A Birthday Celebration in Waikiki

Happy Birthday, Tom!

Tom's birthday was last week and we went into Waikiki to celebrate in style. Tom chose The Cheesecake Factory for his place to celebrate his forty-something years. It's right in the heart of Waikiki, across the street from the famous International Marketplace. In other words, we were in tourist land.



We can't get him to pose for a picture without his normal Spidey salute.


The Christmas lights on the palm trees were pretty, but when it's in the low 80s it's hard to remember that it is the holiday season. It also confuses you when people are walking by you in their bikinis and surfboards. Can it really be December? Is the big guy in the red suit really coming in a couple of weeks? Maybe to Oahu by sea kayak, perhaps.

The Aloha Kelikimaka tree near
the famous Royal Hawaiian hotel

One way to know it's definitely the holidays is by looking at the frequency with which I have been posting to my blog. I haven't been posting as much lately. We are heading back to the mainland for Christmas and New Years. Everyone have a great holiday season! I will post when I get back in 2008!

The Aloha Stadium Swap Meet

Hordes of people swarm the swap meet

If you visit Oahu someday, one thing that you should put on your itinerary is a trip to the Aloha Stadium's Swap Meet. The other thing you should do when here is give us a call. Duh!

The swap meet is huge. It wraps all the way around the stadium, with booths facing each other to make the pathway for shoppers. Here you will find everything from t-shirts, aloha attire, jewelry, wind chimes, and local fruit. There is so much to see that you have to plan to spend a lot of time. And wear your comfortable shoes because you will do a lot of walking.

I went to the swap meet this past Wednesday to do some Christmas shopping. I had my list and yep, I was checking it twice and I'm not even Santa. I was looking for small gifts for Noah to give to all his friends and cousins back on the mainland. It's a great place to buy gifts for kids because there are a plethora of booths selling cheap jewelry, magnets, key chains, and some lead- infused toys from China. I'm not absolutely sure about the lead thing, but there are several booths filled with very cheap toys from Asia. I'm guilty of buying a couple of things from these booths. I figure that Noah's pretty much past the oral-fixation stage and won't be putting the deck of Spider-Man cards I bought in his mouth.

This Hawaiian man uses a machete
to whack off the end of a coconut.
Then he gives the customer the
ice-cold coconut with a straw so they
can drink the milk.


I've been to the swap meet three times, and I've always gone on a Wednesday. I'm always amazed at how many people are there on a weekday. I can't imagine how busy it must get on the weekend. It's funny to watch how much shopping people do at the swap meet. It's common to see people toting a suitcase on wheels to stash their goods. I saw a couple working together to try to zip up a suitcase that was way too full of white socks. There really is a booth that sells nothing but plain athletic white and black socks. I remember walking by it, as a matter of fact, wondering if the guy got much business. Apparently he did quite well with this couple that was going to break their suitcase because they bought 30 pair of socks.

Shoppers in search of the great bargain

When you are shopping on pavement there is one thing that is valuable more than anything for sell: trade winds. It can get so blasted hot. I took my mom to the swap meet when she was visiting in September and we were there in the morning. By the time we left, we were completely soaked in sweat. Gross, eh? Yes, it is. Welcome to our life. At least a couple of days ago it was cooler, but I still got sticky and gross. This is not what I envision as a Christmas shopping experience.

In Hawaii, they like to call food "grindz".

Speaking of a Christmas shopping experience...nothing says Christmas like holiday music. I was at a market in downtown Honolulu earlier in the week. I went downtown to buy a new calendar for my day planner and have lunch with Tom. After we ate I browsed through the open market. They had a lady singing Christmas songs with a man playing an electric keyboard. I couldn't help but snicker to myself when she sang "Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow". Right, lady, like that's going to happen.

Walking through the swap meet I heard various types of music -- rap, hip hop, and Hawaiian. But what really caught my attention was a booth that I walked by that was playing The Carpenters. Talk about a surreal moment. It's the holiday season, it's 80+ degrees outside, I'm walking in a football stadium parking lot, and Karen Carpenter's smooth voice is booming out of a middle-aged man's booth. It's all okay, though, because in my mind all I'm hearing is I'll Be Home for Christmas.

My 5 Seconds of Fame

The top of the tree fell down

It's been a weird and wacky week so far and it is only Thursday. It all started with Monday where it seemed like nothing was going right. From finding a pair of black dress pants covered in mold (see previous blog posting), to Noah coming home from school with his shirt cut up for the second time (thanks to an overzealous little boy who sits next to him), I thought for sure Tuesday would be a much better day.

Boy was I wrong. Well, actually, the day started out fine. I accomplished a lot while Noah was in school. It was another cloudy day, but the winds had really picked up. I had the tv on and they had one of those weather alerts come across the screens. You can't miss those, even when you are in the other room. Beek, beek beek - that annoying sound that precedes the weather service announcements sounds the same no matter what state you live in. We had a high wind warning for most of the day. I didn't really think anything of it other than to predict quite a few leaves in the street.

Noah and I went to the public library after school. I had finished picking out my last book to check out when a lady came over the intercom to make an announcement. It caught my attention because in all the time I've spent in the library, they have never done this. She said something like, "if you have a Toyota van with the license plates, blah, blah, blah, or a Honda blah-blah-blah, please come to the front desk. A tree has fallen on your car." My ears perked up when I heard Toyota van, but I couldn't remember my plate number to know if it matched. Then I remembered that when I parked I was next to another van. Uh, oh.

We went outside to see what happened and sure enough the entire front of our van was engulfed in a bushy tree. By the time we soaked in what had happened, a policewoman pulled up and asked for some information. Of course, what she needed was in the van, so I had to climb in through the back to get to the glove compartment. It was quite the experience to sit in the van and see a bunch of leaves and branches covering the windshield.

Me and the big microphone on tv

I talked to the library branch manager and a man from the parks & rec department before I had time to call Tom. I barely got a chance to tell him what had happened when a tv camera crew pulled up. They must have really been digging for something to put on the news if they were going to cover this story. I mean, there was no blood, no injuries, no significant damage to the vans. The other lady whose van was hit by the tree and her three kids along with Noah and I were gathered together and a reporter from the local Fox channel interviewed us. Well, I wouldn't exactly call it "interviewing" since all she said was, "so what went down?" and thrust the microphone out. The other lady spoke first, and then I piped in. I said quite a bit before the other lady's youngest boy exclaimed, "the tree fell on our car!" And he said it, and he said it and he said it...about 5 times. Put a precocious kid in front of a camera and you're asking for trouble. And the need for lots of film.


The tree fell on our car!

After this it seemed like we did a lot of standing around and waiting. The parks and rec department didn't have the right equipment to remove the tree so they had to contact a tree service company. Unfortunately, they were in Honolulu, in the process of working on another problem. It was almost two hours later by the time they got to the scene.

They had me pull the van out of the tree and park it so they could assess the damage. It was kind of hard to tell what the damage was among all the dirt and scuff marks. It looked like we might have had a couple of minor scratches. We really got lucky. The tree trunk snapped in half and the top just went straight down. Hooray for bushy trees.

As I stood there watching the crew dismember the poor tree, I was amused at how many people it took to work on the whole ordeal. It only took a couple of guys to actually do the hard stuff, but there were three people from parks & rec, the library branch manager and the security guy from the library surrounding me. Everyone wanted to look at the van and I must have given my name, address and phone number to at least four different people.

Since it was after 5:00 by the time we were cleared to leave, I treated Noah to McDonald's for dinner. It was only two blocks away and he was a real trooper through the whole ordeal. He didn't quite understand what was going on, but he went along with everything we had to do.

I was on the 10:00 news, but they took what I said and edited it down to about 5 seconds. It was me saying a couple of things and the blasted kid saying, "the tree fell on our car". At least they edited out the other four times he said it. I don't know what was more bizarre -- having a tree fall on the van or being on tv.

I wish I could say our bizarre week ended there, but it didn't. That night, I was awakened by a creepy howling noise that I thought was Noah crying. When I woke up I realized that the power had gone off. The next day (Wednesday), the schools were closed and it continued to rain and blow. The power didn't come back on until sometime in the middle of the afternoon. Since there was no electricity, I read a book to Noah that we checked out at the library, appropriately titled Henry and Mudge and the Wild Wind.

The Ill Effects of Humidity

What mold looks like when it attacks your pants

I know I've already written about some of the weird things that humidity does, like make your floor all gummy and your food sticky. After yesterday and today's findings, I couldn't help but add a little more to this topic.

Yesterday I scoured through the closet looking for empty hangars since I was doing laundry. I scooted my dress pants down the rod and something caught my eye. This "something" was on my linen pants, and not just on a little bit, but all over (see above picture - you can double click on it to enlarge). I pulled the pants out and gasped. Or at least I think I did, but I was the only one home so who knows. All I can say is I was horrified and not happy. Being the dedicated blogger that I have become, my first thought was (okay, not my first thought, but perhaps my second) that I needed to take a picture of this so everyone could see what we have to live with here in "paradise".

Let me insert a little disclaimer here. Not every part of the island has the extreme levels of humidity that we do. We live in one of the wettest parts of the island, which is why we have the lush backyard. It has been raining for days. Not continuously, but when it does, it makes you wonder who Mother Nature is so mad at because it's as if she's getting her frustrations out at us here in little 'ole Maunawili Estates.

Our repair man, Gary, came over to work on our bathroom sinks yesterday and since he's lived here for years I asked him what we could do about the humidity in the house. He suggested running the air conditioner, which dries things out. Or, we could invest in a dehumidifier. Who would have thought an Idaho native would ever have to purchase a piece of equipment to dry out the air? My brain has a hard time wrapping itself around that since all my life I've dealt with it being too dry.

Gary said he knows a man who has a room in his house that is used only for drying out his documents. Apparently the humidity has taken siege on his documents and he wanted to prevent them from becoming destroyed. Can you imagine? Sorry Mr. IRS auditor, the numbers on last year's tax returns have melted off the page.

A couple of weeks ago I was about to leave the house and thought my breath was in need of some help so I went to the drawer where I had stashed some Orbit gum. When I picked up the box of gum, it was completely oily and it had dissolved into mush, with a hint of wintergreen. I had to wash my hands. They were completely covered in sticky oil. It was so gross.

Poor little chicken. Its sucker took a leak on my desk.

This morning I was working in the office and grabbed my ruler off the top of the desk. My hand got sticky and when I turned over the ruler, there was a red substance on it. I thought maybe the glue used to adhere the cork on the back of the ruler was melting. Then I had one of those "aha" moments. I stood up and cleared out the clutter on the top of the desk and there was the culprit. My old sucker was surrounded in a red sticky pool. The stupid chicken that is holding the sucker in it's mouth wasn't smart enough to drop it and run. But, I guess since it's legs are tied together, that might be difficult. Oh, and the fact that it is a rubber chicken might have something to do with it also. Poor thing, just look at the horror on its face.