I have just returned from a two week trip to Georgia to visit family and procure new business and personal goods. I had a nice time and was able to spend several days in Savannah and Tybee. I had a nice visit with my parents and grandmother…
I was able to do quite a bit on my trip and had a really good visit with everyone. As usual, I was able to go shopping and get all the things that are impossible to find here. After a long 10 hour flight to Honolulu from Atlanta I was able to get home to Hilo in just under an hour and finally arrived here ready to fall asleep.
I will probably write more about this later when I am not so restless and agitated…
I also received an email today from the company that is searching for my birth parents. It would seem that I was not born in Florida but rather that I was born in Colorado. My parents knew nothing about this - they were shocked when I told them. This is just totally out of left field - we had no idea. I even have a Florida birth certificate (not original, of course).
I will be going to Georgia to visit my family in February for about two weeks. I had wanted to go to a basketball game in the hopes of seeing the Hawks play the Lakers, Spurs, Warriors, or the Jazz or some other decent team. Brian said that the Hawks rarely play those teams so it would not be likely that I would get to see any of those three. Well, he was right and wrong. Interestingly enough, the Hawks will be playing all four of those teams during my visit. Unfortunately, none of the games during my entire visit are home games. The last home game is the day before I arrive and the next home game is the day after I leave. I am annoyed.
I think things will finally be returning back to normal since the holidays are over. Brian and I went on a vacation to Kauai and had a really nice time. We did some hiking, kayaking, and sailing and had quite a bit of fun. It did rain quite a bit and because of it I was unable to go SCUBA diving but we did get to see a number of whales and dolphins while sailing. We tried to go hiking on the Napali coast but it was raining, windy, cold, and muddy so we were unable to do the swamp and ridge hike.  We did, however, get to see the Napali coast from the SCUBA boat and it was stunning. Unfortunately, rough seas and a storm turned us around before we were able to see the whole thing. We have also decided that Kauai should be renamed to the Chicken and Mud Isle instead of the Garden Isle…
The holidays were uneventful for me as I don’t really do anything for them. Brian went to California and will be back in a week. I have been using my spare time lately to do oil pastels and I am having a lot of fun with it. I’ve been doing a lot of sketches and have decided to do a Viking mural of some kind on a large canvas that I bought. It will definitely be a long-term project…
I also finally got around to watching the latest documentary by Michael Moore - Sicko. It was really rather interesting. We have certainly had our share of health care related issues living in Hawaii. Interestingly enough, we have had a good experience with Kaiser Hawaii (although I have heard bad things about Kaiser on the mainland). Anyone else see his film? Any thoughts about universal health care?
Anyone do anything fun or interesting for the holidays? What do you think of the assassination of Bhutto?
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…Â 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…
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.
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.
I have been incredibly busy for a number of reasons. I am launching my handbag line literally *right now* and have been extremely busy hiring people and working with fabric and designing bags. Also, I visited my family in Georgia and attended to a few business related things while there. Brian and I have also been doing more outdoor activities. He’s been doing water activities with me lately and we are having a lot of fun. I body boarded some treacherous shore break two weeks ago and that was fun. Brian and I went snorkeling at Kahalu’u Beach Park in Kona and we both had a blast. I prefer the reef when the water is deeper but I think it was better for him - he prefers it when it is more shallow. Everything fun on this island is pretty much free or dirt cheap - it’s great.
I have been reading Sherlock Holmes lately so Brian and I also started watching the Sherlock Holmes series from the 1980’s - what a fabulous series. I highly recommend it (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes). Sherlock Holmes is supposed to be a textbook INTJ - it is interesting. Brian thinks Holmes is great and he would be friends with him. This makes sense since Brian is attracted to INTJs. I, however, dislike every INTJ I’ve come in contact with and prefer to read things written by them or see/read things that star an INTJ. While I like watching Holmes and reading about him I know that I would dislike him profusely if I knew him in person. INTJs do seem to dislike one another as a rule…
It has been a very long time since I updated. My handbag line is about to debut and my bags are soon going to be plastered all over the internet and in stores! I am thrilled…
I am going to GA on Sunday for business and to visit family - should be fun…
I don’t really use recipes. I am one of those people that says I use a recipe until someone asks for the recipe and then I realize that I did not in fact follow the recipe at all but instead made up something entirely different. It makes me wonder why I continue to think that I actually follow recipes.
At any rate… I was looking online for some new recipes to inspire me. Specifically, I was looking for recipes that have blackbeans in them. I always seem to be rather shocked at the horrific things people put in their mouths. I saw way too many recipes that included Cheese Whiz (is that even a food?) and many many processed cheese products, random canned foods, and a myriad of unhealthy items with unforseeable quantities of unnatural colors and additives. Why do people eat that crap? Do they really believe it is healthy? Or am I delusional for thinking people want to be healthy? In a world of McDonalds and fast food am I weird for eating a healthy vegetarian diet?
In other news, my doctor is presenting *me* or more specifically my case at a medical conference to get other opinions on what is wrong with me. I have been referred to an endocrinologist for further study. I will have to fly to Oahu to see one in Honolulu which is fine…
In other news, I am going to the mainland in May - it should be a fun little trip. Brian wants to head to Alaska during the summer…
I was not able to sleep last night because of my sunburn but I got out of bed at 7 AM when Brian got up. He announced that we needed to head over to Kona AGAIN (we just went on Thursday and returned on Friday evening) so we could drop off this packet at the Kona office that he forgot to leave on Friday. He claimed it could not be faxed or sent via mail but this is entirely untrue. So, we ventured over to Kona and made the almost three hour drive to Kealakekua (south of Kona) and he just had to stop at every bookstore in Kona and finally we ate lunch. Then, we drove down to Kealakekua to drop off this *super important* packet and the gate was locked so we were unable to leave the packet. We drove all the way over there for NOTHING. The ONLY thing I wanted this morning was some advil to kill the pain of my sunburn and to take back a couple of DVDs to Blockbuster. I was unable to do anything I needed or wanted to do today. Then he bailed out on the drive from Kona to Kealakekua and also the drive home because he was tired and driving like a maniac and had a major attitude problem. Naturally, the better driver was me since I had no sleep to his 9 hours of sleep… Yeah, right. After we found out that he couldn’t drop off this *super important* package that we just drove three hours to hand deliver he just shrugged his shoulders and said “oh well” and did not even bother to call the director to get them to come or ask to drop it by their house. Yeah, it must have been REALLY important. Right. What’s he doing with the packet tomorrow - he’s faxing it. What a way to waste the day…
It really gets under my skin because he gets annoyed with me if I run only one errand in town - like *only* going to the grocery store which puts a grand total of 5 miles on the car roundtrip. But he just takes off on a random joy ride to Kona and that is okay - especially when we JUST went there! Gas is incredibly expensive here and to top it off he always has to buy a ton of books and then we have to eat at least one meal en route to Kona or on the way back - it’s just an absurd waste of money for a trip that wasn’t even fun. Bleh, I’m not even going to talk about how horrible the rest of the trip was today, it’s just not worth it.
Brian and I spent Thursday night and all day Friday in Kona because he had some business to attend to over there. Unfortunately, we were not able to stay over the weekend because we had to volunteer at the library on Saturday morning. Brian, of course, was not willing to give that up for the weekend because the reward for volunteering an hour is being able to have first pick of nearly new books for less than $1. While he had a fun day of doing a presentation I went to Hapuna Beach in North Kohala. I love that beach. I would live on it if I could but my skin does not like that beach as much as I like that beach. I was on the beach from 9:30 AM until 1 PM and I applied sunscreen three times and my skin still burned like crazy. I went bodyboarding and had a great time - the waves were huge and the shorebreak made it all the more fun for me. My nasty sunburn has created quite an annoying problem for me. I wish to sleep but cannot because the sunburn is hurting too much so I have taken some Ibuprofen to help with the pain but it has caffeine in it so I cannot sleep. Joy. Plus, Brian is mad at me because I got a sunburn so he is intentionally going out of his way to be mean to me about my sunburn - poo on him. I have ordered a rashguard shirt with UV protection to protect me in the future.
Brian found these weird old board games where you recreate one of Napoleon’s Campaigns in Germany - no one had even bothered to play the game and we’re still trying to figure out how to play exactly. Very strange… He also found a World War II game that is somewhat similar - both should be quite interesting.
When I was in Georgia visiting my parents in January I had about 12″ of my hair cut off so that I could donate it to an organization that makes wigs for children with cancer. The organization is called Locks of Love and I highly recommend donating your hair if you have at least 10″ to donate.
I will be going to the mainland next week to visit my parents and grandmother. It should be a fun time with them, I think. I am only dreading the 12 hour day of travel over to visit them but it really should not be so bad… It is only a little over 5 hours to LAX from HNL and then 4 hours to ATL plus the additional 45 minutes to fly to HNL from ITO…
Brian and I are also trying to figure out what to do with our summer vacation since he will not be teaching the summer session (thank goodness) - so we shall see. Our ideas so far are: visit family on the mainland, Alaska, Australia, Japan, Tibet, India, Nepal, China, and Vietnam. So, who knows…
I flew into Atlanta today. First, I took a cab from the apartment to the airport and the guy drove in the median because he was talking on his cell phone. Great. At least he took $10 off the price because of his stupidity and rudeness. Yay for that. After I got to the airport some really old weird guy told me not to leave him behind. I am not sure what that was about but it was bizarre. He started to follow me but fortunately I walk too fast. Weird. When I ate dinner with my grandma and father tonight a weird woman who breathed very strangely sat next to us and made strange noises while we ate. I guess that is it for excitement. More later…
