Nani, that means 'beautiful'

Soooo....

Deanna is studying for her E-5 exam, so you are stuck with me, the grammatically challenged husband. The good news is, I get the opportunity to change up this here blog and make it, er.. like, me-ish. The bad news is, if you read it, well, you have to read it.

So, here it goes.

This past week was fairly boring ultimately. We did some semi-interesting type things. For instance, we got Hawai'i Library cards, because, we own enough books and the library has free books that you can borrow and read and then return. Who knew? So Deanna took out the Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy colossal edition (or something like that, it is the edition that has all the books) and I picked up the next book in the "Sword of Truth" Series (starts with Wizard's First Rule), The Omen Machine by Terry Goodkind. I know, I know, you are thinking "slow down Stephen, don't get crazy." So if this sounds scandalous or too much for you to handle, depart via the exit signs to the left. Or was it to the right? Oh, just hit back on your browser and move along with your day.

Did you stay?

Awesome. Cause, of course, there are pictures later on, I promise =)

Ok, so we had our "lazy day" Tuesday and then Deanna had to go to work on Wednesday, to be honest.. I cannot really remember much from the day, so let's just say I took her to work, filled out some online job applications and then picked her up. Because, that's pretty much been my life these past few weeks, so it sounds about accurate. Somewhere in all of this, I bought a bike, tried to register the bike, was told I need a 'bill of sale' and cannot register the, blah, blah, blah, bureaucratic whatever. You get the idea.

Thursday was exciting because I swore into the Hawai'i Army National Guard! Yay. It was nothing crazy, just sign some paper work and then have a Warrant Officer have me recite an oath, right hand raised, at attention style. No biggie really. Unfortunately, the Hawai'i National Guard had some cutbacks so there is no drill for units in September, so I don't get to meet the 111th Army Band until October =(. Which will be just in time to get to the range (they are doing their marksmanship training during October drill, so that's what I will be doing). Driving out to Kapolei to swear in was definitely a pain at first.. Hawai'i seems to have this mantra "if it not broke, I no fix".. so basically as long as it works well enough, meh, it's good. So, I had to drive 1.5 miles east just to get on the H-1 West, who cares? Right? I was able to get to the H-1 West, and that's ALL that matters. So, it's good.. yea, it's good.

Oh! Um, I think Tuesday night we watched Lilo & Stitch, cause, it is in Hawai'i and it is on Netflix and it made sense, and it is a crazy cute movie, etc. =)

Thursday our digital underwater camera arrived, so we of course went snorkeling  (I think, it's actually not clear in my memory if we went snorkeling on Thursday or Friday, but let's just say it was Thursday). We decided since it was close, and we had read that the snorkeling was pretty decent we took the quick drive to Lanikai Beach (about a 5 minute drive, would be 10 minute bike if we both had bikes) and set off for some near the end of the day snorkels. We found some reefs scattered here and there and here are some of the pictures.

Oh, that's not a fish!

Yellow Stripe Goatfish methinks, could be wrong

Blurry pic of a Goldring surgeonfish

Little blurry Threadfin Butterflyfish

It's some kind of red fish that likes to hide, we can't make up
our minds, we even took two fish books out from the library
and still cannot decide... =/

So.. at first glance they look like Moorish Idols,
however, upon further reading and inspeciton
I suspect that they are Pennant Butterflyfish
which are often called 'the poor man's moorish idol'

Spotted Trunkfish or Spotted Puffer. Thought it was just the Trunkfish and not the Puffer
But on further inspection of the pic, it appears the fin is more like pictures I see of puffers.
So.. not sure, but that's how it goes. Either way, cute fishy!

Sooo, Friday. I had an interview with Bank of Hawai'i in the morning after dropping Deanna off at work, and after we decided to do an early morning workout. The interview went well enough, it was for a teller position and their open question was "if they were making a movie on the life of Stephen Ondak what would the trailer look like?" at that point I pretty much wanted to throw the chairs in the conference room for asking such a ridiculously unimportant and irrelevant question. But hey, who am I to question the ways of interviewing? UGH. Anyway, Deanna had a half-ish day, so I picked her up, we went to the Ala Moana mall to exchange a few things and then went home (maybe actually did the snorkeling Friday, but are you really going to complain about seeing fishy pics a paragraph early?)

Saturday was a blah kind of day. Except not really, because it involved getting up at 0500!! Deanna ran some kind of 8k that I did not definitely DID NOT run. She ran it and then it was over. Then I played racquetball while she practiced her pain stick thing (aka - clarinet). Racquetball was good, lots of doubles. We gave some guys rides home and then we went home. Deanna died. Errr... napped for a really, really, really, REALLY long time. Like, at one point I told her I was going to go to the library, cause I finished up The Omen Machine, and she said "ok, don't be long, because I'm about to wake up" and when I got back with fishy books and the next book in that series (The Third Kingdom) she slept for another 1.5 hours after that.. yea, it was one of those kind of days, just lay around and do nothing, because ya just don't feel like doing a thing. So. Don't. Do. A. Thing.

Sunday we had NFL Breakfast. What? Yea, HST (Hawai'i Standard Time) being what it is (that is -6 hours from the east coast at the moment) NFL games start at 0700.... So, what do you do? Go to the Marine Base where they have a place called "Kahuna's" that has like 20 bagillion televisions with all the games and $8 breakfast buffet! That's what you do.

Oh, and the Browns lost, but you probably knew that.

Then we look at some cars and got our time wasted at a dealership, and couldn't make up mind and decided to just wait and figure out when we were going to get our car (yea, not interesting, but, it happened)..

So, to make up for that frustration, we went to the beach. I know, I know you are thinking, "gosh guys, don't you think you need to cool it with the whole 'we live right next to the beach and can go to it whenever we want' thing?" and no, no we don't. So, we snorkeled and looked at the amazing beauty around us and decided all is good in the world and went home and ate some dinner which included fresh salmon. And Deanna thinks she has a cold. But all is STILL good with the world. Pictures below =) Happy times, indeed. Remember, the world it is nani.

We tried a different section of Lanikai, and wholly moly we found reefs. Like, lots of reefs. I took 200+ pictures, lots of them not so good, so here are the good ones.

Threadfin Butterflyfish

Deanna Brizgysfish

Saddle Wrasse

Yellowtail Filefish

Perhaps a Fourspot Butterlfyfish

She was like "I'ma pose underz water" and then scraped her
back somefin' fierce on the coral. Yerp.

Yellow Tang!

No, really, I'm ok. Cause snorkelz is fun!

It think it was  squirrelfish, can't see the stripes

 

65% Sure this was a Moorish Idol

Four Yellow Tangs

But first lemme take a selfie

Gosh it's beautiful.

bein' a dork

So, there you have it. Thanks for suffering through my 'another week in paradise' blog post. Deanna will likely return at her regularly schedule date and time next week, so there's at least that to look forward to!

Ta-ta for now!