Say what you will about the insanity of downtown and the virtues of staying home in your PJs and watching Star Trek. Any other day, I'm right there with you with a caramel apple and no inclination to step out there. But on Halloween night, which I first experienced only a week before the Boyfriend and I became official nearly two year ago now, the city is a good place to be.

Nevermind that that year we saw two different guys open their respective car doors and puke on the street as well as a rhinestone Elvis giving me the eye all before we even got to the center of Waikiki; it was wicked good fun.

This year, Sue drove me up to meet The Boyfriend with his homemade Day of the Dead mask as he got off work, and while Sue went home to chill and pass out candy, Skullface and I drove to the heart of Honolulu, into a giant music and art festival taking place in Chinatown.

All the bands were fantastic, just plunked down at different areas of the city and rocking out, but in particular this New Orleans-derived blues/rock group that would make The Black Keys pee their pants. They had a man on tuba who was using it to play the bass part. Have you ever HEARDA that shit? Well it was great. Band was called Anders Osborne. During their performance two different guys, Cheech Marin included, spilled their beer on my same foot. But it was chill.


( Rock the Casbah... )

Ladies and gents, a photopost of miraculous randomocity! Please enjoy.



( +24 )

Time for a photopost! I get to let you lovely folks in on what the hell I've been ding with my time, apart from singing to babies and tossing toddlers.

Please enjoy!



( Plant Life & Voodoo Workshop )

Last week, my family and I jumped into a cage in the ocean surrounded by sharks. It was a blast.

When I called my father, telling him that I'd found an ad for a North Shore Shark Tour in a Haleiwa coffee shop, I didn't really expect him to like the idea. I often come up with silly things that I would like to do someday, hang gliding and bungee jumping high on that list, and I've long accepted that if that someday ever comes, I will not be able to convince my sensible family to join me. To my surprise, the old man was all for it. Of course, he has recently acquired a motorcycle and a chili pepper gangsta bandana to go with it, so really I should have known.

On Sunday, we converged in Wahiawa, my sister, her husband, my father, my boyfriend and myself, and drove out to the harbor to meet our boat. It was small, with a two man crew and a huge steel cage on the back and a grinning barefoot surfer guy helping us on board. We had a bumpy, choppy, fast ride out to sea, which I absolutely loved. I was worried I might be seasick, but I never have been before, and I suspect it's not on my large list of handicaps. I would ride on that boat every damn day.

When we came to a stop, the guys started lowering the cage into the water and to our left a couple of humpback whales appeared, much closer than I had ever seen anything of that size. Whale watching boats aren't allowed to come more than 100 yards of the whales themselves but, the crew explained with a grin, shark boats have no such rules on them, and the whales came to us anyway. They lolled out of the water and fluked a few times, our adorable surfer guy whooping in joy, and all of us nearly peeing ourselves.

My sister elected to stay on the ship, so I decended into the cage with my father, the Boyfriend and Justin. The following photos are my views from that point on.



( Sharkgirl of Bora Bora... )

Hey y'all, happy Saturday! With an iced coffee at my side and a warm fresh-washed kitten asleep on my feet, I thought now would be a good time to upload my next photopost, a rather quirky combination of animal photos, and documentation of various art projects. This will probably give you an accurate idea of what my days are filled with.

That is, aside from when I am working, singing songs about parachutes and making announcements about please not ignoring it when your child pukes on my classroom floor and then not telling anyone that they did it and not cleaning it up.

Anyway, onward! I hope you enjoy. As far as good photography goes, I can claim no artistic merit in these pictures: they're simply there to tell the story, not to look brilliant.



( Fuzzy pals and art proj... )

I started to write something this afternoon, whining about something or other, and then just decided to stop and get done what I was putting off.

My fish tank needed cleaning.

My goldfish always seem to represent the state of my happiness. The tank is filthy. Reginald and Jing-Tei are valiantly trying to deal with it. I owe them a scrubbing, and in the time leading up to my deciding to do it, my head always gets messier and messier inside, the way your room looks when you're in the middle of cleaning it, piles of flotsam making little landscapes on the floor, uncovering old things that dredge up memories long packed up and stored away, and you want to save them all, touch them all again, but you have work to do. You have to clean your fish tank.

Today had downs -- like what the scale told me when I got up this morning, like the way mom was later that evening, like the way I miss my dad, like how money and mom and moving made me cry on Andrew's shoulder tonight -- and it had ups -- like the best game of Monopoly I've ever played, using Lily's Simpson's Treehouse of Horror Monopoly set which I played with herself and Andrew, like the way Andrew let me cry on his shoulder, like the relaxed feeling I got afterward while he played with my hair and told me the plot of Star Wars.

But most importantly of all, I got my fish tank clean. Here I am, airing my dirty laundry for you all. So to speak. It's not pretty at first, but going through the process is a beautiful thing, and will be maybe as therapeutic for you to watch as it was for me to do. Here's to spring cleaning.



( From Filth To Fabulous! Click to see more... )

Next I'm going to tackle the inside of my brain. It needs a good scrubaroo.

G'night, lovies.

I've been back from Kauai for a few days, and have had time to arrange all the photos I took with my spiffy new digital camera, second-hand from my dad. I know I always railed against digital cameras, claimed that I adored processing film, and declared that I would never be drawn into an age where you can't actually hold your own pictures in your hand, but hey... it's a free camera, and it's good. And this way, you can all see them better.

I've cut it down considerably from 154 photos, but there's still sixty or so, so my dial-up friends and neighbors may want to sit back with some cocoa and sandwiches before beginning the journey. I can promise some spectacular views.

( Island hop: a photomentary )