I have not posted in quite a while since things have been kind of crazy here.  I got back from a big show in Honolulu (Honolulu Festival), Brian had a colleague in town, and then his parents came for a visit.  Now, I have several shows (Merrie Monarch et al)  coming up this week through next month.  I haven’t been getting much sleep lately but at least I am getting a lot done!

One of my main hard drives decided to stop working today.  I think the MBR is fried but I’m having trouble diagnosing the problem since I don’t have any other MBs that support SATA that I can hook up to to diagnose.  I am having fun installing a fresh OS on a separate drive that is IDE.  I even had to put in a temporary floppy drive just to get everything to work - fun fun.  Hopefully, I can copy everything off the drive.  I’m really annoyed that the drive is not working - it’s such a bad time for this to be happening.

Anything exciting going on with anyone?

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I have not posted in a while because things have been quite hectic here.  I am flying to Honolulu this week to spend a couple of days with my parents, go shopping, and visit Pearl Harbor before they come back to the Big Island to stay with us and have a rousing Thanksgiving.  I have also been planning the trip that Brian and I are taking to Kaua’i in December.  In addition to all of that, I have been preparing for various exhibitions that I will be at later this month and December.  I am also in the midst of rehab for my knee which the physical therapist says that I will most likely need surgery to correct.

On Friday, Brian dropped me off in town (Hilo) and I walked around while he went to Honoka’a.  I finally went to the Pacific Tsunami Museum - it was great.  I also went to the Kress Cinema downtown ($1 theater) after I walked several miles and saw the Mr. Bean movie - bad, very bad…  I spent time in Kalakaua Park and had a lovely afternoon.

We also went up to Mauna Kea in hopes of seeing snow but it had already melted.  The standouts of the evening were seeing the Milky Way, Jupiter, and a string of comets.  The last time we were up there with Brian’s parents we got to see the International Space Station move across the sky.  Mauna Kea really is the finest place in the world to stargaze (obviously).

While hiking at Kalopa State Park, Brian and I ended up on a pig trail and both got stung by bees.  I lost all feeling in my leg and bottom that evening and then slept for about 16 hours because of the bee sting.  It has been over two weeks now and I still have pain and redness from the sting.  Brian got stung on his back but he is doing fine.

I have been reading a large number of books on the economics of the poor - very interesting reading…  I will talk about that in a later post.

Brian and I have been watching StarGate SG-1 now that we have finished Star Trek Voyager.  It is unique and interesting…

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After using Blockbuster Online for quite a while we have finally canceled our service.

I happened to log on to our Blockbuster Online account and saw that movies were no longer being shipped to us. Apparently, Blockbuster decided to create new plans which are terrible and overpriced. Initially, we were attracted to Blockbuster’s service so we could exchange in the movies in the store for free in-store rentals. At $14.99 a month for 2 DVDs + free in-store exchanges it was a good deal. However, to get the same deal you now have to pay $21.99 for the exact same plan. They never sent us an email saying they were changing the plan nor did they have anything on the website that was obvious. To top it off, we had not received any DVDs for this weekend so we went to the store to use one of the free monthly rentals we get from the Blockbuster rewards card we have. Apparently, yesterday, when I used my free monthly coupon (for August) it was just fine. But today, when we tried to use the September coupon they said we had to have the piece of paper which she said would print out with the receipt. Nothing printed out with the receipt. So, we spent $4.99 on a stupid DVD from Blockbuster. I think we could have bought a new DVD to own from Walmart for that much. Needless to say, we have switched to NetFlix. They have a distribution center in Honolulu so we should get DVDs in just one day, yay! At least we will save on gas going to/from Blockbuster.  Anyone else have any positive/negative experiences with Blockbuster or even NetFlix?

An odd side note - an odd little mongoose is outside the house making a lot of noise and being really odd.

Brian also pulled down this tree limb which hangs over our property on a tree that is in the vacant lot next to our house - totally full of termite tunnels. Yikes.

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I have been working on getting my logo finished for the last month. Initially, I used a logo company recommended to me by the marketing/PR firm that I was working with and that turned out to be disastrous. It has taken well over a month to get a pile of crap from them. Fortunately, I found a firm that specializes in taking logo concepts and fixing them. And fix it they did - the new logo is great.

I am also in the market for banner design for advertising on various websites/blogs. If anyone can recommend a good designer for banners I would greatly appreciate it.

Also, in case anyone noticed. I added Sphere content for the website. Essentially, it is a way for you (and me too) to read other blogs or websites about topics that are similar to something I have posted about - check it out.

In other news, I have been randomly ill today for some unknown reason.

I also found out my parents are coming to visit in November. Yay. We will also be staying in Honolulu for a couple of days at a nice resort so I can shop and do some other fun things.

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Being a vegetarian, it only stands to reason that I would be attracted to the idea of vegetarian shoes. I was just looking at Zappos and I took a look at the vegetarian shoes they carry. I really like the idea of buying nice shoes that are earth friendly, recyclable, cruelty free, and all of that good stuff but every vegetarian shoe I have seen looks like it jumped out of the 1960s or the 1980s. Who decided that vegetarians should lack fashion sense? I would not buy a single shoe I saw on that page. The more casual shoes look more like something the hippies with dreadlocks that live in Pahoa would wear - nothing wrong with that - but it is just not me. This shoe, called the Earth Flight is just about the ugliest shoe I’ve ever seen and it comes in such an array of colors - black, poo brown, lighter shade of poo brown, and dirty ocean color. These people should give Manolo Blahnik a call so he can straighten them out about how to make shoes. Make less ugly shoes, please!

*Update* After being out and about today I would just like to say that Crocs are *not* an acceptable vegetarian solution to footwear.  Those things are so hideously ugly that they should have gone out long long ago.  They are made out of something called  croslite  but they feel really mushy and soft in a rather gross way, I think.  Those things should be kept for the garden only.

Brian is out of town for the day - he’s in Honolulu living it up in Waikiki. Fortunately, he will be taking a cab where he needs to go so I don’t have to worry about him driving there (since he does not know where things are). I am sure he will not have the grand time I had last weekend in Honolulu with the cute convertible, fun convention, and my culinary adventure.

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Well, it is final - I am going to Honolulu to go to the “Made in Hawaii” trade show.  Brian said he wanted me to go and I want to go so I am going to fly over for the day and make as many business contacts as I possibly can in just under 12 hours.  It should be fun and very profitable.  … I sound like a Ferengi.

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