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

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

but if i did it might look something like this:

at the "dollar plus" store

naptry, we hardly knew ye

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.

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

Get This Widget!TOPP.org

HCC/Oahu trip

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!