Aloha!

The good news, my finger has healed nicely and we made our flight!

The bad news, Hawaii was experiencing record temperatures and humidity, the tail-end of a hurricane AND the day we left, a tsunami warning because of Chili's earthquakes.  The  heat kept us driving around a lot - as the car had air conditioning and our condo did not.

I COULD give you details - but as I was reading through my notes - I decided they were quite entertaining and left enough unsaid to add mystery and intrigue. I have added photos.


Tuesday
Met lovely couple who lived in Makaha but had vacation property in Stevens, WA.
Helped young girls get unstuck from sand, Peter hurt his back being macho
Got rolled in surf fully clothed - flashed life guards and some now traumatized children

Wednesday 
Saw sea turtle basking on our beach
Went west of Makaha
Walked/jogged along road
Went to north shore - stopped at dole pineapple plantation
Ate lunch in Hale'Iwa
Cruised the beach
Toured the coffee farm


Thursday
Our Turtle and her little friend were back on the beach in the am
Went to Honolulu and dropped in on Dale.
Went to Islands restaurant in the mall and had lunch, (including mai tai's)
Lost car in parking garage
Went to the punch bowl and war memorial
Drove east - saw the blow hole and two turtles playing in the surf
Came home through a long tunnel through the mountains
Took a sunset swim in Makaha. Fell asleep by 9:00





Friday

Rain!  Thunder, lightening!
Headed into Honolulu
Took a turn down Luauluaulei rd on a whim and ended up on a military base with very nice MP's who let us turn around without arresting us.
Went to the Hawaiian Plantation Village.  Peter played with a poisonous cane toad while I panicked and frantically googled cane toads to see if he was going to die.
Ate hot malasadas from a hot malasada truck
Pearl Harbor with realistic thunder and lightening sound effects and a plentiful mongoose population
Following Siri's directions went looking for a mai tai ended up on another military base (Fort Shaftner) and fortunately, again, didn't get shot.
Found somewhere else to enjoy a mai tai (or two)




Saturday

Headed north
Went to Wai'mea valley and waterfall. Beautiful place filled with horrific blood-sucking, pleasure depleting mosquitoes. Could not get back to the car fast enough.
Lā'ie state wayside with natural bridge

Spied two island pigs strapped to the hood of a Honda CRV.  Can you say Luau??
After failed attempt to find Kona brewing ended up with happy hour dinner at the MonkeyPod on Ko'Olina (yummy lilikoi foam & macadamia nut mai tai and then a lilikoi martini)
Sunset swim in the ocean followed by a dip in the pool






Sunday

Started the day with rain and laundry.
Peter went for a swim by himself
Then we headed west and explored the coastline
Stumbled upon a movie set for a web series.
Stopped by the Maunalahilahi botanical garden. Peter explored.  I stayed in the relative mosquito-free safety of the car.
Again, following Siri's directions, dined at Cisco's Cove - on a military base guarded by the same fellow who didn't shoot us in Fort Shaftner.
Went for a sunset swim on Makaha beach - a turtle swam right past us. I startled and screamed like a little girl!

Monday
Surfing at 8:00 am. Got stuck in traffic and arrived 15 minutes late.
After an awesome lesson took a long walk on Waikiki beach.  Not impressed - too crowded!
Sneaker wave, shoes got wet. Had no shoes to wear. Bought a pair of flip flops for $3.49 at Longs drugs - which saved my life as my toes had been rubbed raw by the surf board
Drove east past blow hole and along the beach then home again (after Peter went the wrong way on H-1)

Tuesday
Up at 5:00. Coffee and breakfast
Visited the NW corner of the island so lovely in it's emptiness. Saw turtles in the water. Finally and luckily Experienced Mackey's Shrimp Truck.  Fed little sparrows and chickens our leftovers.
Dinner at Roy's in Ko'olina with Dale and Cathy.





Wednesday - our last day
Drove west of Makaha again. Poked around on the rocks.

Peter rescued three little fishies stranded in a tide pool. Headed back toward our condo and stopped so peter could show me the 'dead sea lion' he had spotted days before.  It had moved to a different location and was wiggling.  Not dead at all!!
Got home, went swimming in the ocean, then the pool.
Peter chatted up a man with a Dutch accent by the name of Hank Zandberg who, freakishly, turns out to be related to Dini of the Holland Cafe in the Windmill in Lynden.
Got permission to check out later so we went back to the ocean.  As we were bobbing about in the water a sea lion swam by within about 10 feet of us!!
Got sunburned.
Made lunch of all the food we had left: Salad, banana, coke, popcorn, cheese, celery, juice, peanut butter, milk. A fine, but bizarre meal. Then we napped and finally left about 4:00
Enjoyed a farewell beverage and pupu's.
Now - sitting at the airport waiting for our flight.

Mongoose

Peter, being Peter

A dog on a surfboard

Lilikoi Martini

Vacation Fallout

Talk about an expensive vacation!

The fraud department of my bank called me this morning.  They were questioning some charges that started showing up at 6:00 this morning.

Had I made a 99 cent purchase with Sony Entertainment?
How about a $5.00 donation to Africare?
Oh... and did I spend $948 on something called a streetman?

No, no and NO!

It seems the bad guy also opened up a pay pal account in my name, on my dime.

Gah!!

Fortunately the bank is on top of it (yay US Bank!!) and I am not responsible for any of these (and about 20 more) charges.  My account is now locked and secured and a fraud case has officially been opened.

I asked the bank fellow if there was something I could do to eliminate or minimize my risk of this happening again.  For instance change the way I shop on-line or don't let my card out of my sight, ever.  He replied that in this day and age, with current technology there is NOTHING to prevent a determined crook from committing these crimes.  It's just a game of Russian roulette and it was my turn.  He did say it was most likely someone that had my card in the last few weeks.

I can't help but wonder which seemingly lovely person I met on my vacation committed this crime.  Was it the nice old lady at the botanical garden gift shop who took so much care to wrap the gift I purchased?  Was it the nice bartender, recently moved from Key West, new grandpa and the unhappy owner of his first pair of "real" shoes?  Was it the English-as-a-second-language parking attendant we tipped so generously or the cute girl with the interesting tattoos, piercings and hair color that had never been jet skiing but worked at the jet ski place?

Unless I'm in a hurry (or they are) I generally do not just "do business."  I chat and visit and learn about the people I deal with.  And I admit it, I'm a pollyanna and it breaks my heart that someone that I had a conversation with had the nerve to do this to me.  How rude!

Now I am cash only until my replacement card shows up in a week or so.  It'll probably be good for me to get back to cash.  It's way too easy to spend money I don't see.

The upshot is that my behavior won't change.  I will continue to shop online, use my debit card and chat with everyone.  It's who I am and I'm not gonna fight it.

Vacation!

We just got home from vacation.  It was the best vacation ever despite the fact that it got off to a really rocky start.

We live two hours from the Seattle airport.  Our flight was scheduled to leave at 6:00 am.  With all the security measures they say you need to be at least an hour or so early for your flight. That means that MINIMUM we had to leave by was 3:00 am.  Which of course means we had to get up by 2:30 am.

Clever me thought why not leave the night before and get a hotel with park and fly?  I just happened to get an offer from Orbitz for % off a hotel in Seattle.  That made it far cheaper to spend the night than to pay for parking. So I took the first one I found that offered park and fly.

I worked the day we were to leave.  It was a long day that involved me accidentally putting the work cell phone in the outgoing mail which required I chase down the big mail truck headed to the Seattle sorting station.  I caught up with it in Bellingham  (thank goodness!) but that meant I didn't get back home until after 6:00.

When I got home I immediately joined Peter in taking care of animals, last minute packing, house cat-proofing (since we were leaving our three indoor cats with the keys to the castle...) and doing all the other things that needed to be done.  We didn't pull out of the driveway until 10:00 - arriving at our hotel just after midnight.  We figured by the time we got to our room and got to bed it would be 1:00 - and with a 4:15 wake up call we were looking forward to a full 3 hours of sleep!  Oh but the desk clerk informed us that they no longer had park and fly services but they did recommend some nearby parking lots that offered shuttles to the airport.  I was irritated to say the least.  Now we would be paying for a 3 hour hotel stay PLUS parking. We would have stayed elsewhere or even stayed at home but it was too late to do anything about it.  I have a bone to pick with Orbitz!

4:15 came way too early - and then began the scramble.  We hadn't calculated the extra drive time into our schedule and missed the 4:40 shuttle at the parking lot and the 5:00 shuttle was slightly late.  We arrived at the airport 35 minutes before our plane was scheduled to leave.  We did the airport sprint.  Peter, unfortunately, was selected by security to have his bags searched - he was bringing his doctor equipment (like stethoscope, blood pressure cuff, pulse oximeter..).  The clock went tick tock.  Once they decided he wasn't a national threat, we sprinted again. We made the plane by the hairs of our chinny-chin-chin.

An hour or so into our flight, the flight attendants began scrambling and messing with their emergency equipment.  Someone on the plane was having a medical emergency.  A seizure and anxiety attack.  The call went out for medical professionals.  A nurse answered the call, as did Peter.  Between them, and since fortunately Peter had his medical bag with him, they got the poor woman resting comfortably and valuable information was able to be forwarded to paramedics on the ground.  The nurse stayed with the ailing woman and Peter returned to his seat where he was offered a courtesy cocktail by the grateful flight attendants.  It was 9:00 in the morning.  Peter turned it down.

Originally we only had 35 minutes between planes, and of course our first one was slightly late.  Plus we were in the back and by the time we got off the plane, we were down to 20 minutes. Off we went on the airport sprint again.  It was the Houston airport and in Texas they make them big!  Our gates were quite far apart. We were the last ones to board - but by gum we made it!

Fortunately on this flight there were no medical emergencies.  We arrived in Florida now truly and completely ready for a vacation.

We had rented a beautiful little cottage in Indian Rocks Beach.  We had a wrap-around deck facing the Gulf of Mexico and were just feet from the beach.

We were in Florida for 10 days.  We napped a lot.  We walked on the beach.  We breakfasted on our deck enjoying this view:

We watched the sunset over the Gulf of Mexico ..

We swam in the ocean, fed alligators, went sight seeing, attended my nephews wedding..

We visited with brother and his wife and children.  We ate well, we drank rum in exotic tropical drinks.  I found a fossilized sharks tooth (three actually).

We visited 2 aunts and an uncle from my fathers side of the family, went snorkeling in a fresh water spring and put our toes in the Atlantic Ocean at Daytona

We played putt putt golf and went jet skiing where I dumped us both in the ocean when I took a turn too tight.  I laughed until I nearly cried.  Unfortunately, Peter lost his good (read expensive) sun glasses on the dunking.

Coming home was uneventful despite the very long day of travelling.  When we got home we needed to tend to our animals and found they had been very VERY well fed by the babysitter who had the theory "well fed animals are happy animals".   A theory I can't entirely argue with.. Our goats gained weight and look a bit like pigs.

It seems most of our animals were glad to see us come home.  The goats and alpacas don't seem particularly happy since they've been put on a diet but I'm sure they'll be fine.  Eventually.

Vacation is good..

The weekend

Every year, for the last 19 (with the exception of one or two), my family has gone to the beach with another family for a long weekend in the spring. Usually over Easter, but sometimes spring break. This past weekend was the annual trip.

When we first began the tradi-tion our oldest children, were just infants. Over the years our families have grown and changed. This was the first year "the big boys" didn't join us. We missed them but managed to have a rocking good time just the same.

The weather was such a treat. It was beautiful during the day. Stormy and exciting at night. At night the winds howled. It hailed and rained ferociously. During the day we built fires and walked on the beach. We explored some lovely tide pools containing starfish, mussels, hermit crabs and all kinds of fascinating tide pool creatures. We experienced two late-afternoon minus tides that made an otherwise hidden beach accessible - if you were brave enough to scramble up and over some huge rocks and outcroppings. The beach was filled with agates. You could actually sit down and within arms reach gather more agates than your hands could hold. We brought back a couple pockets full. It's much like gold fever and I can't wait to go back!

The house we rented had a hot tub. We rented THIS house, in part, specifically because it had one, but only one of us brought a suit. Not very good planning.

On the way to the outlet mall to acquire cheap and ugly swim suits I spied a yarn store. I tell you.. I'm a bit obsessed. I have so much yarn already and projects stacked up for months, but I had to stop. I found unspun wool. Beautiful, hand-dyed merino wool ready for the spindle. And this yarn store is offering a class in hand-spinning in April. Mid-week, mid-day. cough cough.. I think I feel a sick day coming on...