Heeble's Home

big island

2008-11-02T18:21:00.010-07:00

So I'd better write down my big island experiences before I forget em all.

First things first - I booked my tickets 3 or 4 weeks prior to leaving. I was all excited because the only flights direct from Maui to the big island are the little propeller-driven commuter planes. I show up to the ticket counter and apparently Go Airlines has a problem. All their commuter flights were contracted through Mokulele airlines, and there's some sort of recent dispute between the two. The ticket guy says the people they've been sending to Mokulele were being rejected because the flights were booked through Go. The guy spent probably 15 minutes calling around to make sure there's no way I'm getting on my schedule flight, and finally gets confirmation. So he books me tickets on regular Go Airlines flights - only problem is now I have to stop off in Oahu. So what started off as a potentially big problem gets resolved. Note: the guy at the counter was extremely helpful in smoothing over the mess. Thanks Mr. ticket man!

After that things went well - picked up my car, drove to the campsite where I'd be staying and signed in. My first stop was about 15 minutes down the road. There's a beautiful valley called Waipi'o. The guide book talked about the trail that leads down into the valley - how steep and treacherous it was. Only 4-wheel drive vehicles are allowed on the trail because 2-wheel drives can't handle it and go plunging off the cliff. I decided to hike it, but I was a little nervous before hand. When I got there my fears were abated. The road the whole way down was paved, it turns out, and while the grade was steep it was no problem on foot.

The other thing I worried about was the sort of people in the valley. Because getting into the valley is hard, and there's basically no electricity or telephone or other modern conveniences, it's a haven for the homeless and the scary.

I left early enough in the day that I thought I could hike across the valley, up the other side and at least get a glimpse of the valley on the other side (which is supposed to be even more remote). So I hiked along the trail for a good hour or so. The main road was crossed several times by rivers that I waded through, but the road was still followable. It seemed I was getting close to the far valley wall and was looking for the trail up the side I could see earlier in the day, but it had disappeared. The road got less and less defined as I went along, until I was trudging through forest and wetlands with some scary-looking shanties and stuff set up around the way. At that point I decided I must have missed something and turned around.

My first strange experience was when I ran into a group of horses. I've always been a little scared of horses. At first they seemed scared of me and kinda of ran ahead of me. But after I had passed them they started following me. One of them followed pretty closely (like within a couple feet of my back) and it freaked me out a bit, 'cause horses can smell fear right? I just KNEW they'd get a whiff of that and just all gang up on me, beating poor defenseless me with their hooves. Luckily, I escaped. (Not all facts about horses in the above paragraph are true.)

My second experience was running into a guy about the time I turned around. He looked rastafarian with his dreadlocks, and was wearing only a pair of pants. In one hand he had a fruit and in the other he carried a gigantic machete. I hadn't seen another person since the beginning of the hike, and for the first time in a long time I feared for my life. But I tried to keep my cool and I said "hey" as we passed. He said "hey dude" back and I live to tell the tale.

On my way back out of the valley I noticed a fork in the road I had missed earlier, and this trail led to the beach and to the trail to the other valley. Next trip I'll have to finish the hike I suppose.

Anyway, the valley was beautiful and I was glad to have spent some time in it.

Amy and Clay arrived in Kona early the next morning so I went to pick them up. We had nothing planned for the day, but I had a couple things I thought about doing so we headed out.

First we dropped by the City of Refuge. We wandered about the city for a while then hiked around on the lava rock and tide pools that surround it. Things were going good until Amy stubbed her foot on the rocks. I could tell she was hobbling a little after that, but it wasn't until we got back to the car and inspected the damage that we could see he foot was in bad shape. She had hit the ball of her foot right under her toes, and it was turning her foot purple and there was quite a bit of swelling going on.

Before the incident I had recommended we hike the back side of Waipi'o valley, and that was out of the question now.

We drove back to the campsite and got Amy and Clay all signed in, and Amy was kind enough to let us do a quick hike on our own. So Amy hung out around the tent to read and Clay and I went to do the hike real quick. Of course we got to the trailhead and the hike was closed for some reason. Bummer. So we headed back to camp and came up with a plan B.

We had all wanted to see some flowing lava that evening, so since we were headed over that way anyway we decided to see some of the waterfalls around Hilo. First was rainbow falls, and I don't know the name of the other one.

Then it was off to the lava flow. The county had a parking lot all set up and reflective strips on the rocks as a trail. man, it was beautiful. we got there as it was getting dark, and throughout the hike you could see the orange trail of lava coming down from the mountain. at the end there was a viewing area set up and we just sat and watched where the flow hit the ocean and sent up a huge cloud of steam. The steam was lit from beneath by the lava - it was so cool! Unfortunately we were only allowed to go to within 1/2 from the lava. Maybe sometime soon I can go back and hike from the other side - get a little closer, eh?

saturday was temple day. We had a good 13 or so people from the branch show up. We did baptisms and confirmations, sealings, and then a session later on in the day.

After that a lot of people went to the Big Island Grill across the street from the temple for an early dinner.

Then Clay and Amy and I walked around Hilo town until it was time for them to fly back to Maui.

The next day I was originally hoping to have some time to check out a beach or two, but my tickets got changed so I was headed back earlier in the day than I wanted to. There was a church about 10 minutes down the road from the campsite (Hanako'o ward), so I decided to attend the early meeting there. Wow, they must never get visitors there. The first question they asked was, "Are you lost?" Then I was almost swarmed by everyone that came in. Someone would walk in and whoever I was talking to would stop them and ask, "Hey, have you met Jeff?" I still can't get over how friendly they were there - so cool. Either that or they were just couldn't stand me and were passing me off to whoever they could.

Anyway, that's the end. Overall it was an awesome trip. I took about 100 pictures, so you if you really want you can download them here.
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/114454/templetrip.zip

And I almost forgot - some guy hit my car from behind while I was waiting at a stop light my first night over there. That's 3 times in 2 years I've been hit in Hawaii. He was going slow enough that there was no damage, which is good because he didn't even stop. Crazy.

Short update

2008-10-19T19:03:00.004-07:00

Aloha all,

First, here's a picture of my canoe, since I haven't before posted a picture of it.

Second, I'm definitely out of touch because I don't own a TV, but something I ran across online that I hadn't heard of and thought was funny:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j82lhqiAF-M
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xk5YJkhizRs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SkFjTCscM4

And I suppose that's about it. The county fair was in town a couple weeks ago and I spent lots and lots of time there taking in some shows and riding all the rides. Other than that I've been trying to hike and surf and canoe and run and keep myself busy any way I can. Anything's better than being cooped up in the house studying for the CPA exam.

Oh, de doo-da day

2008-09-21T22:01:00.002-07:00

Sunday I got back into the running thing officially with another half-marathon. I realized I hadn’t done one since I arrived on maui so I figured it was time. This race was actually really fun – it was small in size (about 1000 people), it was very very flat, and we started early enough in the morning (5:30am) to avoid most of the heat. It was also nice and scenic, starting at the Whalers Village in Kaanapali, heading down to Launiopoko along front street and back up to the Village. Parking was a problem as it always is on the Lahaina side of the island, but other than that it couldn’t have gone better. Well, unless I had trained harder. In a couple of the pictures I snagged off the photo-peoples’ website I look especially soaked, but rest assured that’s because someone had a hose at the last water stop and was hosing people down. I can safely say that person is going to heaven.

Saturday was the next big event – the 26 mile paddle across the Molokai channel. It was similar to the Great Kahakuloa race I wrote about last, but instead of hugging the coastline we started on Maui and ended up on Molokai. I’d never been to Molokai and I hope to get back there someday and see the sights. But the day went without a hitch, honestly. Oh wait, there was one hitch. Normally we have 9 people to a crew so that we can rotate 3 people into the boat every 15 or 20 minutes. We only had 8 show up. So each person spent more time in the boat than they should have. We were all pretty hammered at the end of the 4 hours or so. But we made it. We hadn’t ever been in ocean swells like that before so I’m sure we worked a lot harder than the more experienced crews. But we made it!

At the end of the race they had food (like the end of any good race), and then we caught the ferry back to Maui. Good times. Basically there’s one more race to finish up the season – from Molokai to Oahu. It runs about 41 miles or so. Things tend to get expensive the longer the race; you have to think about airline tickets, hotels, escort boat fees, entry fees, a rental car, all of that stuff. We’ve got a couple guys working on getting sponsorships for our crew. But barring not having enough money to cover the race I’m all for it. Then comes the end of the racing season (whew!) and I can start getting some alone time with the solo canoe – so far I’ve only been out on it once. So sad.

Anyway, life is good. Oh, and here’s a picture of a lizard who was just begging to have his photo taken.

what's in a name

2008-08-27T12:31:00.002-07:00

Ever Googled yourself? Every once in a while I get so bored I do. Normally doing a google search for Heeble doesn't bring up much - just a couple of people that have copied my unique internet handle - but this time I found something new and it made me laugh out loud. You probably won't enjoy it as much as I did, but it does bring a whole new meaning to my name.

http://www.diclib.com/cgi-bin/d1.cgi?l=en&base=amslang&page=showid&id=4577

Someone who knows me obviously set this up to sully my reputation, methinks.

Paddling

2008-08-25T09:35:00.008-07:00

So things have been pretty status-quo the last couple months. The regatta season of paddling is over and it's now the middle of the long-distance season. Here are some pictures of yesterday's race. We started from Kahului harbor and came around the top of West Maui to about Canoe Beach - a total of 33 miles.

Here's the start at the harbor. They couldn't've ordered up a better day for us. I woke up I was so glad:

Here's us just out of the harbor:

Here's Joel and Kimokeo (Kimokeo's a bit of a local celeb and we were stoked he agreed to steer the canoe for us. In fact, he's volunteered to steer us rookies the next couple races, too. One race from Maui to Molokai and another from Molokai to Oahu.):

Here's a scenic shot:

This is Eric, Mike and Sam from our crew:

And here's a series of shots of one of our water changes. There was only one change I didn't play an active part in, so I was glad to get a couple photos:

So that's been the typical weekend. The surf has really sucked lately so life's been mostly paddling and work.

The Good Life

2008-06-14T23:26:00.003-07:00

Another picture of the crew just because I'm not blinking in this pic:

Well, life has been different since getting back from vacation. The big change is no Chris and Steve. It was nice getting to know them better over the last year and a half - they're pretty cool people. Yeah, things are lonely in the house with just me. Pros? Sitting around watching movies at full blast whist naked. Sleeping in Chris and Steve's huge king-sized bed. Con? I miss Taco Bell runs with the family. Anyway, it sounds like they won't be coming back (except maybe for a quick visit) until next year some time, so I better get used to it, eh?

Over the summer the work schedule is pretty lax. I'm working Mon-Wed for about 6 hours a day. It's enough to pay the bills and that's about it. But what else do I need right now?

The other days are pretty much spent at the beach doing various... beach... activities. The main thing right now is paddling. At 5:15am Tues and Thurs mornings and early saturday and sunday we have paddling practice. We had our first regatta last May 31st. I guess I wasn't prepared for how big an event it was. I was there about 7:00am and was there until about 5:30pm or something. Sorry, Mom, I got a little more sun than I should have.

Our crew did pretty well. We held the lead for the first half of the race and through the turn, and ended up fifth in the end. Last week we ended up fourth, but it was a dang close race with us being about 7 seconds from first place. Anyway, it's lots of fun and it keeps me in shape. Another 5 weeks or so of races and then long distance season starts up.

If you're interested, some pictures of the regattas are here: http://www.kiheicanoeclub.com. I'm in a few of them if you can find them.

Late Friday (Friday the 13th) afternoon I decided to go surfing so I called up my coworker Bret and we headed out. The surfing was great - the waves were huge. I got pounded as much as I caught waves, but all in all it was a good surf day. However, as I was leaving the ocean I came out at a different spot than when I went into the water. Much to my surprise I stepped on something pokey. That combined with the waves coming into shore brought me to my knees. I tried to sit a spell till the current set of waves passed and I could see the ground more clearly but that didn't happen. I tried my best to just walk in as fast as I could, but I just stepped on more spikes. I finally got into shore and my feet started burning. Yep, I had had my first encounter with Sea Urchins. I hobbled as best I could back to the car and let Bret know that he was driving me to the after-hours clinic.

Turns out there's not much you can do for urchin stings. They've got these glass-like barbs that just break up if you try to remove them from your feet. So I continue to hobble around like an old man for now. Oh, and they also gave me a Tetanus shot for good measure. And of course Saturday was Regatta day. My shoulder was pretty sore from the shot and that along with the not being able to walk thing made me sit out this series of races. It just wasn't quite the same sitting on the sidelines cheering the team on. And our team didn’t do so well this week. I’m hoping my shoulder feels good enough to practice with tomorrow. We’ll see how that goes.

So that's life right now. The boss man is on vacation for a couple of weeks so I have nothing better to do than study for the CPA exams and hang out at the beach. I'll keep you posted on anything else that goes on.

As usual...

2008-06-13T18:45:00.006-07:00

here's a couple pics. Stories will come tomorrow. These are of our saturday regatta - the last picture is of our crew.

words. Lots of words.

2008-06-03T22:24:00.003-07:00

So here’s a recap of some of my trip back to mainland a while back. 'Bout time I got around to typing some of this stuff up.

Moab – ah, good times with the Sloans/Knights (heretofore to be called simply “the Sloans”) again. It’s been too long. I pretty much stepped off the plane, unloaded some stuff at the parents’ house and headed out with the Sloans. The two things I remember most about the trip? (1) Hanging out at the campfire and just talking story pretty much all day and (2) the dust. Good crap, the dust. Things were pretty windy there which kicked up the dirt some. People would disappear into the tents to take a nap and emerge looking like they’d been buried alive and just dug their way out.

We did get some hiking in as well, and some driving and hangin out in Moab, too. Oh, and I can’t forget dinner at Sam Hawk’s on the way to Moab.

Back at the parent’s house in Sandy was nice. It was good to see, well, the parents, plus Annie and Ed and Josie again. Unfortunately things were pretty cold and it even snowed one day. I had planned on spending some alone time in the mountains and maybe hike Lake Blanche or something while I was there, but because of the snow in the mountains that was a no-go. Man, I can’t believe how fast Josie has grown up. Such a cute girl.

Oh, and I also got to eat some of my favorite foods while I was there, too. A pastrami burger from Apollo Burger, a pizza bender from Italian Village, and a nice big Costa Vida (Cedar City’s imitation Café Rio) burrito. Man, there’s got to be a way to get those things over here, eh? *drool*

I then headed to Cedar City for a night. Mini was in the middle of finals so I didn’t get to hang out with her too much, but it was nice of her to show me hospitality. The house she lives in basically has no heat, so I wrapped up in 5 different blankets, plus a couple of hot water bottles at my feet and my hoodie pulled up over my head. Despite Cedar’s best efforts, I survived the night.

I then headed over to the Ponderosa to visit Steve and Chris. It was so strange to be back there. I spent most of my time hiking by myself just because Chris and Steve were busy putting the spa together and fixing up their trailer. I had to hike the big stuff of course – angels landing and observation point. I hung out in the hottub some, too, which was fun. No real need of a hottub here so it’d been a while.
When Chris and Steve were able to take some time off we drove through the park and hung out in Springdale or at Steve’s parents’ house in Rockville.

Then it was back to Cedar City to brave the house of ice again. Mini graduated that Saturday, so it was great timing that I’d be on the mainland just in time for that. The whole family traveled there to see it, and it was good to have all the brothers and sisters together again.

One of the main purposes in driving home was shipping my car over to Hawaii so I needed to drive it to California. And I figured while I was in California I might as well spend some time in Yosemite like I’ve always wanted to. I had been there before with Chris and Steve but we just happened to drive in the day before the first huge winter storm of the year and we got snowed out. So this was redemption. I have a friend from Maui who had just moved back to the mainland to finish some school and his parents live about 3 hours from Yosemite, so we met up in the park. The park was beautiful. The winter was just melting away so the waterfalls were running full speed and everything was green and springy. Just perfect.

Anyway, I’d always wanted to hike half dome, so that was goal #1. We started early in the morning and it took most of the day. Nearing the dome we ran into something I didn’t expect – snow. And lots of it. At some points the trail was completely buried for long stretches and it was up to us to blaze our own trail up the mountain. And me in my chocos. You really had to dig your toes into the snow because a slip could mean a long slide down a big snowy hill and possibly off a cliff or something, so I manned up and dug my freezing toes in.

Then at the base of the dome, I almost turned back around. Without actually being there it’s hard to tell, but the friggin dome looks strait up. Like maybe a 80% angle or something. It was insane. And to make matters worse, usually the cables up the dome are supported by wooden planks across the ground (I assume like a latter) and bars that hold the cables up at arm level. Yeah, those weren’t up yet. The cables were just sitting there dangling on the mountain. At this point I was glad I was with Dave cause that kid’s certifiably insane and he’ll do anything. And force everyone he’s with to do it too. So we grabbed onto the cables and started our way up. It was the longest 500 feet of my hiking career. Of course Dave was all over the place and he’s like, “Dude take a picture of me,” and I’d be like, “no damn way I’m taking my hands off this cable so I can take your frickin picture.”

But joy of joys, we made it to the top. The only thing that diminished the time spent on top of the dome was the fact that I now had to survive shimmying down the cables and hiking down the steep slopes of snow in basically sandals to get safely home. But it was worth it.

On the top there were a couple domesticated critters – a couple squirrels and, I dunno, a badger? You tell me. But one of us would stay awake and throw rocks at the brave and stupid critters that would try to approach us while the other person slept.

Long story short, I made it back down the mountain. We were probably 2 of 8 people that went to the top that day. Pretty cool.

From there we spent a night under the stars in Yosemite valley. We built a campfire and talked with a bunch of rock climbers that were pretty stoned but really cool people. The next day we rented some bikes and tried to recover from the day before. After that we headed to Dave’s parents’ house for a night.

From there I drove the car to Long Beach. Steve has a brother that lives sorta in the area and he was kind enough to drive me to a hotel next to the airport so I could get a good night’s rest and catch my plane early the next day. As I had some dinner at the Denny’s there at the hotel I talked with a cool girl from Europe who was just graduated and just touring the world. Gutsy is all I can say.

And that brings me back to Maui. My car has arrived in one piece, I’m happy to report. Now there’s the matter of selling the other cars that I clearly don’t need to keep around any longer. More on life on Maui later.

My Vacation

2008-05-09T21:09:00.004-07:00

Moab:

Josie:

Zion:

Yosemite:

Just a few pics for now. Details to follow...

Moisture is the essence of wetness

2008-02-11T10:58:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a perfect snorkel day. We headed out to what's sometimes called "the aquarium" and hung out there for a couple hours. The sun was shining, the water was clear, and steve just bought a dry bag especially made for his camera. So we took a few pictures, and after a little photoshopping the pitures look great. Now I need to get one for my camera. Its funny, there aren't many pictures of all the fish. All is vanity, eh?

Snow in Maui

2008-02-02T18:46:00.001-07:00

Well, this week was almost a full work week. The tax season will be in full swing next week, which I have mixed feelings about. on the one hand, it's nice to be making some decent money again. on the other, it's hard to give up my free time.

It's been uncommonly rainy and cold this past week. Tuesday morning I woke up to go paddling and saw the snow atop Haleakala. It was so funny to drive along the highway and see all the cars stopped on the shoulder and cameras hanging out the windows - it was big news for a day or two. In some ways it was a lot like the torrential rain we had not long ago. Everyone started conversations the same way for a couple of days - "Did you see the snow!?" In Makawao where I work it's pretty much been raining nonstop, so I guess if I gotta work it might as well rain. Next Wednesday I'll have off work (the last day off for a couple months), so the weather better clear up by then. I haven't been to the beach in forever.

So yeah, this post is to complain that it's raining and getting down to about 65 degrees at night. Don't you feel sorry for me?

Other than that there's not much news to report. No news is good news, right?

There's nothing that cleanses your soul like getting the hell kicked out of you.

2008-01-20T10:02:00.000-07:00

Yeah, that's how I feel. Nothing much to report on this end, but Christin is taking this class on eating healthy and part of what she learned was a new cleanse or detox diet or whatever you want to call it. I've decided to do it with her for moral support, and we just started on Friday. It's supposed to last 14 days, and now 3 days into it all I think about is food. Good food. Real food. But I can't get myself sidetracked cause I'm writing this to get my mind off of food.

Other than that, work has started back up - it's officially tax season again! Last Thursday everyone was back in the office and we had a few clients. I'll miss my beach time during the next couple months, but it'll be nice to have some money again. Also, I just realized that I'll have no tan by the time I get back to Utah in April, what with hanging out behind a desk all day. Will anyone believe I've been living in Hawaii?!

It's been interesting having Potato around. He's been doing well at Christin's spa and he's making some money, which is nice cause some of that money trickles down to us. After having 4 people in this little house of ours it'll feel really big after everyone moves out. Strange to think about. Chris and Steve and Potato will all be gone in 3 months - not a long time.

Here are a couple of pictures just because this text post is boring. The first pic is of a hike I went on with a friend from the branch. It's overlooking Wailuku and Kahului, the main city of Maui.

This next picture was taken near Makena Landing, one of our favorite spots to snorkel and hang out.

So that's been life lately. Same old. Not that I'm complaining - the same old is pretty awesome.

Happy Late Kwanzaa!

2007-12-27T22:38:00.000-07:00

So I have two main things to talk about. #1, the trip to Hana, and #2, how we spent Christmas.

Oh, and a little background. Potato has come to live with us. he's been here about the past 3 weeks now. He worked with us at the Ponderosa, he recently finished school, and we somehow managed to talk him into his first ever airplane ride and, really, his first trip outside of the great state of Utah. It's been fun to have him here, altough things have been a bit crowded in our tinny place. Fortunatley I've been house-sitting a place for a co-worker of mine the past 5 or 6 weeks, so that's taken some of the pressure off.

These first two pictures are on the road to hana. yes, in the second pic Steve is standing on the wall.

This is our campsite. Barely a soul to be found. We went camping right after the huge kona storm that flooded the Maui coastal areas and knocked out power to a lot of the island (including Kihei) for a couple of days. I think most people were afraid of heading to the rainforest side of the island during that time, but the weather in hana was beautiful.

This is a picture of our part of our favorite trail in hana...

and this is Waianapanapa, one of our black sand beaches.

So for Christmas, Steve's boat captain invited us on a trip snorkeling around Lanai - purely a fun trip with no tourists. The day was perfect - sunshiney, warm weather, clear water, good friends. We got a lot of sun and a lot of snorkeling in.

Then as Steve and captain Dave cleaned the boat, Chris and Potato and I relaxed on the beach. Then we went to Dave's house for dinner. Man, the guy loves to cook. Everything was gourmet, including the table settings.

Here's a pic of the gingerbread house I helped make...

and here's one of the spread before the food was ready.

All in all, I couldn't have asked for a more beautiful Christmas day. As always, there are too many pretty pics to post, but this'll have to do for now. Aloha!

Update

2007-11-24T17:17:00.000-07:00

I haven’t updated this thing in forever, so here’s a recap of the highlights of the past few months.
First thing is I quit the job I didn’t like. Eventually I got into the groove and the job wasn’t too horrible, but it just didn’t have the “family” feeling of working at Harold’s. Looking back, I think I’ve always quit a job because I was moving or going back to school or some other valid reason. This is the first time I quit just because I didn’t feel like working there. It was a strange feeling. But a good one.

My parents came to visit not long ago. Unfortunately they came at the very worst time for me – around October 15th. Things were a little insane at Harold’s office because of the October 15th deadline for extentioned (wow, that’s not a word?) taxes, and quarterly reports were due at my 2nd job. I was working from 8:30-6 every day, and very stressed out. I did get to hang out with them on Saturday and Sunday, and then again on the day they left, so all was not lost. We took them on the swinging bridges hike, took them to our favorite beaches, went out to eat at some nice places – it was great.

On 10/28, the annual Xterra off-road triathlon world championship was held here. I wasn’t doing anything else on a Sunday morning, so I headed down to watch some real athletes. It was a beautiful day, and it made me realize I miss the thrill of running races. I’m usually not one for competition, but there’s something about pushing your body to see what it can do that’s addictive. Hard to describe, but, yeah, I’d like to do another ½ marathon or something.

On 11/4 the canoe club paddled a couple of boats out to Molokini. I’m not sure how many miles off shore it is, but it seemed like a long way. We started early in the morning, and while crossing the channel we paddled in some of the roughest water I’ve been in. It was a blast. When we got to Molokini there were 1 or 2 dive boats around, but other than that we had the place to ourselves. The snorkeling wasn’t great because there was a storm rolling in and the sky was cloudy, but it was decent. It’s a little hard to believe that I’ve friggin lived on Maui almost a year and this was my first time to Molokini. But the cloudy weather was just right for intense paddling – kept us cool. And it just started to rain when we were pulling the boats back into shore a few hours later.

Last weekend we had a surf/BBQ/day at the beach single’s branch activity. The surf was looking good, the food was good, and it was fun to just sit and talk with friends. Unfortunately I didn’t catch a single wave which was insanely frustrating.
My birthday was a good one. I went to the beach and just sat on the sand, read a book, jumped in the water, repeated, for a couple of hours. Steve and Chris and I went out to dinner at the Fish Market in Paia for dinner. I got a good bundle of presents from my parents including some white dress shirts that I really needed – a lot of clothes here are made with big polys in mind I think. We looked everywhere and they don’t carry my size dress shirt anywhere on the island.
Then I decided I’d buy myself a surfboard for my birthday. I looked at a few surf shops and took my time deciding what would be a good first board, and I finally decided on one this last Sunday. I took it out on the water yesterday, and I’m really happy with it. Should be a good learning board.
Anyway, that’s the quick and dirty. Overall, life’s been good.

New job

2007-09-10T23:06:00.000-07:00

I started a second job this past week. I figured since my main tax gig will only last through October 15th, I should have another job to tide me over until next February or so. So I handed my resume out to a few places and got a hit.

The job is doing bookkeeping – payroll, financial statements, and the like. It’s VERY part-time (like about 15 hrs a week), so for the next month I’m hoping I’ll be able to do both this and taxes at the same time, and after that the bookkeeping will have to pay the bills.

Trouble is, I’m not a big fan of this new place. Maybe it’s just because it’s so different from Harold’s office. Maybe I just need time to adjust. I’m hoping that’s the case. At Harold’s office, it doesn’t really matter when you show up or what you look like – as long as the job gets done Harold’s happy. Heck, during tax season we usually turn the radio on in the barn or watch Days of Our Lives.

So let me just rant for a minute here as I’ve got a few things to get off my chest.
At the new place it’s your typical “Office Space”-type job. Dress code, strict hours, and I swear it’s as quiet as a library in there. I feel strange even making a phone call in there because everything else is so deadly quiet. And I’m not making it up when I say there’s an older guy with thick glasses named Milton. He shuffles around and mumbles when he speaks. It’s really odd. I’m not sure my manager even knows my name. I haven’t had a REAL conversation with anyone else in the office (i.e. one that lasts more than 3 minutes or is non-work related) the two weeks I’ve been working. All in all, it kind of creeps me out there.

So that’s the scoop. If I can last 5 months there it’ll have served its purpose and I can get the heck out of there. At least I can work late afternoons and have the mornings to paddle and hike and such. Or watch my stories.

Surfing

2007-09-08T00:59:00.000-07:00

Well, and while I'm posting, I may as well tell you about today. Christin and Steve and I all had the morning off work so we thought we'd try our hand at surfing. We've lived here over 8 months now and it's hard to believe we hadn't tried it until now. So we headed to the beach and rented a few boards for the day.

When we first got there we were having some trouble getting up. But there was a guy out there giving lessons - he called me and Chris over, and gave us a push a couple of times to get us going. And really, after catching that first wave it was a lot easier. Immediately after that we were both catching waves on our own. Steve did pretty well, too.

It was a blast. Needless to say we'll be doing a lot more surfing on our days off. In fact, I'm thinking of getting a board for my birthday.

Cop out

2007-09-08T00:12:00.000-07:00

Yeah, so here are some pictures from the big island trip Steve and I took a while back. I guess the truth is, I'm a little intimidated to write about it because it was pretty epic, so hopefully posting some pics now will encourage me to finish it off with some stories in the near future. Anyway, here it goes:

Most of the pictures are from Volcanoes National Park, some are from the top of Mauna Kea (about 14000 feet), and some are from other places.

Paddling the school canoe...ooh, you better believe that's a paddling.

2007-08-06T09:53:00.000-07:00

So also about a month ½ ago I wanted to try canoe paddling. They have paddling clubs all over the island and groups go out every day. So 1, it looked like a lot of fun, 2, it’s social, 3, it’s great exercise, and 4, it gets you out of the house and enjoying nature every day. As it turns out there’s a club that meets right at the bottom of our hill here. So one morning Steve and I checked it out. And it was everything we thought it would be. Soon after we tried it, tho, Steve got a job working on a snorkel boat and he couldn’t paddle mornings. I, on the other hand, have time just about every morning to go. So I wrote my check for membership and even bought me my very own paddle. (I'll have to post a pic of my paddle some time - i have to say it's beautiful. Practically a work of art.)

The first time I went someone was saying to me that racing season had started and the coach may need an extra guy to paddle for him. So the next time the racers met I woke up at 4:30am and met them at the beach at 5am. Then we proceeded to paddle ½ mile sprints over and over and over. Holy crap, I was so in over my head. So I politely bowed out this racing season, but I’m really looking forward to racing next year. Should be cool stuff.

Here’s a view of us paddling out in Maalaea with West Maui mountain in the background,

and here’s a picture of Haleakala from the water.

A lot of times we paddle out to a reef where the turtles hang out and we swim around with them. And apparently when the whales are in season it’s truly amazing to be out with them.

Anyway, in other news, I'm off to camp on the big island for the week with Steve. When we had first booked the trip I stumbled on news that they were filming the new Indiana Jones movie on the Big Island right when we would be there. I can't tell you how excited Steve was to possibly get a glimpse of Harrison Ford or to have a chance to be an extra in the movie. Unfortunately, they moved their schedule up and I just read about the wrapping-up party they had in Hilo 2 weeks ago. So close.

Hana revisisted

2007-08-04T10:11:00.000-07:00

2 weeks ago Chris and Steve and Mini and I were all able to camp in Hana. Mini wrote a blurb on our family blog, and she did an alright job for her first post ever, so I'll just repost the whole thing here:

On Thursday the 19th, we left to go camping to Hana. We packed up the Suzuki and took off in the morning. Steve hadn’t been there in over twenty years and Chris and I (Megan) had never been. We made a stop at Hana Bay to stretch our legs. There is a cute little town and a really nice beach with a popular hole-in-the-wall plate lunch place called Tutu’s.

Here is a picture of our camp in Haleakala National Park. It was beautiful! You could take a walk right out to the ocean.

Apparantly, it was not recommended you swim here:

After setting up camp we took a drive to find the Red Sand Beach. The directions we had were not too clear, so it took a bit of wandering. There was a trail that led right down into this cove. It was awesome and the water felt so good after the hike there. Little did we know it was a popular nudie beach! Just kidding… But we did get an offer for some weed, but figured we already had enough, so we turned it down. hehe

The next day (Friday the 20th) Jeff, Christin, and I got up to do some hiking. It was only like a 4 mile hike- round trip. The trail starts out pretty rocky, then it leads you through a bamboo forest. There are a couple bridges overlooking green valleys on the way.

At the end there is a waterfall that’s about 400 feet high or something. It’s HUGE; the pictures just don’t do it justice!

The famous 7 Sacred Pools were just a walk away from camp. We all got in our suits and took a swim. They really were amazing.

On our way out of camp we stopped to see where Carl A. Lindberg is buried. It was such a quaint and peaceful place. On the grounds is this old chapel that was built in the 1800’s; so old and still being used and still as cute as ever.

Last stop was the Black Sand Beach. There is this lava tube you can crawl into and the water comes crashing right into it. It’s a really fun beach.

The REAL 4th

2007-07-22T11:53:00.001-07:00

So I think the Russells have a new tradition: Various odd fruit night. The night of the 6^th we went shopping and as I was browsing the fruit section I saw a fruit that caught my eye. It looked a little something like this:

Being in an adventurous mood I decided to try it. My sisters picked up on the idea of buying strange fruit. Christin picked up a coconut and Mini decided to get asparagus. Nothing too crazy, I guess, but other than my fruit there wasn’t anything we’ve never tried before. Anyway, turns out my fruit was a dragonfruit, and we had to look up online how to cut and eat it.

Turns out everything was delicious! The coconut was fun to break open and drain. The dragonfruit was really sweet and dyed everything it touched red. The asparagus, well, we cooked it wrong and had to throw it away.

So the REAL 4^th of July celebration came for us on July 7^th. By boss, Harold, has this tradition that he and his family watch the Makawao paradethat morning then have a BBQ at his place afterwards. He invites various and sundry other people as well and they just see who shows up. So he invited Bret and I (and I asked if I could bring my family and got the OK on them, too). So at 8:30 we all plunked our seats down and waited for the parade. My brother-in-law Steve and my sister Mini were there, too. The parade was really funny – typical small town parade. Probably every classic car on the island was there. Then came the different clubs and stuff. Here’s a couple pictures of the Democratic parties festivities – one of the more colorful displays I’ve ever seen. They had loud music, women dancing on stilts, people in corn suits, etc.:

And as Steve is fond of telling everyone, Harold was the star of the parade. He heckled about everyone that went by. He had a thing going with the people around him where they’d try to guess the year of the car going by. Of course that meant to settled the wager he had to yell at every car to ask the year. Some times he’d just yell, “How’d you sneak that car into the parade?!” or “What’s the deal with your float?!” One local business owner drove by and Harold yelled, “Hey, where’s the Kama ‘aina discount, man?! I can’t afford to eat at your place!”

Afterwards was a BBQ at Harold’s place. He’s got a beautiful plot of land with a cool house on it.

Every 4^th of July Makawao also hosts a rodeo that’s pretty famous in the islands. I think it’s the biggest in the state. We dropped by, but at $10 a head we decided it wasn’t worth it. We were all tired and weren’t planning on hanging around long anyway. So that was the real 4^th of July.

The 4th, give or take

2007-07-09T20:51:00.000-07:00

All the Russell kids, together again at last. ^^ (and of course Mini blinked)

This last week Annie and Ed came over to Hawaii on vacation. Ed’s parents have a time-share thing goin on so they were able to stay at Ko’olina on Oahu for free. We convinced them to come to Maui for at least a day before they headed over to Oahu, and they arrived last Thursday night. Everyone had Friday off of work, so it was great to hang out together. We all drove around West Maui, stopping in Lahaina to shop and to lie on the beach, then stopping at a blowhole and some cool tidepools around the top of the road. When we got back into town we had dinner at this really cool Thai place. The next morning I drove them down the Hana Highway a ways and we did a short hike. Then unfortunately Annie and Ed were off to Oahu the next morning.

When the 4^th of July came around, Annie had kept hinting (rather heavily) that we should go visit her and Ed on Oahu. I had the day off work and Mini’s never doing anything, so we both decided to head over there. That night about all we did was walk around Waikiki and watch the surfers and stuff.

One quick sidenote - I hate Oahu traffic, and I didn’t think about the whole island having the day off. So not only was the place over run with tourists, but locals as well. Not really a big deal, but yeah, the whole island was pretty crowded.

I had never been up the Waianae coast on Oahu, so we all took a drive up as far as the road would take us. This is the stretch of beach where all the transient and homeless set up their shanty tents and live. There was one stretch of road that was lined with huge banners pronouncing an independent Hawaiian nation. There were lots of locals out surfing, too. It was fun to sit on the beach and just watch them.

Then I made Annie and Ed drive us up to the north shore and we had lunch at one of the shrimp trucks and shave ice at Matsumoto’s after that. For a long while after that we relaxed on that one beach where all the turtles are. It’s cool to be able to see turtles that close up as they come into shore to rest on the beach. Oh, and as Mini and I were walking along the beach there we saw an ipod sticking out of the sand. At first I said to Mini, “ah, that sucks, someone got their ipod ruined.” But Mini picked it up and it was still playing! So we kept it with us to see if anyone would notice their ipod in our hands but I’m sure the owner was long gone by that point. So yeah, free ipod. It’s quite the opposite experience from last time when Christin had her ipod claimed by the ocean.

The rest of the night we just spent walking along the lagoons at Ko’olina and enjoying the sunset. No fireworks. We really just didn’t feel like fighting the traffic in Waikiki or anywhere else they may have fireworks. I had to be back for work early the next morning so we had an early flight to Maui, but it was great to hang out with Annie and Ed while they were here.

Hana

2007-06-04T10:17:00.000-07:00

A long time ago I started talking about going camping to a couple of people at church. Finally we decided to stop talking about it and just do it. So last week we set a date and stuck to it. Originally my idea was to just have 4 or 5 people or so, but then work started to spread and the number quickly grew to 12 or 13 people. I guess I should have known that 12 committed people would turn out to be 7 people in total going. I really allowed myself to be freaked out for a while there.

5:30pm was the time we were supposed to all meet in Kahului and leave from there. Of course I went to go pick up this girl named Kiley and she wasn't packed at all. So I waited around for that to happen. We finally arrived at the meeting spot about an hour later than we should have - about 6:15 or so. As it turns out, another car that was going was in the exact same situation. Except they were running way later than even our car. After making a Wendy's run and they still weren't packed, we just left. As it turns out, about the same time we left they were finally ready to go and we met up just down the road. So we had a caravan of 3 cars.

I've heard that the drive to hana takes about 3 or 3.5 hours. Given our setting out time I thought we were really in trouble. Turns out the late start wasn't necessarity a bad thing. The way to drive to hana is to just ignore the yellow stripes on the roadway and use both lanes as one. This way you can go faster around the curves in the road and you don't get quite as motion sick as normal. At night we were really able to take advantage of that little tip because you could really tell when there was another car coming around the corner, and you could really cruise when there wasn't.

So we made it to hana in about 1.5 hours, but our campsite was about 10 miles down the road from there. So we drove some more, and we drove some more, then we kept driving. At one point we were driving through a little town, and a person in my car said they didn't remember it being before the national park, and I started to think that somehow we had passed a turn-off or something (despite there being only one road). Then came the kicker. We came to a bridge that said "Bridge May Collapse. Death or serious injury may result. No entry." Yeah. So we turned around and headed back, hoping that we'd run into somewhere we could camp. Driving past a house not far up the road there was a local lady opening her gate to get into her yard. We stopped and asked how close we were to Kipahulu. She then explained that we need to go over the DANGER bridge and keep on going. So we crossed our fingers and made it over the bridge safely. And soon after that we found our camping ground.

As we were settling into our camping spot and setting up the tent, Ben spotted a trail and we decided to follow it. Not far down the path there was a perfect clearing for setting up our tent, so we sprinted back and told the others. It was hard to get a good feeling for our surroundings in the dark. The moon was full so we did have some light, but we knew there would be one heck of a view in the morning from where our tent was.

In the morning we weren't disappointed. These first two pictures are of our view from the campsite. It was amazingly beautiful. (yeah, Kiley stepping into the picture as I was taking it.)

So early in the morning we hiked to the seven sacred pools. It was only about a half mile from camp. Here's a generic 7 sacred pools picture.

Next was a hike up the Pipiwai Trail. There were a couple of distinguishing features about the trail. First was the bamboo forest. I've been through a couple bamboo forests on other hikes here, but this was by far the coolest. The bamboo was at least 50 feet high. In fact the bamboo was so high and dense that we were in complete shade as we hiked. As the wind would flow through the tops of the shoots the bamboo would hit into each other and make this cool knocking noise. Then, of course, at the end was a 400 foot waterfall. I was under the impression that there was a pool for swimming at the bottom of the falls, but sadly, there wasn't. And I guess even if there was you would have to be crazy careful - while we were standing around a rock broke loose from above and came crashing down into the water. Scary.

Here's most of the crew (from left to right): me, Ben, Lyndee, Kiley, and Brady. Not pictured are Roxy and Roxy's friend.

A quick pic of the bamboo:

While on the hike we met some cool tourists. They recommended a side trail that led to the top of another waterfall. Because things had been so dry lately it was a dry waterfall at the time, but it was insalnely cool nonetheless. We threw a rock off the top to time how long you would have to live if you jumped off. Turns out it was about 5 seconds.

After the hike we headed back to camp for some lunch. The girls I guess were feeling lazy so the boys went for a drive to check out some of the other sights on that side of the island. Our first stop was Wai’anapanapa State Park. This is home of the only black sand beach on Maui. When we got there I immediately recognized it as the picture Bill Knight took when he was over here for a band trip. I can’t tell you how often I looked at that picture while on the mainland and dreamed of being on Maui. It was pretty exciting to finally see that place in real life. We swam a little off the beach and explored one of the lava tubes there, then headed out on the highway again.

After driving for a bit we came upon a sweet little beach (I think it was Hamoa beach?). Anyway, we hung out for quite a while over there and then went back to base camp.

Beyond that we just hung out and shot the breeze. This is another picture from our campsite and one of the sunrise early on Sunday morning. Overall it was a great trip, and one I hope to repeat often.

A couple of quick things...

2007-05-02T12:08:00.000-07:00

Just a quick couple of things I’ve done lately that haven’t made it into the blog.

A little over a week ago I decided to see sunrise at the top of Haleakala. Apparently it’s supposed to be pretty cool and a lot of tourists do it. The thing is, the drive is really long, and if you want a parking space you’d better be there at least an hour before sunrise to see it best. Most people leave home around 2am to see it. So anyway, a few friends from the ward and I decided to do it. And me in my infinite wisdom came up with the idea of pulling an all-nighter. So Friday night they came over to my house and we played a rousing game of Phase 10, then headed up to the top of the volcano. Luckily I took my headlamp because it was so dark up there. For a while we just lay out and watched the stars (lots of shooting stars). And I thought the sky in southern Utah was beautiful. I’ve never seen so many stars as this night. It was even tough to find the big dipper just because it was so crowded up there.

Eventually people did start showing up. And sunrise was dang cool. There were lots of clouds and I don’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Was it worth it? I dunno – I certainly won’t do an all-nighter again. I’m gettin’ too old for that anymore.

The other thing recently was Christin and I went to a Wailer’s concert this last Saturday night. We went with a couple of Christin’s friends from work, and it was a blast! For how popular reggae music is here (and Bob Marley specifically) I was surprised how few people showed up for it. It was quite a contrast to the Jack concert not long ago. Well, there was lots of drinking and pot smoking, I guess that much was the same :)

Our day in picutres

2007-04-30T18:55:00.000-07:00

It’s not often that Christin and I have the same days off together (although now that I don’t have a job it happens a little more frequently). Monday was one of those days.

There’s a hike nearby that a lot of people on the island talk about. On weekends the locals like to hike it and hang out at the end. It’s known as the “swinging bridges” hike, and it was pretty cool.

We started the hike early at around 9am. The day was very overcast and it looked like rain, but it turned out to be just cloud cover and the rain never came.

I’d seen pictures of the bridges before and I didn’t think they looked scary at all. But truth be told, they made me a little nervous when I was actually out on them. They’re higher up than they look. And they’re a lot more rickety than they look, too. Some boards looked like they have given way under people before, and some were almost completely loose from the cables holding them. It certainly made the hike a little more exciting.

Towards the beginning of the hike Christin got a phone call from work, so we stopped while she took the call. In just the minute and a half we stopped, swarms of mosquitoes gathered round and tried to take a bite out of us. It’s funny (at least I think it’s funny), but Christin for whatever reason seems to get more than her fair share of mosquito bites, and this occasion was no different. While I totaled 3 bites, Christin had around 6 or 7 on each leg, plus a few more on her arms. And she must be allergic as well – because instead of just little bumps she gets welts. I really felt sorry for her. And again, all the bites seem to have come during the first couple minutes of the hike when we weren’t moving. Poor thing.

At the end of the hike there’s a man-made waterfall, pictured below. To me the water looked a little dangerous so I swam cautiously. It was also some of the coldest water ever so I wasn’t in very long. I guess I need to come up one weekend when there are other people to see which parts of the water are safe to swim in and which are not. With nobody else around it was really a relaxing place to be.

After that we visited ‘Iao valley. It’s a common tourist attraction and it’s only about a 30 minute drive from home, but we’d never made the trip. The famous landmark there is the ‘Iao Needle. Really, the needle wasn’t too impressive, but the valley itself was beautiful. The mountains here reminded me of the mountains along east Oahu that I love so much.

The other thing we witnessed was the suicide of this local Hawaiian guy off of a bridge here. Just kidding. I guess there are a few locals that jump off the bridge for money. It was quite impressive – the fall must be 30 feet or so. I guess I’m just a chicken when it comes to heights, so that made the jump that much more impressive.

Anyway, that’s it for now. I’m starting to get a little bored now so today I think I’ll update my resume and maybe get it out to a few places. Or maybe I’ll head to the beach. I’ll just have to play it by ear I guess.

Kokua

2007-04-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

So had myself another great weekend. I was really disappointed a while ago because I tried and failed to get Kokua Festival tickets (it’s a benefit concert on Oahu with Jack Johnson as the main booking and Matt Costa and Eddie Vedder as some of the supporting acts). Sometime on Thursday I was listening to the radio and I was mentally tuned out, but the overheard the DJ say something about there being about 50 tickets left for Kokua. So I drove home and checked and lo and behold – there were tickets! They must have released a limited number the week before the show.

So I called Christin at work and asked if she could make it. She was able to get work off and I booked the tickets. So we knew where we were going but not how to get there or where we were going to stay over there. The happy answers were that inter-island flights are at an all-time affordable rate (about $50 roundtrip), and we packed up the tent in case we needed it. So Sunday morning we flew over to Oahu. The doors didn’t open until 2:30 so we hung out at Waikiki beach for a while, then wandered over to the Waikiki Shell venue where the concert was.

While in line we met a couple kids who had just moved to Maui the month before, so we talked about what they’d seen there and what we’d seen. Good kids. We were there early enough that we got killer seats right at the front of the lawn. The acts started promptly at 4:00, and man, it was a loooong concert. We finally got out of there around 10:00pm. Eddie Vedder did some cool Pearl Jam songs and had the place rockin, and then Jack played for about 1½ hours and rounded the night out nicely. By the end of the night, tho, the drunks were crowding in around us, taking over the 5 inches of space between our towels and our neighbors’ blankets. Eventually they had taken over all our personal space. It was annoying, but really the whole place was packed by the end of the night. Like a can of sardines we were. So maybe next year we’ll spend an extra $10 a ticket and get individual seats.

We had packed the tent over with us just in case we found a nice spot to camp out, but after the concert I doubt that even if we had had a spot in mind we wouldn’t have made it. We were just too tuckered out to go anywhere. So we drove around Waikiki a little and found a nice neighborhood and just slept in the car. To tell the truth, it wasn’t that bad at all.

Monday we were professional beach-hoppers. We took the Likelike hwy (one of my favorite drives of all time) to the Kamehameha hwy up to the north shore. First we hung out at Sunset beach and watched the surfers a while. Then we spent some time watching the waves at Waimea Bay. The surf was too large for anyone to go into the water, but a few brave souls were out in the distance surfing. We draped our towels on the beach somewhere we thought we’d be safe from the surf, but one huge wave caught everyone off-guard and swept up the beach. All of our stuff was carried away in a few inches of water, including Christin’s new iPod. We salvaged everything eventually, but sadly the iPod is a goner (man, she’s bad luck with those).

We stopped by Matsumoto’s (of course) on our way down to Ko Olina on the Ewa side of the island. I’d never been there but it’s a beautiful place if your goal to just relax and not worry about waves at all. Here’s a picture of us in front of one of the lagoons.

So after that we hopped on the plane and came home. It’s funny how quickly this place has become home to me.

Tuesday and Wednesday were also notable. Firstly because I was in direct sunlight for another 2 straight days (making 4 total if you were counting – and yes, I’m totally fried now and just want to hang out indoors for a couple days and let my sunburns die down a bit).

But secondly because the Dalai Lama came for a visit. It’s been about 14 years since he’s been to the islands at all. So Tuesday was a free lecture. The Lama talked about compassion and its importance in everyday life. At the end of the speech he took some audience questions. But probably my favorite part was the introduction and welcome by some native Hawaiians with their ancient Hawaiian chants and hula. Wednesday the lecture was a little deeper – it served more as an introduction to Buddhism. He spoke about the different thoughts about creation, the idea of self, morality and how a Buddhist tries to live life.

So that’s been the last few days. Oh, and by the way, gas on Oahu was $3.03 for regular. Here on Maui it's now $3.45. Ouch. And here's a picture of Chris on Waikiki beach.

The end of a season

2007-04-18T13:29:00.000-07:00

The end of tax season, that is. I can't believe it's come and gone already.

When we first moved to the island, the most pressing and frustrating thing was finding a job. Christin had finished massage therapy school, Steve had just finished his stint as acting general manager at the Ponderosa, and I had a master's degree in accounting. Should be no problem for us, right? Nope.

It's funny, I started keeping a short journal when we first got here so we could remember stuff once we got a computer and the internet or some kind of communication link with the outside world. After a while I stopped. The main reason was - it was extremely boring. Every day was the same. We would wake up and hit the job market.

We believed when we first got here that all the jobs would be at the big hotels. So we drove around to the Four Seasons, the Prince, the Fairmont, etc. It turns out this is a horrible place to start looking for a job when you need one. The interview process is insanely long - about 3 or 4 weeks at least. First you meet with the pre-interviewer, then the department manager, then their manager, then theirs. And inbetween each interview is a week at least. Most of the time you have no idea what kind of chance you have at getting the job because of the "don't call us, we'll call you" policies.

So really the first few weeks were spent dressing up, handing out resumes, going to interviews, checking the job posting boards, and hitting the beach whenever we got sick of it all. It was rough. Christin got desperate a couple times and worked a few days doing room service in one of the big hotels, and even a few nights working night shift at Denny's (which is a story in and of itself). She eventually found out that all the starting jobs are at the smaller spas and even doing some out-call work (where people call from their hotels and you take the massage to them) which Christin had no idea even existed back on the mainland. She's really happy doing that sort of work now and so things have mellowed out for her as far as a job goes.

Steve eventually got a job at the Fairmont as a bellman, but that only lasted a couple weeks. He's been back in Utah at the Ponderosa for the last couple months and we're anxious for him to come back to Maui.

So that leaves me. I had a couple of job offers the first 2 days we were here. But the only jobs I could get were doing taxes. So I accepted both jobs thinking I could swing both at the same time (I must have been delirious). It was nice knowing I had a job lined up, but the tax season really doesn't start until sometime in February. It got hard towards the end of January because money was tight, but eventually I started working and things turned out better than I could have imagined. (The pictures are of where I worked, by the way. Yeah, it's an old gas station and barn. It's a story for another day but I promise I'll tell it. Oh, and if you look really close in the first picture you can see my boss, Harold, in his office in the center of the picture.)

I guess I could sit here and type forever, but who would read it? So now that I'm temporarily retired (sounds better than unemployed, yeah?) I have lots of free time to write down some of our experiences here. Anyway, I'll sign off for now.

The Cleverest Blog Title Ever!

2007-04-08T22:39:00.000-07:00

I just had to write a few words about how cool last weekend was (March 31^st and April 1^st). It’s funny, but in the 3 ½ months we’ve been here I haven’t had a whole day off to do some real snorkeling. So last Saturday they didn’t call me in to work so I decided to go all out. There’s a place about 30 minutes from home called La Peruse Bay. Pretty much you just start driving south and park where the road ends (thank goodness for the little Geo Metro or I wouldn’t have had a parking place at all). Then if you really want to see hoards of fish you hike about 45 minutes over a lava field. And the hike is no picnic. Some parts of the hike there’s no trail at all and you just have to jump over crevasses and boulder up mounds of rough lava. But after I got to what’s called “the aquarium” it was all worth it. Despite it being the middle of a Saturday morning, the place was virtually empty. There were maybe 3 families hanging out there and me. In fact I decided to head back a little early because eventually it was just me and one other group of 4 people, and I wanted people around in case I got eaten by a shark or tripped on the lava and hurt myself, so I headed home before they did.

The bay itself it beautiful to look at even though there’s no beach, but the real eye candy was after you put your face in the water. It reminds me of when Frodo falls into the dead marshes – it really doesn’t look that deep, but when he falls in the water there’s a whole world down there you can’t see from up top. Except there were fishes instead of dead guys. It was amazing! Huge schools of fish of all kinds. Crazy stretched-out trumpet fish. Huge parrot fish. It was just impossible to describe, really. I could have spent all day there.

It’d been a long time since I’d snorkeled or scuba’d, so I swallowed a lot of salt water that first half hour or so. After that, though, I was just one of the fishes. It was great.

The next day (Sunday morning), Christin had the day off too so we went to Po’olenalena Beach to hang out (pictured at the top). After lying on the beach for a while we decided to do some snorkeling there. I had been a little disappointed the day before because I didn’t see any turtles, but this totally made up for it. There were turtles all over the place. Most were pretty friggin big, but there were a couple that were snuggled at the bottom of the ocean in some corral. They looked like they were sleeping and they were bigger than me and Christin. (Sidenote: How long can turtles hold their breath? Were they really sleeping under there or were they dead?)

Then Sunday evening Christin and I went on a whale-watching trip. Chris and Steve had already been on one earlier in the year but the whale season is ending and I figured I’d better get out there before they leave. It was pretty cool. We didn't see any breaches where the whales jump totally out of the water. But we saw plenty of dorsal fins and tails. Any way you look at it it was a nice boat ride at the end of the day.

So yeah, that was last weekend. It's hard to believe, but this week is really my last week doing taxes. After that I've got some time to explore Kaui or the Big Island. That and I'll have some time to do some real blogging finally.

The Cost of Heaven

2007-03-31T11:05:00.000-07:00

So there are a couple of downsides to living in Maui. Don’t get me wrong – for the most part this is the coolest place in the world (having been to at least 4 other places in the world you can trust me when I say that). I figure my blog posts from here on out will be all about how cool this place is, so that’s one reason why I’m doing this.

Number one – the sugar cane factory stink. Holy crap. There’s a big HC&S factory along one of the highways here and most of the time the stink is pouring out of it. It’s a stench that’s impossible to describe. The closest I can come is that it smells like someone ate a pound of sugar and then threw it up. It’s a sweet smell, but at the same time it makes everyone who smells it queesy. Truly something that needs to be experienced to understand. When I first got here I lost a lot of weight. I thought it was all my diet and exercise paying off, but looking back it was probably loss of appetite due to passing the cane factory going to and from work every day. Ick.

Number two is obviously the cost of living here. We knew it would be expensive, but we had no idea. Rent is expensive. Electricity is expensive. Cars are expensive. Food is expensive. But we’ve learned to manage. We found a nice little cottage and we each pitch in $400 a month. A friend from Utah will be moving in for a few months in the fall and so it’ll go down to $300 a month. But we’re lucky. Most people move here on their own and have to get a studio for $700-$800 on average. I’ve put in fluorescent lightbulbs in our place and we’ve put off using our air conditioner until things get unbearably hot in the summer. We take lukewarm showers (and it feels good), and it all adds up to a perfectly reasonable electric bill. We’ve learned to go to Costco and Walmart for most things including food and we don’t buy anything at Safeway unless it’s on sale. I’m a little dude and don’t have a huge caloric intake need to start out with, so it’s not a big problem for me, but Steve has struggled – he likes his food. So first moving in was a huge outlay, but now our expenses have leveled off and I’m feelin good about living here.

After living here a while it seems that Maui puts everyone through a trial by fire when they first get here (thank goodness we weren’t the only ones). It seems lots of people move here on a whim and get beaten down till there’s nothing left. It’s really very humbling. Maybe that’s why everyone is so nice here – there’s an understanding that we’re all struggling and a need to stick together to make it here. We’ve all been through the war and we all have that one thing in common at least. Anyway, more on that later.

Ah,

2007-03-25T23:53:00.000-07:00

so my first big post about Hawaii. Where to begin? A lot has happened these last couple months, so I’ll have to do this in installments.

As they say, I guess the best place to start is at the beginning. So in December Christin (my sister) and Steve (her husband) and I packed up and began preparations for Hawaii. I still have payments to pay on my Elantra, so my parents and I worked out a deal. I would bring my mom’s Suzuki Sidekick over to Hawaii and my parents would make the payments on my car while my mom drove it around. It seemed like a good idea at the time – I would have an extra $230 in my pocket every month, my mom would have a newish car to drive, and we would have a nice little 4x4 to drive around with. When we were done here we’d sell the Suzuki and give the proceeds to my parents – eliminating the hassle of shipping it back to the mainland. While some things have happened in the meantime to make us rethink this decision, I guess the bottom line is that it’s still cool to have the 4-wheel-drive, and I can always have someone ship over the Elantra if I decide to stay here. More on this later.

So we drove the Suzuki to California a few days before our plane left so we could get it on the boat and on its journey to the island. It normally takes 2-3 weeks for a car to get shipped over, and we wanted to limit the cost of renting a car on Maui before our car arrived.

Steve has a brother in California about 30 minutes from the harbor and LAX, so it all worked out nicely. There really wasn’t a lot to do in Cali, especially because we really didn’t have a car. We played a lot of XBOX, read our Maui books and tried to think through what we would do once we were over here.

I put most of my sound system stuff in my check-in bags so I wouldn’t have to pay to ship them fedex or whatever. The weight limit on check-ins is 50 pounds, and I managed to pack both bags so they were 49 pounds each. The good thing about moving to Hawaii is that you really don’t need a lot of clothes, so there really wasn’t anything else to bring besides the big stuff.

So we got on the plane without a hitch. The plane ride over here was friggin long (as everyone knows). We were on a later flight and arrived in Honolulu even later. Then we had about a 7 hour layover until the flight to Maui took off at about 5:30am. Talk about so close yet so far away. So we bunkered down at the airport and tried to get as much sleep as possible before departure. Inter-island flights are funny. You’re in the air a total of about 25 minutes – about 5 or 10 minutes into the flight the pilot announces your decent.

Talk about relief when we touched down in Maui.

So here's us at the airport trying to catch some shuteye:

And here's us at the campsite where we were prepared to spend up to 2 weeks, if necessary:

Bleh

2007-03-23T23:58:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm feeling too lazy to post anything worthwhile tonight. Maybe tomorrow. In the meantime, here's a song I heard when I went to last year's Warren Miller film and I've since added it to my list of "songs i'm obsessed with". That and everyone else seems to be posting music on their blogs so I thought I'd join in.

Back from a long absence

2007-03-12T11:16:00.000-07:00

A typical morning at the beach with fresh pineapple for a snack. Just a quick note to say we're finally getting internet at the house next week sometime. Hopefully that means I'll be better able to keep in touch with email, blog, webcab, whatever. Aloha!

one more week!

2006-09-05T10:55:00.000-07:00

K, so I've made the reservations for the 7 of us. Mini is done with school Wednesday at 1:00, so my thinking is that if the Sloans and Knights meet us there around then, we can grab some lunch and head down the rest of the way. Possible? Yes? No?

Then here's a list of the stuff Mini and I are planning on taking-

● tent (optional)
● sleeping bag
● sleeping pad (for sure)
● a small camping stove
● lighter
● pots & pans
● plasticware
● flashlights
● camera
● swimsuit
● TP
● water (enough for the hike in)

so anything else we should be taking?

for food we've got some MREs, oatmeal, apple cider, some beef jerky, bagels. any other suggestions for food?

West Rim

2006-08-31T16:31:00.000-07:00

Havasupai

2006-08-17T16:45:00.000-07:00

So we're less than a month away, now. I'll repeat some of the same information I've listed before, but here's the deal. Now that we're getting closer, we need firm committments from those going. If you can let me know sometime this weekend yes or no for sure it'd be much appreciated. If Amber's still planning on coming she can maybe drive to Salt Lake and carpool with the Sloans from there. My sisters and I can meet the group in St. George. And Travis is close enough to just meet us at the trailhead that evening.

The dates I have marked on the calendar are September 13th-17th (Wed-Sun). The 13th for travel, 14th for hiking, that night through the next day and night for hanging out, 16th for hiking out, and the 17th would be driving home. I know the dates may be a problem because of school for some people, but the more the merrier. It'll be $58.32 each for the permits and camping fees.

So again, let me know if you can make it. I still have a couple people from here at work that may be joining us as well, and I hope to have committments from them in the next few days. If you have any questions, let me know. Thanks!

-Jeff

K, so a quick update

2006-08-17T16:19:00.000-07:00

on how I'm doing. I'm working at the Zion Ponderosa on the east rim of Zion National Park. I really love my job here. It gets a little repetative at times (especially the food in the cafeteria), but otherwise it's great. I'm a recreation guide, which means guests here sign up for activities and I'm in charge of the making sure things go smoothly and the guests are safe. We do a variety of different things - paintball, ATV tours, archery, shooting (.22s and 20-guage shotguns), fishing, etc. We even do some rappelling excursions down Orderville Canyon (pictured above, and which I've assistant guided on a few times) and Birch Creek Canyon.

On my days off I try to get hikes in (I still need to do the bigger stuff like the subway and the narrows) which I love. Below are pictures of Observation Point and Cable Mountain.

Otherwise things are good. My sister Christin finished up massage therapy school in Cedar City and has joined me and my brother-in-law Steve here at the resort. It's fun to have the Hawaii crew together again. And Steve's assistant recreation manager, Potato, is contemplating coming with us, too.

There were a few busy weeks but now that school's starting back up the guests are dwindling and most of the staff are heading off in diverse directions. Tonight is a sort of farewell party for everyone. Basically it'll be Steve, me, and 3 others doing all the recreation starting next week. We'll see how that goes.

Anyway, those are the highlights for now. I'll try and write again soon.

Observation Point (along the trail):

Observation Point (at the top):

Cable Mountain (along the trail):

Cable Mountain (at the top):

see you on the other side...

2006-06-26T18:50:00.000-07:00

Well, this'll be my last post for a while. I'm packing up all my stuff this week so I can move to my new job this weekend, and that includes packing up the 'puter. Here are a couple car pictures I've seen over the last couple months - no particular reason.

That last picture is one of the coolest VW vans I've ever seen. So anyway, I'll post again when I get a chance (probably in a couple weeks).

yeah for camping!

2006-06-20T15:31:00.000-07:00

inspired by sloanie's posts about camping, here is my latest adventure. there's a kid here who owns some property southeast of cedar - it's a beautiful piece of land. so mini and i and five others went camping up there last weekend. complete with dutch oven potatoes. (it's not quite prawns and pork, but it was still pretty good.)

Lake Blanch

2006-06-12T17:53:00.000-07:00

Just a quick photo post of the Lake Blanch hike I went on a little over a week ago. Man, it was the perfect day for it. The river was pretty intense:

Towards the top there was still quite a bit of snow (lots of slippin' and slidin'):

The temperature was perfect and the lake was beautiful. And of course, here's Sundial Peak:

dreams does come true!

2006-06-10T22:23:00.000-07:00

I was watching TV a little bit ago and saw one of the coolest things ever. maybe it as so funny because i'm sunburned (which always make me a little crazy) and tired. but it was a demolition derby with buses doing laps in a figure 8. the crashes and burn outs were pretty cool. haha, and the guy who won was the biggest hick ever. while this isn't an exact quote of his victory speech, it's close enough: "Visions of checkered flags danced in my head last night, and i'm here to say, dreams does come true!"

inspired by other posters...

2006-06-07T17:01:00.000-07:00

Top 10 Jeff needs:

1. Jeff needs to come visit his friends in Texas soon.
2. Uncle Jeff Needs You.
3. Jeff needs some luck.
4. Jeff needs a very solid, experienced family who can provide him with structure and day-to-day consistency.
5. Jeff needs a fast flyin' ship on a death star track
6. Jeff needs a jump-start
7. Jeff needs to communicate to his team Ed's concerns.
8. Jeff needs 13 innings to subdue Kokomo.
9. Jeff needs a haircut.
10. Jeff Needs A Date

another dream

2006-06-06T11:35:00.000-07:00

This was a dream from a couple weeks ago. I have a pretty cool drawing of it, but my scanner is already packed away :(

I was on some sort of hike/interview with Jesse & a Kent Brockman-like reporter, except this guy wasn’t a cartoon. He was asking me about this new kind of rap. I could actually hear bits & pieces of it in my head, so I was able to comment on what I thought of it, and it wounded mostly like gibberish. So I tried to say something profound about it like, “most of it is gibberish, some of it is inspired, all of it is from the heart.”

The hike we were on wasn’t a normal hike, either, and very hard to describe. It was a sort of narrow canyon formed by a cliff-face that went up as far as I could see on the left, and on the right just a jutting up of rock with another huge cliff on the right of it. I knew some people were brave enough to climb the jutting on the right to look down the cliff onto the road below, but there was no way I was going to do it. I could see Jesse thinking about it but he decided against it, too.

As we walked I started noticing more & more little nasty things along the trail. First was what looked like a beheaded snake with a spattering of blood on the ground. This worried me because I didn’t have any sort of knife to do the same if I encountered a snake in this narrow place. More & more I saw patters of blood in the dirt, mostly in squiggles – more clear signs that snakes had been there. Then I noticed lots of ants crawling around – big ones.

Then finally there was a big ol’ spider. It was like a big, thick pancake with legs, and it moved pretty fast. It was probably 6 inches in diameter & 1 inch thick. Anyway, it was something I hadn’t seen before so I tried to king of sneak past it. As I did it scurried into my path to block me off. I didn’t know if this sucker could jump so I backed off and found a big stick lying on the path. I used the big[ger] end of the stick as the sledge end & smooshed the spider good with it. Then I walked on.

Random randomness

2006-05-21T18:11:00.000-07:00

So here are just a few things I've thought about posted but never did. Hope you've got a few free minutes to read through it all.

First, I always wanted to photoshop this picture after Mar drew attention to it and mentioned it looks like she's running from something horrible. Sorry, Mar, but I had to. No hard feelings, right?

And this a picture of something from a conversation we had in Moab. It still makes me laugh. "The hooves of a bear!"

So remember when I was tagged by Sloanie? Yeah, it was a while ago. But here are my responses anyway.

Four jobs you have had in your life:

• Little Caesar’s Pizza. First job ever. The work sucked, but we got to eat every pizza we messed up. Which was a lot of pizza.

• Heather’s Gourmet Market. Good times working with the Sloans. And I’m with Sloanie on this one, you can’t beat a hot pastrami sandwich on a baca roll. Man, that’s good eatin.

• Windows West. My first non-food related job. I built blinds for windows. This is where I picked up all the Spanish I know (which is very little).

• 1-800 CONTACTS. Worked here from right off the mission until 5 years later. Great company to work for. Free gym (in fact, you got stuff for working out there), great cafeteria, and they even paid for the marathons I ran. Throw in a 401(k) and stock options. It was a hard place to leave.

Four movies you could watch over and over:

• Braveheart. It’s funny, no matter how many times I’ve seen it, I still have to sit down and watch it every time I see it on TV. FREEEEEEDOM!!!!!!!

• The Matrix. The whole scene when Neo and Trinity go back into the matrix to save Morpheus is one of the coolest sequences ever put on film.

• The original Star Wars Trilogy. What can I say? It’s just a classic.

• The Ring. I love scary movies, and this is my favorite. It’s funny how people either loved or hated this movie. It seriously got under my skin the first time I watched it, though. I remember dropping the Sloans off at their house after seeing it, and I drove home as fast as I could. I just kept looking into my rearview mirror expecting Samara to pop her head up in my back seat. I’ve never had a movie effect me that much – before or since.

Four places you've lived:

• Sandy, UT - born and raised. I was there over the weekend and it was strange. You know the feeling of being in your grandparents’ neighborhood? How it’s sort of familiar but detached? It’s just me? Well, I got that feeling going to my parents’ house now. Strange.

• Provo, UT – Lived there while going to UVSC. And I’m with Sloanie on this one – glad I don’t live there anymore.

• Cedar City, UT. – I’m finishing up my master’s degree here now. Great place. Nice little town with about everything you need and without the things you don’t. Except for Costco, and the St. George Costco is just 40 mins away. I have a feeling it will be too big for my tastes soon, though.

• Maryland – served a mission for my church there. The East coast is beautiful, as long as you stayed out of the city. I’d love to go back some day. If only to hike the Appellation Trail.

Four TV Shows You Love To Watch That Are Still On The Air:

• Lost. Great show. Every week it seems like one question is answered and three new ones pop up.

• The Simpsons. I’m like a lot of people that think the Simpsons should have been taken off the air years ago. It’s painful to watch a show slowly die. But, as a diehard fan, I still try to watch the new episodes.

• Law and Order. I’m still a sucker for the crime dramas. The original L&O did it best, in my opinion.

• Ummmm….the nightly news?

Four TV Shows You Love That Are Off The Air:

• Arrested Development. Sad to see it gone so soon. Only three seasons and it’s cancelled. I just love how random this show is. Every character is a hypocrite and a scum bag, but I love them all.

• Cartoons. All the old cartoons I’d watch after school and Saturday mornings – Darkwing Duck, Tale Spin, TMNT, The Real Ghostbusters, etc.

• Ren & Stimpy. In a class of its own.

Places you've been on vacation:

• Hawaii. Going there in December…woohoo!

• Washington state.

• Moab, UT.

• Mexico.

Four of your favorite foods:

• Spicy Grilled Pork from Sam Hawk. About the worst thing in the world is picking up some deji while driving from Cedar to Sandy, only to get stuck in Provo traffic while the deji sits on the car seat next to you. Its aroma quickly fills the car and gently tempts you to just pull over and dig in.

• Shrimp Pesto. I love about anything with shrimp in it, but noodles and pesto were made to be shrimp’s best buddies.

• My dad’s BBQ’d ribs. Melt-off-the-bone good. My dad always makes a few racks so there are always tons of leftovers for rib sandwiches and stuff.

• Pizza Benders from Italian Village. I don’t go there nearly often enough. I’m salivating right now just thinking of it.

• Honorable mention – Orange chicken from Panda Express.

Four places you'd rather be right now:

• Up in the mountains hiking or camping.

• Cozy in bed, sleeping or playing my gameboy.

• Doing pretty much anything in Hawaii.

• Ummmm… did I mention Hawaii?

Four sites you visit daily:

• Ebaum’s world.

• Various blogs of friends.

• Finance.yahoo.com to check my stocks.

• Fark.com. It’s not news, it’s Fark.com.

Some more random pictures that make me laugh.

And a couple last thoughts. #1, you know you're bored when you start to think that going around in the middle of the night and covering up the "r" in "No shirt" on all local business's doors is a good idea. And #2, Jell-O in sprite is not as delicious as it sounds.

Havasupai 2

2006-05-07T06:10:00.000-07:00

OK, so it's commitment time. So far I've got the following people probably coming. Let me know if I need to add or subtract you from the list...
Me
Mini
Mike
Mar
Jesse
Mel
Amber
Travis
I may have another sister coming along, too.
I figure I'd save another 1 or 2 spots just in case.

The dates I had in mind were September 13th-17th. The 13th for travel, 14th for hiking, that night through the next day and night for hanging out, 16th for hiking out, and the 17th would be driving home. I know the dates may be a problem because of school for some people, and it's certainly possible to move the trip back or forward a week if these dates are no good for someone. Again, it'll be about $60 each for the permits and camping fees.

Anyway, again let me know for sure if you're coming or not, and I'll reserve the spots Monday or Tuesday. Thanks!

Moab again

2006-05-02T09:54:00.000-07:00

So went to Moab again with the Sloans. Last time we went there was a half marathon to run, the weather was crappy, my tent broke, and it was otherwise a mediocre camping trip. So this trip was a bit of a makeup for that.

We drove into town and things were jumping. I’ve never seen Moab that busy before. The first two hours or so were spent driving around looking for an open camping spot, but there were none to be found. We even checked the crappy little RV parks – to no avail. Finally we drove far enough up one canyon to find a sort of spot that at least had a portapotty. Using an old car rim we set up a nice little fire. Both nights were spent talking about “naked steamroller” and animals with “the hooves of a bear” and laughing our butts off.

The next day we did some hiking in Arches, notably to Delicate Arch. Here are a couple pictures from that.

Earlier on Saturday we also hiked around our campsite a little, and found some cool things. There must have been someone who put together a Native American dwellings show or something, because we found a rock house, a cave, and a kiva within 50 yards of each other. Very cool. We kicked around the idea of having a little ceremony in the kiva that night, but it never happened. Maybe later this year we’ll go back and try it out.

Anyway, it was a good trip. Thanks again, Sloans, for inviting me and my sis along.

And here’s some panoramic goodness of Delicate Arch (pops). Warning: picture is about 1.26 megs.

(And yeah, it was my first time to Delicate Arch, so I took a lot of pictures.)

Havasupai

2006-05-01T14:22:00.000-07:00

So I called and got a little more info on Hava today - they have openings in August or September perty much whenever we want to go. Apparently they sometimes have flash floods in July/August and it's a little cooler in September. The cost is $30 per person plus $12 per person per night camping fee, plus 8% tax. Let me know who can go and when you prefer to go and I'll set it up at the end of the week or early next week. And I agree that camping for a Thursday and Friday night would be best, so Wednesday and Thursday would be getting to the site, Saturday and Sunday would be getting out. And here are a couple more info sites - here and here.

drawrings

2006-04-23T10:02:00.000-07:00

So last Sunday for Easter my sister, Mini, and I went to my parents' ward. Mostly because my dad was speaking and we wanted to lend our support. Aftward in sunday school we mostly just drew stuff. I drew a picture of Mom and had Mini do the same. Holy crap, the stuff she made was so hilarious! I think it was all the funnier 'cause we weren't supposed to laugh in sunday school. My favorites are #1 and #3. Mom was very flattered.

Here's a picture of my actual mom as a reference point.

Sick

2006-04-21T03:46:00.000-07:00

Holy crap. Every 6 months or so I get sick, and for whatever reason my immune system really, really sucks. A cold can knock me out for days at a time. This sickness seems a little different, though. I felt it coming on Tuesday night so I got out the Zicam and prepared for the worst. Wednesday I woke up feeling awful. Aches and pains, sore throat, loss of appetite, that kind of thing. Now it’s early Friday morning and it has evolved into something terrible. The aches and pains have pretty much gone, but the sore throat has gotten so much worse. Every time I swallow my throat burns like crazy, and I’ve developed a cough to wake the dead. Needless to say it’s been a rough night. Anyway, being up at 4:30am with no sleep there was only one thing I could think to do – tell the blogging world how bad I feel, of course.

The Fridge of Fortune

2006-04-14T14:02:00.000-07:00

So this is the fridge in my sisters' apartment. Every once in a while the letters will mystically rearrange to spell out a new prophecy. Sometimes the prophecy is a little more cryptic than at other times (like Roumby Wykux or Skagpirt as pictured here). Sometimes it's pretty clear (Mini loves Bread or Chris is eazy). I don't know how it does it, but the prophecies are always 100% accurate and true, even though they aren't always spelled correctly. It's difficult to tell the future with only 2 of every letter, I guess. I'll keep everyone posted as to whether it foretells anything of worth.

Spring!

2006-04-11T19:43:00.000-07:00

Ah, you know spring is here when your lawn starts to bloom.

Zion Ponderosa

2006-04-10T06:37:00.000-07:00

So this weekend I went to the Zion Ponderosa for guide camp. I’ll probably be working there at the end of the summer through sometime December as a recreational guide. Basically, I’ll be shooting guns and riding ATV’s and getting paid for it. Sweet!

I arrived on Thursday night and we (the rest of the guides and I) didn’t do a whole lot. Mostly played pool and got to know a lot of the others.

Friday we had a little meeting in the morning and then went on the overlook hike, pictured below. Then we learned how to hook people up to the zipline and assist the rock climbing wall.

Saturday we shot .22s and shotguns. It was the first time I’d shot a shotgun. Man, it was satisfying! Gotta love the pump action. We then went on a hike called Diana’s Throne or something along those lines, pictured below. This pic is of my sister, Chistin, and I.

Sunday we learned how to instruct and guide people on the ATVs. That was about the whole weekend. So I blew off a ton of homework and played in the sun. Can’t wait till I start working there. And I should mention here that the other guides were awesome people.

Mike may find this story interesting. While sitting in line for Trilogy Tuesday about 2½ years ago, there was a local radio DJ named Laura who got all dressed up for the movie. She also had lots of stuff to give away while she was there. So I was sitting there with the Sloans and she walks by and says, “You look cold, do you want a sweatshirt?” At first I just thought it was a loaner and said no. But as she was walking away I asked, “Is it free?” And she said yeah and threw me one. It’s a LoveSac hoody and it’s one I still love to wear today. Anyway, at the resort this weekend we were shooting guns and a busload of people show up. In the group happened to be Laura and her son Josh. She ended spending a lot of the day with us guides, both shooting and hiking and eating and what not. Apparently she actually makes costumes as a hobby and a passion of hers, and she used to be an english teacher, too, until she couldn’t pay the bills on that salary and went to DJing. Anyway, I thought it was a strange coincidence that the radio DJ that changed my life (she was the first radio personality to give me anything – even though I didn’t win any contest to get it) and she happened to be at the resort the same weekend as me. I thought it was cool, anyway.

One a side note, I think I saw more deer this weekend than I ever have in my life. Hundreds of em. It was cool.

quick dream

2006-04-05T15:10:00.000-07:00

I was watching a news segment on TV about a rap contest held in west valley city. Marky Mark (or I guess he likes to be called Mark Wahlberg now) entered and was shut down.
One of the judges actually stood up, walked over to him, put her arm around him and stood with him on stage, indicating he did a good job. “That’s when the barrage came” said the voiceover.

This one's for Mike

2006-04-04T17:02:00.000-07:00

Don't download these unless you're in the mood for mediocre covers of songs. This is me and my friend Jesse playing guitar in his basement. I'm the weak, bland voice that does most of the harmonizing. In usual slacker manner we usually practice for a while, do one take and call it good. It's fun. Anyway, it is what it is, and here it is.
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen
Dream
War is Over
don't know the name of this one
If downloading directly doesn't work, you can go here and download from there.

Guster

2006-04-02T17:25:00.000-07:00

So Mike and I went to a Guster concert in Orem on Friday night. If I had to describe it in one word, it’d be DAMN. If I was given four words, they’d be, damn it was good. If I was given six words, well, I’d just use the four and have a couple left over. But there’s really nothing like a live show to make you appreciate a favorite artist. The drummer was especially impressive to watch. He pretty much used his bare hands. A lot of the drums are just congas, but he also used his bare hands for cymbals and whatever else was up there.

Only two complaints. First, the doors were supposed to open at 6:00pm, but we stood in the freezing wind and a little rain for an hour before they let anyone in. And second, they didn’t play Fa Fa. What the H?! How can you play a concert without playing Jeff’s personal favorite and think you can get away with it?! Overall it was a great concert, tho. Thanks again for driving and the Beto’s, Mike.

(and the pic is actually the opening act, David Berkstrom or something.)

What are you doing here, Uncle Rico?

2006-03-27T07:51:00.000-07:00

Near my parents’ home was a huge river. I was walking home when I noticed my uncle (no uncle in particular, in fact I’d never seen or met this guy before). He was standing on the edge of the river throwing something in. He had his trusty dog nearby, and also there was a duck floating in the water. Every time my uncle threw the thing in the water, the duck would go immediately fetch it and bring it back to the dog. Then the dog would take it back to my uncle. I approached him, amazed, and asked if that was the first duck [ever] taught to fetch. He laughed and said it wasn’t exactly fetching, because the duck only took the object (it looked like a small bowling pin) back to the dog. I pulled out my camera to take a short video of the scene & maybe get the video on ebaumsworld.com or something, but like in so many other dreams my camera wouldn’t work right when I needed it to. So I just headed on home.

more moab

2006-03-25T15:11:00.000-07:00

To answer your question, Mar, yes, I did get see brightroom. Here's all the pictures i could find of us runnin'. We should be Team Sexy, yeah baby! check out all the pics here.

back to my roots

2006-03-24T07:16:00.000-07:00

A business partner & I had designed a security system for stores, designed to stop shoplifters. It worked by somehow unconsciously asking people if they were stealing or not, and then sensing the answer from people.

So I was on my bike next to a lake, when there’s another girl biking along crazily and basically terrorizing the other park users. I tried following, but she was going very fast and I couldn’t quite keep up. People in the park kept pointing this fact out to me, which was really annoying.

When I do catch up to her, she’s stopped at a convenience store. She’s loaded her arms up with all different colors of popsicles and is on her way out – shoplifting.

My business partner & I are very disturbed about this, and we immediately go about trying to figure how she beat our security system. After examining the sensor and so forth, the only conclusion I can come up with is that this has been hypnotized. Either that or some king of “copy” spell has been cast on her so that she copies the caster exactly just in a different location. For example, the caster goes to his fridge and takes out an item, so the victim happens to be in a convenience store & grabs whatever. Our security system wasn’t picking it up because she just thought she was taking stuff out of her own fridge.

"Spring" break

2006-03-21T16:56:00.000-07:00

Overall, this was a break I really needed and was very much looking forward to. On the 10th through the 13th I headed up to Sandy to hang out with the folks. I greatly enjoyed my time there - the only thing I did between naps was relax.

One of the highlights included Mom taking me and Mini on a Costco trip and paying for all our stuff! (Thank you Mom!) Also, Jesse Hansen and I got together Monday night and played guitars for a few hours.

Wednesday and Thursday I came back to Cedar as a staging point for Moab. I was really worried about the weather, but it held up nicely until Saturday night. The weather for the run was perfect. I was proud that everyone finished. Go Team Sarcasm! (Pffft, like that's a cool name.) Anyway, here are some pics of the trip:

Friday night at the campsite:

The troops before the race (Jesse, Mar, Mel):

The top:

During:

After (Mar, Jesse, Mel, me):

Moab update

2006-03-10T08:03:00.000-07:00

and just a quick update for those going to Moab this weekend - check it out. Hopefully things change over the next week or so.

snow, hosehead

2006-03-10T07:04:00.000-07:00

So it snowed about 6 inches last night here in Cedar. I haven't taken a lot of snow pictures lately, so here are a couple from last year.

This first one is driving down Cedar Canyon.

And this one is in my parents' back yard in Sandy. (You may have to click on this pic to get a better view of it.)

It’s much more fun to flip people off to their face.

2006-03-05T18:56:00.000-07:00

Now this story may leave people with their opinion of me somewhat lowered. So if you're easily offended, or want to keep your bright, shiny vision of me, you should stop reading at this point.

So here’s a little background on the story. In my apartment, I have always done my own dishes. I can’t stand the stupid little fights that start over who’s not doing their dishes, who’s not taking out the trash, etc. So one night, not too long before Christmas break, I’m in bed when my roommate calls me out of my room. Now you have to understand, Sean’s not a bad kid, but he’s one of those cocky SOBs that really get on my nerves. So anyway, he calls me out of my room and starts laying into me that I should do the dishes. “How about you do some dishes, man?” So I said, “How about I give you the finger (and yes, I flipped him off) and then I go back to bed?” Needless to say it shocked him pretty good (which was the point), and I could hear him going on about how he was going to pray for my sinful soul and whatnot.

The next day he saw my sister and said, “Guess what your brother did to me last night?” And mini says, “Did he flip you off? Yeah, he does that.” Then she told him about how she flips her roommate off all the time, too. Anyway, this just added to the sweet, sweet shock value.

Mini and I started discussing it and came to the conclusion that we hadn’t taken it quite far enough. So we made a little Christmas card for Sean, pictured below. On the back of the picture I wrote, “Merry F’ing Christmas” and then left the card on his bed when we left for the break.

When I came back from the break, the following poster was on my wall, along with the following inscription.

So it was a fun little exchange. And if I was a total idiot and didn’t know who had left the poster, he had left the rough draft of the inscription on the back of one of his homework assignments, crumpled up in the middle of my floor. Now, he had to have done that on purpose, right? Good ol’ roommates, eh?

wow

2006-03-04T09:09:00.000-07:00

I wasn't going to post anything today, but I ran into a pretty cool picture. Here's a 360 panorama of Paris at night.

Mike gets eaten

2006-03-02T08:02:00.000-07:00

I was over at some kid’s house at a party. Things were pretty normal for a while, when the ground started moving in a strange way. Everyone at the house felt it. Then it moved again. Some people ran to the front door to try & get a better view of what was going on. It was such a strange sight. The ground outside was moving in waves – you could watch the hills in the distance heaving up & down, and the wave would get closer & closer to the house until it finally hit. It wasn’t like an earthquake really because after each wave things would go back to normal again. Sometimes, the waves would be so severe that one side of the wave would just drop off into blackness & you’d have to jump over them as they went by.

Then the water came. It didn’t come in a title wave or anything dramatic like that, but it was just there all of a sudden. It flooded the whole neighborhood. Luckily for us we were on the second floor of this house & there was a boat in the driveway. Some of us piled on & we started drifting.

We watched as the tops of the trees went by, & then somehow I noticed we were drifting in my parents’ neighborhood towards their house. About the same time I noticed the boat was slowly sinking, too. And to top it all off, I noticed huge black things swimming in the water. As the boat got lower in the water the creatures came to the surface & started picking people off the boat. The amount of boat sticking above the water was getting smaller & smaller, and I got a good look @ the swimming beasts – they were killer whales. As the boat sunk even more we rounded the corner about 100 yards from the house, and it was just me & Mike left on the boat, with Mike on the higher ground. One whale kept his head out of the water and was just waiting for one of us to fall in. The only thing I could think of to do was to punch him in the nose as hard as I could. After a few punches his nose bloodied a little, but it was pretty clear it was useless.

The boat flipped a little in the water & Mike fell in. A few moments later & the rest of the boat was under water & I was left as the sole survivor – Mike had disappeared. I started to swim as fast as I could towards my parents’ house, but I knew I would be eaten at any moment. At this point I woke myself up because I REALLY didn’t want to get eaten.

there's always room for dream jello

2006-03-01T07:40:00.000-07:00

Me & Steve Sloan & 2 other girls. We had a jello-eating contest. Someone handed out big bowls of watermelon jello w/lots of whipped cream on top. I finished off 2 bowls & could have eaten a third, but Steve didn’t like the flavor so he quit early & I won.

bugs

2006-02-27T15:54:00.000-07:00

I was in the backyard with my mom, & we were shooting electronic ducks with this strange contraption. The ducks were basically small planes with props in the front, & our gun was about the same, the trigger controlled how fast the prop on the front of the projectile went. As we were shooting it was getting to be dusk, & we noticed this strange red band of color in the sky. We shouldn’t figure out what it was. Then we figured it was the sun shining through something, & we turned to see what. Again, it just looked like a band of red. Only a couple of seconds went by before we realized it was a swarm of insects, and it was headed right our direction.

I held the prop-end of the fun close to my face & my mom got close enough to it to, so that when the swarm finally hit us, the prop pulverized the insects & we had plenty of bug-free air to breathe. My sisters ran in from different parts of the yard & joined our little group as we headed towards the house. Some insects were smaller & some were about hummingbird size. At one point there was a worm-type creature about 6ft. long that rose up & tried to eat us, but the prop on the gun made short work of it.

After a minute there was a lull in the swarm & we made it to the house, but there was still another wave on the way. We tried frantically each door to discover it was locked, until finally we found the door in the back of the garage was open. We all piled in the house safely.

OK

2006-02-26T08:08:00.000-07:00

I might as well do this. . .
here's 2 of me and 1 more of Chris.

silly christin

2006-02-24T07:56:00.000-07:00

last night mini, christin, and I drove to st. george to visit my grandparents. a couple funny things christin said on our road trip:

After finishing our meal at Arctic Circle: "Let's roll this joint."

Mini and I dared Chris to flip off the guy in the car next to us, when she confessed she'd never flipped anyone off before. Then she qualified that statement with, "The poeple I love are the only ones I've felt comfortable flipping off."

2 men, a woman, & a boy

2006-02-20T07:58:00.000-07:00

2 men, a woman, & a boy. 1st man seems to be the leader of the group, the other talks like Charlie from Lost. The boy has certain special powers. He can use his mind to fix alternate dimensions once he’s there.

Man & boy are fighting a demon in this world – demon is at least 10 feet tall, built like a truck, ram’s horns on his head. He’s also just one solid color of red. The man & boy aren’t getting anywhere with the demon, so the boy says he’s going to try to find a weapon to fight him with. The man says that a certain world is full of rocks good for skipping (I guess so they can slay the demon david & goliath style). The boy transports to this other world, and man #2 goes with him. There’s a beach made entirely of small, flat, round rocks, and the ocean is all around. The boy picks up some rocks and skips them into the ocean. For some reason he dilly-dallies – says he’s thinking. But as he walks over a hill of rocks, he can see the ocean dropping out of existence, and the effect is moving toward him at an alarming rate. He runs back toward the portal to take him home & yells @ the other guy to do the same. At the same time he says a prayer (for lack of a better term) to save the planet from this destructive force. They both made it through the portal & arrive back in a big city, where they almost immediately run into the man & woman.

Time runs differently in the 2 worlds, and whereas a few minutes passed in the alternate world, much time has passed here. The boy simply says, “nothing happened” to the man and walks away. As the man & woman stand in line for a hotdog or something, they discuss what exactly the boy meant by it. In the background is a bridge that looks a lot like the Golden Gate, and the sound of breaking steel cables is heard as the bridge systematically collapses from one end to the other. Then a vortex appears & starts sucking the bridge in, then the roads, then the people as it gets bigger & closer.

The action freezes at this point & I hear the voice of another man. He says, “My name is X. When you do math problems, your teachers tell you X is a variable. You are really just using my name.” Which, at the time I was hearing his voice, scared me.

adorned, that's a weird word, isn't it?

2006-02-18T08:42:00.000-07:00

A Chinese couple had a son about 6 years old. The son was very knowledgeable about the afterlife. Bandits required the life of the boy in exchange for something. So at a predetermined time, the uncle brought the boy and met the bandits in a field near a high brick wall. Various trees grew around the wall. As a sign of the exchange, the uncle and the bandits exchanged flowers, one white, one yellow. As the uncle rode off, the bandits tied a silk scarf around the boy’s neck and sliced his head off with [a] sword. Two of the trees around where the boy was slain were surrounded by blocks, kind of like legos. Some were adorned with shapes of flowers. The blocks were all sorts of colors, which would change occasionally. The parents kept a painting of the field & the trees & the blocks in their home. The colors of the blocks would change in the painting. [I wish I could draw what the trees surrounded by the blocks looked like. They were pretty cool.]

arches

2006-02-17T08:27:00.000-07:00

There was a kid who was doing repelling. One [route] he did was delicate arch. While he was repelling he would have these spectacular views of arches & stop to take pictures. At the bottom was a landmark. There was a group of rocks that looked similar to Stonehenge, but with a pile of rocks in the middle, and carefully placed stones that formed a ring around the whole thing. The ocean tide would form a perfect ring around this at one point, and cover the whole thing up at high tide. This happened so fast I didn’t even have time to pull my camera out of my pocket & take a picture of it [partly because i seemed to be moving in slow motion].

I was walking around on a wooden staircase next to the landmark. Someone else was telling the story about how this landmark had a strange effect on people. One guy always looked over his shoulder when he met you. [I'm not sure what this means, exactly, but I think he was just really, really paranoid.]

swimming and statues

2006-02-14T07:27:00.000-07:00

Somehow Christin had scuba gear & we were in our backyard. There was a big body of water & we were swimming around. Mini was there, too. I put the scuba gear on. The water was dark & dirty looking, but after putting the goggles on & diving, everything was crystal clear. There were tons of fish swimming around of all the brightest colors. I wondered how this colony of fish came to our back yard.
After I was done swimming around, there was a group of people that had gathered in our garage and were looking at something. I joined the group, and as the sun was setting in the sky, there was a formation of clouds that looked just like the statue of liberty.

Moab Half

2006-02-10T11:49:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post for those running the Moab Half in 5 weeks. These are pics from last year at the starting line - it really is beautiful race. Ya'll ready for it?

a new pet

2006-02-09T10:34:00.000-07:00

My cousin Matt was talking about how the dog that littered their new puppy had a second litter, but it wasn’t nearly as big. For some reason, all of a sudden we had a new little pet cheetah. Wasn’t much bigger than a household cat, but man, the little thing would just run everywhere. As I was walking by it, I noticed it was chewing on a wad of toilet paper or something, so I snatched it out of its mouth and headed into the bathroom to flush the wad. The whole toilet was filled with garbage, but I didn’t care. I tossed the wad on top and flushed it all down. The cheetah had followed me into the bathroom to see what I’d do with its precious wad, and jumped up on the rim of the toilet to watch everything swirl around & disappear. Then the cheetah did the stupidest thing possible – it stock its paw into the mess & got sucked in – I watched as the pipe first swallowed its head, then its body, then its tail & legs. I was horrified! How was I going to explain to the family that I’d flushed & drown the family pet? I reached in, & luckily the pipes were small enough that the animal didn’t get far – I was able to grab hold of the end of its tail and pull it out. When I got it out, however, the thing wasn’t breathing. A horrible thought went through my head – I’d have to give it CPR & bring it back to life. I plopped the dripping wet cat onto the tile floor and positioned myself to give mouth to mouth. Luckily, it woke up by itself & went scampering into another room. It was still soaking wet & scared & looked half its normal size with all the hair stuck flat to its body.

another nightmare

2006-02-04T08:38:00.000-07:00

I was staring at a wall of photographs – all B&W. One of them seemed off to me. One picture had tilted & bumped another, and the pictures seemed to blend together – like one had started to take over the other. My friends & I both commented on how strange it was. As I walked around it to get a better look, it was almost as if I could see more of the picture than I should – like it was a hologram or 3-D or something. Then the little girl in the picture was kneeling beside the couch I was on, with a crumpled figure beside her (she was still B&W), which I assumed was her mother. Then we started talking. I said, “You’re impossible.” She looked at me and said (philosophically) “YOU’RE impossible.” I said, “But you’re really impossible.” She said something about Beauty & the Beast & I said, “And you’re the beauty, right?” She smiled & said “yeah.” I said, “And you play the part very well” and patted her head. Someone asked, “how’s the mother?” That crumpled figure really scared me, so I tried to play it cool and said, “oh, she’s all right.” And of course, like any horror movie, that’s when the figure shot out a hand, grabbed my arm, and turned her hideous face towards me. It chilled me to the bone. She sprang into action. I wasn’t sure what she was doing to me, but I knew she meant to kill me. I fought back with everything I had.

12/1/05 - Zuul

2006-02-02T08:25:00.000-07:00

Part 2: I went to Justin Hatch’s house and up to his room. He had a really bad sunburn and he wanted me to take a picture of it. He gave me his camera (not a digital) and hiked up his shorts so I could see the burn line. For some odd reason, I couldn’t quite get a picture of it. The camera would make all sorts of clicking noises, but Justin would check the camera after and say it hadn’t taken a picture at all. Needless to say I was frustrated with it. All the time Ryan Hatch was wandering the room, setting up lamps and such so that we could get a better shot.
At some point it was just me & Ryan in the room. Ryan caught hold of a loop of string that led under the closed bathroom door, and it started to drag him along. I wasn’t amused because I knew it was Zuul or the ghost of Zuul pulling on the other end, but I figured it was Ryan’s house & he knew what he was doing. Besides, he was smiling & laughing and having a good time. But he doesn’t let go of the string and gets pulled under the door & into the bathroom (there seems to be quite a lot of clearance under the door, but still Ryan must have been very thin or magic to fit under it). I lie on my stomach and peek under the door to see what will happen, & to see if it’s an actual Zuul or just a ghost on the other side. Ryan is still holding on to the string & I watch as he gets dragged behind the toilet? or some object. I can see Zuul’s head at this point and it chomps Ryan’s feet off. [It seems like I remember another string coming out from under the bathroom door, but after what I’d seen I don’t bother with it.]

12/1/05 - Jocks love nature

2006-02-01T08:10:00.000-07:00

Part 1: Some jocks had used my camera for the day. I hooked it up to the computer to see the pictures & to back them up, but most of what they used it for was movies (whether on purpose or not I don’t know). One movie showed a plant or a bush of some kind, that was the most brilliant yellow I had ever seen. Then it cut to the country side and the whole valley was filled with brilliant colors. The jocks were filming out the window of a car at this point, and driving along a road. My sister, Mini, yells out from somewhere behind me, “That’s Washington Blvd!” At first I didn’t’ recognize it, but then I did. It was strange because I had never seen the place before, but in my dream it was familiar.

The Russell/Arnold Gang

2006-01-30T14:46:00.000-07:00

On new years day, Mini and Steve and Christin and I went hiking in zion's national park. then we drove to Steve's parents' house and did some shooting. It was great fun, but I think I had some hearing loss from the new pistol Steve bought. It was a .45 army issue, I think they called it a 1911 or something? Anyway, it was good to see Chris and Steve again.

(The helpful man in the pictures is Steve's dad.)

mmm... boiled cats

2006-01-28T10:27:00.000-07:00

We [I have no idea who "we" refers to any more] freed this tribe of slaves and everyone was running. We tried to go separate ways but there weren’t many paths to take. One especially frisky little guy (and a servant of the enslavers) tracked us down, but there were 20 of us & 1 of him. We surrounded & captured him. We threatened him with death (as we couldn’t very well let him go at this point) but he stayed true to his convictions of turning us in. It wasn’t until we were about to cover him in hot oil and set him on fire that he decided to join us. This must have incited the people to bloodlust, but the next thing I know the tribe has a baby and are about to cook it in the hot oil. I yell to stop, and quickly yell that why not cook some kind of animal instead. They seem to go along with this, and my sisters and I head out to this grassy field nearby that’s filled to the brim with rabbits and cats. We chase them around but the rabbits are way too fast (despite the fact that a group of really young kids seem to have caught one for a pet). I finally catch up with a cat. In true wildcat fashion, the thing bites my hand and continues to try to bite me no matter how much I pet it to clam it down. We’re back at some kind of condo and my parents are waiting for us there. For some reason frying the cat has turned into some science project of Megan’s, and there’s a hinged frying pan full of hot oil on this shelf waiting for us. My only idea is to throw the cat up there and prepare for the screeching. So I toss it up, and nothing much happens. The oil must not be hot enough because I stand on my tiptoes to see what’s going on, and it’s standing in the pan, licking up the oil. I can tell its paws are starting to cook, but it doesn’t seem to notice for a few moments. After it does realize, it jumps off the pan but we quickly catch it again. And again I toss it up there. This time it lands on its side and the pan lid closes on top of the cat. At some point the head flops out, wide, lifeless eyes just staring and its mouth open. There are no sounds or smells from the cooking cat at all. I feel sick and try to leave through the condo’s back door, but my dad insists we all stay. This is, after all, Megan’s project, and we should all get plates ready. It takes me a second to realize what he means, and I’m disgusted.

sharks

2006-01-27T09:40:00.000-07:00

Most of the southern U.S. map was covered in water. The whole family was vacationing in a southern state somewhere, right on the waterline. We were all packed into a van with a hatchback, and we were lounging in the car while the car was sitting on the beach overlooking the ocean. Part of the beach would fall away as the water kept coming in, and we would have to keep moving the car. Mom & dad & I were in the very back of the car with our feet almost in the water. Off to the left, we could see some volcanic activity. Molten lava would spurt up here & there, a brilliant orange. I made a comment to dad about how we might be the southern-most people in the U.S. at that moment. Suddenly, there were two short radar beeps. My dad asked, “Where’s Ed’s radar?” but it was nowhere to be found. My brain was thinking that if it was big enough to set off radar equipment it couldn’t be too good. Moments later, my worst fears were confirmed, it was a shark. I dove forward away from the water into the front of the car, and turned around just in time to see a huge shark jump up and sink its teeth into my parents’ legs. They continued to sit on their beach chairs as if nothing peculiar was going on. The shark’s teeth sunk deep into their skin, and as the shark pulled away into the water, I could see it had a good chunk of leg in its mouth. My dad turned around, lifted his leg, and said, “Did you see my leg kids?” Half of his lower leg was gone, except for the white bone sticking out of the ragged flesh.

Miss Miggie

2006-01-26T07:51:00.000-07:00

[I remeber my mom was singing this song to my sister, Mini, while in my parents' kitchen. It was called] Miss Miggie – song about an atom that was in love with her and wanted to be human.

2006-01-21T09:32:00.000-07:00

Part 2: I was having a sleepover at the Sloans, and [Steve, Shawn, and I] were in their basement playing mario tennis, except there were all sorts of crazy characters. I was a big black boxer named P.C. Thug, AKA Knuckles. I don't remember any others. After we had played a few games, I snuck upstairs to get my stuff for sleeping out of the car. I knew it was really late, so I tried not to wake anyone. I passed by Mike upstairs. He had a blanket over the top of his head & covering his eyes, but I knew he was awake. The whole house was a pigsty.

Then it was daytime & I was outside. Two kids had a tetherball tied to the top of a telephone pole with a really long rope. Why they chose that particular pole I don't know, because it had wires poking out of it everywhere. One kid started the tetherball going, but the rope just got insanely tangled in the wires, with the help of the momentum of the ball at the end.

2006-01-20T13:44:00.000-07:00

Part 1: The sloans and I were in the street on the side of my house when I noticed something strange in the sky. I pointed this "wind rainbow" out to the others, and we all stopped to stare. It seemed not far away, but it was a stream of slouds in a perfect arc, moving so rapidly it looked like thin smoke. As we watched, the arc turned into flame. Shortly after that, another arc spurted out from the same source, but in another direction. Again, the smoky arc turned into flame. Then a strong gust of wind was suddenly on us, and we ran (as fast as we could against the wind) into some sort of shelter just off the road. I was the last one in, and I shut and locked the door behind me. Everyone else had taken cover somewhere in the small "house", and I noticed Mike huddling under a sink counter. I figured it would as good a place as any to duck. I ran to the counter and wrapped my arms around my knees (but not before grabbing a pack of gummi fruit off the counter). There was a huge rumbling. The house shook. And then in the midst of the rumbling somehow I knew the house had been lifted into the air in some sort of "rapture". I stayed in my huddle position, fearing the house would catch fire or break apart any minute, but then knowing that I was in the safest place I could have been at the time.

Also when the wind first came, I had my pillow in my hand for some reason, and I couldn't decide if I would be better off with the pillow against my face to shield it from the fire when it came, or if it would just melt onto my face and make things a lot worse.

I think you're bruisin' my neck meat

2006-01-18T07:36:00.000-07:00

I was in the bathroom getting ready to take a shower, when I heard a hissing noise behind me. I backed up, trying to figure out where the hissing was coming from, but it got louder the more I backed up. That's when I noticed a giant white rat on the counter, up on his hind legs and hissing loudly. and then he started to talk. he had a deep male voice, and he was quite the sass-mouth. he started complaining about how someone was supposed to have rented "kung Fu Hustle" for him, but on waking up he noticed it wasn't there. for some reason I had gloves on, so I picked up the rat. he tried furiously to bite me, and I had to keep fighting him so as not to get bit. I got him over to the stairwell in our house, and dropped him down the lower steps. he crashed and tumbled down the last couple steps, but kept complaining about not having his movie. he was unharmed, and came back running up the stairs. I picked him up and chucked him downward as hard as I could. He landed harder this time, but still came back up the steps unphased. So I picked him up again, put my right hand on his head, and jerked his head to the right fast & hard. I could hear neck bone cracking. then I threw him hard to the bottom of the stairs again. he landed head first on a hard metal hand rail, then tumbled down the rest of the steps.

3/18/05

2006-01-17T17:09:00.000-07:00

I was driving around with Mike & other people trying to find our camping spot. It was dark, and we were lost in the campground. We stopped off at a cabin which was unlocked and uninhabited (no renters) so we crashed there for a while. The top floor overlooked a massive swimming pool. After being there a while we decided we should try looking for the campsite again. It wasn't long before we found it and started setting up the tent. It was Steve's [my brother-in-law's] tent so I had a hard time figuring out which pole went where.

3/14/05

2006-01-16T08:42:00.000-07:00

[a new video game] Mario Bros. Clog Buster - kids love to help Mario & Luigi unstop the toilet! [really, who did think that the idea that having a couple of plumbers from New York as video game heroes was a good idea?]

My Life

2006-01-15T16:20:00.000-07:00

This Is My Life, Rated
Life:	7.4
Mind:	7.9
Body:	9
Spirit:	7.1
Friends/Family:	5.6
Love:	0
Finance:	5.8
Take the Rate My Life Quiz

Probably the only thing shocking about the results of this quiz is that I'm not shocked about them.

2006-01-15T12:21:00.000-07:00

Part 2: I was sitting in auditorium seating watching a religion speaker give a talk. After it was over and people started standing up to leave, a lady in the front pointed at me and called that she wanted me to teach a class for the next hour of church. I really felt overloaded in my church callings, but I agreed. She handed me a church manual and led me down a hallway to where I'd be teaching. There were about 5 little black kids, about 6 yrs old in age. I opened the manual and started reading the scriptures it listed, out loud. They were very strange - they talked about a palace or a temple that you knocked on the door. 31 wives would answer and invite you in. If you refused, you were killed. If you agreed, you were let in to a padded room, with the ability to advance in the nation's army.

One of the girls asked a question about an angel called "acquisition" and where she came from. There was a 15 minute break for dessert (which was peaches & bananas) so I looked up the name in the Bible dictionary while munching peaches. A boy asked me what I was eating and I said, "Peaches, they're delicious!" cause they were, but he ended up picking a banana instead. I found the name in the dictionary and turned to where it referenced her. Instead of scriptures, I was referred to a news-like entry about awful superbowl people. The beginning of the article talked about one superbowl winner who only signed autographs with his [edited for the children's sake]. It then went on to talk about Acquisition, who was a rich, spoiled girl (like Paris Hilton). It included a picture of her wearing a dress with a shear top so nothing was left to the imagination up top. She had gone around in front of cameras at halftime bragging she was wearing nothing underneath the dress.

next scene: I was in "our" backyard but it really wasn't. It was a beautiful day with impossibly green grass and a blue sky overhead. Someone had thrown or taken my accordion [in its case] over the west side of the fence, so I had to climb it and jump over it (the fence) to get the accordion. When i picked it up, it much lighter than usual, so I suspected someone had taken it out of the case & left the case. I opened it, but the accordion was in there. I figured I just must be stronger in my old age and walked to where a gate in the fence was. My dad was working on the fence at that end so a section of the fence was gone, so I went out that way instead.

Too much CSI?

2006-01-14T09:58:00.000-07:00

[This next dream I'm splitting up over 2 or 3 entries, but they all happened in one night.]
Part 1: I was in a swimming pool with many other people, it was a school class. We each had to pick a body/cadaver (which were floating randomly in the water) and write an autopsy report. I ended up with a young girl in a bathing suit, and someone else ended up with her twin sister. My cadaver was in almost perfect condition except for some sores around the face, while her twin was in much worse condition. I asked questions about whether she was diabetic (she was, but so was her sister), how much salt she usually had in her diet (about the same as her sister), etc. Class time was up so I had to write something, so I wrote an inconclusive report.

Next thing I remember, I was at the edge of a rock pool (small like a hottub) filled with a strange pink goo. A holy man was there telling us how the goo came from the rocks and had a magical power. I wanted to use the goo to find out what was special about the girl, but I didn't know how. Neither did the holy man. I put some goo in a cup, and it happened to pass by another cup of water sitting on the edge of the pool. The water leaned toward that side of the cup, like it was attracted to the goo. The water belonged to a guy in the group with me, and the water had been previously blessed to be attracted to holy things. I got the idea that the goo might be edible, so one group member scooped up a handful and ate it. Surprisingly he liked it. I was skeptical & hesitant, but eventually I kneeled down & scooped up a handful of my own. It was sweet & really not that bad of a taste.

pics

2006-01-13T17:42:00.000-07:00

Here are just a couple of pictures I thought were fun and/or interesting. The first one was taken while I was parking my car at Walmart. To me it doesn't look like the comfiest place to take a nap, but what do I know?

This one was taken just after my birthday in November last year. I just liked the colors.

2/17/05 - Peanut Butter

2006-01-12T08:08:00.000-07:00

Dream 1: peanut butter & vanilla melted on a stove and poured over chocolate cake. [I remember having a dream about my cousin, Lisa, making this. For some reason it just sounded so good that I just had to write it down when I woke up.]

Dream 2: mike & I had some discount tickets for the movies we had picked up from the box office. as we stood in line for the movie, a nearby movie employee pointed out there may be a problem with the expiration date on our tickets. I looked close at the tickets and they appeared to be fine, but the employee still insisted they wouldn't work. all of a sudden the boy next to us in line was pinning his ticket to the sleeve of my shirt for some reason, and we were let into the movies. we walked across the front of an auditorium filled with people, then we trotted up the stairs on the left side. on our way to the top I noticed Elder Mounteer from my mission starting to sit down. there wasn't time to talk and for some reason he was shirtless at this point. Mike was ahead of me at that point but I know he would save me a seat. At the top of the auditorium I went through a door to our theater (the movie we were seeing was Gladiator) and it turned out to be a small bedroom. There were a few beds (all filled with strangers except Mike on one end) and some mattresses strewn on the floor. I sat on one of the mattresses and tried to make myself comfortable.

date w/girl B in strange house, she leads me hurriedly up some stairs & into a corner so we can kiss. shortly, Justin from work & a friend come tromping up the stairs. I can tell girl is upset so I say, "Do you wanna get out of here?" and we go back down the steps. We come out into a very white, clean, modern-looking building, and I recognize it as an airport. There are 2 steel, slanting doors with handles at the bottom & girl gets through one. The doors seem to want to stay shut, but I manage to get one open & step inside a small room. There are some older ladies in there, too, and the place is steel & sloped, too. Very slippery. And I know it as an elevator or a transport of some kind - like a wonkavator. It starts to move & it's so fast we get to sliding around & against each other. The room will take us wherever we want to go, so I yell out "Florida!" and everyone around me seems to think that's a good idea too. Girl yells out some teen popstar's name, and her music starts to play.

We find ourselves in a large grassy yard with a medium-sized home not far away. We're all lying in the grass. A man in the yard has a baby pig on a leash, and approaches us. I know something's supposed to happen when one of our group touches the pig (like we're supposed to be whisked away again), but as Girl touches the pig, nothing does. They play for a minute. The pig wanders to the fence lining the yard & seems to freeze, then startle & start snorting. It runs back to the man. I notice a similar snort, but one coming from the direction of the front of the house. I turn to look, and see something move out of sight in the front of the yard. I lay down so I can see some of the front yard & inch my way toward the fence. Against the front of the house are Santa's reindeer, lying down. At this point things seem CG, like the movie Polar Express. There's a group of people gathered around. I walk up to them and somehow realize what's going on. One of the reindeer is sick & needs an operation, and the group leader has a list of people in the group & their monetary contribution towards saving the animal. By some people's name there's just written the word "s ly"[I started writing this word but couldn't quite remember it]. They're about $17,000 short of the needed funds. Santa turns around, reaches into the top drawer of a dresser, and pulls out the cash for the difference. I get a little angry because I know santa will require they (the group) pay him back for his "loan".

New Blog

2006-01-11T19:38:00.000-07:00

So here's my new blog. I've always been fascinated with dreams and what they are and if they mean anything. Last Valentine's Day I got my first "Official Dream Journal", and ever since then I've kept it next to my bed and tried to write down my dreams as soon as I wake up. There aren't a whole lot of entries, both because sometimes I just don't remember my dreams or I'm just too friggin lazy to write em down. But here's what I've got. I'll post past entries first until we get caught up to real time. Just as a head's up, yes, I know I'm sick. And beware, I WILL post some dreams with more "adult" material, but I may censor some stuff to try to lessen the blow. I may include normal blog stuff if I feel like it, too, just for posterity's sake.

2/16/05

2006-01-11T19:36:00.000-07:00

end of the world - riding in a car. I looked out the window and the sun was huge. It was eating away the earth and warping the road behind us. I tried taking pictures of what was going on but the camera couldn't adjust to the brightness. Cars were still driving on the road. They'd just launch off the end of the road like a ramp & disappear into the abyss.