Saturday Nights; Sunday Mornings..

Today I didn't work.  At all.  Which was stellar.  Whole day off.  Went to the beach.  Read some book.  Napped.  Listened to some Blues Traveler on the iPod.  Soaked up some rays.  Solid outdoor day on the whole from just after noontime until a tad bit before five.  Plenty o'sun.  No more pasty-ness.  Freshly salted hair.  Woo.  Hoo.  Temporarily shook the rust off from my end-of-summer doldrums.  Hopefully this was the start of something new.

Before I get going too much further I just have to say I've been on a pretty big Blues Traveler kick for the past couple of weeks.  Four has been a regular player on my rides to and from the office and the couple other cd's I have have been being clicked on regularly when the laptop is booted and iTunes is open.  They played at LL Bean's outdoor summer stage a couple of years ago for free and I thought about going down but I saw a flyer with the band beforehand and everyone was skinny so I thought John Popper had either left the band or died so I didn't bother to head down.  Turns out he had gastric bypass surgery in the 2000's and lost a good deal of weight and was normal sized and still in the band.  So, F my decision.  Hindsight always seems to be 20/20, eh?  

After some dinner tonight I settled in to watch some TV and caught the 2nd half of the Arizona v. Iowa game.  I watch Iowa games quite a bit because they're head coach, Kirk Ferentz, coached the Black Bears awhile back so Skip knows him.  When he was with the Browns he got me a personalized Eric Metcalf autographed picture, which is nothing to sneeze at and because of this it goes without saying I'll be pro-Kirk for life.  It's also neat to say you have ties to the highest-paid state employee in Iowa.  So I've got that going for me, which is nice.

The Hawkeyes played pretty terribly, however, and were down three TD's after the first half but worked their way back into the game as Arizona kept shooting themselves in the foot with penalties, a muffed punt, and a pick six and in th 4th Iowa had a chance to take the lead but missed an extra point.  Special teams win games, folks.  And, clearly, lose games, as Iowa went on to lose.  Get'em next week, Kirk.

That Iowa talk really had nothing to do with anything except it's kind of random and semi-interesting to me and it ledd into the fact The Perfect Storm came on around the time the game ended and I started watching The Perfect Storm, because, well, I had nothing better to do and it took place in New England and since I'm 5,000 miles away from New England programs and movies and songs and the like which involve New England interest me more than they used to when I was in New England.  I just said New England a lot.  I should stop that; it was kind of amateur.  I head home in three weeks, though, which I think is kind of cool.  I enjoy Maine immensely in autumn.  Well, fall.  I don't generally use autumn.  Too high brow for my eclectic verbage.  I can't wait to go to Wallingford's.  Cider donuts.  Yes, sir.  There will be plenty else going on and Liam's wedding to go to, but cider donuts are pretty high up on my list of reasons why I enjoy Maine in the fall.  Wallingford's is the cat's purrr-jamas.

I've always thought The Perfect Storm was a pretty good movie.  Good in the sense I can watch it multiple times and still be amused, and be able to jump into it when it's half over without incident.  I had forgotten John C. Reilly was in it.  I just saw The River Wild on an HBO a week or two ago, and had forgotten he was in that, too.  So if you were wondering it takes only one degree to connect John C. Reilly to Kevin Bacon, as both were in The River Wild.  Write that down.  Reilly also damn near brought a tear to my eye tonight as The Perfect Storm was ending after the boat capsizes and he and another of the crew are trapped in the cabin and the water's up to their chins and he looks over at the other guy and says, "This is going to be hard on my little boy" and then the water fills the cabin.  I don't know why it's affecting me so much but even as I type this out I just have to say, "Fuck, that's just shitty all the way around."  I saw a dead cat on the side of the road I ride to work every day and that kind of got me feeling flat, too.  It looked like my first cat when I was little.  His name was Tigger.  He also died in an automobile accident.  Ironic.  But ya, I had to ride past this two days straight before it finally got removed by someone more considerate than myself:

I didn't have a shovel, sorry.

Anyways, back to the film.  Early on in the movie in a bar scene the jukebox is on and Bruce Springsteen is blasting when everyone's happy as the scene opens but when the controversy picks up and George Clooney's Skipper character tells the crew they're going out for one last go-round of the season a Tom Waits song is on in the background.  Today, before Blues Traveler, I listened to most of Closing Time while I was napping on a hotel lawn chair.  Guy's legit.  I know I've mentioned my adoration of Waits' early works so it was nice to find someone in the movie bizz who appreciated his tremendous works.  My big sis got me keen to him one way or another awhile back, so if I didn't give you credit the first time around the block then, "Thanks for introducing me to the music of Tom Waits."  The song that was playing in the bar is called "(Looking for) The Heart of Saturday Night."  I found this especially fitting, as this is, well, a Saturday night.  Eerie...

So, so good.  If you don't know, now you know.
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It's now Sunday morning.  Both here, and wherever you are if you're in the US.  Moreso than here, as it is actually Sunday morning, but it doesn't really feel like Sunday morning because I haven't been to bed yet so really it still feels like Saturday night.  Since you will be reading this on , presumably after a heavy night of boozing and other PED's, let me provide you with my favorite Sunday song, as only two legends can do..

Kris Kristofferson is one hell of a songwriter.  Again, just throwing that out there; if you don't know now you know.  Cheers.

Where'd I leave off..

Aloha.  In case you forgot who I am, my name is Matt.  I moved from Maine to Hawaii some months ago.  I started this blog about two years ago.  Over those two years this is by far the longest I've gone between posts.  I've been incredibly lazy these past couple weeks.  Since I returned to Maui in August I've been leading the sad life of a working man, slaving away for damn near 40 hours of my week, working six out of seven days and all the while pretty much hating life.  My past weeks have consisted of, more or less, the following:

-Rise sometime in the morning.  If I work during the day then that's around 8.  If I work at night then around 11.

-Put on ESPN2 for an hour or so on work days, to catch the Scott Van Pelt show highlights.  These highlights are also generally the highlights of my day.  SVP and Ryen Russillo are hilarious.  Russillo is a New England guy,too, so that's always a solid.

-Go to work.  If I work at night then I waste the day away by walking to the store to grab a couple of groceries or napping/tv watching, then go to work.

-Come home from work.  Scour the internet for flights home for Liam's wedding and to see what happened in the world that particular day on ESPN, CNN, Fox News, and bbc.  And Gmail and Facebook.  And my work schedule.  Watch Family Guy and Mike and Mike in the Morning, both of which begin at midnight.

-Fall asleep.

Fucking pathetic, eh?  I live on a beautiful island with beaches and sun and plenty to do...and for the most part I go to work or waste time until I go to work.  What the shit is wrong with me?!  I am a loser.

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Not that blogging will make me cool.  Just, why would I blog when I don't. do. anything.  It's just not interesting.  The things that have crossed my mind and made me laugh recently are Family Guy clips.  And I guess I can only post so many Family Guy clips where the bulk of the post is THE clip, with nothing more for me to say other than, "I thought it was funny."  The clips have no direct link to any aspect of my life besides me enjoying Family Guy and it's on every night at midnight so there's a pretty strong chance I'm awake to catch it.  It's just become a part of my day.  Most Family Guys have at least one clip that I find quite funny, which then makes me want to see if youtube has the clip, and if youtube has the clip then I think I should post it.  Usually, however, I don't bother.  A lot of the good ones aren't on there at all, or are only on there in foreign languages.  Most scenes just aren't as funny when you can't understand what is being said.

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I started watching The Informant! a couple of weeks ago.  The plot was pretty lame but I found the inner monologue of Matt Damon's character hilarious.  And he had a killer mustache, which was nice.  Somewhere I read that someone had a "molestache."  AKA molest-stache.  AKA molester stache.  I thought it was pretty funny.  I hope some people consider my lip sweater to be working its way into the molestache category.

This was intended to be more about Damon's internal monologue being eerily similar to how I go through most of my days feeling like I talk to myself nonstop.  Is this normal?  Do other people constantly have ridiculous thoughts going through their heads that just drift from one starting point and slowly tangent outward and outward and outward.  Thought entropy, really.  Nonstop.  Earlier this week the song "Your Woman" popped into my head at work.  I knew it was sung by a group that had "white" in its name.  White Town.  I don't recall why I thought of this but the video is pretty neat, silent film style..

But anyways a couple of weeks ago I was leaving work after a day shift and I was walking through the shopping center/district that Hula Grill is on the edge of (bike parking is at the front of this center.  Whaler's Village.  Lot of classy stores (Louis V, Galleries, etc) mixed in with surf clothiers (Volcom, Quicksilver, Billabong, etc) mixed in with cheap ass "island items" stores that sell knick knacks and random ass shit.  Kind of funky but it's a popular tourist spot as it's got a few hotels on either side of it and, of course, Hula Grill draws a crowd..) and I had my headphones on and a little jazz session going on in my head (not jazz as in jazz music, but jazz as in "impromptu performance."  The D-backs coach at Bates would always say that when you intercept a pass or scoop a fumble that it was time for a jazz session.  I thought it was silly, but catchy.  He's the same guy who would also interrupt any time you fucked up and started to say "I thought it was.." with "You thought you farted but you shit your pants."  He's a character..) with some boardshorts and a random ass t-shirt on (I think it was my new USA tie dye.  If you haven't seen it yet I'll try to wear it more.  Picked it up from the Mystical Emporium when I was home in July.  It's swell..) headed back to my bike to ride off into the sunset when I passed some people and one of the guys said, "Hey, that's the guy from the Hula Grill."

Clearly my nappy ponytail and skeevy mustache attracts some attention, but it's nice to know that people comment about my steeze to their friends and family.  Multiple servers have told me they've overheard their guests joke that I could be Ron Jeremy's younger brother.  That one is a mixed blessing, as my goal in life is not to be a short, fat man.  But clearly my upper lip has taken on a personality all its own.  Multiple isn't ten, but three.  Three's enough to know there's plenty of silly banter sparked by the goodness I've got going on.  That's good enough for me.  I guess this is just another step in the escalator that is my look.  There have been some downs brought on by institutions of higher learning which claim to promote egalitarian perspectives within the liberal arts but are quite oppressive in regards to the hair length possessed by their young coaches.  But hey, I got a mullet out of the deal for a couple of months so I guess it was worth it.  As things stand today these hairs won't be touched by the cold steel or barbershop Fiskars for quite some time.  And we can leave it at that and go on our merry ways..

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I think I'm crazy but I'm 90% sure that by the end of the weekend I'll have registered to run a marathon in January.  I need something to kick start my training mindset so giving myself four months to gear up will provide enough time to not kill myself and overtrain but also a short enough span that I'll need to start doing something ASAP.  There's a marathon here on Sunday that finishes right close to where I work so I'll probably wander down and check it out.  They were doing a bunch of setting up today so the bike racks I usually park at got moved to a couple parking spaces in the parking garage.  I feel way to classy being able to park my bike under a roof for the next three days.

But I think it would be an alright goal.  Marathons aren't about talent, just persistence.  I feel like once I get going not wanting to embarrass myself will be enough motivation to hit the pavement most days of the week.  I have a feeling I'll probably hurt myself and not be able to work for a few days after the run, but what the hell.  I need something to do.  Motivation as an adult sucks; I need to find a way to build activity into my life.  Wish me luck.  Cheers (and it's good to be back.  Missed the few of you who have been missing my words...Maine-dogs I'll be back 207 from Oct 11-25.  Fall in Maine.  Can't wait.  No proofread tonight, either.  I'll try to look it over tomorrow...or the next day..)

Now that my mustache is established..

Maybe I should learn to speak Italian.  I need a hobby, right?  Cheers.

I think I missed a killer sunset tonight..

..and that really grinds my gears because I wasn't doing anything of consequence.  I got out of work at five and had some dinner (well, really it's lunch because I eat breakfast around 9am and then don't eat again until after I get off the floor, then have more to eat around 8 or 9pm..) and then rode home.  When I got up the hill I ride every day that overlooks the golf course I saw that it was kind of cloudy  over the water so I made a mental note to check out the sunset...then promptly forgot once I walked in the door.  A little after six thirty I looked out the balcony window and saw pinks and purples through the clouds and said, "Shit."  I grabbed my camera and hopped on my bike to ride down to the park to get a good view but the sun was already well down and the sunset was over with.  Shucks.  Sometimes you take things for granted out here.  The sunset is nice every day, especially the days I'm getting paid to watch it, but it really grinds my gears when I miss a good one.  I still haven't got a mind-blowing one on camera yet.  Maybe tomorrow..

I'm talking to my manager tomorrow about getting time off for Liam's wedding.  I think I need two weeks.  That makes sense for a wedding, right?  I'll make it happen.  Barring a catastrophe or a delay I'll be back at Gipper's on Thursday, October 14.  Write it down.  Also, I threw this out on the facebook and I don't think many people read this because I post so infrequently but I'm planning to head to Burlington to catch The Black Crowes' two night stand at Higher Ground on Tuesday, Oct. 19 & Wednesday, Oct.20.  If you want to see some killer music then let me know pretty soon; some of you may be getting a friendly inquiry from me.  I get paid Thursday of this week so after I buy my plane ticket home I'll be scooping tickets so let me know if you're in.  Sounds like they're playing two sets a night - one electric and one acoustic.  While this is their 20th anniversary it's also sounding more and more like a farewell tour as things progress so I don't plan to miss out.  An "indefinite haitus" is scheduled following the tour's conclusion in San Fran.

If you live in or around Burlington expect some contact from me, too.  I plan to neither sleep in a car nor a hotel so someone hook a brother up!

These guys are the "Most 'Rock & Roll' Rock & Roll Band of all time!"  What's not to like?  Cheers.

I don't know why I haven't posted these earlier..

Straight off the rock...Hawaii's not so subtle ad campaign against teen meth use..

Yikes.  Stuff sounds pretty serious.  Don't do meth, kids.  NOT EVEN ONCE..

I know these both say Montana Meth Project at the end, but trust me when I say these are the same commercials that come on during my Family Guy and South Park shows.  Quite a downer.  They put posters up all over the place, too.  Pleasant.  It sounds like it's working, though.  Shocking what happens when you just try to scare the shit out of kids.  This is like D.A.R.E. on steroids: instead of threatening kids with incarceration these folks just cut to the chase and show the tweakers.  Novel concept: "Hey kid: Don't be that guy, alright?"

Enough of this negativity...time for a good, ol' reliable knee slapper:

Cheers.

Out of it..

The last day or two I've been in a pretty good funk.  I think it started Wednesday.  I was working a dinner shift, just kind of going through the motions doing my thing clearing a table and a server came over and just said thanks for doing a good job and always being in a good mood and I just kind of laughed it off and said something along the lines of, "Let's be serious, it's just wiping up dirty tables."  And for whatever reason my own sentiment on my job has sort of been sticking in my craw for the last couple days.  And it's pretty silly because, yeah, in the whole scheme of things I get paid to clean up tables.  But at the same time I get paid more than well enough to get by, and I get to live in a pretty nice setting.  So while I was at my job when I came to a realization that something (or things, I suppose..) in my life are making me feel not quite right, I'm fairly certain that my discontent does not stem directly from my job.  Which is good, I guess?

At the same time I have sort of been in mercenary mode recently.  Well, I didn't know I was in mercenary mode until I coined the term while I was on the john earlier today.  Basically, I came back with a goal to make some moo-la-moo between landing back on the rock at the end of July and leaving the rock in October for Liam's wedding and I've sort of become consumed with that goal, which is kind of silly.  Dollars are useful from time to time but I need to start living by the other tenants of the TS Restaurants mission statement, which include having fun and with aloha.  Yep, that sounds nice.  Hell, the last two days I didn't work and I didn't make it out of the apartment I'm staying in.  How lame is that?  I live on the beach, gosh darn it, and I'm pretty pasty white right now.  This [apathy] cannot stand, man..

In other news I went through some old drafts of posts I had started but never finished and these videos were from back in January.  I guess I thought they were funny back then.  The first one is hilarious and one we used to listen to all the time back in the day and laugh pretty hard to.  The other two aren't as funny as I remembered them to be.  Well, the last one is funny, because most Family Guy is funny.  The Muppets tried the corner and missed.  Just a bit outside, in my humble opinion.  They're no Wayne, Garth, & Co.  But still use them to waste a few minutes of your day.  Carry on.  Cheers.

The WEED Man.

Muppets do Bohemian Rhapsody.

Family Guy Plywood Cutouts:

Baywatch is on Comedy Central tonight..

I have nothing better to do, so I'm watching an episode right now.  I don't ever recall seeing an episode before.  This is hilarious.  The Hoff just saved some buxom surfer's life in six feet of water.  She had on a wet suit, but when he got to her it was necessary to remove said wet suit to reveal a thong bikini.  Well played, David.

Next scene is the two of them in a room filling out an incident report.  The Hoff has redressed.  The blond is still letting her puppies breathe.  It began:

Hoff: Okay, what's your name, miss?
Girl: Destiny.
Hoff: And your last name?
Girl: Just Destiny.
Hoff: Oh, that's an unusual name..
Girl: Not if it's meant to be...

HAH.  These writers were gold.  I don't see how this show isn't still on today, like Law & Order.  I can't for the life of me figure out what went wrong.

The show was also cool because it had a three minute intro.  That's genius.  If you waste three minutes just running through the credits then that's three less minutes you have to fill dialogue and plot.  It's the female asses that put the asses in the seats, not the talkie talkie.  Another brilliant move, gentlemen.

Side note: Blogger doesn't recognize "dialogue" as a word.  Are you kidding me?  That's farting ridiculous...

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I spent a bunch of time (wasted a bunch of time..) making another animated film but it's taking a long gosh darn time to load or process or whatever.  So I guess a replay of my first goofiness will have to do for now.

Hopefully things will be shipshape tomorrow.  I'm confident it'll be the nuts.  TTFN.  Cheers.

Odd thought..

I guess I have a lot of odd thoughts, but just had to get this bit of pondering out there.  Came to my while on my two wheeler last night headed home:

You know how sometimes you start drinking and just sit there for awhile drinking, usually in a bar or a basement or on a deck (lanai for some..).  Somewhere that you luck out and someone else is always fetching the beers so you don't have to get up for like, two or three hours straight.  And you just started drinking then so you don't have to get up to pee pee for a long time (unless your Sam or Camps, this really can't apply to you since you guys go every 10 minutes when you're sipping..).  Then after all that time and all that booze you stand up and get all stumbly and realize: "Holy smokes...I'm pretty shitcanned right now."

Your night can never quite rebound from there because the hooch snuck up on ya Ashton Kutcher top-rope Punk'd style.  It's not necessarily a bad night, it's just a night that the booze snuck up on ya.

Well, what happens with people in wheelchairs...do they ever know they're drunk?  Is remaining seated alcohol's kryptonite?  If you never get up, do you never get drunk?  I may need a bed pan and a bottle of Jack to test this hypothesis..

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In other news...I started working again yesterday.  I work eleven hours (ya...double digit hours..) today alone.  I think four weeks may have been a bit too much to take off...I really didn't want to go back to work.  I suppose no one really wants to work.  My Grandpa would always say, "Work ain't work unless you don't like what you're doing."  Truer words have never been spoken..

I more or less have to work now, as Liam and Rachel's wedding is in just over two months.  Man, that date crept up.  Maybe because invitations still haven't been mailed out...then again maybe it's just because 30 days aren't as long as they used to be.  It'll be nice to be in Maine during the fall, though.  Good call, guys.  It wouldn't be a real fall if I was without Wallingford's cider donuts and a leaf peeping hike or two and a chilly (but not too chilly..) trip to the ocean and going to one of Skip's fooseball games.  All should be able to be squeezed in, if all goes well...Cheers.

Big Island, big view..

As today is my last day before I return to work I just kind of felt like hanging out all day.  I may go for a jog later on, but we'll have to see about that.  Each day I've been back on Maui I've been saying I'm going to run...and it hasn't really happened yet.  I seem to be lacking a routine...maybe I just need a good kick in the ass.  That's neither here nor there right now because it's hot out and I'm going to wait until the sun starts to go down before I reconsider that whole "exercising" thing.  Right now I've got the Big Island back on my mind.

I had been mulling over the best way to recap this trip and I was struggling because even as I was taking pictures I knew none of them really did this location its due justice.  This place was, to sum: unreal.  I've been to a couple of picturesque oceanfront houses in Maine and neither of these really hold a candle to where I lived for three days, in my humble opinion.   I guess the only place I've been that I could try to compare and contrast would be Haggerty's grandparents' place off the coast of Harpswell.  Literally off the coast of Harpswell, on an island.  Long Island.  Long Island, Maine.  Not that other, shittier, longer Long Island.  And at the northern end of Long Island, away from the other houses and buildings and roads so the only way there is by boat.  That's how you "get away from it all."  

But this post isn't about Long Island, it's about Keaau, Hawaii.  So let me narrate a bit as to how this all transpired.  About the only person I still talk to from my coaching days at Bates is the women's track coach, Jay.  Jay's husband has pretty deep Hawaiian roots.  Haole roots, but roots all the same.  Jay's husband, Andy, had a great great great (I think that's enough greats..) grandpappy who was a missionary headed to Micronesia but stopped in Lahaina so his wife could give birth.  They ended up moving to the Big Island, Hawaii, rather than continuing on so this guy's son, William H. Shipman, grew up on Hawaii, went to the mainland to be educated, then headed back to Hawaii to begin business enterprises.  In the 1880's he and two other guys bought up 70,000 acres that were being sold by a recently deceased Hawaiian king for $20,000 and within two years this Shipman fellow bought out his two partners.  Crafty, crafty.  This land was super fertile so he leased much of it to farmers and he and his family have more or less been reaping the rewards ever since.  

This land also had a killer beach, Haena Beach,and nice beaches are few and far between on the east side of Hawaii.  It's a lot like Hana on Maui as it has a rocky, jagged coastline.  So this land is pretty posh.  This all relates to me because in the very early 1900's this Shipman guy built a couple of houses on the ocean shore deep within his land, just behind this beautiful Haena Beach.  I've been told the land looks like a pizza slice, and the houses are at the center of the crust.  Hawaii has a state law that all beaches are public so people can get to the beach, but they have to walk three or four miles in along the shore and the rest of the land is private.  In one house resides Andy's uncle who is now the president of W.H. Shipman, Ltd., and the other house is known as the Shipman Beach House and anyone who has Shipman blood running through their veins can book it out.  And since there are six bedrooms in this house and I was already in the Hawaiian Islands I got the invite over to spend some days there.  Lucky me.  

I spent some time trying to find a way to show this on a map and wikipedia hooked it up the easiest.  For whatever reason when I typed in "auburn, me" it wasn't a location, but Haena Beach (And the Shipman Puna properties..) both were.  So on a very vanilla scale this is what I was looking at:

From Hilo, the biggest city on Hawaii's east side, you headed south seven or eight miles and then banged a left onto two or three miles of gates, gravel backroads through macadamia nut trees, banana trees, papaya trees, etc, then through another gate and onto a mile or two of paved (ya...paved.  Blacktop.  Let's just say a couple miles of blacktop isn't cheap and just leave it at that..) road through a gosh darn jungle until you pop out onto the Shipman property.  From here I'll leave you with pictures and captions.  I spent a little time in Volcanoes National Park and a little time in Hilo at a farmer's market and at Akaka Falls a little north of Hilo, but other than that I hung out here.  I think I got my money's worth..

There she is: The Shipman Beach House..

207 Recapped in word, picture, and musical tributes..

I haven't worked since July 13th.  That seems so long ago.  It is so long ago.  Damn near a month.  But things start back up tomorrow.  Here are some things that occurred while I was in the 207 for a couple of weeks...I don't have a lot of pictures from my two weeks but the highlight was a Maine steamed dinner with my folks and Mr. Gallagher, who always seems to find his way to my house when the Capone's chow down on lobstah..

It wasn't totally traditional: we didn't have corn on the cob but but did have plenty of Marie's kick ass 'tater salad, but a good time was had by all and at the end of the afternoon we all had full bellies.  As I sit back and reflect on my time in Vacationland it appears that, while I was home for two weeks, the days went by in the blink of an eye (a young girl's eye, that is..).

Aloha: 2.0

Traveling by plane weirds me out to a certain extent.  When I was taking the red eye back home a couple of weeks ago after about four hours of flight time it occured to me that flying in a plane is almost like time travel.  I mean, I don't travel a lot but when I think about traveling 6000 miles in less than a day my brain kind of turns to mush.  It just says," Okay...if you say so."  It just doesn't compute.  Sci-Fi stuff.  I brought this up to a couple of people back home and was met with laughs and shoulder shrugs.  I may be alone on this one.  This feeling of incomprehensibility may also relate to the fact for the previous six-ish months prior to my trip home I could count the number of times I've been in a car on my fingers and toes, without re-counting fingers or toes.  That means I was in a car less than 20 times.  I can't put my finger on what makes foot and bike travel different, it was just a little weird to me.  Perhaps I just feel more comfortable traveling a bit slower than most.  Perhaps I just failed in an attempt to come off as profound.  Either way, flying's pretty silly.


My ma asked me yesterday what it was like to fly over tons and tons of water and I told her I didn't know because my first trip over I sat in the middle aisle without a view outside and my trip back was a red eye and by the time the sun came up we were already back on land.  Watching the sun come up over the desert and mountains and clouds was pretty intsense on that occasion, I must say, but that doesn't really relate to what I was talking about.  As I'm now traveling back across the open ocean and I have a view outside I really don't see a whole lot of difference.  Clouds block most of your view of the ground so for the most part it looks the same as traveling over land.  The was a few minutes where I looked up and the clouds were quite thin so much of the blue from the ocean (remember, I'm in the Pacific now so I don't worry about tar balls.  Just giant conglomerations of plastic that collects miles wide...but again, stories for another day..) and I thought it looked similar to what people might see if they flew in a puddle jumper over much of the Arctic.  Big chunks of ice separated by deep, blue ocean.  I, however, have never been anywhere remotely close to the Arctic so this is really just the Discovery Channel talking.  This does make me want to check out Alaska, though.  That'd be a good time, I reckon.

It also kind of looks like you're looking down at the sky.  This is also a bit disconcerting as you can't actually look down at the sky.  But the clouds are there, and you're over the clouds and underneath is blue ocean but it looks like blue sky.  WILD AND CRAZY.

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In other news, while I'm coming back to the islands after a two week trip home I still have another week before I start work up again.  I've got a couple days to hang out before I'm taking a trip over to the Big Island to meet up with my friend Jay and her family.  Her husband has family on the big island and (from what I've been told..) they have a rather large plantation house where I can lay my head for a couple of days before I have to get back to the office.  I expect a swell time, and you should expect some pictures of a new locale.  I think it'll be the perfect vacation before I have to get back to work.  This will also be my first inter-island travel, so I've got that going for me...which is nice.  While this was my first "vacation," I'd be pretty bummed if I had to go back to work the day after a serious flight (Like from Maine...not from the Big Island..) after taking time away from work.  I think a vacaction after your vacation is the way I'm going to try to do things for a little while.  And by a little while I mean as long as I can, haha.  At worst I plan to leave at least a day off upon my return to the island prior to returning to work, just to make sure I've had time to shake the rust off.  Going home was stressful, lemme tell ya..

Slight diversion here: As I sit on this 777 typing while I head back to my island I've just begun to realize that while I'm going back to what I call home I don't actually have a home there.  I'll be couch crashing for at least a few days and I have no difinitive plan on where I'll be staying.  I laughed this off when I was packing up my little bits of junk and storing them at friends' places, but now it's starting to hit me that quite soon I'll need to figure out a place to live.  In a perfect world I hoped to be coming back to a 3 bedroom place ready for an August 1 move in...but this does not seem to be perfect world as I have no 3 bedroom place to move into.  Zoinks!  Could be looking for another room in a random house quite soon, which would really make me feel flat.  It'll all get sorted out though, I'm sure.  Right?

On the work subject you should all be happy to know that, much to my dismay, I was named Hula's employee of the month for June.  Luckily I was in Maine when this occured as I don't enjoy attention being drawn to me in professional settings.  Only social settings, I suppose, and that's not so much because I enjoy it but because I tend to be a little bit more ridiculous than most and for whatever reason that seems to attract stares from time to time.  So it goes.  Anyways, I don't like the idea of coming in and rocking the boat; I just enjoy going about my business under the radar.   The book I'm reading is a memoir of sorts of a Brit who drove around backwater towns in America and wrote what he saw.  In one Louisiana town he stopped and met a prision inmate who was the editor of the prision's monthly (or bi-monthly...I don't recall at this moment..) magazine, a magazine that, over his time as editor, had been responsible for yard-sale positive changes within the prision, firings of certain people of power within the prison, and the release of innocent inmates.  The magazine had an outside subscription of close to 30,000 people around the country (as of the year 2000-ish..), including many journalists looking for leads to stories for themselves.  Anywhoo this guy has been locked up for quite some time and has seen many people who committed the same crime he did (murder in the first degree) have their life sentences commuted and parole granted.  He felt that he had no chance of being released due to the notoriety he had gained as the edior of the magazine.  He feels that to have any success in getting out of prison you have to basically be annonymous within the system.

Man, how I wanted to remain annonymous within the Hula Grill.  As Bob Dylan sang awhile back: " 'It's my work,' he'd say.  'I do it for pay.  And when it's over I'd just as soon go on my way.' "  It's not like I wanted to skate by or anything; it may sound sick and twisted but I do enjoy what I do and have never had a problem working hard.  I just don't like people talking about the fact I tend to work fairly hard.  I don't sweat it too much if I work with other people who are fine skating by and I have to do more than my share of the work, as has happened in other professions over my years in various crumby jobs.  I just do what I do, you just do what you do, and everything's gravy.  Hopefully when I return to work August 6th everyone will have forgotten about little, old me.  JAG: just another guy.  That would be tremendous.

The $100 gift certificate is a nice touch, though.  As is the longboard trophy for my mantle...Cheers.