The last few weeks that Eamon was in Boot Camp were really intense (so close and yet so far!). He finally graduated on Oct. 9th, so he's officially a Sailor! Wahoo! The weekend immediately after graduation was an emotional roller coaster for me. We got to talk a few times, which was great, but they were mostly short calls - Eamon was, after all, trying to give as much time as he could to his family, who had flown to Chicago to attend the ceremony. I was harboring (ha, nautical humor!) the hope that he would be able to come visit me here, but then it became clear that he wouldn't, and then we realized we were being silly and there was no reason I couldn't come visit him!! As my birthday present, he offered to cover my plane tickets to Hartford, CT so we can just hang out together for a long weekend. It's a lot of traveling for just a few days, but it will be completely, 100% worth it. Just having that to look forward to, and the fact that we don't have to go another two whole months before Christmas, will make everything much, much easier.
Speaking of my birthday - it was great!! Those of you who posted on my Facebook page and/or e-mailed me, thank you! It was so nice to have that to wake up to :-) The weather was gorgeous, I talked to my family and Eamon, saw Where the Wild Things Are with a group of friends – review below – and had yummy Pho (Vietnamese noodle soup) in Chinatown. One of my friends gave me a very special gift indeed. The backstory is that we had been in touch before moving to Honolulu about possibly living together, but for one reason or another it didn't work out. But we found each other on Facebook, and she very kindly came to the Oahu Sacred Music Festival concert that I sang in last Sunday. That was where we met in person for the first time - she's never even been in my apartment! Well, here's her gift, next to its foremonster :-)
Don't they look so conspiratorial? My friend said she saw the display at Barnes and Noble and thought this particular monster just suited me. Isn't that awesome?? I mean, that's heavy cosmic stuff!
The Where the Wild Things Are movie was really, really good. It felt kind of like Maurice Sendak finally got to tell all the bits of the story that he had had to leave out because of the picture book format. It provided lots of insight into why Max was so uncontrollable. The Wild Things themselves were an interesting bunch. They were kind of like ginormous children - their conversations didn't have any real train of thought, they played games without rules, and they had varying loyalties to each other; there was a definite "in-crowd" and outsiders, and all that stuff. Very different characters than the Wild Things of the book! It was ambiguous whether the Wild Things would be able to self-govern after Max left - had he grown up somewhat and passed along a hint of self-control, or was it just going to be chaos again? I had never thought about what would happen to them in the book, so that was really quite profound.
I also said I would post some snorkeling pictures (I know, I'm going way back now). There weren't that many that came out well, but here are the few that did:
Trumpetfish right up near the surface
School of Sargeants eating on the reef
I think these are Hawaiian Chub
And here's the best picture I got of the turtle. It's almost like he's (she's?) posing for the other girl's camera!
In other news, I performed Hula on stage! It was for the Chinese Student and Scholar Association Mid-Autumn celebration at UH Manoa. I have video up on Facebook of the class rehearsing the two dances we did, but I've tried maybe ten times to upload the video of the actual performance and it keeps timing out or just stopping. I will keep trying!
I've now sung for two services at St. Mark's, and it's a terrific church to work for. They have an open, welcoming congregation and they're all just lovely people. It's a very "high church" Episcopalian tradition with smells and bells galore. My whole closet is now infused with frankincense :-) The whole service is full of music - the priest even chants the gospel!
I was thinking of posting a picture of yet another beautiful rainbow we had a few days ago, but that would not make for much variety in my posts since they appear so often :-) I can't keep from taking pictures of them, though!
And now from the sacred to the profane...
I went with a friend from school to October's "First Friday," which is a street event in Chinatown on the, you guessed it, first Friday of every month. All the art galleries have open showings, and you just generally wander around and people watch. But we got more than we bargained for at this one hipper-than-thou bar. They had a woman standing in the window wearing nothing by body paint. Yeah, she was nekkid. It was truly bizarre.
Well, until the next post...which I will try to write in a few days as opposed to a few weeks!
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