It's gonna be an interesting month

Earlier in October, a few folks at The Republic of Pemberley (my favorite Jane Austen website) posted about their planned participation in National Novel Writing Month, affectionately known as NaNoWriMo. I had seen discussions about this in previous years, and never really thought seriously about it. The idea is to write a 50,000 word novel in the space of 30 days, and it always happens in November. Well, I was talking with some of the folks in the LIS program at UH, and it turns out one of my friends there has done NaNoWriMo before and is doing it again this year, so I figured what the heck?? I enjoy writing, I flatter myself I'm a pretty good writer, let's see if I've got a novel in me and whether I can get it written in 30 days!

I have some plot outlines and character ideas jotted down, but the rules state that you're not allowed to actually start writing until midnight, November 1st at the earliest. Well here it is October 31st at around 10:00 Hawai'i time and I wouldn't exactly say I'm pumped or excited - more like apprehensive! Am I crazy to try to do this right now, while I'm working on a Master's degree?? Probably! Can I go all the way? I really just don't know. Will I try? You bet!

People have been filling up the NaNoWriMo boards with ideas for how to adjust their lives and figure out ways to make time for writing - cutting out TV shows and Internet browsing, that kind of thing. I'm sure I could deal with that, but something rather more important may get in the way for me (aside from, y'know, those pesky homework assignments). And that is...

I'm leaving later this week to visit Eamon for five days! I won't say five whole days because we won't have all day of every day that I'm there, but believe me, I'm not complaining. We'll just make the most of the time we will have and then it will only be a few weeks until we can see each other again for Christmas!

So all of that is to say, I'm going to try to participate in NaNoWriMo, and I hope to name myself among the winners (that is, writers who accomplish the 50,000 word goal - the satisfaction is its own prize!) But I will also be realistic and if it's just not going to happen, there's always next year!

Spring forward, fall back...or not

This will be quick - I have more to write about but I have schoolwork I should be doing instead.

I just wanted to let everyone know that Hawai'i thumbs its nose at your silly "Daylight Saving Time" and does not change its clocks. The rest of the country (except for Hawaii's fellow maverick, Arizona) will "fall back" on November 1st, so that means time differences will change. If you're on PST, Hawai'i will be two hours behind instead of three, and if you're on EST, that makes five hours behind instead of six. If you're in Mountain Time or Central time, you do the math. I can't keep track of that many zones :-)

This only really makes a difference going eastwards. If you were ever going to call me at 5 or 6 in the morning my time, you're a cruel, cruel human being, Daylight Saving or no. But this means I can call everyone on the mainland a whole hour later than normal! Mwahahahaha....

So, in short. Adjust your inner multi-region time clock, come Sunday, if you plan to get in touch by phone.

Apologies for the long hiatus

I remember saying that I was going to update this blog every couple of days. I sure had good intentions, but I just haven't been very motivated to post lately.

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!

Happy Autumn!

At least, I'm assuming it's a happy Autumn. I wouldn't know. There's no nip in the air, rustle of dead leaves, or hankering for apple cider and pumpkin pie. I used to check weather.com every single day in Boston because it could be pouring rain on Tuesday and then hot without a cloud in the sky on Wednesday. Here, the 10-day forecast is like a bad joke. It's been 88° and sunny, give or take a degree, every day since I got here.

The FedEx folks, as well as the mail carriers, have been going out of their way to be helpful. When all of those boxes were arriving, the mail carrier would call to make sure I was going to be home to receive them. And that day that 13 of them arrived, a postal worker who didn't have a regular route not only delivered them, he brought them all up to the 4th floor! And FedEx knew I was expecting computer parts, so they called me too!

So, thanks to the vigilance and extra service of the delivery people, my CPU and printer arrived safely within a few days of each other. But I still don't have everything set up because my apartment is apparently the Bermuda Triangle of electronic devices. When I tried to plug the monitor into the wall, I heard this awful *POP*-fizzle and was certain I had killed it even before getting to use it. When I turned on both the monitor and the CPU, I got only a "no signal" message on the screen, so a Dell tech is going to be coming out here to help me try to fix everything. Then, when I was trying to plug the computer, monitor and my new speaker system into the surge protector, I pushed the CPU up against the wall so both it and the subwoofer would fit in the space next to my desk, and I think the CPU got too close to the cord for the lamp (which looks like some former tenant's puppy turned it into a chew toy). There was another *POP*-fizzle, and this time, I even saw sparks! How festive! I don't think any permanent damage was done, but I'm not taking any chances - the tech will be the one hooking everything up! As if that wasn't enough, I even needed help downloading the drivers for my printer. I'm so ashamed. Am I married to a geek, or aren't I?? At least the printer hasn't felt a need to contribute to the Guy Fawkes demonstrations...

Last Thursday, the 17th, I had plans to go to lunch and then do pottery painting with the Navy Wives group on Facebook. Cari, a friend of mine in the LIS program, picked me up and came to lunch with us - she's actually an Army brat, but who's counting? The pottery painting place was on Hickam Air Force Base, and I needed to go to a military installation (didn't matter the branch) to get my dependent ID card, so I figured I could go take care of that and then join everyone. Well, I called ahead of time and spoke to a very nice lady who told me that, contrary to what the very mean lady at Pearl Harbor had said, I did not need Power of Attorney, because my husband had signed the application as the sponsor; I just needed to show up with two forms of ID and the application and I'd be good to go. I didn't even need to make an appointment! She also gave me directions, but try as we might, we couldn't figure out where we were supposed to go once we got on base. So I called the office again, but that was absolutely no help. The guy was like, "Look for a gray building...oh, maybe it's tan..." I dunno, dude, you're the one who works there! Cari and I were cracking up at this point - bless her heart, she drove us around and around that base until I was sure they would stop us for suspicious activity! We finally found the office and the whole process took maybe twenty minutes, which was great. We ended up missing the pottery painting, but getting the ID was way more important. So now I'm officially a Navy wife! Eamon said in one of his letters that getting his dog tags made it all feel very real. Now I know what he means.

One of the things that really makes me feel like I'm in Hawai'i is seeing geckos inside, and I was hoping I'd be lucky enough to have one in my apartment at some point. You can tell when they're nearby because of their distinctive clicking (if you've ever ridden horses, you can approximate the clicking by making the sound you would use to get a horse to start walking). I'd been hearing clicks every night, but a few days ago it echoed right outside my door, so I ran out to check how close it was.

This guy was one door down, just at the entrance to the hall. It's a little hard to tell, but he's flat against the wall up near the ceiling. Look at how well he's camouflaged against the white! He was about 4 inches long - don't you just love his fat little belly??

A few days later, when I was adjusting the windows above my lanai door, I finally got my wish - a tiny little gecko scurried in from outside and settled on the wall above my desk!

This one was only about an inch and a half or two inches long - so cute! I love their little beady eyes and big flat toes.

Here's what Niamh had to say about all this:

I burst out laughing when I saw her staring wide-eyed at the strange little creature up on the wall. I swear she didn't blink once. Can't you just see the thought bubble? "What the...??"

I've signed up for yet another class with the Leisure Center - ceramics! I feel like I'm singlehandedly keeping the place going :-) My very ambitious plan is to make a teapot and sugar bowl to match the beautiful purple floral teacups and saucers that Micah and Ellie gave out as their wedding favors. I haven't been able to find the rest of the set in that pattern online, so if I can just match the colors I'll be happy! Well, okay, let's be realistic - if I manage to make something that even remotely resembles a teapot, I'll be happy.

One thing that makes a house (or apartment) a home is pictures. I have all of my framed photos now, and I would love to put them up around the living room and bedroom, but I am just having the toughest time deciding what should go where, whether I should keep them in their current frames or get the big collage ones that hold lots of pictures, and all those piddling little details. But I can't do it by myself - I need another pair of eyes and arms, someone who can hold them up where I kind of want them to go so I can stand back and see if I like it, or who can tell me if they look okay when *I* hold them up.

Eamon's division got to call home this past Saturday right around noon my time. I was in Hula class and I didn't even hear the phone ring :-( He had gotten his first call just a little over a week before, so I wasn't expecting another one for at least a few days, but there's absolutely no rhyme or reason to how they schedule these things. He left me nice messages (yup, messages plural - he tried calling me twice!) saying things were going better and he was happy I was keeping busy and doing fun stuff, and I shouldn't be sad that I missed his call. Well, with so few chances to talk to him these days, I was definitely bummed. Thankfully, I have lots of wonderful people I can call in times of crisis (or just when I need a good cry), and my roomie Diana and her wife Sarah took turns cheering me up while baking various yummies for a church function.

And I can also take comfort in the fact that Eamon graduates from Boot Camp in just a little over two weeks!!!

Produce, rainbows and cushions, oh my!

There's a really great farmer's market held on the UH Manoa campus every Friday, and I finally went this past week. It's all locally grown produce, and it's all really cheap! I spent about $20 and came away with papayas, lettuce, "long beans" (which look like nothing so much as green shoelaces), grape tomatoes, Roma tomatoes, a cucumber, and the cutest watermelon in the entire world. I kid you not, this thing was frickin' adorable:

It's the perfect size for one person!

FYI - I just figured this out - all of the pictures in the blog posts are clickable so you can see them full-size. In my browser, which is Google Chrome (try it if you haven't, by the way - it's great!) they just open in the same window and then you can go back one page to return to the blog. I don't know if they do the same thing in Internet Explorer and Firefox, though.

After the farmer's market I went to the supermarket to get the rest of the groceries I needed, and just after I got home (around 5:00) it started pouring rain. But as is often the way of these tropical showers, the sun was shining brightly - looking west, the raindrops formed this curtain of dazzling crystals as the sun streamed through them. But I instinctively turned my head east and was greeted with a saturated, gorgeous, full-arc rainbow reaching across the entire valley. Where the clouds were heaviest and darkest, the rainbow doubled in a mirror of itself. I dumped the groceries and ran inside to get my camera.

I got this one standing on my lanai. When I was first looking at apartments I considered one without a lanai - the landlord tried to play it down by saying that having usable indoor space was better, and most people just use their lanais to store their bikes. Well, screw that. I can't believe I almost missed out on this!

There were two guys getting into their car in the parking lot next to my building, and I shouted down to the poor, unsuspecting wretches, "Are you seeing this???" I couldn't bear for no one else to witness this miracle unfolding before my very eyes. They looked up and appeared minorly impressed, and I realized I must have sounded slightly crazy. I explained, "Sorry, I only moved here a few weeks ago!" They laughed and one of them said, "Oh, yeah, well, we get those every couple of days." Holy crap! If I ever come close to getting jaded about the beauty of this place, I give each and every person reading this blog full permission to slap me. HARD.

I had to go out to the top of the stairs to get a picture of the makai (seaward) half. It's kind of faint, but you can see that it really is a complete 'bow ;-)

And here's a close-up of the mauka (mountain) end. Look how it even tints the hills behind it!!

Just a few minutes later, both rainbows had faded and my groceries were in danger of spoiling :-) Sigh...

In the continuing saga of organizing and making the apartment feel more like home, I've been searching and searching for floor cushions to arrange around the coffee table for guest seating. There isn't a dining table except for the one out on the lanai, but if I have people over I don't want to make them sit on the lovely but hard stone floor. It's the kind of table that has a shelf underneath it, but the dimensions are kind of odd for most standard cushions, and I wanted them in a shade of red to go with the futon cover I brought from Boston. Mom and I had found some cute ones at Target when we went during the Whirlwind Weekend of Relocation(TM), but they didn't have four of the same kind. Well, I went to Target this past Saturday with a girl I met through the program - she's living with her parents while in grad school, and has use of their car. She had some things to get and asked me if I wanted to come along. Lo and behold, I found four of the same cushions, in a perfect shade of red, and they're exactly the right dimensions to store underneath the table, with just enough space to spare for all my board games!

Here's a picture of the futon with the coffee table and cushions out. I love how well the reds match! Now to find a slipcover for the armchair...I sure hope I can find one I like!

Dell has finally shipped out the CPU for my new desktop (that's the "brains" of the computer). The flatscreen 22" monitor arrived from Newegg.com several weeks ago, but it's taken a long time for the CPU to be built because of the high demand from the new school year starting. It will be arriving much earlier than the most recent ETA, which was the 24th, so I'll give them that. I've been busy enough what with schoolwork and social activities, but I miss my TV shows! See, the CPU has a TV Tuner, so the cable from the wall can plug directly into that and the CPU will hook up to the monitor, but without the CPU, I've been TV-less. I watched the premiere of America's Next Top Model online last week, but if all goes according to plan, I'll be able to watch this week's episode on my beautiful monitor/TV!

Sorry for all the ugly wires and stuff. I've cleaned all of that up since this picture was taken :-)

If you count from the first full day I was here, today marks exactly one month that I've been living in Honolulu. It has gone by really quickly, mostly because it's all been really fun and interesting. I could be sitting in an apartment somewhere near Groton, CT, waiting for Eamon to finish Boot Camp, and then we could live together while he completes training schools, but as much as I miss him and want to be with him more than anything, I know this isn't forever. And I get to live in a beautiful place while I prepare for a career. That's a trade-off I can live with for a little bit.

A lot of random stuff

When I was posting all those pictures of the apartment last time, I completely forgot to include any of the bedroom! I really like how it's coming together. I love this blanket/sheet set. I've even taken to making the bed every day, which is astonishing, just because it looks so great when it's all tidy. And it's such a huge bed (California King, which is even bigger than regular King) that if I don't make it, almost the whole room is in disarray!

Here's one of the closet, mid-organization. I think I'll get everything to fit okay.

And it's not home until I've got the "Sarah's Kitchen" magnet on the refrigerator. Guarded by a pair of vikings, of course.

Last Saturday, I went on a snorkeling excursion organized by the Leisure Center on campus - $20 got me fins, a snorkel and mask, and transportation. We went to a popular spot on the North Shore called Shark's Cove, which despite the name was bereft of sharks, but by no means bereft of interesting fish and coral formations. Getting into the water was tricky, however. I got my shin thoroughly torn up after being picked up by a particularly powerful wave that came crashing onto the rock-strewn shore. But once that little obstacle had been overcome, the water was (relatively) calm and it was possible to just paddle around enjoying the scenery. I brought a disposable underwater camera, and got a few good shots, but even though I had the pictures put on a CD when I got them developed, I don't have a CD drive yet so I can't upload them! But as soon as my new computer arrives, I promise to post the good ones. After we had our fill of fish - not literally, c'mon people! - we headed to a nearby beach that's a sea turtle haven. There weren't any up on the sand, but someone spotted a veritable giant in the water, just a few feet out. They had told us about this little detour ahead of time, so I had saved a few shots on my camera. I ran over to see if I could get some pictures, but unfortunately none of them really came out. I do have a terrific "eye-picture" (Mom's term) of the turtle's huge form silhouetted in a wave as it crested. Magnificent. And the turtle was entirely unperturbed by all the people clamoring for a good view - at one point it floated close enough to brush against my leg with a flipper!

After the excitement of the turtle, we all needed some shave ice to calm our poor nerves (a la Mrs. Bennet). You could get three flavors on one cone, so I had passionfruit, guava and strawberry. YUM!!! Shave ice was always a tradition on our family trips to Kauai and it brought me back instantly. I will have to island-hop over to Kauai sometime soon - I really miss it.

This weekend has been full too, thanks again to the Leisure Center. Yesterday was the first in a series of five classes in Hula, which was a blast. Today I went on a hike to the Makapu'u Tide Pools. There was a light drizzle in our faces all the way up the paved road to the trailhead, then full-on rain as we clambered down the trail, which was more like a cliff-face with switchbacks and butt-slides. The tide pools were deep enough to swim in - and why not, since we were soaked to the skin already? Once the rain stopped it was quite pleasant to dip in and admire the microcosm of aquatic life - fish, anemones, the like. The coolest part was the double-blowhole, dubbed the Dragon's Nostrils (the roar that comes before the spray does sound quite a bit like a dragon...y'know, if they were real).

I stood there for I don't know how long trying to get a good picture, but the waves weren't cooperating and all I got was this one. It gives you an idea, but it's pretty pathetic compared to what it's capable of. Whenever my back was turned or I had already put my camera away, there were these dazzling, twenty-foot-high spouts. Stupid Mother Nature.

Here's a picture I took as we started the ascent up the cliff, so you can see how much of a vertical climb it is!

And here's some really great news - I landed a paying gig! I'm the newest soprano section leader at St. Mark's Episcopal Church of Honolulu! I am so, so excited about this opportunity. I'm really looking forward to honing my leadership skills in a musical setting. It looks to be a very welcoming, open-minded congregation (they'd kind of have to be to hire a Jewish section leader, right?) and the choirmaster is really nice. All this and it'll help pay the bills!

I haven't written much about the weather here, except how it made for an extremely wet hike today, but it's been gorgeous. You're not going to believe this, but I actually like it when I hear rain falling, because I know just how briefly it'll hang around. It's not like Boston rain at all. First of all, the air is warm, so the rain is too, and it really does come and go, whereas Boston rain just sits for days at a time and makes everything cold and miserable. Here, I'll peek outside and see rain, and five minutes later I'll look again and the clouds are completely blown over, and everything's already dry. Hallelujah!

In the process of unpacking all those piles of boxes, I came across a framed copy of this picture of Eamon and me from back in '05. It was taken as an afterthought when I was getting headshots done in anticipation of my audition for Guys and Dolls. The photographer crammed a whole studio setup (backdrops, lighting equipment, the works) into that tiny apartment; this was the one across the street from our most recent place. Both of us have changed since it was taken, but Eamon's has been more drastic:

My mother-in-law Kitt took this on the day Eamon shipped out. Isn't the change almost arresting?? And he looks so determined and serious taking his oath. I'm sure he's changing even more every day, now that the Navy has him in their clutches (did I say that? I meant, now that he's in Basic...) I'm not feeling too charitable towards the Navy right now, but if I write about it here it'll just make me angry again, so suffice it to say I'll be having words with them after the holiday. If they'll even give me a number where I can talk to someone who matters, that is.

I hope everyone has a lovely, relaxing Labor Day. Me, I'll probably be working on the two papers due this week, but I've recreated enough this weekend for a month of Labor Days, so it's okay :-)

Short video of the bumblebee from previous post

Confidential to David Meadow: Ohhhhh, he's washing!!!