Life and hurricanes

I guess it's been a little bit since I updated.  I'm sure all of you were aware that Hurricane Ana threatened us with the apocalypse, and you've been waiting with baited breath for an update.

Well, here it is: we survived.

All that happened was a slightly heavy rain that lasted through the weekend.  I still ended up working on Saturday night for the Navy birthday ball.  We were in the Sheraton Waikiki, and let me tell you, the sight of the angry waves of the Pacific was something to behold!  We didn't get to behold very much of it, though, because mostly we were playing honors and ceremonial music.  The four-star admiral, the commander of the Pacific Fleet, loved us, though, and that was super-cool.  When the master-of-ceremonies went through all the thank-yous for the Navy ball committee, and then at the end a four-star admiral yells, "Thank the band!" you feel pretty special.  That moment made getting home at midnight worth it.

But really, it rains here every single night.  I think it was Thursday night that we had a torrential downpour that woke both of us up and even set off a car alarm for the entire rest of the night.  I think the car was getting attacked by kukui nuts.

It's raining right now.  Did I say it rains every single night, because it really does.  That's why the windward side is so beautiful!

Thank goodness Stephen didn't make me get up on Sunday to watch the Browns game, but at the same time, I'm pretty sure that since I wasn't watching the game or wearing my lucky jersey, we lost.  Ugh.

I spent the day working on some sewing.

You know what's cool about Facetime?  I actually Facetimed Mom about why I couldn't make my sewing machine work, and I could show her on video up close what I was doing, and she could sit at her sewing machine simultaneously and show me what to do.  I had a moment of being totally floored by what technology can do.  Here I am, literally half a world away from family, but I can Facetime and have a total mother-daughter moment.  Awwwwwww.

That moment resulted in this pillow:

For just sewing a bunch of squares together, I was pleasantly surprised.  The best part was when it actually fit over the skazzy old World Market pillow it was intended to gussy up.

Yeah, the hurricane passed so far south of us that all we got was steady rain.  It wasn't even hard rain.

Since I had to work on Saturday, we had Monday off, and by then the hurricane had passed and the weather was nice and clear.  We thought we would take a chance at snorkeling around Lanikai, because why not?

Here I'm happy about snorkeling

Sad because it's too murky to see

So, as you can probably tell by the lack of pictures, the water was a little too murky for us to see anything.  We ended up just laying out on the beach for the last little bit of daylight, which these days seems to be around 6pm and getting earlier every day.






The rest of the week was fairly uneventful until I went to take a lesson with a clarinetist in the Hawai'i Symphony.  While I was there, the top of our Miata got slashed.

That's our duct-tape job to keep the rain out since it rains every night without fail

You can see the nice duct tape job we did on the T-shaped slashes in our car.  Nothing was stolen.  As I was driving back from the lesson, I could hear the vinyl ripping from the wind resistance as I was driving up the Pali highway, so at a traffic light I put the top down.  Just my luck, once I got into the mountains, I hit a torrential downpour and got soaked.  I'm pretty sure I was that person on the road where everyone is laughing and thinking, "Why doesn't she put her top up?"  LOL no.

I talked to some people in the band on Friday who encouraged me to call insurance, and Dad encouraged me to file a police report, so we took care of that on Saturday.  It's just all so dumb.

Actually, I wasn't nearly as bothered by it as Stephen was, but that led to an amazing terrible night's sleep for the both of us.  But like I said, we filed a police report on Saturday because who knows.  At least insurance knows that we did the report.

The top can't be repaired.  It'll have to be replaced for over $1000, but at least insurance covers part of it.  I'm tempted to see if we can wire the thing so it electrocutes the next person who tries to slash it!  :-D

In other news, I had my PRT, my physical readiness test, on Thursday morning, and I passed with flying colors.  I actually maxed out, again, so yay for that.  I also got certified to teach TRX, which is Total (body) Resistance Exercise.  That was kinda cool, too

On Saturday, after we were done practicing and filing the police report, we decided to have a date day and snorkeled out to the Flat Island.  That was such a B.S. swim, I crabbed to Stephen the whole way.  There's nothing like swimming with flippers on and seeing yourself go nowhere because of the tide.  Ugh.

This is my ultimate derp face, because I was hella tired when we were done with that swim!  I'm pretty sure I stopped Stephen about 10 times to let him know I thought that swim was crap.  We didn't even see any good fish.  And the Flat Island is a bird sanctuary, but you can't go in and look around.  There weren't any birds to see anyway.  It was pretty, and it's probably a nice place to picnic, but I'd rather just kayak out there or something.  There were lots of surfers, for what it's worth.  And for what it's worth, where the surfing is good, the snorkeling is bad.  It's just the way the world works.

Stephen sneaked this shot of me just kinda checking out the scenery from the island.  You can't really argue with that, but you also can't argue with any view from anywhere, and most of them don't come with an exhausting swim against a current.  So yeah.






After that was done, and an equally exhausting swim back to the shore (who knew the current could be going against you no matter what direction you went!), we decided to bop down to Lanikai to see some real fishies.  We didn't see anything that was particularly new or exciting, so here is our highlight pic:

I don't know if it's been mentioned before, but as the sun goes down, these fishies turn progressively blacker until they are just black fish with a while spot just above their tail.  It's kinda cool.  You don't really see it happening, but one minute you see that they're white, and the a little bit later you see that they're black with a white spot.  The fish on the very top middle of the picture is a good example of the transition -- that really white spot is going to stay white while the rest of the fish turns black.  Interesting camo.

Later that evening, we went out to celebrate a friend's birthday, so we spent the evening in downtown Honolulu, only a few blocks away from where my car got slashed.  It's a nice neighborhood.  Oh well.

So yep, Stephen and me hanging out with a bunch of the single guys who are stuck in the barracks.  Somehow neither of us gets along with the married couples in the band.  Ah well, livin' the life!  Hey, the food was good and so was the company, so who can argue?

We also finally bought me a bike.  I decided that it was going to happen this week come hell or high water, so we went to The Bike Shop just down the street from us.  I debated between a tweener bike and a super-cute coral Townie.  I ended up going with the tweener.  We rode it down to the Marine base to watch the Browns game this morning!

So there I am with my new bike and my lucky Browns jersey. I say lucky because last time I wore it, the Browns beat the Steelers, and when I wore it today, we won handily (if ugiliy -- is that a word?)  Oh, and notice my helmet.  Safety first!

It's a nice ride with fun trigger shifts, so all-in-all, I'm pretty happy with it.  It will get me wherever I need to go in Hawai'i.  It was about a half-hour ride to the Marine base for the game, and then we did some grocery shopping and put our food in our backpacks.  The weather is finally becoming less hot (I won't dare to say it's cooling off, because it's not, it's really just "less hot"), so with the breeze it was almost bearable!


Oh, and another picture:

This is a quick selfie of us at the Marine Base where we were watching the Browns game.  Notice the aqua ceiling.  It's probably the most popular color in Hawai'i and is an obvious reflection of the aqua seas and skies.  I can't really argue.

Stephen also sent me two pictures of the cats that we have to include, so here they are:

Audra under the ottoman

Tikti on a leash, hunting all the cockroaches

We are slowly getting the last little bit of our stuff taken care of.  There was a big TV stand built on our lanai that Stephen took off this afternoon so we could have more sitting space.  Now that it's getting more comfortable in the evenings, we have enjoyed sitting outside and reading.  I've found that I sleep better when i do that in the evening instead of spending time on computers and whatnot, so that's all good.  Plus, watching our fat cat go after all the lizards and cockroaches is really fun!  We got some bookshelves and got rid of the last of our boxes.  We are well on our way to making our one-room apartment actually feel like a home!

On a final note, it's been a little over 10 years since Stephen and I started dating, so we decided to celebrate (mourn?) the occasion with dinner out at a nice little restaurant down the street.  Gotta love having someone cook fresh fish for you and being able to sit outside comfortably in October!

So that is our life for the time being.  We'll update again next week!

Settling in

Aloooooooooohaaaaaaaaaaa!

It's not just enough to say Aloha.  You have to say it like that, as white as possible, and insist that your audience respond like you're in a classroom of kids and you just said "Good morning, class!" and they responded with a mumbled, "Good morning, miss so-and-so..."

Ah, the awkward attempts of white people to assimilate the surrounding culture.  It often comes across as a mockery, even if they mean it sincerely.

Yes, that means I played another ceremony this week.  It's Navy birthday week!

We are slowly moving in and getting more settled.  Since I am getting a three day weekend for Columbus Day, Stephen and I decided to dig in to the last remaining boxes and determine what will stay and what will go.  Mostly we just had books and clothes, so we got brutal with our decisions and whittled down our belongings even further.

The library is going to love us, and we're going to love them!

We were then able to get a cheap white bookshelf to house all of our remaining books.  I might get a little craftsy with it and see about putting on some doors so that we can hide the piles of photo albums.  I'm also encouraging Stephen to think about getting craftsy and building an easy corner bench that we can put outside for outdoor dining.

Our living space, which Mom refuses to call an apartment, is starting to feel like we're moving in!

We even had time to hang out with the new friends we're making.  One of the bassoon players in my woodwind sextet is very active and has taken to rock climbing.  There's a gym that just moved up to Kailua, so when he goes, he invites us along.  It's actually a lot of fun, if tiring and sometimes frustrating.

Stephen thinks it's cool to take pictures at weird angles.  So I fixed it...

I try to capture the action, not confusing angles!

We decided to take a few pictures of us trying to climb the walls.  Basically at this wall, since it's not very tall, the grips are done like puzzles and you have to get up the wall using only the colored grips for the ending that you're trying to get to.  It makes it a little more mind boggling and we usually end up in discussions about how to climb.  Or usually, I just end up getting halfway up the wall, going "nope" and climbing back down.  Sometimes I fall.


This friend of mine is also very into hiking and trail running, so he invited us to go on a 9-mile hike on Saturday morning.  Stephen really wanted to play racquetball, so he passed, but I decided to go.  I don't know what I was thinking, but I somehow figured 9 miles would take maybe a little over two hours.  Nope.  It took four.  I didn't bring food with me, so I was freaking starving when we were done!  Lesson learned!

The views were worth it, though!

A view from the side of Maunawili trail

A view all the way down to the ocean!

Obligatory selfie!

The idea was to see what the whole 9 mile trail was like so that anyone who is interested can run it as an informal Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving.  We'll do the run in the morning, go home and take a shower, and then reconvene in the afternoon for a truly hard-earned Thanksgiving dinner!

Stephen has no interest in running 9 miles on a trail, and honestly the hike itself had me so sore that I know I would have a lot of training to do if I were going to do that.

With that in mind, I had Stephen look up any real organized Turkey Trot 5Ks.  I did them in Newport on the base, and Stephen and I did a huge one in Washington, D.C. for Thanksgiving.  Apparently the only one on O'ahu is a 10-miler, at which point Stephen said he'd rather just run the 9 miles on the trail!

So I suppose that I have some training up to do!

Today was just a nice, relaxing day that started with breakfast at the junior enlisted club on the Marine Corps base, where we could get nasty eggs and bacon and sausage and waffles and watch the Browns game.  It's become our Sunday morning ritual.  Afterward, I practiced while Stephen organized more of the apartment, and then when I started getting really frustrating, we went to the beach.

The view of the mountains over the water never gets old.  We've been here for exactly two months now, and I still have to stop and go "Wow."

So yeah, all in all, things are falling in to place!

Life bites

Either bites of life, or life bites.  Take your pick.  It could be a little of both!

I suppose the last time Stephen blogged, it was right after he had his first drill weekend, and after I finished what he called the "Canadian Football League."

CFL actually stands for Command Fitness Leader, so I spent a whole week, all five days, learning how to work out, eat healthy, and complete the appropriate piles of military paperwork.  Fun stuff.

It boils down to doing absolutely nothing fun.

Then, as Stephen already told you, he had drill.  Fun stuff.

I had work the following week.  Yep.  Wait, you wanted me to tell you something you didn't already know?!

Well, thanks to Stephen's drill, we had no chance of catching the Blue Angels show on the Air Force base.  So that stunk.

I had a bunch of gigs during the week.  I sat through two ceremonies where chiefs got commissioned as warrant officers and three retirement ceremonies.  It's always fun, in the not fun way, because you can tell who people liked and who they didn't like based on the speeches and their reception.

There's always a reception for these things, and we never once get a cupcake.  Le sigh.  Yes, maybe I DO want a cookie!

On Saturday, we took the car in to get detailed, a.k.a. removing the mold from the half-inch of water that arrived in the trunk.  It was supposed to be a 4-6 hour job since it was a small car, so one of Stephen's racquetball buddies picked us up and gave us a ride back to the base so they could play and I could practice.  After racquetball was over, we went back, and it turned out they were only half done because, hey, it's Hawai'i, and the mold was apparently worse than they expected.  So we got a pretty decent sushi lunch and then hung out at Starbucks.

Why is it that detailing places are in nasty industrial areas with nothing around?

And why is it that so many big cities still don't have acceptable public transportation systems?!  Boston, New York, and D.C. have definitely spoiled me that way.  You want to go somewhere?  Hop on the subway.  Easy day.

In Honolulu, I could catch the bus and take 3 times as long as it would normally take to get anywhere.

No, but seriously, when your traffic jockeys for first with L.A., you really need to think about a better public transportation network.  L.A. and San Fran, I'm also talking to you!  Heck, even Dallas just plopped down a commuter rail.

Le sigh.  Relying on a car all the time has made me a little car-cranky!  Thank goodness it's at least the Miata and is fun to drive!

But I digress.  So detailing the car took until 6pm, at which point there was nothing to do.  The sun sets here around 6:30 since we don't have daylight savings time.

Early to bed and early to rise.  Stephen had drill on Sunday.  Again.  Oh, and I had an emergency gig come up.  Actually, it was kind of cool because it was only 10 minutes long.  We were at Punchbowl Cemetery.

Side note: Punchbowl Crater was named such because of its shape.  Super-creative, guys.  That's so much better than leaving it Puowaina, which means "Hill of Sacrifice" because that's where Hawaiians offered human sacrifices and executed people who violated taboos.  But who wants to hear about that?  Definitely not military people!  Just call it a Punchbowl instead!

Sarcastic rant aside, the gig was for the arrival of an Australian dignitary.  It is customary for dignitaries to pay their respects at the local National Memorial Cemetery when they arrive, so he arrived, we played the appropriate honors, we played the Australian National Anthem, we played the US Anthem, one of our buglers played taps, and then that was it.  We were instructed by the Australian officers to go get some shade and get a drink, preferably a beer, when we were done because they ruined our beautiful Sunday afternoon.

But now try and say all those instructions with an Australian accent!

We also got coins from the Australian Army.  Leave it to the Aussies to have theirs shaped like bottle openers.  That made my day!  Plus we got a full day off on Tuesday in exchange for messing up our weekend!  Normally they'd give us Monday off, but I had to play a ceremony for... a crane.  Not a bird.  The machine.  We decided it was a Deceptacon.  It was a long ceremony in the middle of lunch, so of course none of us were happy.

For a crane.

We played preliminary music and ceremonial music.  For.  A.  Crane.

They did have a traditional Hawaiian opening and invocation, and closed with a Hawaiian blessing.  There was much blowing of conch shells.  It was pretty cool, right up until the haoles (Hawaiian word for white people, and derogatory only if you put enough stank in the inflection) thought it was appropriate to applaud the invocation.  Really?  Just because it wasn't in English and involved conch shells?

Le sigh.

No, the fun really began on Tuesday, when we decided that, after two weeks of nothing fun at all, it was time to go surfing!  Weeeeeee!

We went down to Waikiki to the Hale Koa hotel, where we could rent boards for the military rate.  The waves weren't too big, so we paddled out to where a few people were floating around the break and tried our luck.

But holy cow, so much paddling.  It was far, even from the rock pier.  I thought we were going to swim forever, and you can't even use your feet!  But we finally got there, bobbed around a bit, and then decided to try catching some waves.

Stephen caught on pretty quickly and actually got a few nice, long rides in.  At least they were long compared to the rides in Newport.  I actually rode a wave for a long distance just on my stomach, like I was on a really big boogie board.  Then there were a couple of waves where I caught them, tried to stand up, lost my balance, and fell off.  After one of them, though, I started paddling back, and I saw a wave coming at me that I wasn't going to catch, and was definitely going to break before I could float over it.  Stephen caught it and surfed, and I did the awesome safe way of avoiding the wave by pushing the nose of my board under the wave and letting the wave go over me.

When I surfaced, there was this big wall of white in front of me.

It took a few seconds before I realized that the wave had simply taken me along for the ride.  So there I was, riding the wave on my stomach, backward.  I was waiting for the wave to flip me over, or for the fins on the back and bottom of the surfboard to do their thing and correct me, but no.  I just rode the wave backward.

It was the same one Stephen caught, only apparently I'm so awesome at riding waves backward that I went twice as far as him.  He was done with the wave, sitting on the surfboard, looking around, and getting slightly concerned about where I was.  Then he heard some splashing behind him, turned around, saw me, and shouted, "How did you get over there?!"

Um, I rode the wave backward.

So while Stephen did the most surfing, I had the most awesome fails.

We came back with some good sunburns, too, but our skin is finally getting tan enough to handle it!  Next time, rash guards.

We were out there for two hours, and let me tell you, two hours is a lot of time bobbing on water and trying to catch waves.  I've been hungry in my life, but not like that!  Our first call of duty was lunch!

Of course, then we had all the other boring household and car stuff to take care of, because we're still getting settled, but yadda yadda yadda...

How about a picture of Audra on her new favorite perch?



Fishbowl for better perspective, too!  Yes, I'm sure that's much better than more boring life stuff!  So I will leave you with that!

Mahalo for reading, and we'll keep you posted!

Even in paradise you can be boring, or bored.

Blogging sans pics.

Yea, I know, I know. There was no blog on Sunday, and now it's already Thursday and there was nothing. Now I'm telling you that I have no pictures for this blog! Lame! Super Lame-sauce, I am aware. But, what can you do? Sometimes, life is boring, even in paradise. Sometimes, you forget to bring your camera (though, really, actually, life was just kind of boring this past week).

What did happen this past weekend? I had my first drill with the 111th Army Band of the Hawai'i National Guard (HING for short). So, typically, the 111th drills Monday nights from 6-10pm. They combine rehearsal time and military briefs into those 4 hours and do that 4 times a month which equals a weekend. However, this past September they were told they had no money. So, all drill was canceled. Until, of course, it wasn't. Hello! "Oh, we have monies now, so go ahead a drill" they say. Of course, no one told me this until Friday at 515pm, I'm just sitting on the treadmill, pedaling idly looking up nothing important on my phone, when I see it ringing. It's a call from our Readiness Non-Commissioned Officer (or RNCO, he is basically a full time member of the HING who takes care of most everything for a unit, more or less running the show), he asks if I knew about drill tomorrow (Saturday), I of course tell him "no." He asks if I can go tomorrow, I tell him "yes".. and that was about that. I then walked over to Deanna who was on the treadmill and said something along the lines of "remember how we had decided we were going to do a bunch of fun stuff this weekend, like take surfing lessons or do more snorkeling or do some great hiking or basically do anything fun?" she says "yes".. I say, "welp, we aren't, I have drill, sucks doesn't it?" muahahaha plans foiled.

Le Sigh.

That being said, the members of the 111th are all super nice and were really welcoming to me and made me feel instantly like an accepted and wanted member of the unit. So, I can't really complain.

Of course, there is that whole "we only have one car thing"....

Soooooo... Saturday I had to be at the armory in Pearl City at 0630... so we woke up around 0530 so that we could leave around 0600 and get there on time (it takes a little over a half hour).. Deanna dropped me off and then went and practiced and probably worked out, and probably some other stuff that I'm unaware of.

I had some in processing, and then we had Master Resiliency Training (MRT), which is basically, how to be a functional member of society and how to best not be a prick and be happy with your life and stuff and figure out how to deal with problems in the best and most awesome way possible by focusing on the positivitude of the situation and foster good relationships while being a good leader of soldiers and people and being the most awesome 'you' you can be.. or some kind of run-on sentence. Ultimately, it's good training, even if it usually ends up being incredibly dry and somewhat boring. There are really nice nuggets of advice within the training that are absolutely applicable to every day life (like "hunting the good stuff", where no matter how bad your day is, you list as many (no less than 3) things that were positives for your day, and write down what you need to do to make sure those good things continue to happen, etc.

A little blurry, and yea, I kinda lied about no pictures. The 111th Army Band room. Blurry because it's a panorama and
people were moving.

Anyway, we then rehearsed some concert band stuff and probably did some other military stuff that I don't quite remember, I was briefed on some things that I have to get done and take care of, signed some paper work and then Deanna picked me up and we did something, but I do not remember, but, that's how that goes.

I also checked out a French Horn... because someone leaked out that I had been playing a little bit of horn.. so, I'm in the woodwind quintet MPT.. that will be an adventure all unto itself. But, apparently, I am the best option, so that is something I suppose? Anyway, what it means, is that I can keep up the little bit of French Horn chops I had got from teaching lessons to a high schooler over the past year or so, and potentially even get better at it, by pushing myself to play a different instrument in a setting that I am unfamiliar with. So, hooah to that.

Oh, Sunday, I had drill again, but it was a ceremony for Japanese-American Soldiers in WWII. So, that was quite solemn but up beat as well, with the Aloha music that was played from time to time throughout the ceremony. It rained super hard, so I was definitely A) Glad the band was under the tent and B) glad that I was NOT the trumpet player chosen to play taps, because, he got SOAKED.. his Class B (pants with the short shirt) was so wet, his pants looked a different shade of blue.

The sun came out near the ceremonies end, and we were able
to snap this photo of the 111th Army Band trumpet section.

Right, so the part about it being a ceremony and the fact that it rained is interesting, but I do not want to overshadow the part where Deanna and I had to wake up at 0430 to make a 0545 report time. Mostly, this is important because Deanna most definitely DID NOT enjoy waking up that early. Sure, she was able to knock some practicing out of the way early in the morning, and that is great and all.. but yea.. not so great. It's possible that in the future she may just choose to stay at home when I have drill. Who knows? Maybe we can finally find a bike for her (aka - she can make an actual decision on what she wants in a bike) so that she could then stay home, but still be able to get up to MCBH to go to the gym or can at least bum around Kailua town if she wanted. Of course, walking to the beach is always an option.

This week has truly been a bore. I spent most of my days at home while Deanna worked. Mostly getting small things done (laundry, little grocery runs, bike to the gym at MCBH and do a work-out, practice, organize things a little here and there, play a video game, sweep, feed the cats, clean the toilet, read a book, check out a book at the library, return a book to the library).. so basically really boring stuff.. I also went through all of my sports cards. ALL.OF.THEM.. for you to appreciate what kind of achievement this is, I would have had to have taken a picture of it.. but I didn't (I did this last week, actually, but whatever).. but, I will just say, I have A LOT of cards.. but, I have determined which cards must be kept and which ones are basically worthless. Now the only question that remains is which cards I should look into getting graded (this is only important to you, if you like sports card collecting..)

Basically, getting a card graded can increase the value A LOT, for example, a card listed at $500 could be worth up to $3,500 depending on the grade it receives (which is contingent on the condition of the card, how centered it is from when it was cut at production, etc)... BUT.. it could also theoretically lose value if it receives a particularly low grade. Also, it costs about $20-$25 per card to be graded, so it is really only worth it if the card has a particularly high value. I have a few Nolan Ryan cards that could potentially grade out upwards of $1000+.. IF they receive a high grade. So, I need to look into that. (additionally, I have an Ozzie Newsome rookie card which has a lot of value and other cards).. so, decisions to be made.

Some members of the Navy band were going into a "cow share"... basically you buy a whole cow and share it with people. She was supposed to be 1 of 5, but one of the members of the band backed out. AND then, it turned out the cow was A LOT bigger than they were quoted at. So, it looks like we will be receiving almost 100 lbs of cow (butchered already, of course).. at a around $6/lb.. what does this mean? It means we need to look into a stand alone freezer to stick outside. Shouldn't actually be too expensive for a freezer, but I hope Deanna REALLY, REALLY likes beef, cause that's what we are going to have for a long, long, long, long, loooooONNNGNng time.

Mahalo for reading!

That's pretty much it. Oh, and "mahalo" means "thank you"

That is all, maybe we will post again this weekend. I have drill on Sunday, which could be a change of command could not be (it's up in the air apparently at the moment) and Deanna just found out that there is a gig going on Sunday for the Navy Band (she was unclear as to whether she was on it or not). I have scheduled for our car to be inspected, which puts us a step closer to have cool Hawai'i License Plates, and Saturday morning we get our car detailed for free because there was a half inch of standing water in our trunk when we picked up the car from the shippers.

Ok, now for real, that is all. Thanks for checking in on our fascinatingly dull lives =)