I discovered a comic strip character that I really like. Her name is Aunty Acid by Ged Backland. She reminds me a lot of Sophie, another acerbic-witted woman comic strip character, but with a tinge more softness on occasion.

Some of my recent favorites are below, the final pick also had a little pidgin (language) tinge, which made her a front runner for me.

So I bought the Nokia Lumia 1020 for the camera feature and I haven’t been disappointed yet. I like gadgets that have a niche, the best camera definitely appealed to me and it holds up spectacularly. Here are some pics of my cat, Kili, with a fun app called strange camera and one of the Nokia camera apps.

Happy New Year, Everyone.

This year I open with retrospection.

I don’t want to be a person that focuses on the negative so when I start to feel like all I may be doing is complaining, I don’t like to write.

Things aren’t bad most times so why focus more time and effort on it? Yes, easier said than done.

So how did I get here, or rather, what informed my choice of action or inaction?
My family. I’ve spent an impressive amount of time in 2013 avoiding my mom, spending time with my grandmother on my dad’s side, visiting with my dad who now lives in Thailand, and meeting my new niece in Georgia.
My work, went back to work with an old company and spent a lot of time growing but wanting to quit at the same time. I continue to love the people there and always will.

It was a good time in general and time to start anew, with family and work.

Hi, Everyone. 

It’s been a while because I’m uninteresting. So I figured I’d just do a general update of things that I’m looking forward to in the next few months:

1) Debuting a form for Improvaganza.

2) Partnering with OTS Improv for Improvaganza, Hawaii’s Festival of Improv.

3) Putting a fundraising dinner event for work firmly in my rearview mirror. 

4) Finding an Executive Director at the organization that I work for. If you know of anyone that’s interested. http://www.jobtarget.com/c/job.cfm?job=14547061&vnet=0&site_id=10746

5) Seeing my first NFL football game and it’s of my husband’s favorite team.

6) Meeting my first niece of four months old (when we see her). (Biggest highlight!)

7) Traveling to Las Vegas and Georgia.

I think that’s most of it. 

 

The extent of stupid ….
Ugh, it is so irritating how reliant people are to their phones at the cost of any type of spatial awareness. Today at Starbucks I had to say, excuse me, to a woman just standing in front of the cafe doors after we got our coffee. She was just standing there looking at her phone. Now how important was it for her to be reading whatever it was that she was reading? I’m assuming if it was life or death, she shouldn’t be at Starbucks in the first place.

It’s been a busy 2013. I have also been sick twice this year already.  Flu season has been the worse for me and quite a few people I know also.
The best thing has been hearing about different cure-alls.
Squire told me he heard that drinking a beer is good for the phlegm.
Here are some of the others that I’ve heard too:
For night time coughs, squeeze a lemon and add a scoop of honey, heat and drink before bed.
Another variation, add some water and whisky.
Vicks vapo-rub on the chest and below the nose.
Scarves and stay away from a/c.
Massages.
Lemon and li hing is also a favorite.

Just the ones off the top of my head.

I only remember having one (the one about the human body) but I found nine at a thrift store today and had to buy them. Be prepared to be wowed by some random trivia and facts from my nine new classic books (in no particular order).

About 300 years ago, some European women wore shoes with platforms up to 30 inches high!

How is a spacecraft steered?
This is usually done by turning the main rockets that are at the bottom of the spacecraft. To turn the spaceship just a little, special small rockets on the sides are fired.

Doctors use stethoscopes to listen to lungs, intestines, arteries, and veins as well as hearts.

What is the fastest animal?
The fastest of all animals is a bird called the swift. The spine-tailed swift can fly at a speed of more than 100 miles an hour. (The fastest land animal is the cheetah. It can run at more than 60 miles an hour.

(In the 80’s) Instead of celebrating their real birthdays, all people in the country of Bhutan become a year older on New Year’s Day!

What does the word “schooner” mean?
The name “schooner” comes from a game that was popular when the schooner was first designed in 1713. Young boys used to throw flat stones in the bay and watch them skip along. They called this game “scooning.” (“Scoon” is a Scottish word for “glide.”) People say that when one of the new sailing boats first appeared, someone shouted, “See how she scoons!”

Why is the egg an Easter symbol?
In many of the world’s cultures the egg stands for new life. An egg looks like a stone or a rock. But it is from an egg that new life bursts forth. The egg is a reminder for Christians of the resurrection of Jesus.

How did dinosaurs get such strange names?
The long, hard-to-pronounce names of dinosaurs all come from Greek words. Greek and Latin are the two languages the earliest scientists used. When modern scientists discover an animal or plant, they still give it a Greek or Latin name. When dinosaurs were discovered, scientists gave them Greek names that described what each dinosaur was like.

And those are my new books! Thank you “Charlie Brown’s Encylopedias” for the memories and the new bits of info that I didn’t know before.

So this has been the easy part of the leg so far. I would say that the beginning was pretty easy in California because we were also staying with family but because we had a pending cross country road trip at that point we were antsy to get started. In Louisiana, we were visiting with my brother-in-law, Cameron’s sister, Courtney. She lives in Mandeville, across the Causeway from N’awlins.

We got in at a relatively early hour on Wednesday. Probably about 8 at night. Cameron definitely had an agenda in Louisiana though, he wanted to eat and see as many things “Swamp People” related.

The food has definitely been a treat. I’ve tried beignets, po’boys, gumbo, jambalaya, lots of oysters-both fried and grilled, and some apple-flavored moonshine. I also tried some sushi and ahi, both of which didn’t compare to what I can find in Hawaii, but not bad at all.

I never watched “Swamp People” before but saw a few episodes while we’ve been here. It is fun and the people are very interesting and impressive. We also got to go to Kleibert’s Alligator and Turtle Farm. That was neat because we got to meet the Kleiberts that were on the first season of Swamp People. They were fun and definitely helped dispell some myths.

I was able to add to my animal petting list; snakes, tigers, alligators, elephants, and monkeys. I think I may be missing something but that’s okay. I’m still working on it.

Hi, All.

Okay, this is not working at all. Trying to write and road trip at the same time just doesn’t work. We have been traveling non-stop and have not had much time to rest. It’s been great though, don’t get me wrong. But I’ve obviously been very bad at blogging and the things that we’ve done in between time have started to mush in my mind. I really haven’t had time to take it all in or organize my thoughts.

But I guess I should start with letting you all know why this road trip has happened in the first place. Squire and I are trying to get a non-profit that we’ve gotten off the ground. A lot of the grants were due right before my sister, nephew and her husband were to set off to his new assignment in Georgia. They were going to road trip it from CA and my sister asked if we could go as well. Since I didn’t have the time to spare before they left it seemed the best opportunity to spend some time with them and frankly, add to our list of new experiences.

To begin, I was hesitant. Road trips have such a bad connotation, especially when done with family. I admit there have been moments where I’ve gotten a little worked up but what I said to myself in the beginning and what I’ve had to remind myself of a few times, is that this is something that I’ve never done before, I’m very lucky to have this opportunity for myself and with Squire and it really is awesome. So even now I can still smile.

So this is going to be brief and really not well done. I’m going to try to write about AZ, NM, and TX in very little time. Knowing that I won’t be doing any of them justice.

Arizona – AZ

The first state we traveled into on this journey and a lot of road trip lessons were learned there. I know in my mind I realized how long the trip was going to take in hours but every little thing takes up a huge amount of time. And even though we cross the border, it doesn’t mean we are anywhere close to where we need to be. Once in Arizona, we stopped to sleep in Eloy and Flagstaff. We got to see Sedona, Flinstones Bedrock, and The Grand Canyon. Although this only slightly counts we did also stop at the meteor crater a mile long as we were leaving the state. That was awesome to see from far off. The admission was a little steep though so we just drove up to it and drove back out. Oh and by steep I mean that it was just one more expense in the grand scheme of things. The admission for adults was $16 and children were $8.

New Mexico – NM

Once we came into the state we went to visit Billy the Kid’s grave site. We found the museum first and spent a good deal of time checking that out and reading about the history of Billy the Kid, the lore, and see some very cool memorabilia. I loved the grave site, mostly because it also had some tombstones of other people from the area and that was nice to see as well. I do like grave yards, I think they have a lot of history in them through the historical timeline they represent through us.

After Billy the Kid we stayed in Roswell and visited the Roswell Museum. I was in heaven. It probably is the most geeky thing I like to do. I like alien lore and enjoy seeing all of it. Part of me blames the movie Paul for my renewed interest in it.

Texas – TX

This state is huge. It was a long drive the first day we entered and the second. We stayed in San Antonio and didn’t get into the hotel till 3 in the morning. We then woke up late and made our way to The Alamo. I realized here that I really like the history you can find and what makes a place unique has to do a lot with what they hold onto of that history. The Alamo is a wonderful place that does just this and celebrates an important part of it what makes Texas so special. After Texas we tried to get through Texas but that didn’t happen and we didn’t end up at a hotel until after 12 at night in Houston. It had a lot to do with the fact that the google map we were using had a tough time getting the direction right and we had two messed up directions and the three phone calls that we made to the hotel also proved useless.

Side note:

We were using a site that Squire actually created to do the bookings for the hotels that we have been staying at during this venture. It’s called bestravelsiteonline.com. It is a site comparison site to search hotels and flights at cheaper rates through all those other sites that are out there, kayak, priceline, hotel.de, travelocity, expedia, etc. So it’s a funnel for over 30 different sites to get you the best prices. We’ve been able to find places that are decent for as low as $37 and we’ve booked with less than an hour to get there. Although we realized that an hour is the best amount of time to give the hotel to make sure that they get our reservation. Most of them have average $50 a night. Sometimes it’s user error though, the google maps being an example and we totally booked for the wrong date (but it was easy enough to cancel because it was far in advance).

This brings us to Louisiana. And more on that later. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch up soon.