2013

year ends always seem to bring about all sorts of reflections on the past year. i didn't have a fantastic 2013 so here's to hoping that 2014 is better. i don't have any specific resolutions except to work much harder, don't waste as much time, be less petty, and accept criticism better.

the things i did do pretty well in 2013: volunteer more, try to be a better person/friend, be less petty, give more, be more environmentally conscious. altho i feel like i did do a pretty good job of these things in 2013 i certainly intend to improve on them even more in the next year.

recork

for 2014 i'm collecting wine corks for recork which uses recycles them into cool things like shoes and furniture. i'm starting my drive a little early this year since i wanted to include the holiday season, when lots of people are drinking anyway.

i'm especially lucky this year because after i put up the usual announcements on fb, a few people actually shared the post. sharon from pinks, marina from space, and ting are all collecting for me too!

spooky!

october 31st's astronomy picture of the day!

hawaii - thoughts

as i mentioned in my first post about hawaii, this trip was... not without its difficulties. i'm not going to go into too much detail here. g doesn't read my blog, but mostly, there's really no point on dwelling on the less happy times. i was having issues before we left though, but i honestly thought that once we got to hawaii, things would be different. at one point before we left my dad said "this is why friends shouldn't travel together. they don't come back as friends." lol. our trip was not that bad. not even close. we're still good friends; we just need some time apart. but this will be our last trip together with just the two of us.

part of my problem is that i don't like to say anything when something first goes wrong. it's because i think that people mess up, they have bad days and act poorly. it's not a big deal. but then, if it becomes clear that it's not a "bad day" and that's just who they are, i focus on other things, like "we've only got three days left." i generally don't like to tell people how they should act. i'm kind of a fix it yourself type person. i generally try to deal with things myself, and expect you to also. this often backfires. haha!

the one example from the trip i'll actually write about: she doesn't have much water clothes and i do (rash guards and board shorts). luckily, we're about the same size so i lent her some of my clothes. after surfing, we took off some of our wet clothes and put them in a plastic bag. when we got back to the hotel i emptied the bag into the tub and showered first. when i came out i asked her to remind me to rinse out the stuff and hang it up when she was done showering. she forgot to remind me later. but when i did remember, i went into the bathroom and saw her bikini hung up on the shower rod. just her bikini. not the rashguard or boardshorts that i lent her. and of course none of the stuff i wore. this is annoying. i understand that i own the clothing. but you wore it. you should have the decency to rinse out the stuff you borrowed from me. the most annoying this is that this happened the next time she borrowed my rashguard/boardshorts as well. so she didn't just forget. this is her.

that story is simply the most telling example of some of the stuff i felt like i had to put up with. it was not an easy trip. the last few days i tried to get some alone time from her. and on our last full day we started bickering. in any case, it didn't get so bad that we were struggling to get thru the rest of the time together. we had a lot of great times, even at the end. but... oh man. they say you don't know someone until you live or travel with them. so true! this week-long trip really highlighted some of the ways we just do not get along.

in any case, i'm thankful for the time we had together. hawaii was beautiful. more beautiful than i had expected, honestly. i think that also we were both happy the trip was ending, we could've used one more day to finish up a few things on the island. but i think we did a lot. enough so that i don't feel like i need to go back to oahu, anyway. another island, another time. hopefully with reepal :)

hawaii - recap

i went to hawaii for a week with g. it was kind of a random "last minute" trip. basically i took over her husband's ticket. there was quite a bit of drama on my end before we left but i didn't want to mention anything to her since she's going thru a hard time right now. i also figured that once we were there, things would be different. they were not so much. lol.

day 1 - arrived mid-day. from our driver we learned about a bunch of local places eat. all on one street, conveniently located reasonably close to our hotel! annie also got our driver to take us to a lunch spot before she went to make another pick-up. that afternoon we walked up the main drag of waikiki.

we pretty much ate our way round the island, lol.

day 2 - circle island tour! was introduced to a lot of beautiful places. also hit up a lot of the usual tourist spots: dole pineapple farm, chinaman's hat, north shore, macadamia nut farm... no pearl harbor however. which was actually fine since neither g nor i really wanted to go there anyway. ha! that night we went to first friday in china town, which is like an art walk.

 

day 3 - we went surfing (something we both really wanted to do)! well, "surfing". the waves were no more than a foot high, the instructors pushed us out and told us when to stand. but who cares, it was awesome! we also paddled in an oc6 for like half an hour too and actually surfed the wave. amazing stuff! i didn't know oc's did that. at night we saw two parades: the pearl harbor memorial parade and the christmas parade for honolulu city lights.

view from diamond head

day 4 - we hiked diamond head (something g really wanted to do) which is a short though kind of difficult hike that gives you views of honolulu on one side. after getting back we hung out at the beach a little in the afternoon.

day 5 - snorkeling at hanauma bay (something i really wanted to do), which was awesome! the coral there is actually really high (or the water really low) so at some points you're less than a foot away from the coral right below you. it's kind of scary actually. i did much better at snorkeling this time. i still got scared and definitely freaked out some in the beginning, but i really started to get the hang of it later. i think that it isn't open open water really helped. also the ground didn't drop off as steeply as it did in catalina. this was my highlight from the trip.

hanauma bay

day 6 - on our last day we decided to rent a car (tho it was quite expensive) and do our own circle island tour. we wanted to hit up north shore and eat at the garlic trucks, matsumoto's shaved ice, and watch the pipeline surfing competition. we also wanted to do another hike if we had the time (we did not). that night we went back to duke's to have our last meal. one of the guys we met the night before had been texting annie during the day and eventually drove us to tantalus, which was very pretty at night and must've been beautiful during the day. it was pretty cold and kind of rainy tho so that also put a damper on the view.

pupukea beach

day 7 - flew back. the flight was super ugh. sitting right next to us was a group of 7: a couple, their three young children, and a set of grandparents. during the first 4 hours of the 5+ hour flight at least one kid was crying in every five minute interval. i had to sleep thru most of it altho i wasn't tired because i couldn't stand it anymore. thank god for ear plugs and my nearly superhuman sleeping powers. i actually started to wonder about choking the kids out. i mean, some regular kids do it to themselves. hold their breath so long they pass out. they don't seem to suffer any long term effects so it should be safe, right? ugh. and before you say anything about how i hate kids anyway, no. these were bad parents. i have examples but whatever. ack!!

north celestial tree

october 23rd's astronomy picture of the day!

amazon quotes

david grann - the lost city of z: a tale of deadly obsession in the amazon

"There were the Prudent, who said: 'This is an extraordinarily foolish thing to do.' There were the Wise, who said: 'This is an extraordinarily foolish thing to do; but at least you will know better next time.' There were the Very Wise, who said: 'This is an extraordinarily foolish thing to do, but not nearly as foolish as it sounds.' There were the Romantic, who appeared to believe that if everyone did this sort of thing all the time the world's troubles would soon be over. There were the Envious, who thanked God they were not coming; and there were the other sort, who said with varying degrees if insincerity that they would give anything to come. There were the Correct, who asked me if I knew any of the people at the Embassy. There were the Practical, who spoke at length of inoculations and calibres... There were the Apprehensive, who asked me if I had made my will. There were the Men Who Had Done A Certain Amount of That Sort of Thing In Their Time, You Know, and these imparted to me elaborate stratagems for getting the better of ants and told me that monkeys made excellent eating, and so for that matter did lizards, and parrots; they all tasted rather like chicken." (p79)

"But it wasn't the big predators that he and his companions fretted about most. It was the ceaseless pests. The sauba ants that could reduce men’s clothes and rucksacks to threads in a single night. The ticks that attached like leeches (another scourge) and the red hairy chiggers that consumed human tissue. The cyanide-squirting millipedes. The parasitic worms that caused blindness. The berne flies that drove their ovipostors through clothing and deposited larval eggs that hatched and burrowed under the skin. The almost invisible biting flies called piums that left the explorers’ bodies covered in lesions. Then there were the 'kissing bugs,' which bite their victim on the lips, transferring a protozoan called Typanasoma cruzi; twenty years later, the person, thinking he had escaped the jungle unharmed, would begin to die of heart or brain swelling. Nothing, though, was more hazardous that the mosquitoes. They transmitted everything from malaria to “bone-crusher” fever to elephantiasis to yellow fever. '[Mosquitoes] constitute the chief single reason why Amazonia is a frontier still to be won,' Willard Price wrote in his 1952 book The Amazing Amazon." (p94)

"A snake-bite which bleeds in nonpoisonous. Two punctures, plus a bluish and bloodless patch, is a sign of poison." (227)

prairie aurora

october 5th's astronomy picture of the day!

initiative

got the following from ting:

(a) 10% do it themselves on their own initiative
(b) 25% will do it if asked
(c) 30% will do it after asking a few times and seeing that it works/in action
(d) 25% do it when you hound them
(e) 10% will never do it

i think these numbers are pretty good. of course, i think people's categories change depending on what you're talking about. i'm generally a and b. but when it comes to things i think are stupid, things i don't want to do anyway, or things that are coming from people i don't really like, i'm a d.

it's pretty crazy though, how many people are d's for a lot of things they should probably be higher in the alphabet for!