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!

Indoc and Snorkeling!

Aloha!  Given that we had the weekend off for Labor Day, and Stephen and I wore ourselves out yesterday, this post is coming one day late.

I spent the whole friggin' week doing my indoctrination for the base, since with a base this large, orientation is a bit of an undertaking.  Some of it was really cool in terms of mission and political climate, and some of it was so far above me that one of the commanders (O-5 for those who want to know) said even he was struggling to keep up.

Once I returned to the land of the living, Stephen and I went up to Snorkel Bob's to procure equipment.  Of course we got a mask, the snorkel, the higher-quality set of flippers, and the free bag, but they also gave us a cool coffee-table type book of fishies and the cards that we can use to help us identify our fishies.

We were debating between Hanauma Bay, which is supposedly the best snorkeling (and most touristy) on the island, and trying to find a few off-the-beaten-path locations.  In the end, we did both.

On Sunday morning, we drove out to the west side of the island to Makaha Beach Park.  It is a great big valley on the leeward side of the island and is the place where big-wave surfing started.  I noted on some websites that the snorkeling is good in the summer, but in the winter, the waves really pick up and it becomes one of the most popular surf spots.

When we got there, we definitely saw some larger waves and some surfers, so Stephen asked the lifeguard.  He said that if we stayed to the middle, we would be good, but definitely stay away from the boats and the surfers because otherwise we'd get run over.  He also asked if we had flippers and were strong swimmers, because while we might see some fishies immediately, the better fishies are a good distance out.

The nice thing about Makaha Beach Park is that it is all the way out in Wai'anae, a kind of shabby-looking area.  There were all of five people out on the beach, and I'm pretty sure they were all local.  We grabbed our snorkel gear and went out, and sure enough, we saw fishies right from the start.  Here is a quick stock-photo tour of what we found (since we didn't have a camera):

Coronetfish

Banded Angelfish

4-spot Butterflyfish

Moorish Idols

Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse

Manybar Goatfish

Pinktail Durgon

Saddle Wrasse

Spiny Pufferfish

Reef Triggerfish

And of course it wouldn't have been a day of snorkeling without seeing this guy:

Green Sea Turtle

That's not a picture we took, either (but I wish I could say our pictures were that good!)  That picture pretty much sums up his attitude, though.  He just floated by us in the shallow, sandy water and cast us a glance that said, "What?  I own this beach."  Then he continued on his merry way.

After about an hour, we got cold and stepped out to lay in the sun, warm up a bit, and figure out our next plan.  We saw a bunch of snorkelers way out near some boats.  We think some of the snorkelers came off the boat, maybe on a guided tour or something, but it wasn't so far out that we couldn't swim.  We headed out there, and for a bit there the water was deep and there wasn't anything to see.  Then we randomly happened upon an enormous school of fish!  There were a lot of the Convict Tangs (the striped guy that appears in the picture of the Moorish Idols) and Bandtail Goatfish.  They liked to tag along for the swim.

Anyway, we were out for a little over another hour, so when all was said and done, we were out on the beach for four hours.  Now I have the sunburn to prove it.

Working on my tan

Working on his tongue's tan

The beach at Makaha

My sunburn

So after a full day of sun and snorkeling, what do you do?  Go again the next day!

This time we brought a camera along, and this is what we ended up with:

Saddle Wrasse and two Goldring Surgeonfish (kole)

Whitespotted Surgeonfish ('api)

Yellow Tang.  Just for you, Mom!

Bluefin Trevally ('omiliu)

Christmas Wrasse male ('awela)

Surgeonfish of some variety we can't figure out yet

Threadfin Butterflyfish (kikakapu)

More Convict Tangs (manini)

Convict Tang jailbreak.

Brown Surgeonfish (ma'i'i'i) and a Christmas Wrasse

Orangeband Surgeonfish (na'ena'e) and Sailfin Tang (mane'one'o) before Stephen figured out how to use the flash

Orangespine Unicornfish (umaumalei) -- yes, even though his spine looks blue

Another Sailfin Tang and an Orangespine Unicornfish (notice the orange spines near the tail)

Thank goodness for the "enhance" button on iPhoto!  It's too bad it can't make up for bad focus and bad aim.  Oh well.  We also saw a bunch of different kinds of Parrotfish and I saw another big sea turtle!

We went early, and even then it was getting crowded with people who really didn't know what they were doing.  By the time we had to leave at 10am, it was crazy crowded and almost not fun.  We did our best snorkeling out by the buoys where the stronger currents kept all but the people with fins and experience away.  That's where most of these pictures came from.

We also took a few pictures of ourselves at the bay as we left!

We snorkeled to the right of the breaking waves.

When we left: crowded

Looking extra salty after the swim

Selfie at the overlook

Stephen at the overlook

One of these days, I'm going to stop feeling like I'm on vacation every weekend and start feeling like I'm living here, but I guess as long as we're living in a tiny space with none of our own stuff except two suitcases of clothes and our cats, it's still going to feel like we haven't moved in.  We are still renting cars while we wait for ours to ship over from the mainland, and at this point it's getting ridiculous.  We are trying to find a beater that can hold us over until we get our car, but we've been renting for three weeks now.  We'll probably end up with our car before we actually find a beater that we can mildly trust.

Our things are scheduled to arrive either this week or next week, and then we'll have the wonderful adventure of trying to fit our real lives into 550 sq. ft. of space.  We have to figure out what will stay and what will go, and then we'll have to figure out where to store what stuff stays.

I just needed to take a second to remind everyone that while life's a beach, it's not perfect!