International Engagement

Garrett and Jody are engaged!!! In spite of our throwing Jody into the frigid Hawaiian waters with dangerous sharks, nearly running her off the path on an ATV, goading her into eating raw fish, exposing her to the Beatty brand of cutthroat card playing, and my attempts to illustrate the kind of childish humor and boring trivia that at least had the potential to loom in her future if she continued to hang in there with Garrett, she accepted his marriage proposal while we were in Hawaii. They filled us in when we returned to California. It's been common Facebook knowledge for a few days now, but I thought I should fill in the blogosphere. No date set, but a ways off according to them. We're off to Halifax next week as Garrett transfers to Dalhousie University there. Far from us, but close to Jody. Funny that, eh.

I confess, I started to write, "Mom, don't even think about grandchildren" when suddenly I realized... that would be me and Dara I'm talking about with that sentence. Yikes.

Passing of an Era

As of today, we no longer own a mini-van, part of our automobile arsenal ever since we decided a 4-door Rabbit was not a family car back in 1989 or so. Dara asked me if it was strange to feel sad about it. I don't think so. There were an awful lot of good family times spent going places in a mini-van. We may have to take a road trip in the convertible to make ourselves feel better.

Hawaii Pix

Thanks to Dara's industriousness, here is the full set of Hawaii pictures for your viewing pleasure.

Shark Bait

Turns out 60 Minutes ran a "Swimming with Sharks" piece last week while we were, uh, swimming with sharks. Only theirs was about doing it with Great White sharks in South Africa. People there are upset because they feel the little bit of chum that the tourist boats throw in conditions the sharks to associate people with food. I'm not sure a Great White needs any education on that front. Now that I've seen this segment, though, I can see why the guys running our tour were defensive about it. By the way, if I had seen the part of this video where a Great White breaks through the bars of the cage to attack the divers in it, and the divers scrambling to get out of the cage through the broken bars, I might have skipped the whole thing!

The Dead Tour

Kyla and I took Thursday afternoon to check out the Arizona memorial in Pearl Harbor and the Punchbowl cemetery. AFDIL still works on remains from the Oklahoma, which turned turtle right next to the Arizona. Here is Kyla on the Arizona memorial with a gun turret behind her.

The Punchbowl is more formally known as the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. It sits in a volcano crater. We had to drive through a funky Honolulu neighborhood to reach it. Inside it was beautiful and green, with large, old trees lining the lanes. It actually honors over 28,000 missing soldiers, so it has some real meaning to Kyla's job. As we wandered around, we wondered what the other people were there for, though. The picture of Kyla is taken in front of a quote from a note sent by Lincoln to the mother of a soldier killed in battle:

The solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the alter of freedom.

Afterward, we met Dara, Kyla, and Jody at Haleiwa Joe's for dinner. We talked with Clark, and AJ's old work buddy Bob was also at the bar. It was fun to meet Bob after hearing AJ talk about him so often. And AJ: Thanks for the drinks and hors d'oeuvres!!!

Aloha Hawaii

The North Shore Shark Adventure was terrific. That's us in the cage, with Garrett facing you. We had beautiful, calm weather leaving at 7AM out of Haleiwa. Out of three boats, two crewmen each, we managed to get onboard with AJ's old friend Tim (aka Twink). He had brought both Clark and AJ out previously, but apparently the visibility wasn't so hot for them. For us it was great, with many large Galapagos sharks circling the cage as we held ourselves under for as long as our lungs would last. They warn you not to stick your hand out to touch the sharks. When you get in there, you understand why, because it's a real temptation as they swim right next to you. Kinda creepy looking a shark in the eye! We have a video of the whole thing, including Twink giving AJ a hard time. We topped it all off last night with a luau at Turtle Bay Resort, which was fun and something we also had never done before after multiple trips to Hawaii.

We're about to take off from this beautiful house, which we need to clear out of by 11AM. The house sits right at what is apparently a very popular surf break just northeast of Sunset Beach, so watching the surf and the surfers has been a key element of entertainment. Since our flight isn't until late tonight, we're going to try to see some Waikiki sights (including the Iolani Palace, I hope) before our final aloha.

Mid-Hawaii Update

Hurricane Felicia finally made an uneventful appearance here today in the form of cloudiness and some rain. Boy were the local weather people disappointed. Since it was originally forecast to land on Monday with tropical storm force, we rearranged the swimming-with-the-sharks outing to Friday. At least it looks like we'll have good weather for it. Hopefully Cap'n Stumpy and his band of merry crewmen will cooperate!

Yesterday we took a two hour ATV ride at Kualoa Ranch. Stunning scenery mixed in with movie locations. No sighting of the film crew from Lost, but there was lots of familiar terrain for the few remaining Lost fans in the country besides us. The storm was just beginning to disrupt the weather, so we spent part of our ATV time roaring through a downpour.

Today we got out before the rain really set in and toured Waimea Falls Park. Dara and I are suckers for the flora, and it was all beautiful. The falls were as unimpressive as I remembered them, but they were fun to see, and it was nice to have a goal on a long walk. We topped it off with shave ice at Matsumoto's, of course!

Here's the gang enjoying a shave ice!

Pre-Hawaii Blogging

I've been watching the weather in Haleiwa for probably 6 weeks now. Every day has been sunny, high of 87, low of 73, with perhaps a plus or minus variation of a degree. Yesterday I looked and see that there is some rain in the forecast. When I got to work, someone pointed out that there was a hurricane near Mexico headed toward Hawaii. Oh well, not much chance of a real hurricane there, but maybe we'll get some rainy remnants. A rainy day in Hawaii will still be a vacation day.