Who Knew?

Today we have a bunch of cancer jobs, so I'm taking the day off. In general, things are going well. Mrguy has more energy than he's had since February. Don't know if that's due to treatment or eating or both, but he's puttering like crazy -- vacuuming, bringing in the garbage cans, getting his own meals, making me coffee. None of these are things I could have imagined a few weeks ago. I cried when I told my therapist how odd it is to feel this level of gratitude in the midst of such a cruddy situation.

Yesterday we went to the hospital for an 8:30pm head MRI. This is all due to the eye situation. I am glad that they prioritized this, somewhat amazed that the radiology department has night appointments, and glad that nobody told us they were admitting mrguy. I have a saying "Pack for capture", by which I mean pack as if they're going to admit you for some random reason. When the hospital is over an hour away, you can't just run home for stuff you forgot, so this is what I do now. I was very happy to put those items away once we got home.

Another moment of gratitude? Realizing that we had been to the radiology building before and that when we were there I was pushing mrguy in a wheelchair. Last night he walked with me from the parking lot.

Random Haps

Mom is back in the state. Her visit with my sister didn't go as planned. I think they're getting COVID tests today to see whether they can get her safely back to her community. After that I don't know what happens. We're still sheltering in place over here, and my mom has been on two plane rides in two weeks, so I hope she and my sister are ok.

This week I hit the wall with a project that I've been supporting for many years. First I realized that I can't actually make the project better, then I realized I can't do it any more. That was actually depressing, because I might be made to continue. More later.

On the up side, mrguy is painting the lady bathroom for me.

I have started randomly poking plants into the barren hump of land in the middle of our street.

Boy Kitten is still in isolation for another couple of weeks, and he keeps growing like crazy.

Yesterday I made chicken and slickers, which was quite tasty.

And I have been working on the aku room. I bought two benches and organized the plants I've been growing in there. Today I might try to make an upside down tomato pot out of a cranberry juice jug.

We had a beautiful sunset the other day.

And last week I made a bunch of succulent cuttings and people from the "Buy Nothing" group on Facebook took them away. And yes, that's poison oak in the bush above!

When times are tough (family, police brutality, futility, pandemic), it sometimes helps to document the good stuff.

The Post-Bear World

We're a month out from our encounter with the bear, and it seems as if bears are everywhere. In the news, in a gigantic flag that hangs from the rafters of my office building. The story has gone a bit viral with my friends, who ask me to retell it for friends who haven't heard. When I tell the story my stomach gets a bit crampy.

Mrguy has had a similar reaction, which is hard when you are already a naturally hyper-vigilant person. But I guess that when you've been surprised inside your cozy vacation home by a 600lb animal it makes you feel as if it can happen anywhere. You spend a whole lifetime training yourself *not* to consider every shadow a threat and then there is a bear in your living room, standing on the sofa, and on the third floor, using the sink in the bathroom. 

It makes you rethink things. I used to find survival manuals at estate sales and give them to my brother-in-law for fun. Now he's actually been in a life-or-death situation with a bear. And I can assure you that none of the manuals cover how to react when encountering a bear in the third floor hallway.

5 days after the bear I got my period. First one in 8 months. Mrguy said the bear scared an egg out of me. One month later, I got my period again. I texted my bandmate. She responded "Damn bear".

You love your Grandma? You love Asian art? You love waffles?

I sent an email with that subject line to oldest and youngest nephews, who were on their way to being the new owners of antique lacquer panels with semi-precious stone inlay. Their payment? Some labor, as well as removal of frozen items from the domicile.

First the labor. Their task, should they love the grandma and waffles, was to remove the solid oak desk from the office. I have lived in terror of this moment from the time the desk entered the office, because my pop had said that it could only leave in halves. Youngest neph brought his Sawzall. 
 
But the local garbage folks' "bulky item pickup" rules consider two halves of a once whole desk to be *two* bulky items, so mrguy vetoed that plan. And given that mrguy's other name is pack-man, he and two nephs were able to get the desk into the patio without a hitch.

Then came Operation Empty The Office. Out went some cool weird furniture and some future landfill.

Then came Operation Empty Freezer. Despite the removal of 28 frozen bananas (and the 8 or so my brother-in-law also found), the chest freezer was really full. Cream puffs, frozen waffles, meat, milk, butter, lots of plums from the tree (so happy). And yes, 5 more frozen bananas. I knew someone would forget a cooler, and a styrofoam cooler appeared on the free table at work this week. Kismet. I filled it with meat.

The vegetarian nephew got the cream puffs. The non-vegetarian got all of the meat and the ancestral bait (two kinds). The estranged nephew gets bupkis (no art, no bait, no love) and his brother gets the admonition that none of what he's taking can go to his brother. Sadly the vegetarian is undeserving of having to pass on this message, but that's how it is.

While I was cleaning out the fridge, Coco came to visit. I'm sure that I've said this before but I'm not sure I could have gotten through this final stretch at mom's house without the affection of sweet Cocodee, who appears in the middle of the house at the most random times. If you're her parents, doing a Google search on your cat's name, I apologize for monopolizing her time during this spring and summer.

The boys got their art and sent another neph, his wife and our grand-nephews, who arrived a few hours later. That neph walked away with a chest of drawers, some Indian wool rugs, the pop's old fishing kit with real tin cups and stuff, and on a later date mrguy will deliver the jade panels that didn't fit in the truck.

I emptied the toy drawer of its mix of late 60's (mine) and early 80's (the nephs') toys. 

And that was almost the end of it. The garage is filled with garbage bags, the garage cabinets are empty, most of the furniture is out of the house, and our entire mr and mrs guy garage is filled with the things from the house that the greater guy family cares about.

Wow.

As The Crow Flies

We spent part of yesterday visiting open homes. 

Much was revealed. 

There was an amazing glass box on stilts that looked very appealing in the listing. When I saw it in person...not so much. It looked like it needed a ton of work, and the listing agent was boasting loudly about how the owners got one inspection that said the house needed 66k worth of work. And then they got another one saying that it was only 6k worth of work. 

Shifty people.

We looked at another house that was truly amazing. It was suspended from 4 giant beams, and located on an 11,000sf lot full of trees. It had built-ins and was very womb-like. We met the architect.

But it was too open and small. It had lots of woodshop-y rooms, but not as many livable rooms. Such an amazing space, though. I just wanted to open a book and fall asleep on the couch.

After our adventures in the woods, mrguy said he's over that neighborhood. "As the crow flies, it's not very far from work for you," he said. "But as the crow drives in the crow's car, it would be kind of a pain."

Love that man!

Tomorrow we put a bid on my first love, the house with the laundry room and the cat room. 

We'll see what happens.

The 2.5%

Those who know me know that I love researching my family history. Genealogy is how I passed the long days when I was on disability and didn't know if I'd ever live a pain-free life. The anaesthetic properties of research were healing then, as they are still now.

After a long absence from genealogy I recently picked it up again. There are more tools, more digitized materials, and I can take my extensive amount of work I did the hard way and push further. DNA testing is one of those tools.

I wish it weren't so confusing.

I did Ancestry, and found that none of my Irish lineage turns up. Is that because they were originally Scandinavians who invaded Isles? And the Native American ancestry I'd heard about didn't reveal itself and was probably untrue as well? Not surprising.

What was surprising is that Ancestry, which has great search interfaces, hasn't done the best job at designing their UI. Browsing is for dummies, people. You need to step it up. Thusfar I have no strong matches, and no way to easily search among remote matches for surnames. Waaaaaaah :(

Now I'm doing 23 and Me. Not all of my answers are in, but the genealogical components are perplexing. It shows Ashkenazi ancestry out there in the distant past. And a splash of what may be either Native American or East Asian ancestry. Currently it's marked as Japanese, specifically, which would be a real hoot, especially given my interests.

I don't know what to think of any of it, as it doesn't exactly link up with the Ancestry information. Another feature of 23 and Me is the part that tells you how much of your DNA is derived from your Neanderthal ancestors. I now know that 2.5% of my DNA is Neanderthal. I told mrguy and he said "That's what I wanted to know!" 

You gotta love a guy who wants to know your Neanderthal count.

'Tis The Season

The mrsguy birthday season, that is. Ordinarily we have a quiet dinner somewhere and go home to open pressies. But this being the "kick, stretch and kick" birthday, it seemed foolish to let it pass without doing something more. I took two weeks off and people called it my staycation, but I did anything but stay. And now I'm recovering in my sick bed (more accurately sick couch) and waiting to go back to work. Whew.

Phase One: Operation Meeting of the Moms
Seems odd that we've been together for over 20 years, married for 17 and our moms have never met until now. We finally made it happen. Picked up the grand mamoo and took her for a ride down the coast to meet the tiny mamoo. Of course they liked each other. We ate lunch and took a tour of tiny mamoo's home town, which was super fun.

Phase Two: Pretend You're Huell Howser
Earlier in the year, big sis, the mamoo and I talked about meeting in the middle of the state to visit the sights seen by the estimable Huell Howser on one of his shows. We finally did it, and it was very fun. We went to the oldest A&W Rootbeer and had carhop service. What are you supposed to do with your milkshake once you have it?

We went to Micke Grove and saw the Japanese Garden. Not as tranquil as we had hoped! A photographer, his buddy, a child and two ladies made up as I-don't-know-what (flappers? it involved a lot of tulle, sequins and cloches) were doing a photo shoot there. The ladies would sit on a rock and stare at each other theatrically for the camera, notice that the child was not in viewing range and shout "Buddah! BUDDAH! Get back here where I can see you". Buddah, the child, had been happily assaulting the koi with small rocks.

Anyway, Micke Grove also has a zoo with little deer called pudu. I really want to see my cats play with a pudu. After the zoo, we looked for the crane habitat but were unsuccessful, so we went back to our hotel. Perfection. Three beds in one room, and a plastic and very dusty olive tree. But I loved it. Successful trip.

Phase Three: Sumo Saturday
Birthday was celebrated with friends on Sumo Saturday. This consisted of my ordering tamales from a neighbor and decorating the house with sumo-themed bunting (yukata fabric created for sumitori or their sumo stables, that I bought on ebay). People seemed to like sumo more than I thought. They asked great questions.

Phase Four: Disneyland
Yeah. Had to do it. Spent all day and part of a night at California Adventure. Ate at Napa Rose. Saw an adorable little kid named Daniel using the guardrail in line at Soarin' as a personal jungle gym. Then he liberally tongued the handrail. Yep. We're doomed. Stayed with mrguy south one evening, which was delicious, and I spent as many hours as my battery would allow cropping photographs in our moving vehicle as we sped back home for Thanksgiving.

Phase Five: Guygiving
But it wasn't Thanksgiving this year. It was guygiving. A one-time-only event celebrating my birthday and my brother-in-law's. The family gathered, the brother-in-law and I put together an overly-long slide show which people seemed to like, and then we went out to dinner. I'd fallen victim to the handrail-lickers earlier, and by guygiving I had almost no voice. It felt like I had cystitis of the throat (imagine gargling with broken glass and tabasco), but I had such a good time. Private room, much good cheer, no birthday singing. It was awesome.

Phase Six: In Which I Retire To My Sofa With Cold Preparations For Days On End
I'm still here. Been here four days. Wicked cough. Voice still very wiggly. Except for the illness, all-in-all a success. Plus, a friend sent orchids yesterday, extending the occasion.

I will never do this again, but man was that enjoyable. OK, parts of it I'll do again. Ordering tamales from my neighbor and having people over for sumo I'll definitely do.

Palm Springia 2012

Oh, the desert. Why do people go there?

In our case, we went for a professional development thingie, which was quite wonderful.

But we weren't alone. No! Our conference coincided with an event called American Heat, drawing motorcycle enthusiasts from all over the state to sunny PS. Loud. Interesting. Scary.

Three of our meals came from a place called Sherman's Deli. Visiting there reminded me of my days as a diner waitress. Unlike my diner, the food at Sherman's was outstanding. This was our first view, as we picked up breakfast:

I ruined the first photo by getting a reflection of the palm trees and mountain behind me in the shot, then decided that it was kinda awesome.

 

Breakfast was on the go in order to get me to a workshop on time. It turns out that the location for the workshop was not the location of the museum (my bad). But I got to hang out here for a while and watch roadrunners chase each other across the dusty road for a while. A desert experience, yes.

 

The workshop was great, if sweat-inducing. I wielded a HEPA vacuum and brushed dirt off of hand-woven rugs all day. I truly felt I'd earned my dinner later.

In the morning we went back to Sherman's. This is my giant pile of matzobrei.

Turns out that motorcycle gangs like breakfast, too. Groups of men and women, dressed in their regalia, politely waited their turns to be seated at Sherman's, along with groups of cops. Truly a varied crowd. I very badly wanted to know more about the flair on the vests of the motorcycle dudes. The motorcycle club that we saw in the largest numbers was the Mongols.

After breakfast we spent the rest of the day looking at every thrift shop we could find. During the drive I gleaned what I could about Mongol flair, its meaning, and how those patches are earned. Purple wings. Wow. Look it up.

We got back into town and most of the Mongols had left town. I was sad, because I really wanted to put my newfound knowledge to use. The only Mongol we saw that day had very little patch action (a novitiate?), and was sweetly romantic with his girlfriend. Not playing to stereotype.

Later that night we went to a private event at the Sunnylands event center. A modernist paradise, with fun company and yummy dishes. We found what we thought was the quietest table and it turned to be in the direct path between the kitchen and the appetizer tables. Unintended bonus: we got everything as fresh as it could be.

Then we went to the children's museum and pulled the same move inadvertently -- we looked for what we thought was going to be the farthest and quietest table, which then turned out to be front and center for a darling performance of traditional Mexican music and folklorico dance, performed by kids from an after school program. Their pure joy could not have made me happier.

The only other thing worth mentioning is that we were treated to an amazing dinner at Workshop Kitchen and Bar. Amazing, both in the fact that we were dining with super interesting colleagues and that the food was so incredibly tasty. This is one of my best meals ever. Because we were a large party we had some of everything: octopus, octopus salad, an oxtail shepherd's pie that was *insanely* flavorful, olive oil cake, panna cotta, rib-eye, redfish...

We all walked home past a large vintage automobile dealership and told stories about the ones that got away.

Judy Time

It's one of those fun days again, when mrguy and his friend fishfruit were hard at work in the man room making horrible sounds. He's been hoarding sounds for years, and periodically will come over to our house so mrguy can disembowel and then sew them together. One memorable occasion a few years back the components were backwards Joni Mitchell and a coffee maker. Another time it was the sound of his old refrigerator mixed with the sound of fishfruit's infant daughter snoring. He has fans and they eat this stuff up.

While they were doing their thing I was visiting with curly and her baby son. He is completely adorable (for a baby). Curly showed me the best trick: when she puts on the LP Best of Judy Ongg, the baby breaks out smiling. They call it "Judy Time".

When I got back I got to hang out with the boys for a while. Mrguy told a story I'd never heard, about how his old band sent a demo tape to a club in San Francisco. It was returned to them, graded. The club owner had sent them a critique of each of their songs with a letter grade. Speaking of which...

For a few years I had a bandmate whose brother-in-law owned the local free music newspaper. Demo tapes would flood in every week, and the ones that would have been tossed otherwise were offered to us poor musicians to use. We'd record our rehearsals on them, and I'd use some for my answering machine tapes. I'd listen to any I kept.

John Komlenich, if you're out there, I still lament the loss of your demo tape. "Emma" and "No War" were very weird and I loved them dearly.

Special Sauce

Today we went to our sweet Auntie's memorial service.

It's not often that you get to go to a service where the officiant, a minister, also calls the person you're mourning "Auntie", but so was the case today. We'd never met him. He is a cousin on Auntie's husband's side.

He said the sweetest thing about her -- that she brought the special sauce. He said it apropos of a microscope that had been given to him as a present. Auntie brought him cool slides to go with it. But she brought the special sauce on so many levels. She was quiet and low-key, but by speaking low and softly she knew she had your attention. She was quick-witted til the end, and her family lived for her stories.

When we were together I asked her for confirmation on the Shypoo story. As readers of mrsguy may recall, mrguy's grandparents owned a pharmacy. When they made a little too much of an ointment it went into this crock that they called the Shypoo pot. When someone's treatment for whatever it was wasn't working, they'd mix up a little Shypoo and a bit of yellow tint and send them off with it. Completely and utterly illegal in our day and time, but in the 1940s and 50s they could get away with it.

This completely rocked our cousin's world. In their nuclear family the term "Shypoo pot" has come to mean the bowl you put out at a family dinner if you're eating artichokes or ribs or something that has parts that need to be discarded. Cousin (and her brother, and his ex-wife, it turns out) had never known the origin of the Shypoo pot.

For two generations of that side of the family the name has taken on this other meaning. As a tribute to mrguy's gene pool, I will now pass this term on in our extended Guy Family.

I can't wait until artichoke season to put out a Shypoo pot, which will serve as a *somewhat* unusual memorial to Auntie and her brother, The Big Guy.

The Kiwi Has Landed

metaphorically. Kiwis are flightless, so that isn't technically possible, which is a long-winded way of saying that we had a delightful visit with our Kiwi friend last night.

It was a bit of a pop quiz -- an early email announcing his arrival that happened to find us at home on a weekend with a clear schedule. Whew. He manages a pop band that is having a fair amount of success, and they were playing at the large venue. Seems like a fun ride, but a little tiring for someone who has a young family waiting 18 hours away from here.

Occasionally you have a friend who you can just pick up with after long stretches of time, and he's one of those friends. He was part of a flock of Kiwis who were sent by our original Kiwi, the Marxist. The Marxist started sending his other musician friends over to stay with us, and last night's Kiwi and his then-girlfriend were two of them. For about two years, there, we had hot and cold running New Zealand visitors. It was so much fun. We paid them all a visit one glorious month in 1993, and had many adventures. We have mostly kept up with last night's Kiwi. I have a better blog name for him, but it would reveal his real name :(

Occasionally he'll come through town with a band. The last time, we showed up around sound check time and the bartender tried to shoo us away, telling us in a really patronizing tone what a sound check is. Dude. I had my first sound check when you were tickling Elmo, o.k.? And I'm still gigging.

Anyway, this time we popped over after sound check and had perhaps our most civilized dinner to date -- at a nice restaurant in the city. Our Kiwi friend had the Coq au Vin and proclaimed it delicious...

If you can sublimate your senses until you get to a restaurant, the city is a nice place. Especially on a warm April night like last night. After dinner we deposited him at the door of the large venue, and hope to hear of the further adventures of the band on the rise.

OwwwOwwwOOOOOWWWWW!

My foray into the garden was short-lived. I am now alternately sipping from and dunking my finger into a glass of ice water. Sorry little bee. I didn't know you were there.

Haven't been stung by a bee since I was a teenager. My foot swelled up like nobody's business. I think anaphylaxis would have set in by now. But I've always got mrguy's epipen if I need it.

Shoot! Luckily I already posted mucho itemage on our etsy store, trimmed the fuschia and leptospermum and transcribed one column of my Hawaiian newspaper page.

O.K., blog, you have distracted me until most of the pain has subsided. Whew!

Our Long North American Nightmare Is Over

The other night, mrguy and I caught a snippet of baseball. My team. The Toronto Bluejays.

We saw the players wearing a logo that looked like the original logo, which readers of mrsguy will know I adore.

I just checked, and it's true, people.

The Bluejays have updated their old logo and the original stripey toothpaste font.

Oh happy day!

For additional information and images, check out my dear friend Paul Lukas' column, Uniwatch, at ESPN.com.

Shirty

I didn't even know what you were, Shirty. You were just a really flat piece of clothing gradually being returned to the earth, or the asphalt, as it were.

On Wednesdays and Thursdays on the way to the taco truck I would look for you. My little urban mascot. Are you flatter today? Will you even be there for me? What would you look like if you were washed?

I had to know.

One day I brought a plastic bag to work and picked you up like a piece of dog doo, so my hand didn't have to touch your disgusting rain-plumped fibers.

I brought you home. I rolled you out of the bag and into the washing machine without even touching you. As mrguy mocked me for bringing your disease-ridden form into our house and into our washing machine, the rocks from 3rd street rattled around with you and made it sound as if you were trying to get out.

Fluffed and folded, I now know who you are. You are quite ugly, Shirty. It's clear why nobody stopped to pick you up when you'd fallen.

I will redeem you somehow, Shirty, even if only by this post.

Hawaii 2011, Day 7

We're getting into the final stretch, here!

On Tuesday we went to Kailua via Waimanalo. We made our pilgrimage to the Akebono statue. Then we went to the nuts and ukulele store next door. The sweet guy who owned it wasn't there, and it just didn't have the same vibe. I don't need to go back (except to see the statue).

Then we went to Kailua Beach Park, which we'd been hoping to do for years. It was lovely. We found some shade in an area that had a minimum number of screaming children and relaxed for a bit. It was sooo beautiful.

They also use a beautiful font to mark the women's room:

Hunger overtook us, so we went into town to look for Ba-Le, the Vietnamese sandwich shop that we had loved so much last time. Waaaah! Not only closed, but also fenced off.

Reaching into his new/old book on okazuya, mrguy decided we needed to go to an okazuya in Kailua. It was in a strip mall far away from town. It was just empty store fronts, the place where you go to get your vehicle registered, the okazuya and a bakery. We went into the okazuya and they hardly had any food left. Just some oden items bobbing around in broth. Clearly it was going to take us a while to find something to eat, so I suggested we go to the nearby Nene Goose Bakery for a beverage. mrguy noticed this review that said that their specialty was mochi anpan. No idea what that was, so we bought some.

We took a seat outside a salon on some plastic chairs. And then the ladies who were ahead of us at the bakery struck up a conversation.

Roughly 40 minutes later we parted after having had the BEST conversation of our trip. They were very surprised to see us in this out of the way spot eating mochi anpan, and extra surprised when they figured out that we were tourists. One of the women was from Waimanalo, so I mentioned that we had just made our pilgrimage to the Akebono statue. Then we explained that we were big sumo fans. Turns out that this woman is Konishiki's sister-in-law, so that started a long conversation about Hawaiians in sumo (one of my favorite topics), Jesse's (Takamiyama's) entry into sumo, how much this woman thought of Chiyonofuji, and the kindness and smarts of the local guys who went to Japan to enter sumo. I can barely have a conversation about sumo anywhere I go, so it was a real pleasure to hang out with these ladies and talk about sumo and local goodness. We asked them what they like to do when they're on vacation and the woman from Waimanalo went into a hilarious monologue about booking a hotel room in Waikiki for her family, using every amenity and never leaving the hotel.

They were curious about the other kinds of stuff we do when we're on the island, so we talked about music. Turns out that one of the new joints next to the Akebono statue in Waimanalo is owned by the family of one of these ladies. It is a bar with live music and we have their blessing that we'd fit in o.k. This will be on our list for next time.

Our ladies also knew where Ba-Le had gone. It's one of their favorite places to eat also, which further blew their minds. With their help we found it and had a yummy lunch. Coconut taro tapioca? Yum.


Then we went to Hungry Ear Records, always great, and the antique stores. I never need to go to those stores again. Happy to sit in the car while someone else does it. That one guy is still extra grumpy and the lady who owns his place and the other place has TOO MUCH STUFF!

Later that afternoon, the farmer's daughter met us over at the Ilikai Bar & Grill for a few sets of Waipuna. They have been joined by David Kamakahi in this incarnation, and were really great. Much better in person because they're so dialed into each other and you get Kale Hannah's dry wit. He's the bass player from Project Kalo Patch who, at the end of their set at Aku Bone last visit, heckled us from the stage, saying "We played an extra twenty minutes because you was late". This time his between-song banter included trying to auction off young David Kamakahi. Funny.

We felt inspired after seeing Waipuna. Can't wait to see them again, and hope to catch the farmer's daughter the next time as well.

Hawaii 2011, Day 6

We started our day with breakfast at Ihop. Sometimes only an egg breakfast would do. Then we went to see some of our favorites in Kaimuki. Some of my favorite facades are hanging in:

The Goodwill didn't have the good stuff we remembered. But Harry's Music, where Jerry Byrd used to teach steel guitar, is still in business and as idiosyncratic as ever. I hope they stay in business for a billion years.

It was blazing hot and we were somehow hungry so we had lunch at Town. Town continues to be a great restaurant at a more than reasonable price. The Town Lemonade is still as full of parsley goodness as I remember.

 

Then back to the convention center for the exhibit crit session and appraisal. Appraisal? Not for me. I slunk off. Time for more new stuff with mrguy.

I had found Chuck's Cellar in some of my pre-trip research, and it seemed like it had been there forever and could be cool. This is mrguy's new favorite place. It's cool, very dark, and is an old school place to have a steak or lobster dinner. There is also a long bar for those who are not as interested in dinner. I had thought that Betty Loo Taylor would be the musical entertainment for the evening, but it turned out to be Satomi, who mrguy had read about in the New York Times. She was really great.

Everything about this place was great, to tell the truth, except for the food, but that's not why we were there. No crying children. Air conditioning. Happy hour. Slinky jazz. And a shout out to our bartender, Virginia, who genuinely likes people and is good company. We wished that The Big Guy could have been there with us. He would have loved it, and we'll be back.

The night was not over. We had heard that there was a viewing party for Hawaii Five-0 at Apartm3nt. This consolidated many favorite things into one place: Hawaii, Hawaii Five-0 and Century Center, one of my fave buildings.  This interior detail is a quotation of the exterior detail on the lower floors. Above? A large mirrored high-rise.

Apartm3nt is in this building and was causing us to enter. So good! It was Monday, so the place was pretty empty. Our waitress was dressed in satin shorts, like a cigarette girl. Overhead, multiple flatscreens showed the movie Labyrinth. Here's the nightly special:

We supped and hoped that others would arrive to watch Hawaii Five-0 with us. Finally a table of people arrived to join the party, and one of them was an actor who had appeared in this episode (and next week's). He was excited and his family was excited. Local flavor :) This episode also featured the Wailana Coffee House, a local landmark which is right next door to the hotel where we were staying. We could actually tell that from one shot to the next, a person being pursued would not have ended up where the camera went. So fun!

At long last we went home, very satisfied with our day. Here's to new stuff!!

Hawaii 2011, Day 5

On day 5 I went to early sessions and then we went to Akasaka, the small yummy restaurant behind the Ala Moana, for lunch. They are always so nice there and the food is so good. Very restful. Plus we had the restaurant to ourselves. Mrguy took me back to the convention center early, and I spent about 40 minutes listening to Uncle Matt Love play slack key and sing in his gorgeous falsetto. Here he is conferring with a woman who he was coaxing into performing a hula for us. It was really inspiring to hear him.

The rest of the afternoon, spent at the Mission Houses Museum was also inspiring. The guy who toured us has made many partnerships that help him get things done at a minimum cost. Akamai!

Evening was the best, though. An evening at the Bishop Museum had me hanging out and learning to pound poi with Uncle Sol Apio. I had him all to myself. I can't even tell you how exciting that was.

Then I caught up with the farmer's daughter and we hung out and I ate my pai ai and listened to the band. Later, the lava presentation was really dramatic. This is the setting:

Once the lava was remelted and poured out onto a sheet pan, it began to spontaneously explode. Very impressive. I wish I could have taken mrguy. While I was at the museum, he scoped out our future destinations for Tuesday and Wednesday's nights out :)

Hawaii 2011, Day 4

Was this the day we went to Jelly's Honolulu? I think so.
But not before we saw the Aloha Festival Flower Parade. It turns out that the parade passed right by our hotel, so our lanai gave us the perfect perch for watching the festivities.

There were marching bands, lots of people in Volkswagen bugs with floral sprays mounted onto their hoods, horse riding groups. Super fun. Each of the riding groups that was in the parade was followed by a highly decorated pooper scooper wagon. Even the poop wagons were announced as part of the parade.

My favorite part? A local Christian high school band played an instrumental version of Koni Au. If you are unfamiliar with the song, here is a translation of the hui:

I throb, I throb for liquid
I throb for cool liquid
Royal liquid, gin
To make life cool and peaceful
Go Team!

After that, we went to Kaka'ako Kitchen. It felt weird to be there without ms scandiwaiian and the Finn, but we were hungry! Kaka'ako makes the weirdest, tastiest veggie burger. Egg whites, vegetables and something else (tofu?), grilled until crispy outside and creamy inside. Super yummy.

At Jelly's in Honolulu, mrguy found "Sculptures in the Sun," a book I've been looking for about public sculptures in Honolulu. Now I know which artist made the sculpture we admired at the Ala Moana yesterday. We bought a bunch more records.
The evening found us trooping up to the Liljestrand House, designed by Ossipoff, and later heading down to the Contemporary Museum, where we were introduced to the farmer's daughter. New character enters blog!
I bonded with some of my fellow conventioneers, and we had a jolly ride back to our hotel.

Hawaii 2011, Day 2

We've really been struck by what's changed since we were last here. We had a good run with our old stuff, but have been disappointed by what is not here for us this time. Our determination?

Find new stuff.

Here's the old stuff:

1) AM940 appears to be gone. What happened? KINE is nice but has way too much syrupy music
2) Aku Bone Lounge is pau
3) SPOILER ALERT! Keawe 'Ohana is good, but the Marriott needs a new sound system. We could barely hear, which reduced our enjoyment. Alan Akaka's dry wit is almost my favorite part of the show and I couldn't quite make out what he was saying
4) No more turntable at Jellys. This means that I will have to use my gut more when buying records. I remember last time that I would have bought some really crap records by sweet-looking old grandmas if I had not been able to listen to them last trip.

On the upside:
1) Jellys exists, in two locations
2) The Keawe 'Ohana is still really darned good

So Day 2 was really nice. The IHOP breakfast cured what ailed us. We bought super yummy food at Shirokya, at Ala Moana Center. We paused for a while to look at the beautiful sculpture and the koi pond. There seemed to be more than one breed. I don't recall seeing the fish with the big foreheads before. They seemed to hang out together. Mrguy dubbed them the Mensa Club :)

Then off to to the North Shore. Oogenesis is still my favorite store in the world, but nothing really fit.

We took our lunch to the beach, slathered on sunscreen and ate our delicacies. Within five minutes I was truly suffering. I was wearing a large hat, so my face was fine, but my legs were burning to a crisp. I hope you find the photo (which I will add later) amusing. I used newspaper as a sun barrier so that we could finish eating on the beach. When I got up, the ink from the newspaper registered the headlines on my sunscreen covered legs. It wasn't a long trip to the beach, but it was so pretty.

On the way back to town there were stubborn rainbows that wouldn't go away.

In the evening we saw the Keawe 'Ohana at the Beach Marriott. A visiting musician sat in during the second set and played Waikiki Chickadee, which made us happy, as did Kumu Akaka's At The Coco Palms.

So ends day 2.

Diners, Part 1

On Friday I traveled to this fine location, my dermatologist's office, for my bi-monthly biopsy. Did I mention that I'm majoring in basal cell?

Along the way, a conversation about cool diners of the past led me to think about what I liked about them, and a quasi request for a story. Doctor, this is for you.

I have always loved a fine diner. We didn't eat in them often when I was a kid, so I mostly loved them from afar. When I was in college, diners became part of the web of life and I came to love their menus, their employees and their architecture.

When I moved to the college town where I lived for many years, there were two phenomenal diners nearby. An embarrassment of riches, really. The more famous diner was circular, had beautifully upholstered booths, and was frequented by an odd mixture of cops, hookers and families. If you wanted a classic Monte Cristo, deep fried and dusted with powdered sugar, this was your place. Its most memorable appearance in my life was as the place where I began a brief but notable relationship.

The other diner was far more humble. It had a cute sign and the requisite lava rock glommed onto the exterior. It was the menu that set this diner apart, however. As I mentioned to my doctor the other day, there are three things I look for on a diner menu: 1) buttermilk, 2) prune juice and 3) cherry jello. Not strawberry. Cherry, which is in the pantheon of man's finest artificial flavors (cherry, grape, orange). This place had it all. And like any good diner, it had amazing diner ladies.

When I was a veteran diner waitress myself and looking for a new gig, I went to place #2. I dressed up in one of my finer thrift store outfits, a blue and cream seersucker dress. I waited until after the lunch rush and asked for the head waitress. She was an amazing older woman. Kind, Southern accent, you could tell that she didn't do her own hair but went to the beauty parlor once a week. I told her that I was looking for a job. She looked at me earnestly and said "Just out of the service?" Turns out that my seersucker was the uniform worn by Navy nurses. She'd been a Wave. I felt not smart telling her that I wasn't aware of the importance of my outfit.

Never got that job, but diner #2 became the place I wanted to go to when given the choice of the two restaurants. Come on. It had the trifecta.

Mrguy, Middlesis Guy and I went there together one last time in the 90's. Sis and I had tickets to see the Blue Jays one day. She drove. Her car started making weird sounds 1/4 mile from the stadium.

Never made it to the stadium. Ended up at the diner after getting towed home. As an aside, I can tell you how sad it is to hear the Canadian national anthem coming over the walls of the stadium while waiting for a tow truck driver and knowing that you have Row 1 seats in your pocket.

Neither diner is still with us but they live deeply in our memories.

Next: stories of a diner waitress...