The Long and Winding Road

Waimea Canyon Road, Kauai.

Pineapple Express

That's what the meteorologists call the storm that's currently in the Bay Area, not my niece in Hawaii after I told her to pose like this. :-)

We're finally getting a little bit of moisture. It's nice. And even nicer that it's accompanied by warmer weather. It was 72 degrees today. If I had an ocean view and a pina colada in my hand, I would have thought I was back in Hawaii.

Not completely a slug

After reviewing my post about all the tv I've been watching, I have the compulsion to let you all know that I truly haven't been sitting in front of the evil box for the past 8 days. It was a pretty relaxing week and we're off to Las Vegas tomorrow, but I did get a few things done aside from brain pickling.

I made my first homemade pie (mixed berry) last Tuesday. Needs work, the crust was a little dry but at least it was flaky. Also made chicken and dumplings that night for dinner. It was cold and cloudy all day and fall certainly was in the air. Chicken and dumplings was nice, warm comfort food. I used lite Bisquick for the dumplings, so dinner was healthy...no added fat. We more than made up for it with the pie.

Had a complete physical. I'm the type of person who sticks her head in the sand when it comes to healthcare. Although I'm not looking forward to the results of the blood work (nervous about my cholesterol), hopefully it'll help kick me in the pants to make better food choices. I'm already trying to eat breakfast...yes, I know it's the most important meal of the day...but I've never been one to eat it regularly. Even just a slice of toast or OJ is torture to eat. Unless you're talking brunch with eggs and bacon and sausage and potatoes, then I can easily consume a whole plate full of cholesterol. I realize though, now that I'm in my mid to late 30's (!), health really is something you need to pay attention to. So I need to get my head out of the sand and just pay more attention.

Did some bookkeeping for the bizness. I've never talked about work on my blog. I've spilled open a lot except in area. Let's just say that Jimmy does the technical stuff, I do the grunt work but oh.so.very.important to keep the technical stuff running smoothly.

Went to Krung Thai for dinner with Phin then we went to a crop at our local scrapbook store from 7p-1a on Friday night. Completely lacking in creativity lately, I only did 1 scrapbook page in 6 hours. However, I did organize my totebag for about 2+ hours!!

Saturday, we went to our fav Mexican restaurant, La Morenita in Palo Alto, then to the Apple store to look at Macs. Just looking. Really. :-)

Woke up at 5:40am Sunday and met Phin in downtown San Jose before her race. She ran in the Inaugural San Jose Rock 'n Roll Half Marathon and I was there to cheer her on and take pictures. Even though I've only wogged a 5k once, I have so much more respect for runners. Those elite runners fly. The men's champion ran the 2nd fastest half on American soil. After her race, we had brunch at Stacks in Menlo Park. Feeling nostalgic for Hawaii, I tried their banana mac nut coconut pancakes, short stack. Definitely "broke da mouf", but not what my doctor had in mind when she recommended eating breakfast. But I ate less than half and brought the rest home to pick at later.

Went to dinner with Doris at Himawari in San Mateo. Delicious ramen house. (Phin, we need to find a ramen place near us). After dinner, we went to stamp club and learned how to make the awesome star book in my previous post. I've wanted to make one of these for years but never did so I was really looking forward to doing the project. We didn't have enough time to finish it during the meeting, so as soon as I came home, I had to finish it (while watching tv of course).

Got Jimmy's car smog checked and washed in prep for our trip to Vegas. We were suppose to leave today, but work and road closures delayed our journey by a day. Our original plans were to go to the cabin tonight then drive to Bishop tomorrow to visit Jimmy's cousin Andrew then drive to Vegas Thursday morning. But we've already had snow in the high country and the highway from the cabin to Bishop is already closed for the season. So instead, we'll drive though Bakersfield, Barstow and Baker en route to the Las Vegas Hockey Tournament, that starts Thursday night. (Melani: we'll be thinking of you and your man! It was so fun when you guys went with us!).

Hopefully, I'll be able to blog while we're there. In addition to the tournament and the artery clogging food we'll eat, we're going to Cirque du Soleil's newest show Love.

Waimea Canyon, dubbed by Mark Twain as the Grand Canyon of the Pacific.
I tore/pulled a calf muscle about 1/2 a hour before I took this photo. Felt like a rubberband being stretched then snapping and I almost passed out from the pain. The next day we had a "condo" day. The ohana went to the beach, I RICE'd my injury: Rested, Iced, Compressed, Elevated. Still aches a bit, almost 2 weeks later, but I can almost walk without a noticable limp. I'm optimistic that within another week or 2, it'll feel totally normal.

Broke da mouf

I'm trying out a new web album program, Picasa's competitor to Flickr, in my opinion. I still like Flickr, but haven't signed up for a pro account yet. Testing both...would love your input on it, too.

Click on the album below to see a few of the delicious (broke da mouf) foods we consumed in Hawaii.

Broke da mouf

Sep 30, 2006 - 17 Photos

update: Picasa's online web album isn't really all that similar to Flickr now that I think of it. Flickr is more of an online networked photo sharing community with tags and searchable features. Picasa's is more like "lemme pull out my Hawaii album and show it to you my friend".

Hiding from reality

I'm back! I've been back for 4 days but having a hard time adjusting back to reality. So I've been escaping to TiVo and the zillion season premiers I recorded while we were gone.

Men in Trees: A near copy of Northern Exposure including the bar. Could retain my interest for a while if it proves to be as quirky as NE.

Six Degrees: I'll give it 2 more episodes to grab me. Otherwise, it gets the ax. I can't watch this much tv.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: lovin' this one. Good, fresh change from Aaron Sorkin's West Wing, although I was very sad to see that one go. But boy, do they talk fast!

Ugly Betty: Oh, I had hopes for this one. But so far, really stupid. Should be a 1/2 hour sit, not an hour, if that could even save it.

The Class: kind of reminds me of Friends. I'm a Friends junkie, so we'll see if it actually holds up to the comparison.

Jerico, Heroes and The Nine: haven't made the time to watch these yet but TiVo's diligently recording.

Watched the season premiers of The Simpsons, Grey's Anatomy, Law and Order and South Park. Still need to watch Lost.

It's kind of (!) gross the amount of tv I've been watching.

I guess in my attempt to not get back to reality, I've been distracted by this evil source of mindless escapism.

Kipu Ranch ATV Tours

Ok, so it's really hard to pinpoint a favorite part of anything when you're relaxing in paradise, but this certainly was a big highlight...so far!

Monday afternoon, we took an ATV Tour of Kipu Ranch. It started out in the flat ranch area where they raise cows. All of the free range cows we saw wandering around were primarily used for breeding. Most of their offspring are usually sent back to the mainland and sold at auction. It was nice having the flat roads to get used to the vehicles. These suckers were so cool, as you can see, 2 passenger "Rhinos", Jimmy drove and I enjoyed being a passenger and taking 200+ photos of amazing scenery and lots of shots of the back of ohana's Rhino, too!
Here we are on the ranch. If you enlarge the photo, you can see the grazing cows.

A lot of movies were filmed on Kauai, most notably Jurassic Park, Six Days and Seven Nights, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. All of which were filmed partially on the ranch and elsewhere on the island. We rode through this very dense forest and before I knew about the movie trivia, I was totally thinking "I feel like I'm on the Raiders of the Lost Ark ride at Disneyland." Turns out I was...but in real life!! Hee! This photo is just about the only non-blurry one I captured since it was dark and very bumpy. ps: if you ever do this and are prone to bug bites, don't forget the deet.

One more gorgeous view along our ride. It was 3 hours. Our niece was a maniac on that thing! It was awesome. We were having sooo much fun!

The Grand Finale! Our tour guide Tom lead us up to the ridgeline of the mountain in the previous photo. The view was spectacular! Again, lots of movie scenes shot here. If you've seen Hook, this was Neverland.

Hawaii is my Neverland. And I've found it.

Aloha

from Kauai!
It's so amazing being in an tropical island paradise. It's been so much fun and jam packed with activities so far. Especially enjoying the time with ohana ("Ohana means family and family means nobody gets left behind." Lilo, from Lilo and Stitch).
We arrived Friday afternoon and after a quick lunch at Mermaids in Kapa'a we headed back the airport to pick up our niece who island hopped from San Deigo to Maui to Oahu then finally to Kauai. 3 islands in one day, but not on purpose. Her flights got a little diverted. :)
We're staying in the north shore in the Princeville community. We have amazing ocean views and it's lush and rains a lot on this side of the island.
The view of Bali Hai from the Princeville Resort, next to the complex we're staying at. The sun sets right behind this mountain range and is breathtaking.
Our ocean view from the Lanai. Spending lots of time out there and even bbq'd Sunday night watching the sun set. Saturday afternoon we watched a hula competition in Poipu.
Shipwreck beach in Poipu. Poipu is in the south shore and doesn't rain quite as much as the north shore but it's just as lush. Jimmy and I stayed in the south shore 5 years ago.

Lots more to blog about, especially our ATV ride yesterday, but wanna send this off for now. Tried blogging yesterday but it got lost crossing the pacific and never showed up on blogger.

Kauai, here we come!

In less than 36 hours, Jimmy, his sister and I will be on a plane to Hawaii! We're meeting our niece there who is flying in from San Diego, arriving 5 minutes before we do. I'm totally excited and love travelling with them. In 2004, I went on a 12 day cruise to Alaska with my SIL, and in 2001, Jimmy and I went on a motorhome trip with our niece to Vancouver with the parentals. It's gonna be a blast. Our niece loves to take photos as much as I do so I'm sure we'll get a lot of goofy shots of us being...goofy.

I've been concentrating so much on my race that I really haven't taken the time to think about this trip. I'm a last minute packer, too, so I'm counting on Jimmy to remember everything. I have stamp club tomorrow night and won't get home till almost 10pm. I know myself well enough that I won't start packing till after I get home. I'll be too excited to sleep anyhoo! Besides, I have a 5 hour flight to sleep, right?

I think part of the reason I haven't been able to accept autumn yet is because of this trip. Hawaii is such the summer environment that my mindset is still in summer. Plus our temperatures are still in the high 70s and 80s. The Bay Area is known for its Indian summers and it often doesn’t feel like fall till the end of October - just in time for Halloween! Fall is one of my favorite seasons, it’s definitely in the top 4. Ha! I can’t say what my favorite season is because I love a lot of elements of all the seasons. But Halloween and Thanksgiving are probably my favorite holidays. Weather wise, fall and spring far exceed summer and winter. I enjoy the rain and snow, but I’d rather be boating on the lake.

Another fall tradition I love is the fall lineup. I’ve programmed TiVo to record the interesting series premiers that I’ll miss while we’re in Hawaii. The ones on my radar are Heroes, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, The Class, Twenty Good Years, Jericho, Ugly Betty, The Nine, Brothers & Sisters, Men in Trees, Notes from the Underbelly and Six Degrees. And then there’s the returning shows: Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, Ghost Whisperer, Law and Order and Gilmore Girls to add to that list. TiVo will be working very hard!

We’ll be gone for 9 days. Lots of time for relaxing as well as playing. The condo we’re staying at has wifi so of course, laptops will be brought. At least 2. Along with 4 iPods, a PSP, GPS (geocaching!), 3 digital cameras, 4 cell phones and I’m sure a lot more electronic gadgets. Obviously we are not roughing it. We’re also bringing books, magazines, Sudoku puzzles, hiking shoes, bathing suits and possibly purchasing snorkel gear when we get there.

...ah...well...for those times that I had little to say, I think this post has made up for it! I was a little (!) long winded and rambled on without direction. A sign that I cannot concentrate on anything in particular because too much is flittering around in my head. I guess I succeeded in wanting to spill open more! :)

Photo taken at the Kalalau Lookout of the Na Pali Coast, July 2005.

9 more days

Kauai Chickens

We're planning a trip to Kauai in September.
I'm sooo psyched!!

Feral chickens are everywhere on the island. In 1991 a major hurricane hit Kauai and many chicken coops were damaged, freeing all the chickens.

Poipu Beach

submitted to Thursday Challenge: Wet