How To: harvest a mango with an mp3 player

1. remove neck cord.

2. Run cord through hole in end of mop handle.

3. Thread headphones through neck cord.

4. lift mop handle to mango.

5. Loop mango with neck cord.

6. Pull noose tight with headphones/mp3 player.

7. Win!

Many of you received this message via cell phone today, but here’s the story behind it.

I had to work today, all overtime, after a long fuggin week. But alas! Myschedule doesn’t have a time for me to arrive. So, being a good Minnesotan and obsessed with punctuality I arrive to be ready at the earliest possible time.. 0600. Turns out that I didn’t have to be there til 0930. So I went and hung out at the Picnic Table for a few hours. The mango tree that shades the Table is ripening the last of it’s most recent fruit (and starting new ones) so I was occasionally pelted with falling mangos.

I saw one that looked particularly nice, but was, alas!, out of my reach. Hence, the contraption you see before you now. Here’s some more fun mango pics.

There, Carol. You were right. It wasn’t a Dewy Nut. It was mangos.

To the victor go the spoils!

So me and my mango spent the day at work and are now back home with the prospect of an actual day off ahead of us. I think Mango will have to lay around and ripen a little more, but I’m going to go swimming and stuff.

Talked to my mom for a while today. That was nice.

Thinking about getting this tattooed on me. “Nana Korobi – Ya oki” – Japanese – “Fall seven times, get up eight.”

But I won’t actually do it because tattooing is just too expensive. Maybe I’ll ghetto tattoo it. You know if I decide to it’ll be photo documented on the Blog!

Make up post.

Fell asleep last night as soon as I finally got back from the airport. Late night for me, followed by an early morning.. Had a meeting at the Japanese Cultural Center/Japanese Chamber of Commerce today that lasted most of the day. After the meeting I went through the museum there.. Very interesting walk through of Japanese life from plantation laborers to professionals here in Hawaii.. Had a 15 minute video of Japanese people in Hawaii during WWII that was touching and very interesting.

Here’s a flower arrangement that is no doubt sublime and beautiful in a way that youand I will never understand. This was seen in the lobby of the Chamber of Commerce.

This interesting thing was seen in the actual chamber of commerce offices, which when I entered them were completely unattended by humans. Someone walked in just as I was stealth-snapping this pic, hence the Blur.

It was a very neat place to spend a day, even a day training in cGMP. I’m glad I got the chance to finally go to a museum and see some non-7-11 type culture It’s really not that hard to bus it to town and just dink around looking at stuff.. I should be seeing more of the tourist stuff than I have. What if I ever get a visitor? I should at least be able to talk about Waikiki Beach and stuff.. Hell, I’ve never even been there. Been to another island but never gone Waikiki.. Gonna have to fix that.

What is there to say about yesterday? We got swamped, worked for 14 hours, flight back to Oahu was uneventful, and I started work on the Secret Project. I have started to accrue Hawaiian Miles from these trips.. Wonder how long before I can get to the mainland?

Hilo, Day Two. More of the same.

Still beautiful here, but alas I barely got outdoors today. Too busy working. Here’s a pic of the view from the room.

I’ve mentioned “Vog” before.. Volcanic gases and such in the air making it hazy and stuff. Well, this is where the vog comes from. 29 miles away is the volcano. In fact, this hotel is the Naniloa Volcanoes Resort. Been breathing a lot of subterranean fumes and have a really scratchy throat. This is compounded by the need to talk all day long as part of my work.. Gatorade seems to help.. Fierce Grape, specifically.

Tomorrow is day three and back to Oahu. We’re at the Hilo Police Dept. for our blood drive then out on the last flight out (I think.. Maybe there are more. I’m not an air traffic controller). So I’m going to repack my bags and be ready to roll tomorrow morning to avoid losing anything valuable (Laptop, Nintendo DS, cell phone, etc.) and hopefully get a decent night’s sleep.

So best wishes to all. Hope everyone is well.

Hilo, Day One: The Hotel.

Lots of pictures in this one, so unlimber your broadband connections and get ready.

During the flight over here I saw the mountain/island from above the clouds.. Never seen anything like that before.. Huge. And I couldn’t even see where the mountain came out of the ocean.. It’s enormous. The Country is neat. We got tons of blood and I’m dead beat, but I took a walk around the grounds. Here’s the pics.

First thing I saw at the airport on the Big Island, pretty much. The airports here are generally open-air walkways and stuff.. It’s awesome to walk out of an airplane into the environment. Definitely like that.

Sick of flowers yet?

The shoreline here really reminds you of the volcanic origins of the islands..

Cool, huh?

The lanai (patio) at the hotel. Great view.

So yeah. Lots of cool islandy junk on this island. Been up since 0200. It’s 1835 now. I’m beat. Gonna sleep. Good night blog fans

Snorkel madness

Hit Ka’ena Beach Park at low tide today, so the reef was even more visible than usual. Surf was pounding in at about 6′ and the water was great. Here’s a list of all the weird crap that happened.

1. Kat lost her snorkel and goggles in the surf, but found someone else’s (snorkel first, then goggles) that she likes better.

2. I had one contact lens jammed so far back into my brain pan that i can see inside my skull. Then I lost the other one in a wave, and the first one came back out for a second but I caught it, got slammed by a wave, and held on to it, tried to put it back in (in heavy surf) and lost it in a gust of wind.

3. The mouthpiece fell off the tube end of my snorkel. Counted it as lost in the surf. It was later found quite a ways out to sea by another snorkeler who had heard me talking about it and returned it to me. This would have been great except that now I had no contact lenses so I couldn’t see the fishies and stuff. But at least I didn’t have to buy a new snorkel.

4. I used my old Columbia swimsuit today and it’s (unfashionably) short legs left about 6″ of my thighs exposed to the sun. They are very burned. The rest of my tan seemed to absorb the sun’s rays without significant damage.

Here’s an apres snorkel pic.

Just in case you forgot what I looked like. For mom, you can right click and select “save as” on this image and it’ll be saved to your hard drive. Then you can burn it to a CD and have it developed into an honest to goodness picture if you like

Oh yeah, in lieu of snorkeling after I lost my sight I turned to body surfing. With the height and power of the waves coming in it was a great time. My timing is much better than last time I tried it and I rode a few in good form. Now I need to get a boogie board and flippers and stuff so I can do it right. It’s a lot harder without (as John puts it) “Flap.” And the extra bouyancy wouldn’t hurt either.

I need to go to bed. We have to be at the airport at 0400 to make a flight to the Big Island for 3 days of blood drives. It would be good to get at least a token amount of sleep before that time.

Jamie, I’m sorry I swore at you. You’re an elf.

I miss you one and all and I’ll try to get lots of pictures of “the Country” as the less-developed parts of the state are called. Hopefully be an interesting entry tomorrow if we have internet. I hear that cell reception on the Big Island isn’t always very good either.. Bah. We’ll see.

Leave me more comments! I love ‘em.

Surprise BBQ party!

Got home from work and there was a vat of meat marinating in the fridge, so I got some beer and I guess we’ll see what happens.

Had a nice hell-bent moped ride to work today. it’s actually 20.5 miles there and I can do it in 40 minutes. Full throttle that little bike, baby. All the way!

Work was a drag, but it’s over for a day then off to Hilo for a few days for work.

I’m thinking about taking another stab at writing a stand-up routine.. Just for shits and giggles.

My burn is finally starting to peel.

Gotta clean my room.

More tomorow

H-h-heeey, Kids! It’s Me! Yucky the Slug!

Sorry I’m so blurry! Guess I was just mo-hoo-hoovin’ a little too fast for that cell phone!

Heh heh!! Whooa-oh! I think I lost a contact! Hyuck hyuck! It’s Me! Yucky the Slug!

Saw this guy on my way to catch the bus this morning. He was active as hell. If I thought for a second my phone could do it I would have shot video of him. But the light was bad, and my flash wont run for video. Entertaining little bugger.

Had a good day at work and got some good news on that front. I’m not really ready to divulge the details, but it’s pretty exciting. And on that front lately anything that makes me want to kill myself less is good news, so exciting is pretty awesome news!

Here’s a flower. Treated myself to Boston’s Pizza tonight after work and these guys were in full bloom.

Work tomorrow super early (0515 start time) so everyone that reads this between now and then make a wish that all nasty road hazards (i.e. screws and the like) stay out of my new tire! Thanks.

work sleep work sleep

Got in last night at 2130 (9:30 p.m.) and up this morning at 0330 (you can figure that one out). Not a lot of time for typing in the blog.

Carmen, I got your package. I couldn’t figure out if it was encouraging or not, so I’m just going to assume it is.

Got the loaner moped back from the other shop after getting a new tire put on it, so I have wheels again, however inadequate for the task I set them.

Homesickness is still there, but approaching a baseline level again. Not as bad as it was..

Got an invitation to the “Sounds of Aloha” men’s chorus.. barbershop group. Last week. I was supposed to go last Thurs, but being without transportation I missed it. I should let them know, probably. It’s the first batch of people that really seemed to think I was a potential asset to them since I got here.

OK. out of time. Gotta get on the damn bus and do it again. Thanks for reading. The blog is about all that I wake in the mornings for some days. Life is good here, but this job.. I’m telling ya.. </rodneydangerfield>

Working again..

Sorry for the dark day. I just sort of get distracted. Nothing much new to report. We were at The Kahala Resort and Hotel, where apparently our blood drive normally is in a room where their dolphins swim past the room. Today we were stuck in a disappointingly dolphinless room. Good day of blood mobiling, but would have been more fun with dolphins

Wish I had more to say.. Just plain don’t. Stick with me. I’ll get interesting again sometime soon.

Here’s an odd thing I found today

When I sent this to some of you via cell pic, I said it was a shed skin. Turns out I was wrong. It was still there this afternoon when I got home from the dentist (more on that later) and I went to check it out. It’s actually a dead, dried out gecko. Must’ve died of natural causes given his condition..

Got mobbed by the little doves I like so much at the bus stop today..

And a couple pigeons

My long stretch of days off is over. Working man again until Sunday, then very very early (0415) Monday morning I get on a plane for my first Neighbor Island blood drives in Hilo. Ought to be cool as hell.

My sunburn looks worse than it is. I have faith that it’ll resolve into the first tan I’ve ever really had on my torso. Had to happen sometime. At least I got over my shirtlessness phobia before I turned 40.

Dentist complimented me on how nice my teeth were (I haven’t been to a dentist in probably about 20 years, so I was dreading this). Messed around a little, took an x-ray, and a digital photo for me to look at, prescribed some antibiotics for the infected part of my gums and turned me loose. I might even go back!

Good to meet you new readers. Keep the posts coming. Gives me something to do when I get home