mr. splashy-pants!!!

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

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

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??!?

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,

k

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

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

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???

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.

k

back from the big city

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

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

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

Road Trip!

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!