It's been a while. Here are just a few highlights of the past few months:
The holidays were relatively uneventful. I took call, but didn't have to work much. On Thanksgiving, I took advantage of what I suspected would be a slow day and went to the Bishop Museum. It was quiet and nice, I took my time through the exhibits, and finished with a planetarium show in which my geeky guide taught us how to navigate from here to Tahiti using only the stars. Maybe I'll try it someday.
Christmas... um, I was sick for a full two weeks. The thing is, I'm not sure it was anything but a cold, but I felt pretty awful and did my best to overdose on cough medication. A month later, and I'm still coughing. So, I'm pretty sure I spent my Christmas sleeping and watching old episodes of the Office. Then I spent the following week sleeping and watching episodes of The Wire (thanks, Walls!).
New Year's Eve, incidentally, had been described to me since my first month here. Apparently it's local tradition to shoot fireworks on New Year's Eve, and everyone and their mother participates. I was cautioned with one of those 'you have to see it to believe it' things that I quickly dismissed. Then NYE came around. Good lord. Constant fireworks from 1600 until about 0200. There was a haze of smoke over the entire island, and it's so annoying that you want to pull your hair out. I have no plans whatsoever to be in Hawaii for New Years next year. I'm serious. I hated every second of it.
After I recovered, I took advantage of January in Hawaii, which, while the coldest month here, still gave me a great snorkeling day, and a fun day trip up to the North Shore on a high surf advisory day. It was actually a lovely day, and cool as hell. Turtle Beach as seen in pictures in my previous post? Yeah, the water came up all the way to the road. There was no Turtle Beach. There were, however, seemingly thousands of people who had driven up (on the one main road) to see the waves, so it was slow moving for a while, but even then it was nice to creep along with the windows down and the water right there on the side of the road. I saw one guy out there kitesurfing and two geniuses swimming, but other than that, there wasn't a soul in the ocean that day.
A note on getting used to living here: I think I don't even notice the mountains anymore as I'm driving along, I totally take for granted that I can walk out of my front door and be sitting on a bench at the waterfront reading a book in fewer than ten minutes, and I joined everyone in complaining last week about how cold it was (the low was 65 degrees). It reminds me of a story a colleague from work told me once. She and her son (he's around 6 or 7) were walking along the beach with a friend visiting from the mainland, who stated, 'wow, this really is paradise.' The kid snaps his head around in all directions and shouts, 'where?' Yeah, we're spoiled.
For those of you who were excited by and took part in free taco day in October as advertised on this blog, I'm happy to share with you that Tuesday, February 12, is Free Pancake Day at IHOP. You're welcome.
Here are some pictures taken in January (in no particular order).
The holidays were relatively uneventful. I took call, but didn't have to work much. On Thanksgiving, I took advantage of what I suspected would be a slow day and went to the Bishop Museum. It was quiet and nice, I took my time through the exhibits, and finished with a planetarium show in which my geeky guide taught us how to navigate from here to Tahiti using only the stars. Maybe I'll try it someday.
Christmas... um, I was sick for a full two weeks. The thing is, I'm not sure it was anything but a cold, but I felt pretty awful and did my best to overdose on cough medication. A month later, and I'm still coughing. So, I'm pretty sure I spent my Christmas sleeping and watching old episodes of the Office. Then I spent the following week sleeping and watching episodes of The Wire (thanks, Walls!).
New Year's Eve, incidentally, had been described to me since my first month here. Apparently it's local tradition to shoot fireworks on New Year's Eve, and everyone and their mother participates. I was cautioned with one of those 'you have to see it to believe it' things that I quickly dismissed. Then NYE came around. Good lord. Constant fireworks from 1600 until about 0200. There was a haze of smoke over the entire island, and it's so annoying that you want to pull your hair out. I have no plans whatsoever to be in Hawaii for New Years next year. I'm serious. I hated every second of it.
After I recovered, I took advantage of January in Hawaii, which, while the coldest month here, still gave me a great snorkeling day, and a fun day trip up to the North Shore on a high surf advisory day. It was actually a lovely day, and cool as hell. Turtle Beach as seen in pictures in my previous post? Yeah, the water came up all the way to the road. There was no Turtle Beach. There were, however, seemingly thousands of people who had driven up (on the one main road) to see the waves, so it was slow moving for a while, but even then it was nice to creep along with the windows down and the water right there on the side of the road. I saw one guy out there kitesurfing and two geniuses swimming, but other than that, there wasn't a soul in the ocean that day.
A note on getting used to living here: I think I don't even notice the mountains anymore as I'm driving along, I totally take for granted that I can walk out of my front door and be sitting on a bench at the waterfront reading a book in fewer than ten minutes, and I joined everyone in complaining last week about how cold it was (the low was 65 degrees). It reminds me of a story a colleague from work told me once. She and her son (he's around 6 or 7) were walking along the beach with a friend visiting from the mainland, who stated, 'wow, this really is paradise.' The kid snaps his head around in all directions and shouts, 'where?' Yeah, we're spoiled.
For those of you who were excited by and took part in free taco day in October as advertised on this blog, I'm happy to share with you that Tuesday, February 12, is Free Pancake Day at IHOP. You're welcome.
Here are some pictures taken in January (in no particular order).
Had a random Friday off and spent the entire day reading and snorkeling at Hanauma Bay.
The view from the top of Hanauma Bay before you hike down.
The view of the sunset as I drive home...
My stop at Sunset Beach on the North Shore during one of the many winter surf advisories.
Yeah, you'd think there isn't a lot for the lifeguards to do on these days, but they get the pleasure of yelling at the people who actually think they can get near the water and not be sucked in.
