Aloha

Since I don't have the internet, you get a delayed action blog post. Actually, I do sort of have the internet. The hotel finally installed wireless internet, but in an evil twist, you have to pay separately for it, far too much, in my opinion. So delayed it is.

1/21/08: I made it to Hawaii today. The flight from Portland was fine, and a good day to leave too. It was somewhere near freezing when I left and the temperature was set to drop throughout the day, including freakishly low wind chills.

I unintentionally spent the day as a guide. My coworker hadn't flown in quite some time, so I got to shepherd him through the vagaries of self-check kiosks and post-9/11 security. Then I spent the flight to Honolulu with a woman who claimed it was her first real flight, whatever that means. At the least, it means that she didn't understand much about airplanes or what the beeps meant, what the flight attendants were talking about, or how to work her seatbelt. She was quite friendly though, and although she didn't let me sleep or read, she was pleasant enough to talk to and the conversation helped pass the time. (For the record, she was older than my folks. Don't get any ideas.) Then on the flight to Kona, I sat next to a guy who had never been to Hawaii before and was fascinated by Diamond Head, the various islands, the sparsity of those islands, and the volcanoes. He sounded extremely Japanese, but he said he was from Las Vegas. He is a sushi chef and is moving to Kona for three months to help a friend of his open a restaurant.

Plus, we saw whales from the plane. I always heard they were big, but they looked like ants to me.

James and I went to a second floor open-air bar called Lulu's for dinner. Rick and I had gone there last year, and we had added a dollar to the collection of signed bills stapled to the walls and ceilings. I distinctly remember standing on the bar (overlooking the street) to reach the ceiling to staple it up (they didn't mind), but we couldn't find it anywhere. Oh, well.

1/22/08: Despite being in Hawaii, today was mainly boring, what with all the working and such. Saw some lava. The weather was fine, I guess, but we were inside for most of it.

I did learn more about the big ocean water pipe I found last year. I found someone who could give me a more complete description of what they are doing there. It turns out they have several big pipes bringing up seawater for different uses. They do grow the Maine lobsters, but they also grow several other things, including shellfish, algae, and seahorses, 'cuz hey, we need more seahorses. The factory bottling expensive Japanese health water is still there and actually has its own pipe, and is currently the only use of the water that is really making money. I also found out about another use of the water. The water from 3000 feet down comes up about 40 degrees. They also have a pipe that brings water from about 70 feet down which runs around 75 degrees. Somehow they harness the temperature differential to make energy. I have no idea how much of that energy is used to pump water 3000 feet up the side of an underwater volcano. I assume there must be some extra, or they wouldn't bother doing it, but nobody I worked with knew much about it.

Other than that, it was pretty much just working. I did see a gecko and some mongooses (mongeese?), but no whales today.

1/23/08: We finished work in Kona this morning. Kona has the traffic problems of a much larger place. The problem is that, for some reason, they seem to lack any traffic planning. Everything is build as cul-de-sacs or neighborhoods built off the one main road through the area. This means that everyone in the area has to use that one road to get anywhere else. The state is widening a portion of it, but the never ending construction is actually causing even more trouble for the time being. I'm not sure how the locals deal with it.

We drove across the island to Hilo this afternoon and into the Hilo rain. It isn't always raining in Hilo (We had great weather last year.) but it's more likely here than in Kona. We got settled in and ate dinner at a place that seemed to be filled only with locals. I like that.

1/24/08: I'm on the internet for real this time. I had to break down and pay so I could get plane tickets. So while, I'm here, I'll check in with the world.

Today was a long day. Better weather though. Sunny most of the day. Among other things, I visited the volcano today, although I was working and never actually saw it. I did find that the eruption has changed significantly since last year. At that time, the lava was flowing entirely through a tube and exiting underwater, making lots of steam, but not being directly visible. However, in the meantime, there was an earthquake that collapsed the tube and the lava started flowing above ground again, but in a different area. Unfortunately, however, I will only be able to see this lava if I learn how to fly. It is in the middle of previous lava flows, which are much too dangerous to walk on. This is the same unstable new ground that collapsed to cause the earthquake.

Before I headed up that way, the radio stations kept playing civil defense messages, a sort of non-emergency emergency broadcast. It was detailing the lava flows that are potentially endangering a particular neighborhood. It kept saying that only residents are allowed in the neighborhood and that all remaining residents have been informed. However, at the volcano, I found out that the neighborhood was completely surrounded by miles of lava something like 20 years ago. "All remaining residents" turns out to be one apparently very stubborn guy. He used to have to walk to and from his house, but apparently he recently got some sort of ATV that can get over much of the lava.

On a low note, my entire trip so far has been marred by a cold. I kind of thought/hoped that warm moist air might help, but no luck. Too bad.

We're off to Honolulu tomorrow for another long week. Talk to you there.

My Favorite Applebee's

Applebee's isn't really that cool of a restaurant. I've been to many of them, but never really cared about them one way or another. They are one of those safe restaurants where you know what you're in for and you're okay with it even though you'd probably never bother to recommend it to anyone. But I've now had a really good time at a particular Applebee's location twice in a row, separated by six months. I'm in Pocatello, Idaho now and this restaurant is located within walking distance of our hotel, which, after a long day of driving, is a clear bonus. However, it's the experience that's been fun.

When I was here in March, Rob (a coworker) and I sat at the bar for dinner due to a huge waiting list. It turned out to be a great decision as we sat around with a bunch of locals playing "Guess the 80's Song Currently Playing". We had a good time guessing, but it got way better when the bartender decided to reward correct guesses with free beers. It even got ridiculous when a student who was there pulled out his laptop and cellular PC card to Google things for us. The bartender decided that he did not deserve free drinks for that and he decided that his minutes were to valuable to waste on a bar game. We kept thinking that the bartender was going to get tired of giving out free drinks, but we didn't pay for anything for the rest of the night and had to cut her off from giving us any more, since we did have to work in the morning. The best part was when an old guy (not old, maybe 50, but old enough that 80's music wasn't his music) pulled out his Blackberry and found a particularly stumping one for us. He made the laptop guy feel pretty silly too.

Tonight we pulled the bar thing again due to the line out the door. And tonight we had a great time with a couple guys from the gulf coast. Both were from Louisiana, but one lives in Houston now. They were up here on business too and were a hoot. They one still living in Louisiana was especially playing up the fish out of water game. He's apparently from a bayou about 90 miles from New Orleans. Every time you see Louisiana in the movies, that's his town. The swamps and mosquitoes and alligators and everything. He's very proud that he lives at +9 feet elevation. Much smarter than those NO folks. The Houston guy seemed to think that everywhere smaller than his hometown might as well be run by Boss Hogg. (For those keeping score, Houston is the 4th largest city in the country, behind, New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago.) He wasn't sure he was going to know what to do with himself in Pocatello, Idaho. Both guys worked together for some consulting firm that was closely related to the oil industry. The main thing that they had to say about that was that maybe we should give the industry a break and if we really want to get away from it, we should stop buying stuff and driving everywhere. They didn't seem too concerned that we might do this, but if we do, they are ready to jump into other industries instead. Good consultants can suck money from whoever has it.

I suppose I'll have to go back next Spring when I'm back this way again, just to see what's going on at my favorite Applebee's.

Where the heck has Dave been lately anyway?

I've been told by my reader that I have to blog something. I suppose it has been a while. I guess I just haven't been in the mood lately, but here goes...

I've been working on the Oregon Coast this week. If you have to travel for work, you could do worse. Most of the work this week is between Tillamook and Seaside, but I also had to make a run down to Newport. The weather's been on and off, but hey, it's Oregon.

Most of the work out here is at wastewater plants, but I worked at the Tillamook County Creamery the other day. It a dairy that makes awesome cheese and ice cream. I'm not sure how far away you can get it, but it's good stuff. Whenever I work there I have to check out the visitor area. It was raining which means the place was crawling with tourists, so I didn't bother to wait for the free samples. I did however need to check out the viewing area. There is a whole section overlooking the packaging floor where you can watch industrial stuff happen. I always love watching assembly line processes. In this area, 50 lb. blocks of fresh cheese come in one end, get cut to the right size, and packaged before rolling out the other end on conveyor belts. Just listening to the other watchers, it's amazing to me how little people understand machine-looking things. I admit that I might be more technically trained than the average Joe, but it's very comical listening to people guessing what various machines and workers are doing. I feel bad for the folks working on the floor down there too. Not only are they working a boring-ass production job wearing all white uniforms and hair nets, but every tourist in Oregon is watching them do it. Somebody next to me sang the Oompa Loompa song.

This morning I met a couple lab cats. Lab kittens actually. I almost stepped on one of them sitting in the doorway of the first lab of the day. Apparently, their mother was killed by a raccoon and one of the guys bottle-fed 5 kittens until they could eat. 2 of them now live there. They were a little cautious of me at first, but pretty quickly they decided it would be fun to play on my feet and equipment for the rest of the time I was there. I tried to grab a picture of them on my phone, but like toddlers, they didn't sit still for long.

I have been staying in Garibaldi for the last couple days. There's not much going on in Garibaldi. It's the main port/marina for Tillamook Bay, but there's not much more to it than that. The marina was about 1/3 commercial fishing boats, 1/3 charter fishing boats, and 1/3 personal boats that looked very small for the ocean, especially next to the other 2/3. There's a lumber mill here too, but not much else.

I ate at the Pirate's Cove, which is supposed to be the best restaurant in town. There are only like 2 or 3 other places anyway, so there's not much competition. The food was decent and it had a nice view of the bay, but that's about it. The service was slow and the atmosphere sucked. The Pirate's Cove sounds like it should be cool, but don't be fooled. It was vaguely nautical, but only with the kind of seashell cutesy crap that your grandmother might keep around (not YOUR grandmother, of course, but you know the kind of stuff I mean). Basically, I spent half as much and had a better time eating a burger at a local fisherman's dive bar across the street from the hotel the other night.

The bread was really good at the Pirate's Cove though and I ate WAY too much of it. Dummy.

I'll be finishing up out here tomorrow and heading back home for the weekend. Good thing too, 'cuz I miss Franny and the Mizz, and as he can now tell me on the phone, he misses me too. I don't know if he knows what it means, but he knows to tell me it on the phone anyway. I'll take it.

Happy Birthday Mizz!

The Mizz is officially twice as old as he was yesterday. He turned two. We made him say that many times, but I don't think he knows what he's talking about. He likes to count, but the numbers don't mean much to him. He can count quite well to 13, but that means that there are 13 of anything he counts. If he runs out of things, he just points to the same ones again until he gets to 13. And then he gives himself a big "YAY!" He even had 13 feet the other day. He counted them both a couple times and then moved on to lights in the room until he got to the proper number.

We surprised him this morning with a train set -- his first. As you can see, he dug right in.



Five minutes later, witness the destruction that is Mizzilla. He didn't really need the track set up anyway since he mainly just liked stuffing things through the wonderful suspension bridge, whether they fit or not. It turns out that, with persistence, even a helicopter or a jetliner can go right on through. I'm sure Jerry Brockheimer would like to know that little tidbit. I highly recommend clicking and enlarging this second picture. His expression is priceless.



It was a fairly low-key day for the Mizz. Franny took him to the zoo and then we went out to eat this evening at Claim Jumper with some family who wandered into town. The food was fine, but there was WAY too much of it. I ordered a half-size country fried steak (Yes, there's still some southern in me.) that would have overlapped the sides of a normal plate. Luckily they brought it on a platter. I can't even imagine the size of a full order. I imagine a side of beef, breaded and deep fried in a hot tub. The Mizz had a good time coloring on his place mat and eating the food Franny smuggled in from home. They even had a free kid's plate with cheese and applesauce, so he was set. He could get as loud as he needed and nobody in that place could even hear him over the din of the cavernous room. Excellent place to take a toddler.

Insomniac

I'm not sure why I'm awake in the middle of the night, but I'll take the opportunity to write, I suppose.

It's been another busy week, but not super interesting until Friday. Franny's folks came to town, partly to see the Mizz and partly to celebrate birthdays for Franny and her dad, one day apart. What her dad didn't know is that her brother Sam also came out for the festivities. Excellent surprise.

Friday, we went out to eat at Mother's Bistro. They claim to love kids -- how could they not with that name? That said, the Mizz seemed to be really testing that theory. We were wondering if he would be the first kids blacklisted from Mother's. I ended up taking him outside for a walk where we found a bench he could climb in and out of. He wouldn't stop until a couple of girls, maybe three or four years old with face paint from the Rose Festival, saw him through the window and were enthralled by him. He, in turn, did not want to stop watching them. He's got a great story for daycare about the older twin chicks that were checking him out.

Speaking of Rose Festival, I managed to forget about the Starlight Run that I was going to do until it was much too late. I got all sick and travelling and forgot all about it and now it happened Friday evening and I didn't even notice. That's motivation for you. Maybe next year.

This weekend we stayed at a great house at Bella Beach with the inlaws for a couple days. Bella Beach is a neighborhood a little south of Lincoln City on the Oregon Coast. True to Oregon, the weather sucked until we left this morning. Just lots of rain, but we still had fun. The front coming through made for some awesome wave to watch, something Oregon usually only sees much in the winter. The house we rented was fairly baby-proof, so chasing Mizz was still a necessity, but not as difficult as some of the knick-knack laden places we've stayed before.

Franny and I managed to escape for a little while for a pseudo birthday dinner Sunday night while the inlaws watched the baby monitor. From what I heard, it didn't require much, but we were grateful for the time out with just the two of us, something that doesn't happen near enough these days. We ate at Kyllo's in Lincoln City. A decent spot with an excellent view. It's built up on stilts right at the beach and we arrived about an hour before high tide, so the water was about as close as it got. It was situated right at the mouth of the "D" River, which is about 100 yards from the beginning of the "D" River, which, according to the sign, makes it the world's shortest river. We debated what constituted a river versus a creek or stream or whatever, but we just have to assume there's an international governing body that regulates these things.

This evening we had an early birthday dinner for Franny and Phil, since Sam has to leave early on Tuesday. We ate at Higgin's in downtown Portland. The Mizz was not invited on this trip. Most of us had the steak special, which was excellent. Very tender with a wonderful sauce. Highly recommended. One of the fun things about Franny's parents visiting is that we get to eat well. They like to eat at new nice restaurants, so we get to eat at new nice restaurants. Franny and I have actually been to Higgin's before, but not often. Last time, we had the duck. ("Say we grant you a reservation. What would you order?" "Oh, I don't know. How about the duck?" "He cannot have zee duck." "You can't have zee duck." "He can have zee chicken." "You can have zee chicken." "Well, what about my date? I can't tell her what to order." "You can strongly suggest zee chicken." [Probably misquoted, but still one of my favorite movie scenes.])

I really need to get back to sleep. I don't know what my problem is, but I'm wide awake. Maybe some chamomile tea or something...

Things looking up?

I dare say I feel a little better today. Not good, mind you, but better anyway. Passable. I can now handle dealing with the world, although I found that I am no match for Franny on a Target shopping binge. Mizz and I decided that it was just best to stay out of her way. I also managed to move some furniture around and even lug a big TV downstairs. Some of us don't have flat screens yet. One day I'll tell the Mizz about the old days when we had 120 pound televisions that were almost 2 feet deep. Nope, none of that hanging on the wall stuff for us. And they were old-fashioned low-def. 1080i widescreen? You wish. Only if you stacked them 4 wide and 3 high. That's right; we had LDTV and we were happy, dammit. And you know why? Because we didn't have what your grandfathers had. They had to sit in the snow and watch other cavemen paint on the wall really fast. In black and white! This was especially boring during commercials, which is the only reason they had time to invent fire and the wheel and civilization and stuff.

Anyway, enough of that. The point is, I'm back in the world with a mere sinus infection, which seems like a vast improvement over the last couple days.

We ate out this evening at a new pan-asian eatery called Wei Wei (What does that mean?). Don't get excited. It's one step up from fast food and it's in the Home Depot parking lot. It was pretty decent though. Franny loved some eggplant thing she got, the Mizz decided he liked lo mein noodles once he learned how to wrangle them, and I got a spicy chicken thing so I could taste it. My fortune was "Your sports team will be very successful this year." I don't really have a sports team, so if anyone is interested, I'm willing to rent my enthusiasm for a price. However, it sounds like I only get one team, so it will have to go to the highest bidder. Also, my lucky numbers are 3, 6, 14, 23, 36, and 49. I'd be happy to split 50-50 with someone who wants to sponsor a lottery ticket. I'm guessing it won't work if you use these numbers yourself, since they were on my fortune. Gitcherown fortune cookie.

Back Home

[Some of this was written in the San Francisco airport, but I wasn't connected at the time, so if it sounds disjointed, it was. I don't care. I was just bored and needed a way to pass the time.]

Just sitting here stuck in the San Francisco airport. The flight from Honolulu was a little bumpy but ended up getting in a half hour early. Then I learned that my connection to Portland is 2 hours late. Nice. Franny and Mizz were going to pick me up, but not anymore. Too bad. I was looking forward to that. Now I have to wait until tomorrow morning to see the little guy, and that's going to be awfully early for someone on Hawaii Standard Time (3:30-4:00 am to be specific). Worth getting up for though, but maybe not staying up. :) -- (written 3:20 pm, February 2nd)

Still waiting. The flight has been delayed further. We are now at about a 2 1/2 hour delay. that means 4 1/2 hours sitting in the airport and getting home at maybe 9:30 pm or later. This all for a 1 1/2 hour flight. It looks like I can blame Washington, DC. It's their plane we're waiting for. On another note, an announcement keeps playing telling us that the Homeland Security threat level has been raised to Orange. I don't know why. It doesn't include any further instructions or restrictions, so what's the point? Am I supposed to be extra frightened for this leg of the flight? What's my job in responding to this threat? Especially since as far as I know, we are usually at Orange anyway. Ports and industries and such do different things for different threat levels, but not us regular people as far as I know. -- (written 6:10 pm, February 2nd)

Well, I made it back home finally. We got loaded up a little before 7:00 pm and left at 7:10, a full 5 minutes before the next flight to Portland. We win. It was late and I was tired, hence the delay getting these notes on-line.

It's good to be home, although, as expected, yesterday morning was pretty early and involved a lot of coffee. I did manage to stay up though. Go me.

Franny set up a babysitter for this afternoon, so we got to go out for a little while and see what it's like. We need to do that more often. Lebanese dinner followed by Cold Stone Creamery. Not a bad afternoon. We also checked out vintage shops for a cheap-but-not-too-ugly hanging lamp for our living room. Mizz managed to learn to crawl under the coffee table so he could knock over the pole lamp we had. It didn't survive. Now we'll escalate and put in a hanging one. We didn't find anything good today, but soon I'm sure. If that doesn't work, we go nuclear (nucular?).

One of these days, I'll have to learn how to add pictures and put up something from Hawaii. Franny does it all the time, so it probably isn't terribly difficult (no offense F). If I have trouble, I'll have to turn in my Geek Club membership card. It would help to at least give it a shot though. Maybe tomorrow. I guess I can be lazy and still be a geek.