Wordless Wednesday

The adventures of Mr. Stick

Life With Dogs is one of my favorite blogs. I check it (a bit too obsessively) throughout the day knowing I'll be gifted with a hearty laugh.

However, things took an ominous turn a few weeks back when the evil Mr. Stick appeared on the scene at Life with Dogs! So now we're playing a game of fetch with Mr. Stick, flinging him through the blogosphere to fans & followers of Life With Dogs. Want to play too?

Now, I wasn't comfortable tossing someone I haven't even met, so I took the time to interview Mr. Stick over the phone. I wanted to find out what really makes up the fiber of his being. He prattled out his life story, lots of generic dysfunctional crap we all find in our family tree, the scars of being picked on as a kid for his bushy hair & bad skin, the trauma of loosing his grampa to an 'industrial accident' at the paper mill. *yawn* Mr. Stick obviously detected my impending boredom.

MS: Oh did I mention I was in an 80's punk band?

ER: Dude, weren't we all?

MS: Yeah, but we were FAMOUS.

ER: Um, yeah

MS: Hop on AIM and I will send you proof

ER: *rolls eyes*



ER: Oh you could have totally Photoshopped yourself in that pic. Give me a break.

(crickets)

MS: Well, I have the original lyrics I wrote. Check AIM in about 10 minutes, I have to get them out of the fire safe & scan them.

ER: Fine, I'm supposed to be working right now anyway. I'm putting you on speaker, so just yell when you've sent it.

Tappity, tap, tap, click, dammit, tap tap tap.

MS: Yo! you still there?

ER: yeah, hold on a sec, the wifi is slow, I'm downloading what you sent.



ER: WHOA, this stick's for real.

I'm not sure which is more disturbing, the cannibalistic aspect of using TP as a writing medium or the fact that he was penning a punk icon while pushing out a Yule Log.

ER: hey, wait a minute

MS: hmm, wha?

ER: you must think I'm dumb as a stump. I've been reading Life With Dogs, how do you think I found out about you? These lyrics went down two weeks ago, not 2 decades ago. WTF are you trying to pull?

*click*

Sheister. It's time to Toss Mr. Stick.

Schedule in CA

THURSDAY 2/5
* fly in at 9pm. Brian is picking me up
* staying at Brian's until Sunday

FRIDAY 2/6
* DMV

SAT 2/7
* SF Farmer Market with Carrie & Zsu

SUNDAY 2/8
* go to Carmel, play at the coast

MONDAY 2/9 through THURS 2/12
* work in Carmel

FRIDAY 2/13
* cousin's wedding in Sacramento

SAT 2/14
* stay at Carrie's
* Sunbrothers Party

SUN 2/15
* stay at Carrie's
* head down to Carmel

MON 2/16 - FRI 2/20
* work in Carmel
* drive to Oakland Friday night

SAT 2/21 & SUN 2/22
* stay at Carrie's

MON 2/23
* fly home to Hawaii

Mainland 2/5 - 2/23

My fantastic boss is flying me to California for 2 weeks of work in the office. I've been working for Steven & with Derek for almost 6 months and I finally get to meet the guys face to face!

I am seriously moping about leaving my dog. He'll be well taken care of, that's not the problem. I'm just going to miss his happy little face first thing in the morning, his silly antics all day while I work and a warm cuddly lump on my feet all night long. I'm going to miss morning walk every day. How funny...I'm sad about it as though I'm leaving him for months on end and I'm only gone 19 days!

I'm going to try to do a lot of whirlwind stuff in CA...first and foremost I'm going to eat myself senseless. I'm hoping to hit North Beach Pizza right after I land at the airport, LOL. Oh, the things I'm going to eat!

I'm so excited to see my peeps. I miss them SO much.

I am not looking forward to the ambient air temperature ;) It's been 'freezing' here in Hawaii, down in the mid 60's. That is too cold. I'm going to be a very cold puppy in CA, no matter how nice the weather is.

Off to pack.

Mele Kilikimaka

More Treats, Less Silly Hats.

Happy Holidays everyone! Oh, I'm on Facebook now too, friend me up if you find me!

our newest family member!

Everyone, meet Pono. He's a 1 1/2 year old male whippet. We are adopting him on September 22nd. He was rescued by a lovely family last year & they can no longer keep him. Lucky US ! We drove over to the other side of the island yesterday to meet sweet Pono & it was REALLY hard to not take him home with us right on the spot!

Pono was originally owned by a pig hunter (yes we have wild pigs here & folks hunt them all the time). Pono is afraid of gunshots (aren't we all?) so he failed miserably as a hungting dog. The hunter was going to kill him! Luckily Pono ran away & was found by a kind soul named Anne. Anne convinced the hunter to give Pono to her instead of killing him. Anne then found Pono a home with Tane & her family, where he is now. Sad, it's just like the 'perform or die' story of greyhounds and whippets from the racetrack. Sigh.

Pono's current family just inherited their father's dogs, bringing their pack up to 6 dogs! It's too much & they had to find a new home for Pono. Tane ( the current owner) was heartbroken & worried that she couldn't find a loving home for Pono. Then along came me! It's a fantastic match & Tane is very relieved that Pono's going to be loved to bits.

We only got to hang out with Pono for an hour and a half, but in that time we found out what a wonderful pup he is. He is friendly, outgoing, not spooky, not hyper, doesn't destroy his toys (aka chew things up), loves other dogs, very intelligent, responsive on leash...I can't really say enough good things about him. I'm so glad we can give him a loving (spoiled rotten) home!

'Pono' is Hawaiian for: just, fair, goodness, excellence, well being... in a nutshell "righteous living".

click on the photos for a larger view :) His 'pillow' is Pebbles, a chihuahua/jack russell mix. TOo cute, huh?

recap from the zoo

Well, the little mynah bird we rescued died when he was 2 days old. RIP nugget :(


However, we're taking these two face-breakingly-cute kittens in 6 weeks. Identical twins. Makes you drool they are so adorable.



We've got butterflies for DAYS. At least 4 hatch out each morning. At the height of the crazy we have 16 hatch in one morning.

Tired & off to bed. Will try to remember to blog about the uber garden tomorrow...so far 200+ starts covering 78+ varieties of veggies and grains. I'z a farmer!

making an offer

Booyah! We're making an offer on 2 acres tomorrow morning. Holy crap batman.

In the meantime, we already have the garden going - hydroponics style, with 47 different veggies or grains. We have 70+ plumeria cuttings, 30+ crown flower cuttings, a producing coffee tree, baby mango & 3 baby avocado . Now all we need is the land to plant it! Crossing the fingers!

Should be growing our own food, feeding the butterflies & making awesome leis within 6 months if this works out!

welcome Charlie!

There's a million things to blog about. I'm way behind & lots is going on. However, I'm going to throw in one quick post to welcome our Monarch Butterfly 'Charlie' into the world. He hatched out this morning...two days early little stinker!

Charlie is our first butterfly! His predecessors, Alpha and Bravo, both died in the pupae stage (Alpha fell & splatted, Bravo had a lethal parasite).

Delta and Echo are both pupating right now & should appear in 9 days if they don't have the dreaded parasite too.

Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India, Kilo, Juliet & Lima are still caterpillars & are munching away on Crown Flower leaves in the schwanky 'Butterfly Castle' we purchased.

We're raising monarchs quite by accident & totally loving it! We're going to turn our screened lanai into an indoor monarch house. Woo! Helping an endangered species is WAY FUN.

seattle

woo! I'm in Seattle with Steve. I must love him if I'm willing to be somewhere this COLD :)

Weather like this makes me appreciate Hawaii even more. It was 30 degrees when I landed. AAAAAGGHHHH!

Lava up close & personal

The lava finally came back down the hill last night. Pele's been hiding since July & we've been out for the past two weeks waiting for her to make an appearance. We heard she finally got down the hill to a walkable distance so we got our walking sticks, cameras, water & headed out. I was ready for a 4 hour hike like last year...this time it was 3 minutes! By the time we left the flow was only 25 feet from the spot where everyone parks!

Here's a starter set of photos:
Dat's a Rotsa Rava Reorge!

Yes, we are that close. Most of these are taken without zoom. We were only 8 feet from the lava most of the time. Luckily it moves slow & we stayed on the high spots. Gravity is your friend!

These movies and photos are hosted on my OWN site, so please just view them once & don't send the link around. I need to keep my bandwidth under the limit. If you know of free photo sites where I can host pics *and* movies, please let me know & I'll move em.

containerati + computer nerd0

Oh, did I mention the container arrived safe & sound? Folks keep asking, so I think I forgot to post it on the blog.

So yeah, it's here. It's been here for 6 weeks :) The mega-drama of everything going wrong is OVER. One the mainland, 'container' got to be a dirty word. Oddly, the moment it went on the boat, everything to do with the container has been effortless, inexpensive and all good. I take this as a another sign that I'm supposed to live in Hawaii.

It's been raining too much to cut into it. Besides, I have to unpack it first :) I did, however, get some schwanky metal roofing on the cheap last week & am going to throw a storage shed off the back of the container - thank god all my male pals over here are builders !

Old timey HighWire folks, this one's for you....
On a different note, I got a web job a few weeks ago, that actually has a lot of programming! The site's using Miva Merchant & it turns out that MM is written in SLP. I got to tweak templates & get my geek on. I was happy in ways that I'm embarrassed to admit.

rainy today, but still 85 degrees. no complaining here.

oh hot! hot! hot!

Well goodness me. After 5 weeks of rain the skies suddenly went BLUE, NO CLOUDS. It is freakin hot! Right now it is 92 degrees in the SHADE. Wah wah wah. I don't know if this is abnormal, but I don't care...alls I knows is that I got a sunburn on the 7th of freaking *january*. JANUARY.

Mom and Auntie Pam just left from my birthday visit. We had a mad, 4 day tour of the island. Quite an itinerary and I'm exhausted. I'm trying to convince my aunt that she needs to move here :)

Off to Hilo for errands.

I am Le Nerd

I made my website this weekend - well the guts anyway. And I made it with PHP. Oooooh la la....all the nerdy joys of templates without DTL. It started with one php snippet, then of course I had to bust out the TYPE-A and make it as 'streamlined' as possible. I can't leave well enough alone. Kinda cool though. Two small templates generate the entire site, with one file holding the settings to make each page look different, then the unique content pages. GEEK GEEK GEEK.

Other big news is that the container is on the ground! It's been raining every day so I can't play with it yet. First job is to harvest 20' bamboo up the hill & make a rain structure to keep the container dry while I'm fussing with it. Bamboo is free, renewable and compostable folks, so please refrain from lecturing me about how much easier/cheaper/faster it'll be to make my shade structure out of lumber or the metal carports! I appreciate the advice, but I can't grow Doug Fir or Steel in my back yard - but bamboo.... that I can do.

rain, rain gone away...

FINALLY! We just had 5 days of massive rain & storms. I've never seen so much water fall from the sky, so much, for so long. We were going stir crazy. However, the storm finally broke last night & today was clear blue sky, trade wind breezes & 90 degrees in the shade. Back to Normal :) December in Kapoho is right up my alley.

AIM login change!

Heya, if I'm in your AIM buddy list, please change my AIM ID to:

hawaii hooligal

:) Erin

aloha friday

woot! Just got back from the architect's in Hilo. My second (ever) set of plans got stamped with NO corrections needed...I'm learning fast!

I'm 99% sure I've decided where I'm going to drop my container - comes in Monday & I'm so excited to be almost done!

I've been working like nuts this week & trying to get my life re-organized and unpacked. I know I've worked 40 hours, but it sure doesn't feel like it. Wake up at 6am, work for a few hours, go snorkeling, take a nap, dink around on the porch with Brent & Cat, work for a few hours when the sun goes down. NICE.

Monday I met up with Jaime Vaida. He's an amazing metal artist from NIMBY & he's in Hilo! Looks like we may do some work together, yee haw!

I've been at the tidepools every day with Brent re-freshing my tan & we went to Kalapana to check out property on Wednesday. The lava lake is perched about 400' right above the lots we like, so I'm a tad (lol) concerned. I still love a 2.5 acre lot here in Kapoho, we'll see.

Puna's even better the second time around. Being away for 2 months made me love it even more. Folks are complaining that we're having a cold winter...ha! It's down to 74 degrees at night - I think I can hack it.

Off to celebrate Aloha Friday!

9:30 pm 76 degrees

Oh oh oh. It's 9:30 at night & I'm lounging around in a tank top... a lusciously humid 75 degrees. Ahhhhhhhhh. I am so happy to be home. Still decompressing from the stress and go-go-go of CA. Sloooow down, relax, don't jump at every gecko and cochroach - you home in Hawaii now & it's all good. I fell asleep last night to the sound of the ocean, light trade winds & coqui frogs. Best sleep I've had in months. DOG, pronounced "dee-oh-gee" (one of the greyhounds I live with) came in periodically throughout the night to make sure I was really here and hadn't abandoned him again. How I've missed snuggly greyhound therapy!

I flew in under a full moon on the Pacific & was treated to an insane sunset 1/2 way through the flight. Sigh, so beautiful.

Hawaii is even more stunning than I remembered it. It smells good. Clean clean air. It's warm. Clouds, lava, pounding surf, flowers, colors, jungle..gahhhhh. I woke up this morning & the front driveway was covered in Plumerias (the best smelling flower on earth, IMHO). We watched the moonrise through massive -pillared clouds from Jack & Glady's new house site. Lovely. Absolutely lovely.

Off to sleep once I get the gecko out of my sheets.

fun day

yesterday was too fun. I drove down to HighWire to see everyone. * waves to huttites*. I missed a few friends & it reminded me how much I miss the comraderie, dry wit and flying toy cubicle wars! It was funny to walk past folks, they'd look up & say hi, then do a double take "ERIN!! you're here!". There were moments when I felt like I hadn't even left. 8 years will do that to ya. I miss you guys lots.

Brian let me take the M Roadster convertible to Palo Alto. That level of fun is probably illegal somewhere. I was very well behaved, considering the horsepower available to me. I didn't speed, but there's no law that says I can't get from Zero to the speed limit as fast as possible. Man that thing hauls ass. Whee! Kinda made up for missing my ride in the Ferrari last month :)

I *think* I can finally go home next Friday. God willing, there will be no further fiascos with the shipping company. In the meantime I'm sitting on my duff trolling Craigslist for more free stuff (that'll fit in the spots left in the container). Today I'm picking up a bunch of metal grating so I can make a plasma cutting table. Yay Free!

1000 lbs of steel later...

Oy. I just loaded 1000 lbs of steel into the container. My god I hurt. The body, she is the old.

The good news is that I found all of my steel in the 'scrap' leftovers so it was 1/3 the price of new steel. If you ever need metal, go to Alco in San Leandro - a virtual candy store for metal whores. Bad news...I started the day off by loading 6 seventy pound batteries - so I pissed off my back from the get-go. I sheared a nice chunk out of my right hand too, complete with profuse bleeding. So why not piss my back off more! By all means! I'll go drag steel off the racks at the Alco yard, , load into the truck, load off the truck, load into the container...so I guess I lifted 4000 lbs of steel - ugh.

As of 10pm my hands, arms and legs have stopped co-operating...the nerves are not firing quite right, so I'm managing to drop 1/2 of everything I pick up or randomly veer off course, into insidiously placed corners, when walking. Who put a frigging wall there!

For all my tired complaining, I really am thrilled that I'm almost done. Solar panels & batteries are packed, crap is packed, storage is empty. Tomorrow I'm lugging the windows, plamsa cutter, welder & genny down to the container..strap it all in and call it done.

Super tired woot.