So.Many.Boxes...

Hey-oh! Mid-week update from the husband type person. Cause, ya' know, just cause! I can. Because I can.

So, this past weekend we definitely enjoyed the beach time, as I am sure you saw.

This week Deanna has had to participate in the CFL course (Canadian Football League) where she will be training to be a member of the Edmonton Eskimos, I think the idea is that she will be trying out as a kicker, but could be decent in the passing game as well... (yea, yea, it doesn't stand for that.. but she will tell you all about it over the weekend, so.. w/e)..

Monday. Deanna left for work.. Aloha Furniture guys came and picked up the temporary stuff exactly when they said they would.. then I waited in an empty apartment for the Royal Hawaiian Movers guys to arrive..

and waited..

and..

OK, to be fair, I was told they could come by between 10-12.. and they arrived at 1225.. so they were not THAT late?... er, or something. The truck arrives of course at the exact same time as a guy who was bringing over a couch/chair set that I was buying from him for our lanai.. it's actually VERY similar to the couch we have/had that is currently residing in Ohio with the in-laws.. not sure of its authenticity, but it was very affordable Danish looking couch and chair set...

 So, I had to hurry and pay the guy, and in my rush did not until later realize that he said that some of the straps had come off.. Much later (like the next day) I actually took a second to investigate the situation, most of the chairs and most of the couch have most of their straps.. but he provided the materials (as you can see on the one chair) to replace the straps, so I guess I have a small project to take care of.. you know... after all the unpacking and whatnot.

So, ok. The movers are there, they give me the inventory list of all the boxes that are in our pack.. blah blah.. they read off numbers as I check off the list, etc.. they unload the one crate.. and then.. Oh, yea, the one dude has to go back to Honolulu to get our other two crates! For serious? Yes, for serious.. so.. me and the younger guy, just kind of chill (and by chill, I mean, bring in the boxes that have been off-loaded from the truck and then I proceed to at least open up the kitchen boxes and start putting away plates, etc.

Sidebar.. the cats really, really, REALLy did not like all the commotion and hullabaloo going on at our residence..

Audra's go to hidey-hole when all else fails, behind the toilet
dunno if she feels safe there because when we took her
in we kept her in the bathroom for 2 weeks.. or what

 We probably waited an hour, maybe more, I did not really look at the time for fear of being upset about it all.. So, finally, the guy who stayed, was talking about how he really hoped that his co-worker hurried up, cause he was getting hungry (oh, and they do not usually take breaks, because they do not get paid by the hour, they get paid by how many jobs they do.. which as I thought about it, is a guaranteed way to get the crappiest quality of work out of your employees.. but w/e, they were both fine and courteous, etc)... ANYWAY.. I offered to make him a sandwich.. and then his co-worker

Behind the tub of protein powder
inside a kitchen cabinet. SAFE

showed up.. so I made two sandwiches.. yea.. cause I'm nice or something, or Mother Hubbard re-incarnate.. yes, let's go with that..

Boxes then made their way to the apartment and it looked like this...

So many stinkin' boxes

At least I got the bed started (and later
completed much before bed time 

Yup, welcome to my task for the week

so, you get the idea.. I got to unpack and unpack and unpack and unpack until finally.. it all is done.. or not, because there actually is enough stuff that I'm pretty sure we do not have enough room. Well, not with our current furniture possession.

We will probably need to purchase a bookshelf, some sort of kitchen island/butcher blocky type thingy, a desk, and then probably some sort of coffee table type for the lanai. Possibly, if not probably, will also purchase at some point a small dining set for outside.

Well, I cleaned, I opened boxes, I crammed as much as I could into every corner, and stuffed as much under the bed as I could (hooray for space-saver bags!) and I think, for the most part, there will not be that much that we have to get rid of, of course, some collections of things could certainly be scrupulously thinned from their currently voluminous numbers, for instance my baseball cards, books that I'm not sure we necessarily need all of, and tons of clothes could all use to be paired down. Ultimately, by today, however, the apartment is in much more reasonable order.

Yay, clean-ish and mostly box free (at least, a lot more box free than it had been)

and all the boxes.. which once I have
unpacked everything, I call Royal
Hawaiian and they come pick them
up, so that's a plus

Um, that's really about it. In the end, as much work as it is to unpack, it's extremely boring and not really that interesting to read about.. certainly nothing amazing to discuss.. I mean.. I hooked up the tv, so I was able to watch Netflix while I unpacked, so that was neat. I discovered that if I put the Internet Router on top of the subwoofer for the soundbar system, the shielding perhaps.. blocks the signal from the router and I get no more internet.. Also, we have re-purposed our side board as a TV/entertainment center.. (you can't quite see that from the panoramic photo.. also, not seen in the photo, is the stack of 10 boxes of books/vhs/pictures/baseball/football cards/etc that is stacked and hiding behind the door... 

The good news, is the cats are happy with our stuff back. They are back to sleeping at our feet at night (mostly) and are doing much less hiding and skulking about than they had been initially.. I guess the furniture did not completely lose their smell while in transit.

Tikti gets a chair

 So, yea, not the most riveting blog post ever.. but it is a small update in our fabulous? life? Yes. Life, it goes on... whether you live in paradise, or not.

and Audra gets a chair

OH!.. and then this happened.. like just now, as I was blogging... Audra has too much hops.

Beach Bummin'

Not that I'm trying to rub it in anyone's face or anything like that!

Aloha again!  I have finally returned to the land of the living from the deep mental void that is the advancement exam.  For those who don't know, every six months, we are required to take a three-hour exam that counts as a certain percentage toward our promotion.  The problem is that with the timing of our move, I basically didn't start studying until about three weeks before the test, so I really had to hit cram time.  Plus, my exam fell on the morning of 9/11, so we were told to not only allow time for parking, but also to allow time to get through the gate.  I woke up at 4:00am for the test so I could have good coffee, a good breakfast, and time to really wake my brain up before the test, plus still have time to get to the exam site.

I had Stephen drive me so that parking wasn't an issue.  We had a half-hour drive from Kailua, so we left at 5:15am, figuring that with extra gate-time I could at least be in by 6.  Nope.  We were in the parking lot, in a space, at 5:45am, and the test didn't start until 7am.

My paperwork got messed up in the course of the move, so when I finally got my worksheet that was supposed to have the number of points I've amassed from my evaluations, awards, and education, it was all blank.  So when I got done with the test at 10am, I got to work on getting the paperwork I needed over to Personnel Support Detachment so I could get the points that I'm supposed to get.  I'm so close to getting promoted now that I'll have to look over the final score sheet closely when it gets released in November and make sure I'm not missing any points.  It could mean the difference between staying E-4 and getting bumped up to E-5.

Somebody also messed up where general military training is concerned, so instead of getting the afternoon off, we had to stick around after lunch for some training.  Blech.

But that was last week, and Stephen covered for me while I slowly nurtured my injured brain cells back to health.

This week, things finally started to come together.  After crabbing a bunch to my coworkers about not hearing anything about household goods or the car, one person told me to just go down to the car lot and see if they would release it.  I got permission to leave work early on Wednesday, since technically PCSing is work, and the shipping company had it to us in 5 minutes.

With a half-inch of water in the trunk.

They gave us the name of the detailing place to contact, and they will cover the cost of cleaning out the trunk and the air conditioning to make sure there is no mold, because who knows how long the water has been in the trunk.

Yesterday, I got an e-mail saying that our car was ready to be picked up.

*facepalm*

Thursday was mostly a day off.  The band decided to have a hail-and-farewell fiesta lunch from 11am-1pm to welcome the three newest members of the band, myself included, and say goodbye to two members who are transferring to other bands.  I suggested that Stephen and I go to Hanauma Bay early in the morning and see if the fishes and the tourists were any better.

Success!

We got there at 6:45am, and it was just starting to get really crowded when we left at 9.  The water was exceptionally clear and the fishies were gigantic compared to the ones we've seen anywhere else.  We also saw a wider variety than we'd seen in the past.  Here are a few of the highlights:

Big Ornate Butterflyfish

 

 

Initial phase Bird Wrasse (a.k.a. juvenile)

Terminal phase Bird Wrasse (adult male)

Another terminal phase Bird Wrasse

A Saddleback Butterflyfish and its mate.  Butterflyfish are usually seen in pairs.

A poignant image of a pair of Threadfin Butterflyfish

This week's Honu.  He was eating a lot and didn't mind our presence.

Fortunately we didn't get a picture when he pooped in our general direction.  I guess there's a first time for everything....!

And to top it all off, I saw this guy actually swimming through the water before he squirmed into his hidey-hole and got all ferocious and hissy:

Whitemouth Moray Eel

If you're interested in seeing more pictures of fish, Stephen took about 110, so it really wasn't worth trying to post all of them!  Here is the link to Stephen's album, so click on that and see all the fishies!

Other than that, we've mostly been bumming around the beaches.  Yesterday, we mostly spent time playing racquetball (Stephen), practicing (the both of us), and grocery shopping.  Then it was nap-time and beach-time.

Today we caught the Browns game, which I'm still not sure is worth the 6:30am wake up time on the weekend, but at least it was disappointingly over by 10am.  We thought we would try our hand at surfing, but there were no good waves.

We tried going to Hickam Beach on the Air Force side of the base, but we were quickly reminded why we didn't live in military housing.  I won't say anything more about that, because none of it is nice.

So we went out near Waikiki and parked at the Hale Koa Resort, the military hotel in the heart of it all.  Actually, it was really great!  It was only a little crowded, and there were facilities to rent kayaks, surfboards, stand-up paddleboards, and even ridiculous ocean-going floating tricycles.  There was a Mai Tai stand and a stand where I got not the best shrimp cocktail in the world, but it was shrimp cocktail nonetheless.  Oh, and it had a pretty amazing view of Diamondhead Crater.  We simply bummed around, bobbed in the water, sat on the beach and read books, and other relaxing stuff like that.  I wouldn't mind staying there for a small stay-cation because it charges based on paygrade.  Normally the garage is $37 a day, but since we're lowly E-4s, we only got charged $5.  Same goes for the hotel rooms.

View of the beach from the Hale Koa.  Who can argue?

So that pretty much sums up our week.  I guess I need to throw in a few gratuitous photos of Tikti doing his stuff.  This week, it's been walking around outside in a cat harness on a leash.  And apparently laying on Stephen when we have the A/C running...

And there you have it!  Aloha for now and mahalo for stopping by!

Swim with Honu

I'm a lying liar who wears lying pants that catch on a fire of lies (of course I hang them from the telephone wire). Deanna is cooking food. Not just food, like what we are going to eat for dinner, but also the foods that she is going to eat for several lunches this week. Yea, being a foodie is a pain, or rather, the desire to not have to make a lunch EVERY stinkin' night is strong in this one. So, she is cooking. The foods. I am blogging. The blog.

And. It. Starts. Let me detail our week for you.

Um.. we did stuff, and then other stuff, and then some more stuff. Cool?

Yea, I thought so.

The End.





OK OK OKAAAY, I will blog for real and stop being the kinda weird weird-o that I am. But first, here's a picture to make you say "aaawwe" and then one to make you say, "eeeewwwww"

 So yea, the cats are doing well. FYI - and full disclosure here, this blog post will be less "here is what we did each day" and more a general impression of the week, with a plethora of pictures from the weekend. Why? You may ask. Because. Um, basically, because neither Deanna nor I really remember the exact sequence of the week. I mean, we remember some of the main talking points like, she took her E-5 exam on Thursday and I had to drop her off stupid early in the morning for that. Or, I had a job interview to work as an MWR attendant at the Marina at the Marine Corps Base Hawai'i (MCBH henceforth), and such. However, the particulars, the exact details, well, Deanna lost the details and particulars in the vast number of hours studying for the anathema that is the Navy Rating

This fella greeted us one morning, so I greeted him with my
flip-flop, crushing his middle sections, then flicked him out
the door and did not see him again (thankfully!)

Exam... So, that superlatively stupendous sasquatch of an "exam" basically fried her brain and caused her much emotional and physical, but mostly emotional pain and much fatigue on the brain. THAT BEING SAID, things did happen this week. Oh, they happened indeed.

For instance. We definitely did not receive our Household Goods. This is generally a source of frustration as there are some of our household goods that we would like to regain possession of. For example, we would like our grill back. We have had a myriad of fish options to consume via purchase at the commissary, but no grill to grill the fishes on. Poaching a fish is nice, but grilling a fish is MORE nice.

We also have received ZERO word on the whereabouts of our vehicle (that sporty little Mazda Miata Mx-5 that would be OH SO fun to drive around Hawai'i). This is slightly more troubling, because we have received word on our HHGs, specifically, we received an email detailing that they are in Honolulu, in a port somewhere, waiting to pass through customs, please wait for 8-10 'whenever we feel like it' days to contact you. HOWEVER, with the car, we have a confirmation number that mysteriously yields zilch when inputted in their 'every-so-helpful-not-so-helpful' website. Of course, I called and after spelling Deanna's first and last names at least 3,000 times, was told that I would receive an email detailing the information that the receptionist was forwarding to 'those who could help me'... and I got an email that confirmed that "BRIZGF, DEANNA.." info will be obtained.. Ef. My. Life. So, I get to make that phone call again 'WEEEEEeeee..." *facepalm*

Erm, the cats, right, I was talking about the cats, and then I got, distracted by telling you other things. The cats are getting along fairly well, for those who wish to know. Audra seems to like to hide most of the day, but then is out and about when we get home. Tikti kinda just is Titki, you know, all the time. Either he's too smart, too dumb, too lazy, or too old to care about all the moving and being scared, so he just adjusts and lazes around like he owns everything. Oh, and I took him out on a leash and a harness out on our lanai and he pretty much loved it. I.E. He loved lazing around outside just as much as he loves lazing around inside! So, I will take a picture this week when I take him out to sit with me again (it will happen).

The position I interviewed for, the manager told me it was between me and one other person. So, I suppose that COULD happen. I received the "no, we no like you" email from the bank, which was fine, it was kind of a far drive for that little pay. Working at the marina would only be 30 hrs/wk at ~$11.20/hr, but I can ride my bike there. So, no, not big-time money, but definitely a nice little 'more than part-time not quite full-time' job to float us along with a little extra spending money until I can (hopefully) land something worthwhile.

Thursday Deanna took her test and then we had beer at the house and then we went to a South American restaurant called "Cactus" which is in Kailua. So, of course we walked down. The food was really quite good. We ordered guacamole and a few drinks. Deanna got a duck dinner (forget everything that came with it, but it was quite good) and I got a pork shoulder. The highlight of the pork shoulder was probably the glazed or grizzled or something skin that tasted like arteries clogging. Which I assume that tastes like heaven, because it means you are going to die sooner. It was amazing. Then we got dessert, because, when you are stressed about a test, that's what you do. (she was stressed, I just like an excuse for dessert). Deanna got a dessert that had apple bananas and I got the tropical fruit empanada, and it was all too good to describe. So, you will just have to visit and try them for yourselves!

Saturday morning was a mess. I had it all set to go to the Pearl Harbor Gym and play racquetball, while Deanna worked out and then practiced... but.. the Pearl Harbor Gym was closed, because of a 'water outage' or whatever. So we went down to AMR (don't worry what it is, just another military area) to check that gym, in the hopes that perhaps the racquetballers went there. FAIL. They also suffered from this 'water outage' so we went to the Navy Band band building and Deanna practiced and I watched some college football and read. (sidebar, I picked up another book, some Star Wars book, cause, why not? Also, I requested the next books in the series that I was reading by Terry Goodkind, cause, why not? and am beating Deanna in 'library books completed so far' 2.5-.5 ... soooo, yup). Then I got the brilliant idea to text the rballers and find out if racquetball was happening. It was, at the Tripler Army Medical Center Gym. K. Sounds great. So we went there, Deanna did her workout, I was awful at racquetball (as in, I actually played really badly, comparatively to how bad I normally play) and I ended sweating a lot. The gym at Tripler is lucky that the Army hospital is RIGHT there, because you would think that air circulation and air conditioning was some kind of new fangled technology that only fancy places have, because the gym definitely DID NOT have it! O.M.freakin'.G I have not sweat like that in a while. After that we went home to grab supplies and change to go to Turtle Bay to snorkel. =)

 So, these are not necessarily in order, but they are close enough. Basically, in case you do not know, Turtle Bay is on the north shore of O'ahu, so we took the long scenic route along the King Kamehameha highway and traveled through many little idyllic Hawai'ian villages which were all sorts of full of beauty and quaint-ness. It takes an hour, not so much because it is far, but because it is never more than 35 MPH at any moment and often the limit is 25 MPH.  As you can see on the map, it actually is kind of far. I think total it was 35 miles, so, as you can imagine, going 25-35 the whole way, it takes you a while to get there.

Common Long-nosed Butterflyfish

When we got to Turtle Bay, we actually missed it, because the fact that it was a resort kind of somehow did not fully sink in (yea, even though we google mapped "turtle bay resort") and we drove right by.. Buuutt.. we figured it out, turned around, parked, unloaded our gear and got on with the snorkeling. Here's some of what we saw.

 The "Honu" or sea turtle was clearly the star of our adventure on Saturday. Such amazing creatures. Deanna grabbed my arm while we were snorkeling, so I surfaced, and she girggled "blblb-tuttle-bjblbl" So, I whipped around and followed her to this guy. Then Deanna went and swam with him a bit and he played along, always keeping his distance, never straying to far, much like how Audra does her whole "I'm gonna let you pet me, but I'm not really gonna let you pet me, but gosh, I really want you to pet me, but I refuse to let you pet me" dance.

Deanna tries to reach out and introduce herself

So that was pretty much the dance that played out. Deanna wanted to touch the turtle, but of course, it is illegal to harass the turtles, so she did not. If she did, I would imagine that he was slimy, and leathery, and probably slimy.

And then with a wink he prepares to go back up the chimney
Or swim off to where we will not go.

 So, we got to see a sea turtle at Turtle Bay, I will admit, this is not particularly surprising, however, it was exciting!

Humuhumu-nukunuku-a-pua'a
Reef Triggerfish

Lagoon Triggerfish

Moorish Idol

Ornate Butterflyfish 

One of my favorite pictures. A Saddle
Wrasse. He so is smiling =)

This beaut batted its eyes at me a few times
and asked for a close up (=

Because it has a rainbow, and Deanna
must picture ALL THE RAINBOWS!!!

Purple sky at Turtle Bay

The sun setting at Turtle Bay

So one of the neat things about Turtle Bay, versus, say, Kailua, is it actually has a view of the setting sun, so, of course we went ahead and clamored over jagged petrified coral that jutted out and helps create the fishy habitat that is Turtle Bay and helps rape our feet, because it is jagged and spikey and not so happy on bare feet, so that we could scope out a killer sunset. We then went ahead and drove back down the Kamehameha (Henceforth to be referred to as "the Kam") and halted abruptly at a little conglomeration of food trucks. We had some delicious food truck dinner (I had some BBQ beef and Deanna had Spicy Garlic Shrimp from the Thai truck) with our bodies weary from the workout and the snorkeling, our bodies full from dinner and our minds happy from the snorkeling and sunset, we headed home for the evening, calling it a day!

Sunday = football. So, we woke up early once again (0630) and drove down to Kahuna's on MCBH to watch the game. We ordered the standard coffee and breakfast buffet and hoped for a better showing from our Browns. What a stressful game that was! You should know by now, but if you do not, the Browns beat the Saints on a field goal with seconds remaining. I will say the Saints fans in attendance were not happy. However, everyone else who had been watching other games, was pulling for the Browns and that WAS nice =)

After the game we headed down to Pearl Harbor so both of us could practice. We did. Then we grocery shopped at Hickam (air force base) then we went home. Then we decided what the heck, let's go for a hike! (post-Deanna 30 minute corpse pose)

More or less the
'entrance' to our hike

A bird, on the tip to of the bamboo

 We ended up, without entirely realizing it, hiking to a waterfall. There are many waterfalls on O'ahu, but this is the one we hiked to. It was our first O'ahu hike, and for that, it will likely always be remembered, and that is what makes it special. Located just off the Pali, we parked our cars and entered through a fence that said something about "restricted area, hunting area" or something. We had read on that googlez that this was long ago a hunting area, but not really anymore, so we were fine. As someone pointed out though, Deanna would have been safe anyway, what with her Day-Glo shoes and all. There was not a clearly defined path the whole time. Sometimes, I was not even sure we were on a path. At first the path was unclear and shooting through bamboo shoots and then it was a huge pathway

which looked like it had been cleared away for the power lines that swept over us. Then it went back into the forest/jungle whatever you'd like to call it, and meandered along or at least near the stream, until finally we hit what we thought might be the main attraction in this little waterfall thing.

Pretty mountains

But that could not possibly be what the path meant to lead us to. We did some investigating and found a path off to the left and followed (hindsight being 20/20, if we had followed the cement barrier and then hopped on the rocks in the stream, we would have saved us some time from meandering all the way left of the stream and then quite a ways back, but hey, adventures are fun!)

And then we just kept climbing. And climbing and climbing and climbing and climbing up and up, higher and 

The little falls, this can't be it, right?

Kind strangers take the best pictures =) 

Again with smiles =)

As I ascend to the waterfall

Me posing by the waterfall

Deanna poses at the waterfall

all the way up, and there was the waterfall. Just as we were thinking, "we better just decide to turn around in a half hour, so we don't get caught in the woods at night" we hit the falls. They were pretty cool. And cold. The temperature was easily 10-15 degrees (or more, maybe?) than it was when we got back to Kailua.

And that, that was our week. Still have every day bullarky going on. BUT. Still live in paradise.

Honu are pretty awesome.