Sunday, August 27, 2006

Aloha!

Well, we arrived unscathed! It was a pretty long flight, but we passed the time watching stuff on Will's Ipod and everything went off without a hitch (aside from some serious turbulence about an hour away from Hawaii which had us scrambling for Will's motion sickness pills). We landed, got leied, had some sushi, settled into Caitlin's sister Maeve's condo, had some awesome fish for dinner (mine was pink snapper, have you ever heard of such a thing?) then crashed. I was proud, we were awake for 24 hours all told. We managed to sleep until 6:30 AM this morning too, so we're all but acclimated to the time change already (we're 6 hours behind the east coast). Today we spent driving a huge loop around the island, stopping at fruit stands, shrimp farms, overlooks, beaches etc. Oahu has a very dry scrubby side, and then a very lush and jungle-y side. They definitely have the market cornered on foliage variety. Everything I've ever seen growing on any island in the Caribbean is here, plus some new things, and it's amazing how HUGE the mimosa trees get here. I think everything has a chance to get bigger since there are no hurricanes and not even that many big storms out here. It's also not humid at all. It is incredibly strange though to see a city with highrises and a 6 lane freeway and then also be seeing volcanic mountains and jungles and turquoise water. Usually you find the latter in more under-developed areas. That's America for you, I guess. We'll develop anywhere that it's profitable to do so.
We're making dinner for Caitlin and Maeve tonight as a sort of a thank you. We picked up local shark steaks at the commissary (where Maeve took us shopping since otherwise groceries tend to be outrageous) for amazingly cheap and we're also having corn that we picked up at a roadside stand that was alarming because it had brown silk instead of the blonde we're used to. For dessert I think we'll try to attack the pommelo we got that is larger than a bowling ball.

-Sara

Thursday, August 24, 2006

It's crunch time

We're getting down to the wire, this time tomorrow I'll be driving Will and I to the airport! Well, the hotel near the airport, we don't actually fly out until retarded early Saturday morning. Guess I should start packing...

We moved my youngest sister Kathleen to college yesterday. She's going to Mary Washington along with our middle sister Krista who will be starting her junior year there this year. Kathleen didn't, as we say in our family, "Pull a Krista" and go completely hysterical when we dropped her off, and it seems like she's having fun meeting people and getting into the swing of things so far.

Once I got home we had Will's sister Margaret over and she, Brad, Will and I ate dinner and watched "Rize" and then spent the rest of the evening trying to figure out how to "get krump". If you have no idea what I'm talking about, it is a type of dancing that originated in South Central LA. It basically is accomplished by disengaging all of your joints and flailing like you're having a seizure. It may not SOUND cool (and it certainly didn't look cool when we were attempting it) but the total effect is really mind-blowing when you see someone who knows what they're doing. If you haven't seen the movie you should, but practice care when attempting to Krump or you may end up straining a muscle in your upper chest (who even knew we had muscles there?) like I did.

I spent most of today trying to teach my boss how to run the IC at work so she can do the nitrate analyses while I'm gone. I fear she is completely hopeless, but hey, it won't be my problem because I won't be there! Now I'm wrapping Will's presents, making food for the trip and packing up. With these new restrictions on liquid and gel-type substances in your carry-on it will be interesting. Will wants to try to get yogurt and cottage cheese through security for a snack later in the day, but unless we put it in a baby bottle and say it's really thick (and in the case of cottage cheese rancid) formula, I don't think we'll be successful. It would be really nice if everywhere carried fat-free options, but most places don't even have anything less than 2ilk, let alone fat free yogurt or cottage cheese.

Once we survive that, we'll only be a 14 hour flight away from Hawaii! In all fairness though, only 12 of those hours will be spent in the air. Ugh. At least we'll get leied at the end. Hah! I'm sure I'm the first person to ever say that. But we will get to see Caitlin which I am psyched about. I used to see her every day, but then she quit working at the lab, and now she's moved out of the continental US. So I have to haul my ass to Hawaii to see her, what a pain! I'm also psyched that Will convinced me to rent a Jeep while we're there, so we'll be spending the next 2 weeks (1 week in Will's case) trucking all over Oahu and seeing everything there is to see. Possibly lying on a beach for awhile too, but I'm not so good at doing that on vacation when there is so much else to see.

But before I can go to Hawaii I have to pack, so I need to get down to business!

My next update will hopefully be from Honolulu

-Sara

Monday, August 21, 2006

Almost time to go home...

Blah, another boring day at work. Mondays are always slow though. The problem is, if there's nothing to do, I'm bored. If there are a lot of things to get done, I get irritated that I don't have any down time. I guess that just means I don't like my job? I have a short workday, it's super-flexible hours, and it's 7 minutes from my house, so most people think I'm lucky and I suppose I am. All the same though, this job is bad for my mental well-being. For example, today to pass the time I was working on a "project" my boss has given me, which consists of making her a personal website so she can sell her ponies. Um, I happen to be a chemist, not a web designer. I haven't the slightest clue how to make a website. Not to mention the fact that it's pretty wrong to have the lab pay me to make her a personal website. But she bills the lab for the time our network administrator spends fixing her home computer, so I guess that's nothing new. And I guess that's the problem with being the only person at your workplace below the age of 40. They see you type fast and they watch you use shortcut keys and they decide you know everything there is to know about computers.

The bad thing is, there really is nothing else to do but I still have to be here, so I've just been screwing around with Microsoft Frontpage for hours.

-Sara