Employed Husbands Are Happier

I'ma kine update jus'a little. Just a quick look at a few days past up to the present. Wit a sneak peak at our Christmas decorations!

So, I, Stephen, finally have a job. Is it a glamorous job? No. Is it a job where I do not come home smelling of gasoline and possibly fish? No. But, is it a job? Yes. So, there's that. Sadly, this means less weekend time to spend with Deanna (for now, as I am holding out the hope that I will be able to land a better mo' payin' job with regular M-F 9-5 type-ish working days/hours).. but for now, it lets us save us more moolas and do more things, and maybe go more places, see more things. So. Yay! Long story short, after much paper work, etc, I am an MWR Assistant at the Marine Base up at K-Bay (Kaneohe).. it's 8-5, weekends mandatory, technically "on-call" but for now while they are busy, full-time. Essentially, if someone rents a kayak, I help them get a kayak, if someone rents a pontoon boat, I help them embark, and subsequently help them dock when they return. Then fuel up boats, fill bags of ice. Stack chairs. Defrost frozen squid and put into baggies to sell as bait (this is how my hands might smell fishy).. yup, that's my new job.

So, Thanksgiving came and went, while I definitely miss being able to see the families. I am thankful that we have made some friends, and had our own little Thanksgiving feast. There was a nice spread of food and good peeps to hang with (and subsequently play hearts with). Oh, and we did it all at the beach, which, yes, included Apple pie in beach chairs looking out at the ocean. Yea, you're jealous. No sense in denying it. =P However, as great as it was, we will have to make a trip stateside to see familiar relations. Hopefully, that's one of those things that my aforementioned job will help us be able to do (and any subsequent, mo' betta job).

 I decided to throw in some obligatory cat picks for those of you who like cats. These are basically pictures that were taken to send as a random text message to Deanna during the day, to either brighten her day (if maybe it was not going so well) or just to make her go "aww" and fawn over how cute we think the kitties are. So, enjoy! YOU KNOW YOU WILL THINK THE KITTIES ARE CUTE, THERE IS NO SENSE IN RESISTING, IT IS FUTILE

Oh, a nice picture of our spread of food.

So, today when I got off of work (that's nice to say for once, it's been a while!), we bummed down to the Whole Foods, got some quick grub walked back and ate our dinner. We then sat around with a whole big "WTF" hangin' over our heads trying to figure out just what to do. Finally we just decided what the heck? Let's just get in the Christmas spirit! Cranked the Christmas jams on Spotify and got ourselves all festive with the tree and lights. So, here is our work. Who's coming to Hawai'i for Christmas? The tree is ready! See you soon?!?!

Getting ready to put ornaments on the tree!

Wrapped the trees outside and hung some garland

Is it?!?!

Welp. That's pretty much it. We have other things going on this weekend, however, I will leave that for Deanna to blog about in the next few days. 

Mahalo for letting me talk story at you. =)

I hear it's cold everywhere else...

Stephen's sympathetic pouty face for all of you at home who are getting buried in feet of snow.

Okay now, so where did we leave off?

Right, it's been two weeks.  I ended up having a really cracked-out week because of Veterans' Day.  We were supposed to get a four-day weekend, but because of Veterans' Day concerts, a lot of us ended up with a weird schedule.  We had Sunday and Monday off, and then Tuesday I had a gig at a... veterans home.  Wednesday was supposed to be a day of, but then at the last minute, we got a gig outside the library at the University of Hawaii on the west side of the island.  So there was another work day.  I think we ended up doing nothing in particular because Stephen also taught his trumpet student that day.

On Thursday, I had a day off again, so we decided to go to Hanauma Bay again.  We didn't get as early of a start as I would have liked, so it was already a little crowded and the water was already a little churned up by the time we got there.  I think it was 9:30-10am when we finally got to snorkeling.  The fishies were as fun as always, but I would highly recommend going super-early and being done between 8 and 9 like we did last time.

Here are just some random fishie pictures that we included of guys that I'm not sure we have good photos of yet.  The first guy is "just a trumpetfish," but I don't think we'd seen one with colorings like that before.  The guy to the right is a blackspot sergeant, and the bottom is one of our best pictures of a spotted toby!

Friday was another gig, and then Saturday we kinda had a catch-up weekend day.  Stephen played racquetball, we did grocery shopping, and I think after that we just kinda hung around.  Maybe we went to the beach.  There's been a lot of that going on recently.  On Sunday, we had our big fall concert with the Honolulu Wind Ensemble, and that really pretty much ate up our whole day.

So, okay, there really wasn't much to talk about last week.  This week makes up for it!  We had Monday off, for no reason I could discern.  But then the Navy decided to release the quotas for promotions this cycle.  One person in the music program got promoted from E-3 to E-4, four people got promoted from E-4 to E-5, and three people got promoted from E-5 to E-6.  That's, like, 3% of the people in the music program.  Needless to say, work was a sour, sour place to be, especially because they weren't going to post the actual results until next week.  Gotta love the psychological warfare.

The Vans World Cup of Surfing has been going on for the last week or so, so we decided to go check out the waves on the North Shore.  I got a random hankering to go on Thursday afternoon, so we just went straight from work.  The waves were huge and amazing!  It's really hard to describe, because you see how huge they are with up-close videos, and yet in person, because of the distance, you don't realize just how huge they are.  But then you see these little specks that are people floating on the waves, and whoa, those waves are huge!  You seriously do not go in that water unless you know what you're doing!

We ended up at Sunset Beach, so here are the pictures from that:

See how small that surfer dude is compared to that wave??

Barrels.  Bigger than they look.

Then, on Friday morning, we woke up to the news that Navy Advancement screwed up and accidentally posted the results Thursday night.  They realized their mistake and took it down, but then they had to contact the commands anyway and let them know the results.

I made it!  Yay!

So on Tuesday, I'm going to get "frocked," which is Navy-speak for putting on the rank of a second-class but without receiving the pay.  I don't know when I'll actually get my new paycheck because it depends on how I did on the exam compared to the others who got promoted.  If I did the best, I'll get paid sooner, and if I did the worst, I'll get the new pay last.  It may be as long as another six months before I actually get paid for my paygrade.  Oh well.

At first, we thought we were going to celebrate by going to the place down the street from us that we liked well enough, but then I thought I was more interested in drinks and less interested in food, so we hopped on a bus downtown and tried a bar called Pint + Jigger.  It was so good because they totally do the local thing, even with their drinks.  As in, the Hawaiian margarita I got used real lilikoi juice and lime juice and stuff, not super-sweet flavor crap like you get in other places.  They also did lots of small plates so you can try different things and not feel stuffed.  If the bro wants to get drinks when the family visits, I can imagine taking him there and having a good time.

Saturday was a recovery day, mostly because the bus ride is 45 minutes, and getting home at midnight is super-late in my book.  Stephen missed out on racquetball and I missed out on my morning kickboxing class, but eventually we decided that enough was enough and we went down to the Ala Moana mall to window shop.  Yeah, I live in Hawaii and I wanted to window shop.  Don't judge!

We also did a little bit of grocery shopping so we could make Sunday a complete date-day.

So Sunday came, and we went down to Kahuna's on the Marine base to catch the Browns-Falcons game.  Yeah.  Gotta say, the food is still awful and I always feel terrible when I've eaten there, but the atmosphere is the best.  By the last two minutes of the game, half the bar was watching!  We keep trying to find a new place with better food to watch, but so far we haven't been successful.  I guess Hawaii doesn't care about football...

After a much-needed nap and shower, Stephen and I decided to head down to the North Shore again.  I wanted to see amazing waves and eat shrimp from a food truck.

Top down, and the mountains

It looks like the mountains run into the ocean

We went to Sunset Beach again, where they were setting up for the second round of the Vans World Cup of Surfing. The waves were intense!  They didn't look that big, but they just kept coming, and there were three or four layers of waves going back pretty far off shore.  We just kinda bummed around and watched the others, and then Stephen saw a guy having the time of his life bouncing around in the waves right near the shore.  After a little bit, we decided to join, and holy cow I got a new appreciation for how big those waves were!  The water got deep fast, and the waves even right at the shore were frequently shoulder-height or higher.  The undertow was ridiculous, too -- you'd just get sucked in to this 5-foot or taller wall of water.  Here are some pictures and even a couple videos, but I don't think this even remotely does justice to how intense these waves were.

Again, bigger than this photo indicates

Trying to bodysurf.  The wave really more surfed him.

Bracing for impact

Unphotoshopped color

Taken down by waves

Getting ready for more punishment

Shaka (hang loose)

I'm having this memory itch from when we were kids in Myrtle Beach, and I remember we had names for the different sizes of waves.  The only one I remember, though, was the ones that were big enough to break over your head were called "trash heaps" and Dad would grab a hold of us or toss us over so we wouldn't get totally thrashed.  These were trash heaps times two.

As we all know, this week is Thanksgiving, so we'll have plenty of days off to adventure around, plus we'll be making with the holiday cheer with my co-workers.  Good to know I actually like a few of them!

Mahalo for checking in, and we'll post again next week!

Island Hopping and other nonsense

What a crazy long week it's been!  I can hardly believe that the last time we posted was actually a week ago.  It seems like it was a lot longer than that.

We've had a "cold snap" here, if you could call it that, that has made beach time a little less happening.  It's noticeably cooler here, especially the water, and since we didn't "fall back," the sun is setting relatively early.  It goes behind the mountains around 5:30 now.  I wouldn't call it sunset, but it makes it get pretty dark pretty fast.  Right now it's 7:30 and it feels like 10 because it's been dark for so long.  The flip side is that I still go to work in the morning light.  I don't miss the time change and the cats going nuts over feeding times.

On Wednesday, I decided I needed some beach time, and if you follow Facebook, you already know that I got stung by a jellyfish.  It was a Portuguese Man-of-War, which sounds way scarier than it is.  Actually, it isn't really a true jellyfish.  It's some colony of specialized individuals called zooids.  So there you have it.  The one that got me wasn't so much a colony as it was just a few floating tentacles on the water.  Every once in a while, Stephen and I would get a funky stinging sensation in the water, who knows what from, maybe all that saltiness on a scratch or something, so I didn't think much of the initial sting except that it hit my arms, my left shoulder, and my chest all at the same time.  I said to Stephen, "Why am I suddenly prickly all over?" and when I looked at my arm, I saw a tentacle stuck to it.  So that did it for our beach time.  I ended up with some nice-looking little welts on my arms and over my left shoulder, but even without any treatment, the stinging went down within the hour and I only had a small red mark on my shoulder by the morning.  There was really nothing to write home about.

Just another view on jellyfish day

The only other jelly to worry about is the box jelly, and those hurt like no tomorrow and are extremely dangerous.  They also don't appear on the Windward side.

On the way back, we saw a snail on top of a much larger snail, so Stephen snapped a picture.  It was way cooler than my jellyfish sting, so I thought I would share that picture instead.  Yay!
 

Snail on a snail

Friday was a long day.  I had to be at work at 7, played a gig, and then hopped on a plane for the Big Island so we could participate in a Veterans' Day parade the next morning.  Two of the guys I'm friends with decided to go for an hour run, which might have been a mistake considering I already did a half-hour run that morning.  We got to see a little bit of Hilo that way, but since we didn't even get to our hotel until 5, we couldn't run until 5:30, and it was dark by 6.  Oh well.  It looked like such a cute little city-town!

My roommate and me on our balcony

The view from that balcony

Pre-run selfie

A half-hour later, after rain

As you can see, it wasn't exactly the nicest day.  Kinda overcast and dreary.


















One of the guys I work with loves to take selfies.  Particularly shirtless ones.  But hey, I guess it provides me with more photos to share on the blog, so I guess you'll have to get used to it.





We did not sweat that much.  We got rained on.  We could actually see the line of rain as we ran into it.  I wasn't thrilled about the idea, but the guy leading the run loves to run in the rain, so I guess that's what we did.  Yay.

After that, we went to Ken's Pancake House, which I guess is *the* place to go in Hilo.  I ordered crab cakes.  When in Hawai'i, don't order crab cakes.  I would have been better off with the Loco Moco.  It was very "Hawaiian style," which means it had a super-thick fried coating on it.  I couldn't have recognized the crab in it if I tried.  But, my shirtless friend ordered a slice of macadamia nut pie, and THAT was awesome!  It was like pecan pie, but lighter and less sweet.  Good stuff!

Saturday was the parade day.  We got "flower bombed" by Blue Hawaiian helicopters.  Right before the parade started, a helicopter flew over us and dropped a bunch of flowers on everybody participating in the parade.  The locals were all waving shakas at the helicopter (shaka being the technical term for the "hang loose" hand gesture).

It was a beautiful day for a parade.  It was also 85 degrees out and full sunshine, which means we sweated through our uniforms big-time.

When we were done, the military place that fed us breakfast (donuts, some sort of sweet rolls, pineapple, bananas, and... sushi...) also fed us lunch.  The girl made crock pots full of kalua pork and shoyu chicken, plus there was still sushi, white rice, corn, and a really good salad with all kinds of greens, broccoli, carrots, olives, and other goodness. I ended up eating two plates this size because we had another community band concert in the evening, and I didn't know with the flights if I was going to have time for dinner.  We were done with the parade at 10am, done with lunch at 11am, and our flight didn't leave until 3pm.  We were just sitting around, and then our leadership made the smart decision to have us go to the airport early and hang around there since there were at least comfy chairs.  As it turned out, they could fly us back on two separate flights earlier, so I ended up only hanging out for an hour and was back in Honolulu around 2:30.  I actually had time to finally take a shower and get some real dinner before we had our community band concert!

Yesterday we just tried to catch up on sleep.  While I was in Hilo doing the parade (oh, and there were only about 10 people watching because Hawaiians don't care about Veterans Day.  Wonder why...??), Stephen had to be up at 4:30am to go do his physical fitness test for the National Guard, do some training, and then play a funeral.  He was done just in time to pick me up from work.  So yeah, Sunday was all about grocery shopping, catching up on sleep, and cleaning up the apartment.  We did find this nightstand on the side of the road:


It was free because it's clearly broken, but we figured just remove the drawer, put a bottom in it (possibly just the drawer bottom) and repaint it.  We needed something to hold our little TV outside on the lanai, and nothing comes cheaper than free, so we took it.  It was only a street or two up from us, so it was a quick walk down the road.  I'm actually really thrilled to get started fixing it up!





Today we actually had our adventure day.  We went hiking with my shirtless friend up Ka'au Crater.  While we were there, we found some wild lilikoi (passion fruit) and a lot of ripe strawberry guavas.  We ate them up!  They were so delicious, though, that I'm not sure I can eat lilikoi and guava flavored anything ever again, because those wild fruits were tart like blackberries, and everything else adds so much sugar.  We also saw several nice, big waterfalls, but we had to do some serious hiking.  It was about five hours overall, and it was some pretty athletic hiking.  I've done a grueling hike or two in the past, but a lot of these are maintained by volunteers, not by the park system or the government or anything, so the paths aren't always the clearest or the best maintained.  There were ropes tied around rocks and trees where the climb was particularly steep or slippery.  People have died on this hike before, but as far as I know, all of them were avid hikers who got too confident and did something less-than-smart, like go farther than was safe or peer over the edge of a waterfall and slip.  We were aiming to go to the top, but while the three guys got up a particularly vertical climb without a problem, I decided I was done.  As it turned out, only a few feet up, the trail was so eroded that they decided they were done, too, so it's not like I rained on anyone's parade.  But seriously, we were on top of one of the ridges, and it was amazing!  I never needed food or a nap so much in my life!  So now, here are the pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first waterfall we found

Waterfall selfie

Stephen took this picture from the edge

Strawberry guavas

Stephen eating one

Selfie by the waterfalls

View from the ridge at Ka'au Crater

Selfie at the ridge

Another view from the ridge

Us climbing along the ridge

A view of Ka'au Crater.  That's Diamondhead off to the left in the background

 So, needless to say we had a really good time.  The four of us got lunch at Whole Foods in Honolulu, where I got some really good sushi because Honolulu is basically Japanland.  After that, we were super tired, so it was all naps and sitting on the couch and doing nothing else interesting, and that was fine by me.  Stephen and I both have to work tomorrow, and I'm working on Wednesday, but then we have a funky set of weekends coming up because we didn't get our military weekend off the way everybody else in the Pacific Fleet did.  We will definitely have some more adventures coming up!

Aloha shirts and Christmas creep

Never fear underblog is here! Er, I mean, an update of our blog is here? I mean, blogging done be happening here? erm, I be bloggin' 'mun. Yea.

So, nothing as exciting as hurricanes which bring long days of rain going on these past weeks (or was it just a week?). Honestly, it has been fairly uneventful this past bit in Hawai'i (well, boring for us, I suppose).

Deanna left you off with that we went out for the anniversary of the beginning of our relationship. Ten long years we have made each other suffer, er happy! =) It was a very tasty dinner with appetizers and desserts at a restaurant in Kailua, much delicious and so date.

Here are some pictures of us enjoying ourselves that night.

Me looking as doofy as can be.

Deanna, beautiful as alaways

This is going to be pretty scatter brained as far as blogging goes. Fair warning given. It's still early in the morning (7am-ish) but on a whim I thought to blog, so blogging will continue.

Just in case anyone was worried that there were "signs of the creep" in Hawai'i, I can verify there are. (sidenote, "sign of the creep" basically refers to when stores start putting up decorations for a holiday WAY WAY WAY too early and before other holidays are completed, e.g., Christmas decorations going up in October). I do not understand the rationale behind this, not one bit. I took this picture in the middle of October. IN THE FREAKING MIDDLE OF OCTOBER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11

One of the small '1st world' issues with our society

I do not understand this. Not one bit. It also created this really awkward moment on October 31st, where Deanna and I were grocery shopping and decided to hop in the Marine exchange to get some coffee (they exchange has a slightly better selection than the commissary) and you have the jarring juxtaposition of all the cashiers dressed in their scariest Halloween costumes with Santa Claus and Christmas trees in the background. It was enough to make my head want to asplode. Shake my damn head. When will we stop hurrying to the next thing and just enjoy the thing we are doing? 

OK, that was a bit of a soapbox diatribe, but I make no apologies.

That being said, this past week needed more snorkeling, because, it had no snorkeling. Actually, we did not make any trips to the beach. Bad Stephen and Deanna! BAD! Thankfully we already have plans to snorkel at Hanauma Bay again next week on one of Deanna's days off. Gonna go in early the day after the park closes (it closes once a week to give the ecosystem a break from plodding and inconsiderate humans), additionally there will be a hike included in our week.

It's not called the "Rainbow State" for nothing!

Well, a quick synopsis of the week would be pretty simply, Deanna worked, Stephen did stuff at home (cleaned, laundry, applied for jobs, mailed out forms to be filled by the Rhode Island Department of Education to be then sent to the Hawai'i Department of Education to then hopefully work toward me netting a HDOE Teaching License!).. you know, errands and whatnots. 

Saturday was a crazy day, well, long for me anyway. I had National Guards stuff with the 111th Army Band. It was an ALL day type affair. It was "military appreciation" day at the University of Hawai'i football game, so we were going to march out onto the field and play with the UH Marching Band for pregame and then at halftime there was a little ceremony where a few units from all of the branches of the military marched onto the field and were recognized, along with a few individual members. It was neat, but it was also a LONG day. We had training that started at 9am and some rehearsing to do, and then we arrived at the stadium around 1pm to rehearse on the field around 2. Then we changed into our dress uniform and sat around for a few hours before pregame. Thankfully, I like the people in the band, so this wasn't as terrible as it sounds (and not nearly as boring). We played the pregame music and then went to sit in our military appreciation seats to watch the first half. 

Um, definitely feeling "appreciated" There were no rows
behind our seats, and with the overhang, you could see none
of the scoreboards. Though, I will admit, watching football
from the endzone is great, you get to see the plays develop.
That being said, UH football has fallen far from the June Jones
days... yikes...

We left after halftime, bussed back to the NG Armory and changed briefed on what was coming up in our schedule and headed out. Now, there was a social gathering of some of the Navy musicians that Deanna wanted to go to. Dubbed "Scotch-toberfest" it was to incorporate all things "scotch" like oatmeal butter'scotch' cookies, 'scottish' eggs or just the good 'ole single-malt. So we had to work out some crazy "she drops me off at the armory at 830 and I keep a key for the car and she then does what she needs to do to make shepherd's pie (that's scottish, yea?) and whatever other errands she needs to do then drops off the car and gets picked up by the host of the gathering because the gathering starts around 5pm and Stephen won't be done until 830" jerry-mandering.. but it worked. We got to socialize, meet some new people and be more or less adult-y types who like to have conversations with other people.

Sunday we had a concert with the Honolulu Wind Ensemble. It is a community band, if you google it I'm sure you will find information. The only real exciting part about this was the uniform for the concert was "aloha" shirt with some kind of pants (or skirt or shorts, basically, some kind of bottoms).. however, Deanna didn't have anything "aloha" except for this dress she bought way back shortly after we moved here, and we decided while it's a great dress, it's not quite concert appropriate (it's more date appropriate, or going out appropriate)... so after watching the Browns game (this time at Whole Foods.. which, side note, that wasn't the greatest decision, because they do not actually serve breakfast, HOWEVER, it did put us very close to the "aloha" wear store and for that, it worked out) we hopped over to the island wear shop and Deanna picked out a shirt for the concert. I do say we look rather dashing!

Welp, aloha for now! Until next time =)

A bad selfie attempt

Much moar better picture. New
shirt for Deanna