam. More later, kids. HBD to Blake!

but wait! there's still hope!!

2008-08-07T20:02:00.000-07:00

http://seachoice.org/

imma go eat me sum SOOSHI!!!! :)

2008-07-30T01:44:00.001-07:00

well, poop.

2008-07-30T01:44:00.000-07:00

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/05/0515_030515_fishdecline.html

cultural bonanza

2008-07-17T11:36:00.000-07:00

This weekend is a slack-key/ukulele extravaganza. As if that weren't enough for sleepy little hilo town, it's time for Shakespeare In The Rain. This year's performance is Hamlet! Woo!

Oh, and we have two new restaurants: a sushi bar and a "Mongolian BBQ" joint as well. I must try them.

I've been very un-posty lately and you must forgive me. See, I'm trying to get my poster done for the HCC in a week and a half. It's real pretty right now... if you don't look at the data very closely.... :( I promise I will be more posty when that's done with.

And I'd like to wish a happy late birthday to my sistruh and to my aunt sonja. Should have posted those on Tuesday so they wouldn't be late shout-outs! d'oh!

Vaycrayshunzzzz

2008-07-01T18:31:00.000-07:00

Okay, so first I have to tell you about the Dolphin Days Food And Booze Extravaganza. I got to take my princess boat to our room, which was quite nice but apparently "O-cean View" actually means "View of Mountain with Food Tables". But whatever.

We drank so much wine and ate so much food in so short a time that my head is still spinning. We thought the food was served until 10, but found out upon our arrival (at 6:30) that it actually got taken away at 8! And booze at 9! Holy Schmolies, we better hurry up, we thought! and so we did. We had carapaccio and chocolate mousse and roast beast and.. i don't even remember what we ate, except that most of it was damn tasty. After the food ran out, we got our drink on and tasted a lot of really nice red wines, none of whose names I remember.

Then, after we were feelin' all right despite the Smoove Jazz on-stage, Mr. Whatshisbucket gets up for his final number and does.... GHOSTBUSTERS! I took a video, which i shall not post, but you should have heard me and grant laughing our asses off at the first "I ain't afraid of no ghost"! I was crying. There were fireworks and then the bar for an afterparty, where I bet Grant that my shot of Patron would be at least 2x what it costs in Nawlins, and sho nuf, it cost 3x as much. buzzkill. but it went down easy as always. I made fun of white people dancing, and then danced. Slow-danced, no less, to a band covering Al Green. Ah, the things alcohol will make you do....

Sunday was a blur. We slept in, then checked out, then went to the beach and slept some more. (Grant illustrates the sleepy vibe, below.) Then we went home. On the way home we saw a byootiful rainbow.

Four short days later, we were rising at 4 am to hit the road for Waipi'o Valley, where our backpacking adventure was to begin. We started with a hearty breakfast (should have timed our feeding frenzy, I'm sure we broke records) and headed up the Hamakua Coast, taking in a beautiful sunrise on the way. The first thing we did was ford a river (they call it a "stream") and I got vertigo because the water is really rushing into the ocean there, and I was full of aaaallll that breakfast, but I didn't fall over first thing. Whew!

Our next task was to ascend our first ridge on the Muliwai trail in the hot sun. Dusty and crumbly and steep and hot, but oh my, what a view of waipi'o! I was scared it was going to be up and down hot escarpments like that the whole way and was about to ask Grant if we could just go back and camp in Waipi'o, when we rounded the crest and... boom! cool breeze, ironwoods and pines.... a much different hiking situation, much more to my liking. We went up and down I don't know how many valleys and hills, and then, finally, we saw our destination: Waimanu Valley. (Queue choral music) The sign at our final landmark told us it was only 0.9 more miles!! (We'd been hiking six hours at that point, and I for one was pretty pooped.) So we got all excited and started our descent.

Well. What a steep freekin descent it was, and it started raining and got slippery, and we walked and walked and the beach still looked just as far away as it did from the top. That was a real morale-buster. Grant had to pep-talk me through the last one and a half hours. He's a very patient man.

FINALLY we got to the bottom and all we had to do then, after 8 miles and 8 hours, was cross another river with slippery rocks all up in it, and then walk on more rocks to the veeeeery last campsite on the furthest end of the beach. I guess we set up camp then. I don't really remember, because I was so tired! Somehow the tent got set up and we went to get water from a nearby stream. [Waimanu hikers: Campsites 6, 8, and 9 are the best ones. Campsite 1 is AWFUL, you have to sleep on rocks!! I am so glad we got assigned #9, even if it was a bit of a walk. Also, there is a Mango Minefield on the way to the water source on the west side of the valley, and (in season, of course) you have to cover your head to not get mango-bombed. but oh, the mango-ey goodness!]

[In the cliff shot here, Grant is the little speck in the water about 1/4 from the right. He's boogie-boarding on one of two boogie boards that fortuitously (and ominously) washed up on the beach for us. ]

We loaded up on water and mangoes and made ourselves a little Dr. Bronners Peppermint Ho-Bath, and washed up. There was one other camper there, but he left in the morning, leaving us this whole valley and beach to our lonesomes. it was awesome.

some other campers showed up at night, as did a pighunter and his lady friend and their six dogs, who proceeded to hunt down a pig at 4 a.m. our second (and last) night there. Yeah, we woke up to the sound of a huge pig being dragged thru our campsite!

[these shells contain opihi, considered a delicacy by the hawaiians. I ate one that Grant pried off the rock and cut out of its shell with his Rambo knife. I guess it was pretty much still alive when I ate it. It didn't go down very easy and I think I still have its little soul lodged in my throat.]

We broke camp pretty early and headed back, unpleasantly surprised that, despite all the food we ate, our packs were still Really Freaking Heavy. Oh well. The hike back was not as grueling as the way in, and the day was beautiful, turning overcast as we reached Waipi'o again and giving us a lucky break on the dry (but not broiling like it could have been) descent. It felt good crossing the river and seeing that the truck was still there. But of course it was --we left Kung Fu Panda to guard it! Nobody dared touch it. We stopped at Tex Drive In for dinner and then headed back to home for a long soak in the tub and a good night's sleep.

Playing Tourist At Home

2008-06-21T10:57:00.000-07:00

Airfare, schmarefare! me and G are going to the Hilton Waikoloa Village for the Great Waikoloa Food, Wine, and Music Festival. It's a benefit for the Children's Hospital and the Pacific Marine Research Institute.

Basically all the best chefs on the island get together and make a bunch of food and you go eat it and drink copiously while listening to Ray "GhostBusters" Parker Jr, and Jeffrey Osborne, who Grant is still trying to explain to me. I keep thinking he's Billy Ocean. Grant keeps thinking he's James Ingram. Anybody remember this dude from the 80s? at any rate, I'm looking forward to the food and booze, and especially to taking a mahogany boat thru the flower-ridden waterways to our room. Apparently this place is so big (or its guests so lazy) that you have to get around its 62 acres by tram or by boat.

And they have a dolphin show, for god's sake. Maybe you can check us out on the live webcam.

I'm a little princess. :) Pix to follow! Next week is a much different excursion: the 18-mile r/t hike to Waimanu Valley via the Muliwai Trail.

Pictures Of Other (Somewhat Exasperated) People

2008-06-17T00:46:00.000-07:00

Here's Grant demonstrating hawai'i's famous "stink- eye". His eye got all red after he took a nap at my house. We think Doodle got jealous and put some dooky in g's eyeball while he was asleep. This was the face I got after telling him "you should go see the eye doctor."

and this is New Intern Laura, knee-deep in Kohala mud. She actually was the one who had the idea of taking a picture of her predicament! What a good sport.

New Intern Lola rescued the boot, which was reeeeeally stuck. Well done!

why i love shopping (sometimes)

2008-06-17T00:26:00.000-07:00

baby elephant coffee mug, $1.99 @ Ross

Audrey II, $1.oo @ farmers market

hello kitty bling shades, $17.50 @ Long's Drugs

doggie drama: raoul learns to swim

2008-06-05T12:42:00.000-07:00

poor raoul! we took him for his aquadog training session and it was a little traumatic. There were a lot of people on the sand beach, so we chose a rocky water entry -- in more ways than one. Nanook demonstrates the opposite of "the buddy system".

Later we found an unpopulated sandy area that raoul was much more comfortable with. He wasn't too into it at first...

..but got the hang of it eventually.

(the next day, raoul ate nanook's lifevest. was it jealousy, revenge, or just levelling the playing field? hmmm....)

kthxbye: Link Of The Day

2008-05-31T13:07:00.001-07:00

Linguistics + lolcats = I has pifaneee!!1

(japanese translation)

Arright Arready!!

2008-05-29T15:16:00.000-07:00

Okay, you guys are gonna get me in trouble, but here is Grant (with Nanook) in action. One comment on potential comments: Please remember, he's reading this too, and so is my mom. :)

You can also check him out on his website-in-progress.

captain cook died in a pretty place

2008-05-27T09:37:00.000-07:00

I needed to test out the new underwater camera this weekend, so Grant and I went to the Captain Cook monument at Kealakekua Bay and kayaked out for some snorkeling. I took some underwater movies, but my, err, technique needs work.... maybe next time I'll have some good action shots for y'all! I'm disappointed that the puffer fish and needlefish pictures didn't come out, but overall i'm very happy with my new toy! (I got it with my Economic Stimulus money from the widely misunderestimated Dubya.)

I'll let you verify the details, but Captain James A. Cook visited Hawai'i a few times and managed to piss off the locals. First, he named the islands the Sandwich Islands, after his buddy the Earl of Sandwich. (When Mark Twain visited Kealakekua Bay, the spot where Captain Cook "discovered" Hawaii this is what he saw. "The setting sun was flaming upon it, a summer show was falling, and it was spanned by two magnificent rainbows. Two men who were in advance of us rode through one of these and for a moment their garments shone with a more than regal splendor. Why did not Captain Cook have taste enough to call his great discovery the Rainbow Islands?")

(Here go Grant. look, he's part fish!)

Cook had initially been treated really well by the Hawaiians, some say because he landed in a certain spot at a time when the Hawaiians were expecting their god Lono to show up. They thought Cook was Lono, and gave him food and gifts accordingly, which he accepted greedily, and commenced to coppin' a attitude. After a while people started realizing he wasn't a god after all, and at that last departure from Kealakekua there was a skirmish over some property. Things were tense, and Cook got bonked over the head with a club. Accounts vary, but sounds like he mighta been asking for it. He was by all accounts a violent dude.

Later, the haoles wanted Cook's remains and some Hawaiians, sympathetic to Cook's heirs, were lucky enough to find a single butt-cheek to return to his family. Needless to say, the family was horrified. (I think that's a Mark Twain story too, though, so... grain o'salt.)

On a different note, G and I adopted a dog, Raoul. (He's the red puppeh in the picture, and the heeler mix is Grant's dog Nanook. She needed a playfriend because G works a lot.)

We thought Raoul was a Rhodesian Ridgeback mix until we saw the painting below -- there's something called a Thai Ridgeback, and that's got to be him, because that is exactly the look on his face all the time. He's very sensitive and has a poetic nature. We were thinking he was a beatnik, but I think he might actually be emo. Nanook is more of a down-to-earth farm girl, so they sort of balance each other out. I'll have to get some good shots of them wrestling and then snuggling. pweshus.

okay, i guess i better clock in now. more later....

and another happy anniversary...

2008-05-13T21:02:00.000-07:00

... to the shampoo and conditioner my mother got at Costco last year (ostensibly for herself, for the week, ahem...) ! It doesn't look like they'll make it another year, but wow. color me tired of Garnier. Fructis, indeed.

we cool

2008-04-26T23:25:00.001-07:00

evacuated again, sigh

2008-04-23T19:21:00.000-07:00

so the trade winds changed to "transport winds" and the sulfur dioxide rose to unprecedented levels this morning, forcing the park to close again. This time we actually wore our government-issue gas masks, it was that bad. I have no refugees staying with me this time, though.

last post's teaser was picked up on by one astute reader (who commented "here go yo otha urrrrnge!") -- Urnge v 2.0 showed up and made himself at home for a while. I thought i was going to have to keep him (anybody seen/read the Kite Runner? I felt like that Afghani dude) but as luck (or maybe the Doodle) would have it, he only stuck around for a few days and then he left. he was actually better-behaved than his daddy (Urnge 1.0). We dodged a bullet there.

there's big news on the alo-holla this week. I booked my ticket to SE Asia (23 days in November, woo!) where i'll meet my friend katrin (from berlin. did i tell y'all about this already?) Now I get to flesh out the itinerary. Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand are the focus, with (I think) more time in Laos and Cambodia than Thailand. I can't wait! I haven't been off American soil since Ireland 1999. too long. hopefully when i get back i'll have enough frequent flyer miles for a NZ/Australia trip in the spring with Christopher, who isn't coming to see me in June after all. :(

2nd news is I got an email from my old boss at the monkey house, and the grad student working in our lab has finished his paper. It's being submitted to Nature Medicine and has a good chance of being accepted. i feel all important and stuff -- I'm only the 4th author, but there's some big names all around me!

third news, which some of you have heard about ad nauseum, is that i met a boy. (Blush.) he's really awesome and is probably reading this so i'm not going to say too much more, except that he is gifted in the subtle art of gift-giving. he went to san diego for a conference and came back with fancy chocolates for me and this little gem from the museum of art:

words cannot express how happy this makes me. i know, i'm special. but. you know.

so, upshot = things are really good here. hope all's well everywhere else!

special dedication sunday

2008-04-06T10:38:00.000-07:00

well, it seems as though the Doodle's friends miss him too. i received a plea for a dedicated Doodle posting, so here you go!

(this post is dedicated with mad luuuv to amy in nigeria. i love and miss you!!)

and here's a teaser for next time. Urnge v. 2.0???

computer geeks + artists =

2008-03-30T15:33:00.000-07:00

http://www.complexification.net/

This is a lovely site where you can easily lose a few hours. Try it, you'll see what I mean. They did steal a page from my cousin sara's book -- she did a series of city traveler maps on translucent paper that, laid over each other, showed where she had traveled in new york in a given timeframe. it was somehow fascinating, and these folks have something conceptually similar, but much different visually. here's one of sara's mind-bogglingly detailed paintings:

sara's not a computer geek, by the way. she's old-school: paint, brush, canvas. i told you it was mind-boggling.

But. Back to the computer geeks. I think my favorites are "bubble chamber" (which, if you let it run long enough, creates a galactic, milky-way sort of image) and "box fitting"(which pixellates tornado photos into a sort of Klimt-like structured cubism), but i haven't looked at all of them, or even half. I actually stumbled across this site on a fascinating blog (you can find it here) that popped up in a google search for images of diatoms. how much do i love the interwebs??? THIS much!

(yes, it's overcast today with occasional showers. and yes i am a nerd. but you love it.)

yay, beach!

2008-03-23T01:01:00.000-07:00

The Kids invited me to come chill with them at Kua Bay, which was awesome. Really fine soft sand is kind of hard to come by on this young island, and most of it resides in Kohala, the oldest of the 5 volcanoes here. (who's been paying attention?)

so i got some serious Sun Time in, with company for a change. After the Kids split, I thought it was a little crowded so I moved on to the next beach on the checklist.

and hey, this is a holiday weekend? wtf. This is Anaehoomalu Bay (or A-Bay), about 10 miles north of Kua Bay. Get outta my way, people! Damn!

A-Bay has an ancient Hawaiian fishpond (right) and the Pacific (left) with a very solid sandbar between. It's not the supersoft sand, and the atmosphere is a little hoo-dee-doo, but sometimes that's nice. There are lava paths that lead you through some archeological treats: the buildings of an old Hawaiian dwelling, the fishpond of course, and petroglyphs.

here's a not-so ancient structure being visited by vermin. This particular specimen is the mongoose equivalent of the Doodle. It's like four mongooses all put together in one. (BTW the Cat Ladies' Association has some serious political clout for getting that shelter built.)

and this is a fake sunset. I wanted to get home by dark. It would have been a lot prettier than this and I must catch an A-Bay sunset someday. Just not today.....

fascinating neurological phenomenon of the day: synaesthesia

2008-03-21T01:47:00.000-07:00

"Synaesthesia means the sensory receptors in the brain are cross-wired so that sounds are felt, tastes are smelled, sensations are heard, &c. Many people experience this to some minor degree (you feel that Wednesdays are purple, for example). "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia

http://otherthings.com/uw/syn/

http://web.mit.edu/synesthesia/www/synesthesia.html

whoa.

yikers! she's gonna blow!!! (maybe)

2008-03-20T18:23:00.000-07:00

(my boss took this picture this morning about a 5-minute walk from our office.)

Explosive eruption in Halema`uma`u Crater, Kilauea Volcano, is first since 1924
USGS HVO News Release March 19, 2008

At 2:58 a.m. H.s.t on Wednesday, March 19, 2008, a small explosion occurred at Halema‘uma‘u Crater at the summit of Kilauea Volcano in Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park. This event was erroneously reported as an earthquake earlier this morning. The explosion scattered debris over an area of about 75 acres (30 hectares), covering a portion of Crater Rim Drive and damaging the Halema‘uma‘u overlook. No lava was erupted as part of the explosion, suggesting that the activity was driven by hydrothermal or gas sources.

In addition to damaging the overlook, explosive debris covers the trail to the overlook, the Halema‘uma‘u parking area, and the portion of Crater Rim Drive adjacent to the parking area. On Crater Rim Drive the debris was up to 2 centimeters in size, with the size and thickness of debris increasing toward the overlook. The largest observed block ejected during the explosion was about 1 cubic meter (35 cubic feet) and must have been propelled from the vent located more than 70 m (230 feet) below the crater rim. Small impact craters from 30 cm (1 foot) blocks are abundant in the Halema‘uma‘u overlook area. Rock debris also extends halfway across the floor of Halema‘uma‘u Crater. The debris is composed of rock fragments that were derived from the walls of Halema‘uma‘u Crater. No fresh lava was observed on the floor of Halema‘uma‘u or in the ejected debris.

At 2:55 am, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory recorded a series of seismic events that may have been shallow, high-frequency earthquakes or minor explosions. The main explosion at 2:58 was associated with long period seismicity. Low frequency sound waves were also detected by the University of Hawai`i infrasound laboratory, operated by Dr. Milton Garces. These signals have persisted through this morning indicating continuing energetic release of gas from the vent in Halema‘uma‘u Crater.

The explosion produced a small crater along the east wall of Halema‘uma‘u that is about 20-30 meters (65-100 feet) in diameter. The crater occupies the area in which incandescence had been observed during the previous week. Sulfur dioxide emissions from the new explosion crater are still elevated, and sounds of rock breaking are frequent.

This is the first explosion in Halema`uma`u crater since 1924 and the first eruption of any kind in Kilauea caldera since September 1982.

Future explosive activity is possible and the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory continues to monitor the activity. Photos, text updates, a new Halema`uma`u crater webcam, and details about the Kilauea 1924 explosive eruption can be found at the HVO website http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/.

Kohala Play-Day

2008-03-16T22:39:00.000-07:00

I got to go into Kohala last thursday (no, there's no koalas there) and holy schmolies. This part of Kohala has been protected, restored, and fenced, and I got to see some of the most endangered plants and animals in the state! We were checking it out because my boss is brilliant and wants to survey some of the most gorgeous areas on the island to see what the insect fauna is like. Previous studies are lacking. We gonna find out how many invasives there are vs. native species, see if there's bad critters we need to do something about, and who knows, maybe we'll find something nobody's seen before! (We just did that with a wasp, in a different area.) Any botanists out there, it's been estimated that 'dozens' of undescribed epiphitic species exist in just the little part of the forest i went to.

We drove through the grasslands to get there, and again I have to point out the Many Faces Of Hawaii. If you didn't know where you were, you might say Ireland. or Vermont. See?

(i like that cow that's trying to hide behind the rock there. nice try, flossie, but i can totally see your bony butt sticking out. might wanna pick a bigger rock next time!)

Much of Kohala is grazing land for Parker Ranch, but some of the forest has been preserved. Here's a picture of what a fence can do for an ecosystem:

And I saw my very first happyface spider ! (too lazy to crop & blow this up. so click on him:)

I was supposed to go snorkel at Puako this weekend, but instead I got a cold on Friday, and have been mouth-breathing ever since. hopefully next weekend I can find a beach that's not too crowded for the holiday weekend and make up for that. i'll keep you posted.

speaking of holidays, i'm still hoping christopher is going to come visit in june, and i've been reading my kauai guidebook -- we're talking about kayaking the Na Pali coast! "A few years back, National Geographic Adventure magazine ranked a kayak trip down Na Pali the number two thing to do on its list of America’s Best 100 adventures, sandwiched between dogsledding in Alaska (number three) and rafting the Colorado River down the Grand Canyon." (Chris & Brandy - if we do that, don't worry, it's a guided tour, and I swear I ain't gonna sit on my lifejacket! 8-P.) I'm very excited for my hawaiian vacation. I've still only seen this island and O'ahu! Embarrassing!

okay, happy short week to all. praise jeebus for fridays off. amen.

this genre needs a name.

2008-03-08T21:18:00.000-08:00

or maybe it doesn't. Seems like all my mainland friends have been checking out Leslie and the Lys on tour. what a treat that would be. I don't know if I've explained the musical situation here to you good people. I'll save that for another post. Anyway, belle has a great leslie video posted, and Chris has some live shots. But here is Leslie's glorious tribute to the interwebs (second in my book only to Dave Chappelle's " The Internet skit):

Honky-hop? Whrap?

Sasha Frere-Jones had a semi-recent article in the New Yorker about the lack of black influence in indie rock/ emo/ etc. He noted that, while other styles of black music have historically been co-opted by white artists, rap will never be, because white people simply cannot do it. They can come close, like the Beastie Boys and Eminem, but it just isn't the same. Sure, you've got Buck 65 and Sage Francis and everybody tryin to keep it raaaael, but their rap is not the same animal as Missy Elliott's or Jay-z's or Juvenile's.

I personally find it much more enjoyable when white people just have a little fun with the fact that they Cannot Rap. That's what makes these videos so funny. It's like watching chickens fly.

Next up: I recently watched the "Mugging" episode of Flight of the Conchords:

but my favorite video of this genre has to go to my dear friend billy, with this classic shout-out to my old stompin' grounds, Carrboro.

mo' lava

2008-03-05T14:38:00.001-08:00

here's what it looks like at night:

drawin a crowd. That pickup truck belongs to someone who was out fishing and came back to find out he was on the wrong side of the lava! he outran it and made it to the other side safely, but I bet he wished these hippies would have gotten out of his way.

and here's a completely

different view of hawaya:

(thanks to ginger for the amazing pix)

hot lava!

2008-03-02T20:01:00.000-08:00

if i was smarter, i could figure out how to make Chef start singing Hot Lava when you open this page. oh well!

so yesterday they ran a picture of the RIVER OF LAVA in Royal Gardens subdivision (near Kalapana, already been lava-ed a few times, population 2), then told people not to come gawk at it. Yeah, right!!! as if. It was about a mile hike to this action, the bottom of the river. We encountered people who'd gone further upstream, but what we saw was so awesome we didn't bother. They told us we were at the best place for lava appreciation anyway.

I hung back a bit while the kids (Corinna, Ginger, and Matt) got All Up Innit with a couple of dudes that were cooking apples and hot dogs in the lava. They had cameras on long sticks, which I'm totally doing when/if I ever go in search of hot lava again.

This picture was in case that hill they're all standing on melted into the lava sea. Luckily, they all survived, but my sissy status is solid now.

The other kids have pix of rescuing my camera, which fell (ok, i dropped it) into a crack (in cold lava) and was a bee-yotch to get out! We had to break some rocks and get a little scraped up, but the camera lived to deliver you these pics. i was halfway hoping we wouldn't be able to retrieve it so I can get the Olympus underwater digital camera i'm in love with.

Then we went to the black sand beach. I don't miss Louisiana as much today. :)

Oh! and it's my 1 year anniversary in hawai'i today! woo! happy anniversary to me!

no they dih-uhn, or Why I Miss Louisiana

2008-03-01T19:41:00.000-08:00

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

(Okay, full disclosure: Exhibit B actually came from North Carolina, and made me miss my sister more than anything, but also makes me miss nawlinz. )

Exhibit C is right hyah. Followed closely by Exhibit D.

beach day (local kine)

2008-02-24T18:18:00.001-08:00

oink oink

2008-02-24T14:08:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-18T21:43:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-18T01:21:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-16T23:26:00.001-08:00

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

2008-02-16T21:56:00.000-08:00

hooray for chinese new year!

happy v.d., y'all

2008-02-13T22:00:00.000-08:00

it's funny because it's true.

2008-02-12T23:31:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-10T19:39:00.000-08:00

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

2008-02-07T21:59:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-02-07T16:45:00.000-08:00

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

muzak revolution?

2008-02-06T01:33:00.000-08:00

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.

2008-02-06T00:36:00.001-08:00

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

2008-02-03T11:08:00.000-08:00

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!

bunny fish

2008-01-20T20:13:00.000-08:00

uhh, you could come help me eat this avocado?

2008-01-20T19:20:00.000-08:00

it's as big as my head!!! i had to have him, but then i was all, wtf am i gonna do with him? I could make california rolls fo days...

but no, the only answer is guacamole. check it out, that thing filled up a whole mixing bowl.

so what's everybody doing for MLK day? I'm working. yeah, sometimes that has to happen. i got a day off last week in exchange, though, and I am now a Hawaii driver, and am also registered to vote here in HI. it feels kind of official. i had to turn in my LA license which was a little sad, except i looked like a serial killer in that photo. my HI one is better.

check out the snow on mauna kea! i really need to get up there. I think next weekend I'll rent a 4WD (they have an economy one now! it's the cheapest car you can get, so $40 will save the wear and tear on mr. jeep) and take that sucka to the summit and also down into Waipi'o Valley and hike around. or maybe ride a horse around. we'll see.

somebody needs to come visit me! c'mon now! whale season ends in april. betta hurry!

Happy New Year!

2008-01-08T21:30:00.000-08:00

or Hau'oli (happy) Makahiki (year) Hou (new), as they say round these parts. I am happy to be ringin' in the New Year with WIRELESS INTERNET, which means that it no longer takes me six hours to upload one stinkin' photo. So for those of you who are still actually looking at this thing, there may be more frequent updates. if there aren't, i don't have a good excuse.

photo captions: there go my christmas tree. my mommy got it for me at the farmer's market. and the seal you'll hear about in a moment, and my favorite new objet d'art. (thanks summer!)

So i hope everyone had a mele kalikimaka (*the* catchiest christmas song EVER, in my opinion. damn you bing crosby! get out of my head). I certainly did. Kaari came on the 14th of december and mom and pop arrived the 16th. we played in Kona and in Hilo, and I got to do my favorite thing -- play Tourist on my own island -- and i saw all kinds of neat stuff. including a monk seal. there are an estimated 1200 of those buggers and they mostly hang out on the remote and unpopulated northwest islands -- and i saw one chillin at Onomea Bay when the folks and I went to the botanical gardens there. good stuff.

we also hit laupahoehoe point where there is a tsunami memorial to a whole bunch of people that got washed out to sea in 1946, including a McGinnis lady from NC (any relation, Leah?), a schoolteacher who'd arrived in Hawaii one month earlier. she lived to tell the tale, and married the guy who rescued her. she'd had a date with him scheduled the night the tsunami hit but never made it because, well, she was swept out to sea by a tsunami. all's well that ends well, i reckon.

we also checked out Waimea, the headquarters of Parker Ranch, where they have a store with the most fabulous cowboy gear ever. i saw a blue spangly cowgirl shirt that i know belle would die for. i mean. i'm going back there when i need some new duds.

what else is goin on. work's still good, got a glowing 6-month performance review (especially in the areas of Communication and Safety, ha) but I'm a little anxious because not only am I on soft money, but so is my boss. so i'm looking for something more secure/long-term, and if I find that here, great. but if not, i may actually hit the mainland again. don't tell the doodle. hopefully i'll find something here. but it's all about the green in '08. tired of bein po'!

well that's enough babbling for now. but can i just say that No Country For Old Men has *still* not come to theaters here? i am so behind the times....

xoxo,

mr. splashy-pants!!!

2007-12-16T10:59:00.000-08:00

okay, so i didn't take this picture. but i totally saw whales yesterday at onekahakaha! kaari got here friday night and yesterday we met some of my co-workers in downtown hilo, and it was kind of cloudy so we picked the closest beach park to the sunshine. well as soon as we rolled up, we got a whale show! flippers waving at us, big jumps.... no tail action, tho -- apparently that's for the deep water and these guys were really close to shore. like 100 yards close. of course i didn't have my camera, but it was awesome anyway.

yay, whales!

mom and dad fly into kona today but i can't join them until Friday cause i got to work all week. Kaari is going over there tomorrow to enjoy the timeshare jacuzzi while i slave away...

merry christmas to everybody! maybe i'll post again before then, but just in case.

new orleans

2007-11-11T20:30:00.000-08:00

shoo! i meant to post as soon as i got back from the Big Greazy while things were still fresh in my mind. but that time has past and now i'm packing my freshly unpacked bag to attend my grandmother's funeral in Des Moines, Iowa, on Wednesday. She passed away peacefully, in her own house, in her own bed, on Saturday morning, with all her faculties about her -- just like she wanted. she turned 91 years old October 4th. she was a great lady. sassy right til the end. so i'm going to pay my respects and be with my mama and the rest of the family. but especially my mama.

so. new orleans. Hoo! New Orleans looks GREAT! I know you're supposed to say that about people you haven't seen in a while, but wow. Everyone had their best Halloween trimmings on the house and yard. Here are a few of my favorites:

Tim and I spent our first night back in the legendary Columns Hotel. Here's our room:

and of course we had folks over for cocktails in the Columns' equally legendary bar. we had the added luxury of having an upstairs patio all to ourselves.

let's see if i can recall what happened after that. we had a lovely Columns breakfast, then made our way over to Miz Smarty Pants' lovely Fountainbleu retreat. Let me tell y'all, Miz Smarty Pants, a.k.a. Laura, could give that Martha Stewart a run for her money. We had a smashing guest room with fresh roses, linen sprays, and candles galore! *And* she threw a fabulous soiree for Timmaay that evening with the chiminea blazing, dozens of candles, jambalaya, a cheese torte i'll not soon forget, and various and sundry other yummies. which were later augmented by Beth Oubre's bananas foster bread pudding. yes, you heard me right. it was heaven. we were serenaded by Tim's friend RJ, who did a mellow rendition of Beck's 'Loser", in addition to other tunes. Summer and Gary arrived from Jackson, Emily made a rare appearance, and a very good time was had by all.

at some point Laura and Tim and I all started talking like y'ats. (that's folks from deep in the Parrish for you yankee types.) Actually it was more like a cross between y'ats (almost a bronx accent) and the way New Orleans people talk in movies. Sort of Gone With The Wind-y/Blanche DuBoise-y. It was very odd and none of us could stop ourselves even when we tried. It was like after Katrina, staying with Gary (a Glaswegian) and Summer (a Jacksonian)-- everyone began to adopt a Scottish lilt. these things just happen.

Tim left on Halloween, and I went to stay with Chris and Brandy. Or was it Yaggy? They all put me up and were wonderful hosts. I've always depended on the kindness of.... see, there i go again!

This will be the longest post in the world if i don't start condensing. Here are some highlights:

- turn-down service with chocolates on pillow at Laura's;

- fog machine, bubble machine, strobe light, creepy halloween music, and wine on Laura's fantastic porch;

- going to Folahan's school and seeing all the children dressed up for halloween and jacked up on candy and soda;

- seeing the New Pornographers with Ian and Yaggy on Halloween;

-a lovely day at the zoo with Brandy;

- many drinks with Belle and Husband and Amy and Blake, esp. cocktails Chez Buchert/Woodruff;

- QT with Emily and Jerrilynn; down-slash-q-time with Chris and Brandy;

- Cocktails with the monkey house crew;

- Lots and Lots of great new orleans food (the 5-pound weight gain I foretold did indeed happen): Frankie and Johnny's, Crepe Nanou, Rivershack, Coop's, Langenstein's, Crabby Jack's, Felix's, Acme... i think i just peed a little remembering it...

- St. Joseph's Plantation tour in the Earth F***er (rented Ford Expedition), full of sightseers;

- and last but not least, of course, being reunited with my beloved Timothea.

The bad news: my suitcase broke shortly after arrival. piece of crap. it was only its fourth voyage. then it REALLY broke just as i was getting ready to leave! it had no handles and brandy had to haul it downstairs from the 5-9-4-1 for me! i left it with yaggy in case the Suitcase People wanted proof that it was all fooshed up, but when i emailed them, they said oh no problem, we'll credit you back, just throw that sucker out. they've also given me discounts when they run sales on things i just purchased at pre-sale prices. So that's my little plug for the suitcase people.

At the NOLA airport I saw something I'd been meaning to get on my stay: Barbeque Shrimp Mix!!! So as soon as I got home (Molly and Corinna picked me up, and they brought me a lei!! how sweet is that???) and got my wits about me, I went and got 6 pounds of scriuuumphs and made BBQ scrimps for the neighbors, catsitters, and colleagues. I also was hell-bent on recreating Langenstein's creole potato salad at home, and I am happy to say I cracked it! and, while that is happy news indeed, I must report that it, like all great food, has a Context. What I made tastes damn good, but it doesn't seem right eating it in Hawaii. I'm gonna, tho, every time I make potato salad!!

Yup, so now it's off to Iowa (BRRR! I was cold even in New Orleans! I packed better for Iowa, though. I even have a pair of grandma's leather & cashmere gloves to wear. yay!)

Hope all's well everywhere, and that happy halloweens were had by all.

puppies and froggies and more weird fruit

2007-10-07T15:04:00.000-07:00

first, let me say how interesting it is to me that i used to post almost Every Single Day, and now it's every month at best?? jeez. oh well.

the neighbors have a breeding pair of miniature dachshunds. that means little wrinkly hot dog babies!! here's one of them at 6 days old (with worried mama in the background). awwuh!! the puppy neighbors, incidentally, are moving away so they can be the caretakers of Kenny Loggins' big self-sustaining homestead he built for his family in Hawi on the north side of the island. It was a Y2K retreat, apparently. Kenny's apparently been yacht-rockin' lots of benefit concerts for schools and environmental protection organizations. (wonder if he does Footloose?)anyway, he's going to pay my soon-to be ex-neighbor lots of money to keep up his solar power station and to eat organic fruit from his hippie wife's orchards. sweet.

but i digress. in other Cute News, another coqui frog got in the house. I got to this one before Doodle did (unlike the last several, who became Cat Toys and then Dead Cat Toys). I suppose i really should let him have them, since i'm working on the invasive species and all, but look at those sticky feet! i just can't bring myself to do it.

dragonfruit are pretty. see?

but they taste like nothing. watery and a tiny bit sweet with crunchy poppyseed-esque action. no more dragonfruit for me, thanks. i'm still eagerly anticipating meeting my first mangosteen. and i have discovered that lilikoi, or passionfruit, a fruit once too strong for my tender taste buds, has become super-addictive. it's a megadose of vitamin C. really perks ya up. and the homemade ice cream place up the street makes sorbet out of them. i never tasted anything so yummy (especially when paired with mango ice cream).

i haven't posted a picture of the doodle lately. he's getting fat again! gained 2 pounds last month. we're going to have to take measures if this trend continues. south beach diet has been suggested. i'm going to have to make him his own naptry! there ain't no room for me!

arright kids, i'm off to the tidepools to molest the marine creatures. i'm trying to make sure i hit the mainland with some semblance of a tan, but i may disappoint some people. since that burn i got, sunscreen is my friend.

happy rocktober, everybody! special birthday shoutouts to amy (oct 2), grandma (91 on oct 4), and molly (oct 5). october's a big birthday month. so happy b-day in advance to: kee, eleanor, rob, summer, ian, brandy, and ME!!!!!

six months already??!?

2007-09-02T14:57:00.001-07:00

yes, today is my 6-month anniversary! doodle and i may have some sashimi to celebrate. things have been a little tight moneywise, and i'm still acclimating to the job, but all in all i'm happy about the way things are going. i just got an advancement at work, i am now an Entomological Research Associate instead of a mere Assistant, and i get more money for that, yay! in addition, the project i'm leading is in full swing and i'm happy to be doing it. this month we get 3 new interns which means i will have 5 gung-ho helpers to do my evil bidding! i can just sit back and eat bon-bons and make them do all the work. not. they are an enormous help, though. i can't imagine what the lab would do without them.

i don't have much to share picture-wise, but check out these purple sweet potatoes. they are so tasty i can't even believe it. i don't like the orangey kind, but these ones? they have crack in them.

i said i'd report on the jaboticaba. they were good, but there's not much to them after you get rid of the slightly bitter skin and the pit on the inside. yummy, though. one dollar well spent. here's the current fruit situation at Hale Snook:

that is a tiny little 2-pound pineapple grown here on the island. organic white Puna pineapple. 79 cents a pound. i think he's adorable. he's for the chopping block today for sure. he'll probably turn into pineapple salsa with a few chunks reserved to garnish the mai-tai. all i'm gonna do today is eat and go to the beach. i think that's a fitting anniversary present!

i'm coming back to the mainland at the end of October (happy birthday to me), but instead of the cross-country extravaganza i had planned, i'm only going to new orleans. i'll be there the 25th of october till the 4th of november if anyone wants to come have a nawlins halloween with me!

this week has had its share of bad news, though: kelly lost her mom, laura her dad, and amber jolene her grandmother. i'm thinking about all three of you, ladies. i wish i could be there to give you all big hugs.

that's it for now. everybody take care and remember the ppl you love won't be around forever. love 'em as much as you can now.

xoxo,

omg i have a guacamole tree!!!!!!

2007-08-26T18:11:00.000-07:00

i've been seeing some little pear-shaped fruits on a tree by our laundry room and wondering what they were gonna turn into. well. now there's about sixty great big avocados hangin up there. i just picked my first one! okay, it only saves me a dollar, cause that's what you pay for an avocado as big as yr head at the market, but still. now i have papayas and avocados. who knows what else i've missed? i gotta look around a little better. i's ignant.

in other tropical fruit news, i just bought my first jaboticabas. i will let you know how they are. i also had acai/mango sorbet (delicious!) and have been eyeing the dragonfruit. they're expyonsive at the natural food store right now, and i haven't seen any at the farmers market just yet, but i will let you know.

that's all for now, i reckon. no big news. the weather has been un-freekin-beatable since Flossie disintegrated. Every day has been absolutely gorgeous. I feel really bad for all y'all in the heat. hang in there and wait til fall. just make a note of how hot you are and think about coming to see me next summer, okay? my high temp is just a little higher than your lows. yikers. stay cool & safe. i miss y'all!

xoxo
k

Holy $@#&ing &$#%!!!

2007-08-13T23:32:00.000-07:00

so i'm getting all prepared for Flossie (thanks for all the "moooooo"s, btw, and for telling me she's only gonna "graze" us here, lol), and we have a BIG FREAKIN 5.3 EARTHQUAKE!!!! wow. the whole house shook, stuff fell over, the fridge walked across the room, doodle freaked. the only casualties were my John Preble print (just needs new glass now, no biggie) and, snif -- my goblet that Kelly made me with her own two hands. looks like i need to do some earthquake-proofing around here. i wish i liked plastic. but i just don't.

i feel like i just got off a crazy ride at the carnival. the whole neighborhood's all a-twitter. smells like somebody's Costco-sized bottle of Drakkar Noir broke, too. Yukka.

all i need now's a tsunami.....

Funny, too. it was an absolutely beautiful day today.

will someone please send NOAA a list of hurricane name ideas???

2007-08-12T14:33:00.000-07:00

Flossie?? FLOSSIE?!?! that's a name for a cow, not a stinkin' hurricane!!! If Flossie destroys anything anywhere, it just adds insult to injury that the poor schmoes have to go the rest of their lives talking about what Flossie did to them (us?) in '07. Good god ammighty. It's bad enough I have to recall the ass-whoopin i took from Fran in NC back whenever that was. So obviously, NOAA needs some help with name ideas, especially girl names that start with F. I recommend they get ethnic and/or get some ppl with some imagination on staff, STAT, so they can come up with some names that ppl won't be embarrassed to say. Hurricane Fatima. Hurricane Felicia. Hurricane Francoise. Hurricane Fabiola. Florence. Frida. Frances, not Fran. Fran sounds like she'd be at the bingo parlor. (Frances is my grandma's name, and maybe that's why Frances sounds more formidable than 'Fran' to me.) Hurricane, I donno, Fookeisha. I mean, what's next on NOAA's list? Fluffy? Fancy? give me a break.

so yeah, it's kinda cloudy here, and that makes me mad because i wanted to see the Perseid meteor shower tonight. And i have to cuss at somebody named Flossie. i just can't stop imagining her with a bell around her neck. in the words of tim darby, it ain't right. it ain't fittin'.

in other news. you see that i've been un-posty lately. let me tell you why. see, here in hawaii, apparently, people like to work All The Freakin Time. Really. i'm trying to motivate myself to a whole new level of work ethic, and i just don't know how they do it. ppl that get paid a lot less than me do a whoooole lot more. and my peeps at the monkey house remember how hard i worked there..... NOT. that was such a low-output gig, i'm kind of in shock now at how much i need to accomplish. so that's been kind of taking all my energy. i even woke up today, a sunday, thinking about things i have to do at work. that kind of sucks -- except that i don't have anything better to think about! so i'm entering a phase of Knuckling Down, i reckon.

Oh and i have a lovely Kilauea Field Station Tan to show for it. I forgot to reapply my sunscreen (SPF 50, previously an unheard-of number in my sunscreen repertoire, which has always ended at 8) one day, just one stinkin' day, and look what happened! owie owie owie! note the line where the sunglasses were. oh, and i had that mineral powder concealer on -- i.d. bare escentuals, ladies, spf one million. it lasted all day. see those white splotches on my otherwise livid red cheek? that's where the concealer was.

amazingly, the next day i was just a little pink. i thought for sure my face was gonna peel right off! i was even wearing a hat and everything.

yeah. and boy, are my arms brown. But my legs are pasty white! I need to get to the beach and equilibrate. i look like i have a congenital skin condition. or several.

i did get to go back up on Mauna Kea the other week when it was a full moon, tho. i tried to take a picture, as it was sitting up above the cloud line, making everything all silvery and impossibly surreal, but my camera wouldn't cooperate and all i got was a fuzzy white orb on a black background. booooo. digital cameras aren't for every situation, sadly.

Anyway, there are nene, the endangered hawaiian goose, all up on that mountain. here's a gang of them that were givin' me the stink-eye. they attacked poor emily last time she went up on the mountain. they evolved from canada geese, and now they've lost the webbing on their feet and are purely terrestrial. like most geese, they enjoy golf courses, so if you ever want to see one, check out the golf course at Volcanoes National Park.

what else. there's some lava action going on. these lava ponds have formed that become "perched": the pool forms, the sides solidify into a sort of levee, the pond level rises, so does the exterior wall, until you have something that resembles an above-ground swimming pool -- full of molten lava! sounds pretty cool but you couldn't pay me to get anywhere near that thing.

that's all i got to report. netflix is still my best friend here. and i'm still waiting for the mangosteens to hit the farmers' market, will keep you apprised of that situation. doesn't anybody wanna come visit me, in the meantime? my next visitors aren't til December. boooooo!

hey, i am seriously thinking about a New Zealand/Australia trip in winter '08. (our winter, that is.) I need a travel companion. anyone? anyone? kristcha? we could be kristcha and kristcha in christchurch. heh. saljie? anybody? group trip? let me know.

last of all, here's a lovely gimungous hawaiian raspberry i found up there on the mountain. they have no thorns and are gimongous. the perfect berry.

Piece, y'all! keep it raaael.

back from the big city

2007-07-28T21:36:00.000-07:00

yup, just got back from the Hawai'i Conservation Conference, which was awesome. Here's a picture from the convention center there. the conference was great, but they kept trying to feed us these wax apples in our lunches. the first day nobody ate them, so the second day the organizers made an "Unwanted Fruit" table. since there were about 900 attendees, there were about 899 apples on that table. shoulda took a picture of that. they were absolutely inedible.

but anyway. there were cool presentations on monk seals foraging (with nat'l geographic video, awesome), baby sea turtles, spinner dolphins.... oh and stuff i'm doing too, bugs and plants and everything. it was all really cool and i got to get a larger view of the kinds of conservation issues HI is facing. the challenges are many, and the obstacles pretty much boil down to a lack of money/interest from the State and Federal governments. huh. fancy that.

oh, and we took a Lexus taxi to the airport with a large and colorful assortment of little buddha figurines on the dash. there were tv screens on the seats in front of us, and the driver talked on her phone nonstop in vietnamese the whole ride.

i've been a very poor blogger lately. this whole work thing really cuts into my blogging time. i'll have to discuss that with my boss. oh wait, but he's gone to FIJI for two weeks. yeah. fiji. bastard. meanwhile, the rest of us are fixing to get back into fieldwork and set up the plots for my project. so i should be losing about 10 pounds in the next month or so. unless i make up for them in mai-tais.

that's it for now. i'll try to be a better blogger, but the problem i think is how infernally boring i've become. i'll work on that too....

up on de big mountain

2007-07-06T14:26:00.000-07:00

i just spent 4 days on Mauna Kea, the "most massive" mountain in the world. (It's bigger than Everest, but in contrast to the big E, "only" about 14, 000 feet are above the ocean. The rest is submerged and is weighing heavily on the crust of the earth, which is usually why we have earthquakes here.) It is above 90% of the earth's atmosphere and the stars were amazing, as were the sunsets and sunrises from our cabin just above the first cloud line.

so yeah, we were taking samples of koa in Hakalau Forest National Wildlife Refuge, which used to be cattle land and was almost completely grazed until about 22 years ago, when the park service stepped in and started replanting koa, a native tree lots of birds nest in. Many of these birds are endangered or threatened. I saw my first (and second, and third, and...) 'i'iwi! I also saw wild turkeys and heard Urkel's Francolins, who like to get up really early and start yelling at each other. it kind of reminded me of the chickens outside the hotel Chris and I stayed at in Captain Cook.

so this is sunrise:

and this is sunset:

and ha ha, this little piggy has opposable thumbs and the combination to the lock on the gate!

back to the blogosphere

2007-06-24T12:09:00.000-07:00

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.

tourists in kailua-kona

2007-06-16T21:11:00.000-07:00

Road Trip!

2007-06-15T11:55:00.001-07:00

yesterday chris and i went to Puna. we stopped in at the Painted Church, which i'd never bothered to do before. it's so pretty! look!

today we're headed to waterfalls, up the hamakua coast, north kahala, and then down to captain cook. i'll try to post from there as well.

aloha!

chris is here! chris is here!

2007-06-13T19:08:00.001-07:00

i picked him up this morning! he got lei'd and we're having a rainy day eating lots of food from the farmer's market. i think we're about to get all up in some champagne.

sorry i've been outta touch. fieldwork last week kicked my old butt. i was whooped. still lovin it though. yesterday after lunch we had a croquet match in the yard amidst the hydrangeas. gotta love a workplace with a croquet set on the front porch.

hope all's well everywhere. check back for pictures of doodle wearing chris's lei and looking not-very-pleased about it.

first day at work! but first let me say

2007-06-04T23:27:00.000-07:00

sharelle, chris, kristcha, beely, and aimee. i didn't make it thru my list on sunday. i'll try y'all on saturday, okay?

first day at work! omg i love it! there's 5 other kids right now:

Justin = sharp as a tack. he is super-funny and we love him. listens to joanna newsom, joni mitchell, elvis, small faces. looks at plant/bug interactions.

Sam = california boy. also extreeemely intelligent and humorful. listens to sunset rubdown, wilco, the mountain goats. looks at parasitoids of caterpillars.

Ben = british chap. listens to bowie, the damned, belle & sebastian, lee "scratch" perry. he's leaving on thursday for PhD in Scotland. we'll miss him.

Melody = from pennsylvania. of some sort of asian descent. surfer girl. gave justin the newsom cd. looks at pollen and native pollinators of native plants.

Kulai = hawaii boy from Volcano, of all places. goes to duke. only met him for a minute. he wears earphones. the only thing i've heard him listen to is crosby, stills, nash & young.

Bob = bossman. encourages free-thinking, going off on tangents, listens to everyone as peers. this lab is known to have Very Low Turnover because of the think-tank atmosphere he engenders. a rare boss indeed.

this is really really cool. the boss went home early today and the kids were just as productive a bunch as i have ever seen, constantly batting ideas back and forth. this is gonna be a great experience for me as soon as i get up to speed. i'm reading a lot and asking a lot of questions but i feel like the new kid at school for sure. we're getting a new intern tomorrow, emily. then in another week Molly arrives. i'll keep y'all posted, but this is gonna be fun! tomorrow we do fieldwork, yay!

many return phone calls owed

2007-06-02T19:52:00.000-07:00

i know! i know! i've been remiss. and reclusive. tomorrow i am getting up early and calling each and every one of you, i swear to god. i miss you ten times more than you think i do.

xo

i'm gonna have to change my blog name

2007-06-01T12:05:00.000-07:00

to "The Inadvertent Cat Lady". Urnge has usurped Doodle's new favorite perch, and then the neighbors had an allergic reaction to these two little monkeys and brought them to me. i kept them a couple of days cause they were awfully sweet (little orange-ears especially), but yesterday i had to take them to the shelter. :(. but: the shelter is running a two-for-one special this month so i'm sure somebody will take the little angels. i'm gonna check back just in case, though....

oh, but the other neighbors know somebody who really wants to take Urnge. they're traveling for the summer but will come get him when they return. so he's now just a foster child. soon it'll just be me and the doodle again, the way it's sposed to be.

and in non-cat news, i start my job on monday! all the paperwork has gone through and i'm Officially A Productive Member of Society. my boss emailed me to say that he's started a new study of the way the ants interact with their little "cows" (the insects they tend for the nectar they produce). this is gonna be so cool. i've always kind of wished i could go back in time to when Science was just naturalists observing things. and that's exactly what this job is. just lookin'. it's awesome. no molecular hooey at all.

i am now eating real food again too, after my horrid illness. that was the sickest i've ever been. yuk.

amy, if you're in nigeria already and i never got to talk to you before you left i'm gonna punch a wall. i'm sorry i had to drop off the face of the planet like that. i miss everyone terribly and have been looking at a lot of old pix of all the fun we've had. july 4 in cape cod. mississippi beach. pirate party. beach trip NC. fake-hurricane ivan. guilty pleasures. god, i miss you all so @%$&ing much! so i'm starting to plan a return visit for my birthday in october. everybody tell me when/if you're going to be around, because i need a good solid dose of Mah Peeps. you know who you are.

oh, and if anyone's planning on getting married any time soon (emily), let me know a timeframe, cause that could change everything....

happy friday everybody!

i found something soft and fuzzy to decorate the shelves in the naptry

2007-05-28T17:49:00.000-07:00

hi kids, sorry for the silence. i have been battling a Colony of Evil Somethings that have colonized my interior and terrorized my posterior since thursday, when i believe i drank some tainted carrot juice in an attempt to recover from the cold/sinus thing. no food for 4 days = kill me now. tim sent me this lovely get-well card that seems to sum up the world's feelings about sick ppl.

will write more when better. or if not, send condolences to: Don and Sylvia Snook, 833 Cutter Court, Kure Beach NC 28449. and somebody please come get the Doodle.

there's a man in a tree outside my window

2007-05-24T11:23:00.000-07:00

and i'm on the fourth floor. he's got a machete and is hackin away at a palm tree. huh.

so check out the poster! i need to go to vanuatu and learn their pidgin. i love it.

the third shot is the pool at this fancy place. but look, they nickel and dime you to death here. if anyone i know visits and stays here i'm going to kick their butts, cause this place is a ripoff. they wanted to charge me ten bucks a day for wireless internet. as if. hooray for bluetooth!

i'm sick as a dog today and sitting out the conference. they have a short day and it's mostly about ants of little concern to me in my new position, but i still feel a little guilty, and i'd like to be learning things, but i think the cold has progressed to sinus infection, so i'm just going to have to suck it up. i'll have some spicy soup for lunch and be better tomorrow.

doodle has a new little brother

2007-05-22T19:59:00.000-07:00

this will be my token cat-lady post for the month. one of my neighbors has had it with hawaii and is going back to the mainland. she said she was going to take her kitty (the orange one i posted about long ago when i thought he was homeless) to the shelter. so of course i couldn't let that happen. he and doodle seem to tolerate each other, i've even seen them hanging out together. so this is Urnge, formerly known as Dog-Dog. he is a little freak. he's mostly an outside guy so everything should work out okay.

also in cat news, doodle likes coconut milk. here he is drinking my thai tea.

also in neighbor news, the guy in the back house (retired military, young japanese wife, listens to Rush Limbaugh Every Single Day) came up when i was helping the neighbor lady move. he said, "i'm moving too, got my orders. going to china." i said, really, what part, how exciting &c, and he said "Bangkok." i said, oh, i thought you said china. thailand, huh? i have family in chiang mai. then he said "That's where I'm going! Chiang Mai!"

i'm thinking we don't have all our marbles.

so that's your post for today. i'm feeling a little puny and am trying to shake a cold before going back to kona tomorrow. i will have pictures of the Phat hotel and the exciting ant conference later this week, i know y'all want to hear all about that. and belle, i'll let you know what's in the goody bags, cause i'm curious myself!

oh -- i just found out that some folks from nc state that i worked with (same dept, not really "with") are coming to this conference to present stuff. so it won't be all strangers. that's kinda nice.

birthday shoutouts to leah (yesterday) and blan (today). happy birthday, you'uns! kick out the jams. mofos.

Little Princess Report

2007-05-21T14:34:00.000-07:00

aloha from the spoiledest little girl in hawaii! i got back to hilo last night after my spoilathon. we went on the submarine, went on the airplane, made orchid leis, saw sea turtles on black sand beaches, walked across lava, and ate a whole lot of yummy stuff. including a seafood buffet at the sheraton keauhou, where i'll be weds-friday for my conference. yeah. that place is Phat. wish somebody was here to keep me company in my Very Own Room with that fantastic pool, and a lovely beach known for its sea turtle and dolphin activity. if anybody's got some free time and a lot of frequent flier miles, get your butt down here before wednesday and go with me!

and speaking of potential visits, i now have kama'aina status (resident) with the submarine ppl and the airplane ppl. so now i can go for free and you can go for half-price when you come see me. so no more excuses, people. c'mon over.

oh yeah, another thing -- i got to sit in the cockpit in the airplane. i had a steering wheel in front of me and everything. it was soooo cool! thanks, mom & pops! yer the best. at spoiling me damn near rotten, that is!

i'm going to a conference and haven't even been hired yet. huh.

2007-05-18T21:16:00.000-07:00

i'm going to be my new boss's "invitational guest" at the First International Pacific Invasive Ant Conference next week in Kona! yes, i get to come back to the sunny side of the rock, all expenses paid, for 3 days of playing catch-up, because i don' t know diddly about pacific ants! yes, i am now a myrmecologist. or an ecologist. or an invasive species person. or something.

anyway the conference will be cool and makes me happy for several reasons:

1) it means that if HR gives my new boss any grief about hiring me, he'll most likely kick some butt

2) it means that he is serious about sending me to conferences (maybe the next one will be in Sydney! or Tokyo!)

3) it gives me a reason to get out of bed in the morning, finally.

well that third one is sort of a tack-on cause i needed a #3. but it's also kind of true.

the poor neglected Doodle, though. does anyone want to come cat-sit? anyone?

good news from the Bee Lady

2007-05-16T14:01:00.000-07:00

from my friend Eleanor, who has just received her masters in Bee-ology:

ANYWAY, the official position about the bee situation (Colony Collapse Disorder) is that they are dying from the compounding effects of a variety of man-induced factors: mites, viruses, bacteria, migratory beekeeping, and sub-lethal effects of pesticides used both outside the hive and inside that cause those poor bees to be brain damaged and they can't find their way home (and it really is the saddest thing. all these "slow" bees don't remember how to dance because of fipronil and its friends and end up wandering around until they die). we like to call it "the case of a thousand cuts." and then when people stare blankly at us we say, "you know, you get cut once, you don't die. you get cut a thousand times, you bleed to death."

the unofficial position is that it is all a big media conspiracy, brought on by the loss of government subsidies for beekeepers (some of whom are very rich and very noisy), decline in the practice, rise in the california almond pollination industry, and slow news days that can be brightened by whacked-out theories of our impending doom from lack of pollination (CELL PHONES! RADIATION! RADIATION!!). these huge losses have occurred and been documented many times in the mellinia-old practice of beekeeping, and this one will surely right itself over time if we can stop using pesticides as preventative cure-alls and start using the biology of the honey bee as our yard stick for husbandry instead of the convenience of man.

the official position of eleanor is that it falls somewhere in between those two, or is a mix of both things. we're not going to die if the honey bees die. native pollinators are very effective at pollinating crops.

now i can sleep at night. thanks e. you're so smart. love the yardstick. miss you bunches.

now. here's some pretty pictures of what i saw with the folks yesterday.

Hot Diggitty Damn!

2007-05-16T01:12:00.000-07:00

this crazy plan of mine just might work! i got the job! just have to wait for some paperwork to go through. and actually, i got a higher job classification and salary than the position i applied for! woo!

o happy day! mom and dad just took me out for a lovely celebration dinner. we've had a good trip so far but listen to this: we're gonna go on a submarine to the coral reef on saturday, and take a little airplane around the whole entire island on Sunday!!!

i'm a little princess.

i will post some pix soon. promise. we seen a lot of pretty things.

now that i'll have an income, i can start sending you guys presents! this whole time i've seen things that have made me wish i had enough cash to be generous. now i get to! sorry i couldn't sooner. love you all.

xo

drat, foiled again.

2007-05-10T19:21:00.000-07:00

welp, i was gonna go see if the turtles needed anybody to swim with this afternoon, but then it got all overcast. that water is cold and i ain't gettin in it unless i have plenty of sunshine to warm me up after, turtles be damned. so instead i went to lili'uokalani gardens. it's purty. well. everything here is pretty, even the pigeons.

my mommy and daddy are coming to visit for a week, yay! they get here on mother's day and they got us a luxury condo in Kona, which is on the sunny side of this rock, so that's gonna be real, real nice. i'm going to go stay with them for a few days, then bring them over here to rainforest central, and then we'll go back to Kona. we're going to try to see a lot of this island. so you might not hear from me for a while, but then there's gonna be a whoooole lotta pictures up in here-uh.

no word on the job yet. trying not to freak out. keep 'em crossed a little longer.

aloha!

some of y'all have expressed concern

2007-05-09T09:23:00.000-07:00

that i'm gonna thwack my head open on that shelf in the Naptry. i too had this concern. i actually sleep the other way round. it just looks cuter in pictures with the pillows up under the shelves.

i've been thinking about what kind of tchotchkes i want to put on aaaaalll those shelves, but then i remembered: earthquakes. perhaps light and fluffy tchotchkes. an assortment of origami, peut-etre.

happy wednesday!

earzz

2007-05-06T00:15:00.000-07:00

now i *know* i need a job.

World's Smallest Bedroom

2007-05-04T13:04:00.000-07:00

somebody call Guiness! Kressy and JB no longer have the smallest bedroom in the world. i do! i have finally converted the pantry into the naptry. i built a platform bed. yes, i am proud of myself. yes, i sleep in a closet. no, those two things together don't make any sense. but there's something about a Dedicated Sleeping Space that i enjoy very much, and the living room just didn't work as a double-duty bedroom. so now the Guest Quarters are official and no, i won't make you sleep in the closet if you come visit me. (it's very comfortable, though -- i should say i won't *let* you.)

next project is to get the baskets on the bike. remember i was whingeing about how steep the hill is to my house? well. the other day i saw a big humongous hawaiian dude on a bike *much* crappier than mine, and he was just pluggin his big self up that hill. so obviously i need to suck it up and get my leg muscles back in proper working condition. if i get the job at the volcano, i'll be driving a lot during the week, so i need to be able to navigate the topography on my rusty little grocery-getter so as to save gas and stave off driving fatigue on the weekends. hey, if those dudes can rock-climb crazy cliffs in their ratty ol' Chuck Taylors, i can do this. right? right.

other good news: the only good mexican restaurant in town, which has been closed for renovations, is re-opening for cinco de mayo. They have a variety of tropical margaritas: mango, liliokoi (passionfruit), guava, coconut, and watermelon. i will definitely be down there tasting at least one of those.

thanks to everyone who sent me their addresses. i still can't believe i packed the address book when it would have been soooo easy to just throw it in the purse. d'oh. i will be sending postcards out terreckly.

happy cinco de mayo! (otherwise known as tim's birthday -- happy birfday punkin!) also, happy kentucky derby. may the best horse win!

doodle hates it outside as well

2007-05-02T21:55:00.000-07:00

hi kids,

well, the job interview went well, i talked to the PI for an hour and a half. i was his first interview for the position. he said he had 2 phone interviews and 2 other interviews to do, and then he rates all the applicants and submits his "recommendation" to the Research Corporation of the University of Hawaii, and they make the final determination (based, one hopes, on his recommendation). if i get the job, the earliest i would start is june first, so i better start soakin up the scenery! actually, i'll be doing some of that at the job as well, but it's often quite cold at the volcano so i need to Maximize My Time Being Warm.

of course i will keep you posted on how that turns out. again, please to make with the finger-crossing for me. pretty please!

yesterday was lei day. May Day is Lei Day in Hawai'i. i missed most of the festivities but did see a few ladies making leis at the volcano. today i went to the bank, tho, and when i walked in, i was like, omg what smells so good in here? turns out they had a gazillion fresh flowers from lei day, including a massive amount of gardenias. it smelled sooo good.

nothing much else to report here. oh wait, we did have another teeny earthquake this morning. i almost slept through it. it wasn't nearly as Exorcist-y as that last one. other than that, there have been no turtles, no menehune sightings, no weird fruit. next on the list are dragonfruit and mangosteen. we'll see when those turn up at the market.

oh and what is up with the honeybees disappearing? y'all, if we don't have any bees, we're all going to have to eat, i donno, soylent green or something. let's all pray for the honeybees to come back and pollinate our everythings. i mean, okay, part of me hopes they just got sick of being pimped out and treated like slaves by people all these years and went native. but still, them crops needs them bees. it kinda doesn't look good for ol' mankind right now, what with the oil situation and the global warming and the bees and everything. let's all raise a glass to Future Generations Fixing Everything.

but how am i supposed to stay mad

2007-04-28T21:29:00.000-07:00

when i got this right outside the door? go away, rainbow! i'm being pissed-off! shoo, now -- git!

rainbows. i hate those friggin things. Well, you know. You'll just be sitting there, minding your own business, and they'll come marching in, and crawl up your leg, and start biting the inside of your ass, and you'll be all like, "Hey! Get out of my ass you stupid rainbows!"

Oh. RainBOWS. Yeah, I like those. Those are cool.

oh, memphis, you broke my heart! (and all my stuff!)

2007-04-28T18:27:00.000-07:00

it's reassuring to know that the post office couldn't even get my stuff to Memphis before destroying it. look! my books are all damaged, i can't even talk about what they did to my muppets lunchbox, and my dvds are just gone. well not the weird ones, they let me keep Hedwig and Twin Peaks and Tenenbaums. it's awfully peculiar that they were able to "salvage" some of them (see pic), since all the DVDs were packed in a box within another box. hm. the outside box must have come open, despite their gentle handling, and then the inner box must have somehow exploded, leaving only the difficult-to-sell videos "intact". I can think of no other explanation.

it's a good thing i sold all the wedgwood. i can't have nice things. or even somewhat crappy things in good condition, apparently. they even un-strung my glass mardi gras beads!

another person must have been similarly Memphis-ed, as I got the cover only of a book entitled "Our Love Is Here to Stay" by Tony & Lois Evans. I can only wonder what they got of mine.

*sigh*. oh, and i had to pay for the privilege of such careful handling of my things as well. $26.16 because i "underpaid" initially. no matter that my stuff is broken and/or missing. they even managed to rip the ears off my bunny magnet, who was wrapped up inside the Muppets lunchbox! it seems rather violent and un-coincidental. his little expression looks all the more poignant now. we must make him some prosthetics.

but first, i think it's time for a mai-tai.

Fun Fact Friday!

2007-04-27T15:03:00.000-07:00

since i've been so remiss in sharing what i've learned so far about hawaiian culture, and since i need to take my mind off the whole will-i-ever-see-those-irreplaceable-books-again thing, I'm going to make this Fun Fact Friday! Whee!

have you heard of the menehune, or little people? Legend has it that when the Tahitians arrived on Hawai'i, these people were already here. some think they are akin to Brownies or Leprechauns, but others think they were descendents of ancient Jewish peoples.

wtf? if they're real, how'd they get here? nobody knows.

Hawaiian mythology (up to the second arrival of polynesians) is very similar to judaism. There is a creation, an adam and eve, a cain and abel, and lots of very literal parallels. (there are also co-existing mythologies, about three separate ones, that interweave, contradict each other, and generally make hawaiian religious history difficult to categorize.)

No one has ever found any menehune skeletons, though census results in the early 1800s show 65 people identified as menehune on Kaua'i, where it is thought they were driven by the influx of polynesians on the southernmost islands in the chain. "menehune" also means "slave".

when things go wrong, especially on kaua'i, the menehune get blamed. if you lose your wallet, it was the menehune. flat tire? menehune. crops fail? and so on.

whatchathink? little jews, faeries, or what? cryptozoologists want to know.

things are getting interesting around here

2007-04-26T16:46:00.000-07:00

1. we had a 3.7 earthquake
2. i got (most) of my stuff in the mail from nawlins
3. i have a job interview next week
4. i saw another turtle
5. at least doodle's important things made it safely

1. yes, we had an earthquake at about 5 a.m. today. it felt like the bed turned to jelly for a minute. i thought i was possessed by de Debil! doodle got all freaked out, and then we went back to sleep. apparently it was 5 miles underneath us and about 26 miles south. my first earthquake! yay, i mean, eep.

2. Tuesday I got 3 boxes (out of six) in the mail. Unfortunately I was not here to accept them so they went to the post office. I picked them up on Wednesday. They were all open and the P.O. ppl made me pay, cause we tried to sneak them thru the cheap Media Mail option, and they didn't contain Media. It would have worked, too, if i had been home instead of volunteering at the stupid volcano. (pout) oh well. today i got a verrry small package. inside were a few of the contents of one of the Big Big boxes. i got a photo album torn in half -- wait, let me rephrase that -- half of a torn photo album, my undergrad degree, one store-bought DVD (I had about 35), and that's about it. they cut out the postage and address from the original box and taped it on this one. i'm really hoping that tomorrow i will get the rest of that box's contents, but i have to say i might have lost a lot of things: all my cds and my DVD "archive" (500 cds; about 250 movies) and a lot of books. so say a little prayer that they were able to collect all those items and figure out to send them to me.

3. what was 3 again? oh yeah, i have a job interview next week. for the job in the enchanted rainforest protecting all the little endangered birdies. i will keep you posted on that, fo shizzle.

4. self-contained and fairly explanatory

5. doodle got his favorite toy back. his mama was too stoopid to pack it in her suitcase. it was a joyful reunion.

oh, and that picture with the green things on a big stick? yeah. that's a tsunami siren. i've seen a few different designs and i'll be posting some more de temps en temps.

that's the Aloha Report for today. I'm going to go try and think aloha thoughts and not kill-the-postman thoughts.

somebody else likes tropical treats

2007-04-23T16:52:00.000-07:00

yertles!!!

2007-04-22T21:18:00.000-07:00

today it was sunny, but i didn't trust it to stay that way, so i decided i was going to take a trip along the hamakua coast, which is a scenic drive from Hilo north to the Waipi'o Valley. I wore my suit because there are a few beachy places on the route, and i thought if it happened to be sunny for a while, i'd just hang out and make some vitamin D. well i had a few errands to run, and i decided that first i would just go check out a little park in Hilo i hadn't been to yet. it's called Onekahakaha Beach Park, and it's behind the airport. to get there you go thru a very industrial area that reminded me a lot of River Road. so of course i expected a skaintchy little stretch of muddy beach and rocks.

well. color me taken aback. this park is byootiful! and huge! and the water is crystal clear! there's a breakwater to keep the ocean from smashing you into bits while you look around the biggest, best tidepools i've seen yet. lots of angelfish, little fishies that like to pretend they're dolphins jumping out of the water in formation.... AND SEA TURTLES!! yes i finally saw them! two of them, big 'uns. the first picture you see has a turtle in it if you click on it and look at the top middle. oh and there's a little fish in that last picture that looks like it's just some rocks. you'll never find it. okay maybe you will. it'll be a fun game. find the fishie! that's straight down into about a foot of water, btw. don't look like water, do it?? oh, and no it did not rain, it was super-sunny and i got quite a healthy dose. god, i love this place.

i'll check out the hamakua coast tomorrow maybe.

hey, did you notice that i figured out how to link things? actually, i didn't. chris told me how. click on that link to hear about how he just scored a roundtrip ticket to come see me in june for $577.54. we are gonna have such a good time, and i can't freeking WAIT!

yeah so i had a good weekend. hopefully in the next few weeks i'll be hearing about that job. otherwise the posts are gonna get depressing. you'll hear about me eating pbj's and ramen noodles. i've stocked up Just In Case. so wish me luck.

the little apartment is almost starting to look like somebody lives here. i put up a few pictures and things, and it's getting there. i've decided i need a papasan chair, so once i get some income i suppose a picture of that will be forthcoming.

happy birthday to my mama, who turned a certain age yesterday. i love you, mama!

that's it, hope everyone had a lovely Earth Day, and pleeez let me know if my links don't work, huh?

aloha!

well, double poop

2007-04-18T14:45:00.000-07:00

See this? this is what an unripe durian looks like. yes he was green as all get-out, and when i cut him open, there was NO stink and his little seedy poddy pulpy things were all solid and not custardy at all like they are supposed to be. i hate to pass on this disappointing turn of events, but there it is. i don't think he ever would have gotten ripe. i think they have to ripen on the tree. can anyone help me with that? they say that no two durians are alike, and i still intend to get a ripe one... someday. *sigh*. there is a thai restaurant (the Garden Snack Club, incidentally) that purports to sell durian ice cream, but they were out the day i went. the durian gods hate me.

it's still rainy here. if this keeps up i'm going to have to go to the other side of the island for some sunshine. i'm getting pasty again! i'm kind of scared of becoming one of the Leather People, but i also don't want to look like the inside of that durian. if i take a road trip i'll be sure and get plenty of pictures for you all.

what else have i got for you? not much. oh here's a fun story about things proceeding slowly here on the island: i took the jeep in b/c there is a recall on the catalytic converter. remember i had to wait 2 weeks for them to see me? okay. so monday i went, and the letter i got about the service said it would take 1-2 hours, so i chose to wait around for them to finish. BIG MISTAKE! Seven hours later, they told me it was finished, and i was like, yay new catalytic converter for free, and they were like, no we just looked at it and determined that the part does need to be replaced. (hello, there was a recall.) THEN they tell me that Daimler-Chrysler, in an attempt to keep dealers from hoarding the parts, only lets them order one a week. (??!?) and they have a waiting list already. I'm #4 on the list. therefore, they can *order* the part for me in 4 weeks. then when it comes in, they MAIL me a notice and i call them for an appointment (another two weeks, i'd imagine). Somebody please tell Elbert how much i am missing him right now!!!

*****(okay, here we go again with the blog not letting me make a new paragraph. chris b, help me out here, why does this happen?)*****

in happier news, i figured out an easy recipe for a mai-tai facsimile without all the fancy complicated ingredients. yes these two events were directly related.

big birthday shout-outs to kressy and dorothy! happy birthday, ladies. hope you had lovely celebrations.

aloha!

more parade pix while i wait for the sun to come out

2007-04-15T13:56:00.000-07:00

to my cackalack peeps

2007-04-15T13:32:00.000-07:00

i read last night that the starlite drive-in in durham closed because the owner passed away last month. does anyone know if it will re-open? i found some showtimes listed for it for this week and i'm wondering if some good samaritan took the reins. it makes me sad to think the starlite might be gone forever. please let me know if y'all hear anything?

well, poop.

2007-04-15T13:03:00.000-07:00

i was gonna go to the beach today, but look, it's all rainy and grey. i know, i know, cry you a river, right? i thought y'all might like that after i've tortured you for so long. since i can't go to the beach, i think i might bust open this durian thing. i was sitting here last night and i kept getting wafts of something funky-smelling, and i finally realized it was the durian! so i don't know if it's time yet, but if it gets any stinkier i'm not going to want to eat it at all. so check back later for that action.

i guess i'll send doodle out for the paper. actually it'll be a good excuse to try and find some more jobs to apply for. i mean, if i didn't have that volunteer gig i might be a little stir-crazy by now. i was hoping that gig would introduce me to some folx and start some networking, but instead, my supervisor has made it abundantly clear that she hopes i *never* get a job. i explained that at some point, i wouldn' t have gas money to drive there and help her, and she graciously offered to give me bus fare.

yeah, deb's a funny lady. we've been working in the botanical collection and neither of us are botanists, so when we read a plant's Latin name, we look at it from a purely aesthetic perspective. Neither of us care for the fern genus Doodia. Deb is particularly fond of the raspberries, Rubus, especially Rubus mcraei. I think that should be a old hound dog, not a raspberry. So there we are, two grown women, saying things like, "pass me the Thyssanothingy", or "hm. Phyllocanthria. That would be a lovely name for a baby girl."

I looked at the pictures i posted from the parade yesterday, and i didn't post any of the floats! yes there were plenty of floats, so i might have to put up a few of those. later, i mean.

*yawn*. i've discovered that coffee tastes good with coconut milk in it instead of half and half. those who know me know that i have to have my half and half. except it's $5 a quart here. yikes! so i tried the coconut milk ($1.39 a quart) and it is a more than suitable alternative. don't worry, i'm not gonna go vegan or anything, milk and cheese are quite affordable (they even had a special on Brie last week). but half and half will have to be reserved for sales. also cereal. i did pick up a box of frosted flakes when they were on sale for $3.50. Cereal here runs about $6-7 a box! even the bagged stuff is pricey. i saw some frosted mini-wheats on the sale rack (the little box) for $4.99. meanwhile, sashimi-grade ahi is $6/lb. so it's not like i'm suffering or anything.

okay, more later on durians. and i think the sun is coming out, hooray!

aloha!

parade day!

2007-04-14T16:59:00.000-07:00

everybody loves a parade! especially when they're throwing macadamia nuts and leis! this was the Merrie Monarch parade, capping off a week of hula competitions. King Kalakaua is the monarch they're referring to, and he was responsible for reviving the art of hula after the missionaries had a cow about it and pushed it underground for being too lascivious. now they have modern hula and ancient hula divisions. i need to learn a lot more about them to begin to appreciate the movements and especially the mele, or chants.

anyway. it was a damn fine parade, with an elvis impersonator, a middle-school ukulele band, all the princesses from all the islands, horses in leis, and a brass band whaling "When The Saints Go Marching In" with such Nawlins-like gusto that it brought tears to my eyes. i took 157 pictures so it was kinda hard to pick which ones to show y'all, but i think these'll do.

the durian seems not to be ripe yet. it's hard to tell, though. he might be rotten for all i know. but he doesn't stink, so from everything i've read i'm pretty sure he's not ripe.

that's all for now. happy weekend to everybody!

downtown (sing it like petula)

2007-04-08T22:39:00.000-07:00

okay, i think i finally got some pix that do Downtown Hilo some justice. this cute little area is about six blocks long and four deep, and is chock full of little goodies. i took these pix today, easter sunday, so it was dead. everybody in a ham and candy coma, i reckon.

see that woodcut in the window? that's the river that i cross when i go downtown, the wailuku. that's the bluey-greeny thing that isn't the ocean that you've seen so many pictures of. i got a copy of that. i heart it. i think it's going in the kitchen.

and no, i have not been in chi-chi la fong's yet, but it is definitely On The List! take care, and remember, god is watching you.

We Have Durian! and it's Internet Independence Day

2007-04-07T20:16:00.000-07:00

well, after 4 days of phone calls to cingular and samsung, i went to the cingular store today to get them to fix my frustrating Lack Of Internet. there was a 16-year old asian kid there that got me hooked up in no time. apparently the geniuses at the support center signed me up for the wrong data package, so of course i couldn't get on the internet with the bluetooth thingy. *sigh.* i won't get into the madness of the hours and hours of service call contents. i just want to put it all behind me.

so there's that. and also, after i got done at cingular, i went to the farmers market, and lo and behold -- they had a little durian for me!! isn't he cute? i accidentally reached my hand in the wrong bag and he stabbed me with one of his pointy things, and he drew blood. awwuh! just precious, he is. he also kind of looks like he's flipping me off. he better taste really good. i was warned repeatedly that he is not ripe yet, so i can't dig in for a while. but yay, we have Durian!

i also have chairs. that's big. my back was hurting from having a bedcouch be my only piece of furniture. now i have a little kitchen table (thanks al!) and two folding bamboo chairs, so i can sit upright and not hunched-up like a little monkey.

and the Merrie Monarch Hula Festival starts tomorrow! it's big. real big. like you have to book your flight a year in advance big. unfortunately tickets were sold out long ago, but they do have some free hula exhibitions, and there are other free non-hula things associated with the festival. it goes for a week and culminates in a big parade next saturday. yay, parades!! i do miss them.

okay, now i don't feel the pressure to post as much as i can, now that i'm free of the chains of Spotty Wireless Internet. Happy Easter everyone! i hope the easter bunny brings you lots of goodies, especially of course that king of easter candies, the Reese's Peanut Butter Egg. Enjoy!

walk wiz me thru my 'hood

2007-04-06T20:43:00.000-07:00

doodle hates it here

2007-04-05T20:33:00.000-07:00

i mean. look how unhappy he is. pore doodle.

so i think i have the internet for a little while and i can fill you in on some of the things you've missed. tomorrow is walkabout day in hilo town and there should be more Scenery posted for you to look at. the weather has been unbeatable these last few days -- sunny and about 80 degrees, dropping to about 70 at night. it is so nice to have walls instead of screens, and get this -- there are no mosquitoes! they were bleeding me dry in the jungle, but now those days are over. i can leave the front and back doors open and the only people that come in are houseflies (i need a swatter) and the little orange homeless kitty that may become doodle's brother if they continue to get along.

yes, things are much more comfortable here. i am a 3 minute walk from downtown, but it is downhill. i rode my bike, a rusty old cruiser, to town today and coming back up that hill almost killed me. i may find a safe place to stash it and walk down the semi-mountain and then tool around in nice flat hilo, then leave the bike for next time. i packed my bike rack and grocery baskets, but the thought of biking up that mountain loaded down with stuff is not really very appealing to me. who knows, though -- maybe i can work on my poor atrophied leg muscles and the incline will be a piece of cake eventually. and maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt.

a lady i didn't rent an apartment from told me, while showing me a house, that if people moved any slower in hilo they'd be going in reverse. she was from honolulu. now, being from new orleans most recently, i figured i'd be ready for the pace of life on the island. but when i called to see about getting internet from the cable company, the soonest they could get here was two weeks out. i also got a recall notice from daimler-chrysler saying the jeep's catalytic converter has been recalled. so i called to get an appointment to fix that and guess what? two weeks. it reminds me of Ulysses Everett McGill in O Brother Where Art Thou -- "Well ain't this place a geographical oddity! Two weeks from everywhere!"

so i guess i shouldn't be too anxious that the job i applied for on Monday hasn't contacted me yet. patience. deep breathing. the newest potential employment is with the Research Corporation of the University of Hawaii, at a national wildlife refuge, closed to the public, where endangered birds roost. it is not far from hilo, and the job is field and labwork, discovering what the birds are eating (caterpillars) and how they are being affected by all the invasive species, especally ants (not well -- ants are vicious predators). to this end i have been reading up on hawaii's unique ecology and insect fauna. did you know there are predaceous caterpillars here? that's right. little inchworms that bend over backwards like a catapult and tense their bodies, then when a fly comes along in the right place, SNAP! flies for dinner. isn't that crazy? some damselfly naiads (babies) here, aquatic in the rest of the world, are terrestrial. okay maybe that isn't so impressive for you non-bug folks. anyway, i found out that i have much to learn about these hawaiian bugs. i haven't even been doing much entomology for a while, so i'm rusty on the general stuff, and then with all this crazy new stuff to learn, well, let's just say i won't be an expert on hawaiian invertebrates for a long time.

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i am continually blown away by all the yummy goodies to eat -- last saturday i happened upon a thai lady who had a table set up and was making green papaya salad to order. i couldn't resist that. i got medium-hot, and while she ground peppers and garlic and peanuts and all the goodies in her mortar, i saw that she had pumpkin curry and taro-tapioca pudding. also sticky rice, summer rolls, and the best thai ice tea i have ever had in my life. i am starting to think i need to go to thailand and do a survey of street food vendors -- i hear they have the best pad thai.

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i've been acquiring a few little trinkets for the casa as well. you saw how empty it is. well my friend al runs a store called "Alan's Art and Collectibles" and he has an amazing, overpriced secondhand shop full of the best hawaiiana and antiques of all flavors. he is also conveniently located next to the salvation army, so between those two stores i have found some things that make me quite happy. it will be a while before i have a lot of stuff, but i am starting to think that this apartment is just about perfect for me. it's not huge, but not as teeny as i thought at first. it is a great location and very comfortable, and of course most importantly, doodle likes it. the only downside is that it is very noisy! the neighbors are all very audible. part of the loudness is that i've been desensitized to human noise from being out in the jungle, i think, and then there's the fact that everyone has their windows open all the time. and of course an empty (okay, semi-empty) apartment with high ceilings and tile floors is basically an ampitheater. acoustically resonant, shall we say. but nobody's yelling at their girlfriend daily like in new orleans, so that's nice. it just doesn't feel very private, especially after my isolation month in the rainforest, like i said.

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okay, that's enough for now. hopefully i will have my own internet soon and can post at will, but until then, it'll be sneak-and-grab postings. i hope you all are well, and if you called me and i haven't called back, i will be doing so real soon. (speaking of which, the new number has taken effect.)

i miss you all! aloha!

ack! no internet for 4 days! i'm dying ovah heah!

2007-04-04T21:11:00.000-07:00

hey y'all. sorry for the lapse. i'm trying to get internet service via cingular (cue uproarious laughter from all cingular customers) and using the neighbors' connection in the meantime. the neighbors don't go online much. anyway. here's pix of the new crib and the surrounding environs, and hopefully i can get this posted before the neighbors sign off!

oh and the durian -- turns out they're $4.00 a pound, and the one they had saturday weighed 12 pounds! so i'll have to wait to meet some adventuresome folx or get some visitors who are game. sorry for the let-down. i did get some rambutans, which were yummy. they're the red Tribble-looking things. okay i'm posting before internets run out! laterz, k

more lava, more rainbows

2007-03-27T22:03:00.000-07:00

here are a few pix from yesterday's excursion to kaimu beach at high tide. hooray for rainbows! i couldn't get it all in the frame so here are the Segments Of A Rainbow for y'all.

what else is new. i went to the volcano national park for my first day volunteering, and my supervisor shares an office with the lady who is responsible for co-ordinating all the research done at the park with the Hawaiian kapuna, or elders. since it is sacred land, all research has to be okayed by the hawaiians, and if they don't think it's important enough, it doesn't get done. so kaola is a pretty important lady up there.

i also got to visit their library (checked out about ten books for myself), see the botany collection (i've never seen one of those. it was v. educational) and the zoology collection, which includes everything but lizards (?). i saw pig skulls and stuffed hawaiian owls and nene, and all kinds of things. i didn't open the cabinet labeled "rat jaws", though. i'll be working on 4 projects they have going on to catalog and inventory all these items in all these collections. yay, database. yay, Access. Oh and -- the library is being converted from dewey decimal! they have a card catalog and everything. been a long time since i've seen ol' Dewey. bless his heart.

what else, let's see... well obviously i put off the durian for another week but listen! no it's not what you think! i'm leaving the jungle this weekend, right, so i figured why not have the Ceremonial Durian-Tasting Thingy just before i leave the jungle? that way the stinky corpse stays behind, and maybe it's symbolic or something but i'm not really good at Deep Hidden Meanings, so maybe one of y'all could help with that? my aunt (or maybe i should start saying "Auntie"?) in Thailand tells me durian is delicious. so we're focusing on that.

um, i think that's it today. i could go on about the usual sunshine, pretty things, yummy eats, but really i'm getting tired of writing about all that. i'll think of some meatier things to keep you entertained. i found this tiki guy in kalapana by a bunch of NO TRESPASSING signs and thought you might like to meet him.

'a hui ho! (til next time!)

catchemups

2007-03-25T16:27:00.000-07:00

aloha y'all,

some people are just tuning into the Blog and never got my first emails of where i am and what i'm doing, so this post is to recap. i arrived on the Big Island on march 2, bought a Jeep, and have been hanging out in Puna (read: The Jungle) in a little "ohana" or jungalow. i've been out here with the hippies entertaining myself with scenery and good eats, and here's a few pix that you might enjoy.

doodle has something to say

2007-03-22T15:05:00.000-07:00

Here's doodle and the lease to my new apartment. actually, upon closer inspection, the torn-up bit was the Pet Agreement that he wouldn't eff anything up. doodle is punk rock.

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yes, i signed the 6-month lease on the little cute apartment, which i learned later has 6 apartments in front, plus there is a house in the back with 2 apartments. sound familiar?? i know it'll be no 5941 but that is kind of a coinkydink, don't you agree? i move in the 31st and am racking my brain on how to make it visitor-friendly, since it's sooo teeny. o how i wish timmy would come be my interior decorator...

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(sorry about these, the blog demons want to make this whole thing one paragraph, which i am not down with. so asterisks it is.)

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so yeah, we're getting out of the jungle. in the meantime, my assignment is to find all the best bits of the jungle and enjoy them. yesterday was the Champagne Ponds, a series of inlets sort of like the Tide Pools, but manicured, deeper, and with more marine life, i.e. sea turtles! yes the champagne ponds, which are quite deep in spots, wind their way through a "gated" community (try to keep the riff-raff out of something like that -- no way). They are warm and lovely. and i got lots more sun, so i am feeling a little less White. while i was there i commented that i needed to get some sun to get the haole off me, and a local told me he didn't think i needed to worry about that b/c i was still breathing. apparently "haole" only refers to the uptight uber-tourist types. so phew.

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i'm still waiting to hear about jobs, and getting a little restless. i actually would like to be working, fancy that. i am going to volunteer at the Volcano National Park next tuesday, helping them organize their botany and entomology collections. sounds like a great way to learn about hawaiian flora and fauna to me. and meet some smart people. where my biologists at?

also, i'm feeling better and planning on hitting the farmers market on saturday, so i'll probably go ahead and get this whole durian thing behind me.

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tonight i'm going to a goodbye party for the lady i bought my car from. she's leaving for australia on saturday. she lives close to the lava flow, so all us party-goers might take a hike and go look at that action. which reminds me of something that i would love to photograph for you all, but am not able to: the stars. they are amazing here. i don't even recognize the constellations because there are so many extra stars in them. some of you know that this island has the highest elevation with the clearest air in the world, and there are multi-million dollar astronomy labs on top of Mauna Kea. all the streetlights on the island are special lowlight sodium lamps to keep the ambient light to a minimum, and ensure that those observatories get the best possible view of the night skies. someday i will go up there for their stargazing program but til then, hiking out on the lava with more stars than i thought could possibly exist, watching molten lava flow into the sea.... that sounds pretty good to me.

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hope everything is warming up for everyone, and happy 2nd day of spring!

Mr. Scary, the Centipede Man!!! and other hawaiian hazards

2007-03-18T23:09:00.000-07:00

i haven't seen this guy or any of his friends since last week, thanks gawrd. lord he makes my skin crawl!!! fyi, he's about 1" wide and 10" long. ugga.

black by popular demand (well, black/brown, officially)

2007-03-18T21:55:00.000-07:00

here are some doodle pictures, as requested. This is the Travel Series, in the hotel room in L.A., in the "garden" at LAX, in the airplane bathroom on the way to Honolulu, and

in the jungalow. i can't figure out how

to put them in order, so this is blogspot's creative image chronology for y'all. doodle sends his luv right back to all y'all, and says to come on over and give him a treat. i have found out that he loves poke (hawaiian sushi) as much as i do, so we share.

nekkid beach

2007-03-18T15:34:00.000-07:00

this weekend i went to a different black sands beach, which is more popular than the last one and is "clothing-optional". (yes, i wore my suit, thanks for asking.) i heard that on sunday they have a big drum-circle thing there, so i went on saturday. you have to clamber down a pretty steep slope to get to it, but it's easily navigable even for clumsy haole girls in flip-flops, i mean rubbah slippah. one dude even carried his bike down there, but i can't for the life of me figure out why. maybe he forgot his lock. the whole beach is about 1/4 mile and surrounded by steep cliffs. the sand is nice and soft, but apparently is being lost quickly: someone told me the sand just a few years ago was up to the horizontal roots you see on this dead tree about six feet off the ground. the ocean was choppy and full of big rocks, so no swimming, but it sure was pretty. (a lot of the beaches on the island have been closed this week due to dangerous surf and high waves.)

i also hit the salvation army for some tunes on cassettes, so now i have options (sort of) when the radio gets annoying. i got hall & oates' greatest hits, johnny mathis, til tuesday, greatest hits of the 40s, glenn gould, glenn miller, david bowie (let's dance) and some hilarious-looking dudes called "3 local boyz". the parental advisory label was the deciding factor on that purchase. had a great time driving to hilo with "You Did it in a Minute" blaring. i haven't heard that in ages!

it looks like the Durian Project is going to have to wait til next week. i'm feeling a little puny (sinus stuff again, i think i might be allergic to the Jungle). or maybe it's psychosomatic cause i'm afraid of durians. i have conducted a survey and the consensus is: smells bad, tastes good. i can't get a firm answer on whether the taste is worth suffering the smell for. but that's what experiments are for, right? i did see a guy on the travel channel eat warm raw calf brains with gusto in an open market in morrocco, then later eat a durian and immediately get sick. so hm. if i don't like it, i have to figure out what to do with the rest of it. perhaps hurl it into a lava flow or off a cliff into the ocean. i don't want it stankin' up my jungalow, that's for sure!

speaking of the jungalow, it looks like our time is coming to a close, and i am signing a 6-month lease on a leetle-bitty place in hilo. it's a great location, walking distance to downtown and all the adorable shops and tasty restaurants. i've also been placed on the eligible list for a State job, and have discovered that this particular State gives 55 leave days per year to start. 56 on election years! hot diggity. so keep those fingers crossed for me, okay? i miss you all!

alohas,
k

aloha oy!

Who are you? Where am I? What year is it?

i didn't fall in no volcano

at the "dollar plus" store

naptry, we hardly knew ye

um.

Great White Shark off Honolulu

HCC/Oahu trip

but wait! there's still hope!!

well, poop.

cultural bonanza

Vaycrayshunzzzz

Playing Tourist At Home

Pictures Of Other (Somewhat Exasperated) People

why i love shopping (sometimes)

doggie drama: raoul learns to swim

kthxbye: Link Of The Day

Arright Arready!!

captain cook died in a pretty place

and another happy anniversary...

we cool

evacuated again, *sigh*

special dedication sunday

computer geeks + artists =

yay, beach!

fascinating neurological phenomenon of the day: synaesthesia

yikers! she's gonna blow!!! (maybe)

Kohala Play-Day

this genre needs a name.

mo' lava

hot lava!

no they dih-uhn, or Why I Miss Louisiana

beach day (local kine)

oink oink

beach day: kikaua

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

oh now you have *got* to be kidding me

kalakaua park chinese new year celebration

happy v.d., y'all

it's funny because it's true.

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

Geekin' out

Gung Hay Fat Choy!

muzak revolution?

well okAY then.

yikes with the rain

bunny fish

uhh, you could come help me eat this avocado?

Happy New Year!

mr. splashy-pants!!!

new orleans

puppies and froggies and more weird fruit

six months already??!?

omg i have a guacamole tree!!!!!!

Holy $@#&ing &$#%!!!

will someone *please* send NOAA a list of hurricane name ideas???

back from the big city

up on de big mountain

back to the blogosphere

tourists in kailua-kona

Road Trip!

chris is here! chris is here!

first day at work! but first let me say

many return phone calls owed

i'm gonna have to change my blog name

i found something soft and fuzzy to decorate the shelves in the naptry

there's a man in a tree outside my window

doodle has a new little brother

Little Princess Report

i'm going to a conference and haven't even been hired yet. huh.

good news from the Bee Lady

Hot Diggitty Damn!

drat, foiled again.

some of y'all have expressed concern

earzz

World's Smallest Bedroom

doodle hates it outside as well

but how am i supposed to stay mad

oh, memphis, you broke my heart! (and all my stuff!)

Fun Fact Friday!

evacuated again, sigh

oh now you have got to be kidding me

will someone please send NOAA a list of hurricane name ideas???