9-21-2010

Some people do fat people yoga on the beach every morning while on vacation. I prefered to snorkel almost every morning I was in Hawaii. Here are more fish pictures:

Half a fish that reminds me of 90's swimwear
Wolverine fish
Eyebrow fish and friend
Polka dot puffer fish
Tiny covert ops camouflage fish
Really colorful fish
Less colorful but still fancy fish

After snorkeling, Nicole, Phil and I were left to babysit Baby Lily while everyone else when scuba diving. The three of us took turns getting massages at the spa which I didn't take pictures of...cause that would just be weird. After the massages, Nicole orchestrated a shower schedule in which she would be watching Baby Lily 95% of the time. Never underestimate just how badly two boys can watch a baby for even 5% of the time. Things started off fine. I took pictures of Baby Lily taking a nap while having lunch on the patio. Then I noticed she was moving around and making nightmare frowny faces. Our cat Mushroom does this too, and if you wake her up from her nightmare she realizes everything is ok and starts happily purring. I thought that a baby would work the same way. She didn't purr. I don't think she screamed this loud any other time on the entire trip except for when she bounced off a mattress and fell on the floor. Clearly unqualified to tend to a baby, I called Phil over, who promptly started mock crying back at her (though a solid concept, this did not work in practice but only encouraged her to be louder than him). After frantically dragging Nicole out of the bathroom where she was getting ready, she fixed the baby pretty much instantly. I should never have responsibilty for children. Ever.

After my Adventures In Babysitting afternoon, we went to Hank's Haute Dogs. I'll pretty much go anywhere that's been on the Food Network, and this place was on Diners Drive-ins and Dives. Since Hank's was in the super touristy area we went to before, I dressed to blend in. Ordering. Delicious fancy hot dogs. Makes you crazy. Then we walked off our lunch and saw this guy carving tiki statues, silver guy, and gold guy. As we were walking, we came upon this fancy old hotel. I guess princesses used to live here or something...I wasn't really listening to all the details, I just knew I wanted to invade it. So I grabbed Kim to look less suspicious, and help pretend like we belonged there. We rode the elevator to where the actual rooms are, explored the halls and took took pictures on the balconys. Then we found this sign which worked more as an attractor than a repellant. If they were to catch us though, I couldn't even lie and say I was blind since they had the good sense to write the sign in braille as well. Whatever, we went though their laundry room, into their service elevator and went up to the previously unreachable seventh floor where we found...the Being John Malkovich door. This was a rewarding discovery for our trespassing.

Our adventuring eventally led to Leonard's Bakery to get malasadas (Portuguese doughnut things my sister really likes). It was a glowing beacon of sugar and deep fried saturated fats. Today happened to be my cousin Phil's birthday, so naturally while in line, we decided that the only right thing to do was to buy him a cake. We had it decorated by this lady to celebrate the reoccuring anniversary of his 24th birthday (with two exclamation points). They even gave him a complimentary birthday gift to decorate his cake with. This lady packed these things up for us and acted as a visual warning to not eat too many of them (was that too mean? I'm a horrible human being). On the way out, we saw this incredibly local looking girl. Keep in mind I was still wearing my super tourist outfit...which probably accounts for her expression.

Back at the resort, the only way to wash down a box full of malasadas is to go to the hot tub and drink super classy wine in juice boxes with swirly straws from the Dole plantation. Thus began the plannings for Epic Ocean Run 2010. The first step was running though the resort sprinklers while wearing capes (I think screaming about gargoyles was also involved at this point)...followed by a mad dash down the beach and into the ocean (which was both too fast and far too epic to be fully documented). There is however, this picture of Kim holding me.

P.s. The beach the fat people did yoga on was the launch site of Epic Ocean Run.

9-20-2010

I tried to snorkel as much as possible, even though I wasn't very good at it. Here's a weird spotty thing and a crabby. We then picked up my cousin Derf to complete the collection of Asian cousins in Hawaii.

After the airport, the next stop was the Dole Pineapple Plantation. This was very educational for me since I had the prior misconception that pineapples grew on the tops of trees like coconuts. I learned that they actually grow like this after everyone made fun of me. The pineapple planation also has lots of fishes, Pineapple Dole Whip, and another photobooth which we fit everyone in.

We then had another Food Wars-esque comparison of shave ice between Aoki's from the day before and Matsumoto's which is down the street. I think sugar water and ice generally makes people happy no matter where it's from.

Then we went to a surf shop on our way to see a real live sea turtle sleeping on the beach. A large part of my pre-trip imagination centered around Finding Nemo, so seeing a sea turtle was really my only big objective of the trip and terribly exciting when it actually happened.

We then ended up back at the fruit stand we went to the day before. If I ever though vandalism was the most petty felony possible, this sign proved me wrong. We got more coconuts to drink and banana lumpia which is like a banana eggroll in the best way possible. I could eat one right now and I don't even like banana. I do like cats though, and was happy to see these indigenous Hawaiian fruit stand kitties.

I'm not sure if we only ate things this whole day or if I only took pictures of us eating things, but here are some pictures from Romy's shrimp hut. I guess this place is well known for cooking fresh shrimp and prawns from the farms(?) right behind their stand. Although I was eating my fair share of meat at this point, these were too hardcore for me, so I just watched other people eat them.

Ok, so I'm pretty sure we did nothing but eat this day. We even waited an hour in line to eat at Morio's Sushi. In that wait time, we found a nice little store that had something for everyone. We totally harassed this shop guy setting off his door sensor every time we walked in and out out of sheer boredom. When we finally got to sit down for sushi the wait was definitely worth it. Nom.

9-19-2010

We woke up very excited to go snorkeling. First, we went to the lagoon at the resort and quickly found Gill from Finding Nemo. He was our first fancy tropical fish and I was probably way too excited to see him. I was also pretty excited to see Baby Lily's fat baby legs in the water. She was happy to be held by my cousin Philip and bite people above the water even though she doesn't have any teeth.

Speaking of biting, we then went to Duke's Restaurant and Barefoot Bar for brunch...and so began my week long meat-eating-bender. Other than a handfull of unavoidable/traveling exceptions, I haven't eaten meat in well over nine months. Like, I could have had a baby in the amout of time since I ate meat. This has developed into an extreme guilt complex whenever I cheat. Today, I more than cheated...I Tiger Woods-ed on this whole "eating healthy thing." I can't say I'm proud, but it was delicious. So delicious. Here's me eating my first bite of bacon all year (I love you, King Curtis). The Portuguese sausage pictured above was also note worthy. This guy quietly judged me from the bushes the entire time. We then went to the super touristy shops across the street. Highlights included the tan? Hawaiian? Coffee stained? Miss Kitty doll and the photobooth which accidentally produced one of my favorite photos of the whole trip.

Next was a driving tour around the area. We saw this rock formation, went to this roadside fruit stand, and Nicole got a coconut drink. Then we drove around some more and made Baby Lily hold things and pretend to drink out of coconuts on our way to the Macadamia Nut Farm. There were real and fake Hawaiian people there. The area around was very picturesque though. Anywhere is a good place to take pictures of Baby Lily.

Then we went to snorkel at Sharks Cove to see more fish and step on sea urchins. This was followed by Aoki's Shave Ice for...shave ice. which is like a giant snow cone with flavored syrup, and ice cream, sweet beans, and/or condensed milk if you want it. They have lots of flavors. Binky is not one of them. Kim is apparently a flavor for dogs though. I don't know what the wild chickens eat, but as the spouse of a (most of the time) non-meat-eating person who doesn't like seafood, Nicole was delighted to have crab legs for dinner at Sam Choy's.

9-18-2010

Waking up way too early just to rush though secuity so you can sleep in the airport has become something I've gotten good at, but hate every time. I don't remember a lot of this morning since I tried to sleep though as much of it as possible, but I do remember wanting to fight an entire group of obnoxiously loud old men that all had their ill fitting shirts buttoned all the way up and tucked into their dad jeans. They ignored our personal space so much that I think Nicole wanted to fight them too. The plane finally arrived and it was so little that we had to go out on the tarmac to get on (this was actually pretty fun). We layed over in Minneapolis then got on our second flight after meeting up with a baby that I had met a few times before. On the flight, telling the flight attendant that I don't eat meat somehow turned into her giving me two people's meals and a ton of extra snacks. This circumstantial binge eating was just the warm up for the rest of the trip. This is the big plane that we came in on, and more importantly the "Gate gourmet" food truck that fed me all together too much food. Baby Lily was the most unhappy person ever to arrive in in a tropical paradise. She was however much more excited to meet my cousin Kim for the first time ever. She also enjoyed chewing on the fake flowers I got for her. On the way to the resort, Baby Lily sang us traditional Hawaiian folk songs. When we got there, we unloaded the spoils of flying that we stuffed in Nicole's purse and took mandatory "view from the balcony" pictures. Target stores in Hawaii sell weird stuff like surf boards and children's books about Barack Obama. They also sell liquor which Baby Lily quickly indulged in.

9-17-2010

My long lost coworker Mark came to town for the office Oktoberfest party. There was lots of cookout food, but I was far more interested with the bottle opener. In literature this is called foreshadowing.

My coworker Jared has a new workout routine. He does 30 pushups every day in the middle of the office.
(yes, my office has giant crayons just sitting around for no reason).

There was a swarm of insects of biblical proportions infesting the area tonight. The world may very well be coming to an end.

That being said, see you continental United States people in a week. I'll be making sand castles and drinking salt water while wearing a Speedo in the Pacific.

9-16-2010

I can has?

Ok, so I live in the suuubbbuurrrbbbssss. Like Wisteria Lane suburbia (and not the punk rock movie Suburbia). The name of our street even alludes to peace and quite. So tonight, when we heard some pop pop pops that weren't fireworks we were a little concerned. Once our street started looking like Close Encounters of the Third Kind we were a bit more concerned. For a street where I'm normally the loudest and most disruptive thing on the block, this is a little atypical. Neighbors I had never even seen before appeared and started milling around to watch the episode of CSI that was happening for real on our block. Bad boys, bad boys whatcha gonna do.

9-15-2010

Totally spoiled by cupcakes.

9-14-2010

9-13-2010

Dinner with my parents and the restaurant had a bocce ball stadium in their patio. Then I saw this guy on the way home.

9-12-2010

For a few Fall seasons now, I've been on the lookout for a coat that looks like Paddington Bear. I'm not sure why I'm so interested in looking like a plush doll based on a children's storybook, but I probably spent all together too much money to do so today. I'm incredibly excited about this. Besides, I can always lie and tell people the coat makes me look like a salty sailor if I need to act tough.

9-11-2010

This is a Magical Train. We saw it at a carnival where Nicole went here and got the biggest corn dog in the whole world. Then we saw a pretty amazing homage to early 2000's gangster rap while driving around random awesome places and trying to get lost.

We eventually figured out where we were and Nicole made friends with random street cats. We found people wearing costumes and holding giant...umm compensating instruments. We saw a random street cat on a boat. Then went somewhere fancy for fancy food.

This is what 1,368 exposures of ammunition for my blog looks like.

9-10-2010

Two weeks and two days later, I went out for the first time for something other than work or groceries. This potted head lives in Little Italy by where we went for dinner.

9-9-2010

Being sick totally sucks. I haven't done anything fun in so long and I haven't gotten to play with my fun camera stuff in even longer. I pulled my FM2 out of the closest today just to turn the knobs and click the button. I can't wait to waste a ton of film doing stupid stuff as soon as I'm better.

9-8-2010

So this morning I was awoken by a phonecall telling me that the doctor apparently didn't really look that closely at my chest x-ray on Saturday, and that I've actually had Pneumonia in my right lung for at least the last five days. I swear to God, if they were too busy lauging at my sars mask instead of figuring out if I'm going to die or not...I'm going to sue them so hard. In anycase, I now have a bottle of fancy antibiotics and high hopes that they may actually fix me now that they know how I'm broken.

P.s. this has definitely been the most fun-less two weeks of the past year and possibly my whole life.