Day of rest

Yeah, I got absolutely nothing done today.

I got up way later than usual. I made my way over to Larry's to check on his cats (he, of course, did not make it home yesterday). The driving sucked (SUCKED) so I just came home. And then...I think I putzed for a little while. Maybe read. Watched some TV. Took a nap. Putzed some more. Laid on the couch. Read. Watched more TV. Went to therapy. Book, couch, TV, dinner (frozen pizza and a glass of wine). And then I came upstairs, thinking I'd clean, but...

I just have no motivation today. And, really, I figure that's okay. It's vacation, after all, right?

By the seashore

So the fam and I are in Myrtle Beach.

(Don't rob my house. The dog sitter's there. And Maggie will bite you.)

It was a long day. Picked up the folks at the airport, drove down south of the border.

But we have a great condo. And it's very pretty down here.

'Night, all.

Whoosh....

Dawn

Aaaand, we're back...

I'm home!

I'm still a little sad not to be in Hawaii anymore (and a little jealous of my parents, who are there until Monday), but I'm quite glad to be back, flopped on my own bed, watching the shows that have accumulated on my DVR in my absence. With my dog, whom I missed so (she was SO EXCITED that I was home. But apparently her means of showing me she missed me was to pee on the floor of my bedroom. Ah well....).

On the whole, my trip back was pretty uneventful. Maui to Honolulu...a three hour layover in Honolulu (I went to Starbucks)...then to LA, where I had about enough time to pee and then board the flight to Chicago. I slept pretty restlessly on the red eye - I felt kind of bad for my seatmate, as much as I was tossing and turning, but she didn't seem to mind. I actually did manage to get a little bit of sleep, though. I had another three hour layover in Chicago, but I have to say, O'Hare is a much more interesting airport than Honolulu (although....I went to Starbucks again). And finally I made it back to NC, where Sparrow graciously scooped me up at the airport. We had lunch and visited a while (between her travel and my travel I haven't seen her in over 3 weeks), then I came home and hung out with my dog (SOEXCITED). We watched House, and Bones, and CSI, and SVU, and Dollhouse, which had accumulated on the DVR, until I finally gave in to the nap that overtook me around 5 or so. Then we went out and got some dinner (I was a little worried the car wouldn't be too thrilled about moving after sitting in my spot for two weeks, but it started right up). And now a little more TV, and my plan is to go back to sleep around 11... Generally, the trip back was good, I suppose. It was freakin' long, but I got some knitting done, I finished the book I'd been reading (Hawaiian ghost stories) and started and finished a new one by an author I'd not read before, but plan to read more of (Paulo Coelho; weirdly, I randomly found him in the Mythology and Supernatural section of the Borders, although I see nothing particularly mythologic or supernatural about the story I read...). I wasn't feeling so hot for most of the trip, but I did okay. And my suitcase even made all the connections and got back to NC with me! I was really convinced that I wouldn't be seeing that thing for a couple more days. And, because I left it with the curbside porter in Maui, they apparently didn't weigh it and thus didn't charge me more for it (I'm pretty sure it was over 50 lbs). So, on the whole? A win.

And, time for bed....

Sorry, y'all. Blogger's acting up tonight here in Paradise. Will try to post something useful tomorrow from one of the many airports in which I'll be....

Hawaiian training wheels

Obake

So my folks and I went to dinner at this cute little Italian place tonight, and afterwards wandered over to the Long's Drugs next door, which is apparently something of a Hawaiian institution. I got a bunch of stuff for people back home who did nice things to make this trip possible for me (nothing says, "Thanks for doing extra work so I could go sit on a beach in paradise!" like chocolate covered macadamia nuts). And I picked up a book of Hawaiian ghost stories.

Dude.

I think I shouldn't be reading that shit before bedtime.

The Hawaiians are a very superstitious culture. There are lots of mystic, supernatural kinds of things that are alleged to go on around here. And for some totally non-rational reason, I completely believe this is the case. There is a distinctly preternatural vibe about the islands. I think there are places where mystical energies tend to coalesce; I find this to be true of several places I've been: Savannah, Georgia...Charleston, SC...NOLA...to name a few. I think if you are still and quiet, often you can feel the undercurrents of these places being a little differently charged than, say, Winnetka.

Now, does this mean I believe any ghost story I hear, or buy into every superstition anyone presents? Of course not. But, let's face it - the Greeks are a pretty superstitious people themselves. So it's kind of in my blood. And I think there is so much that happens on this plane of existence and others that we can't even comprehend...I'd quote the line from Hamlet, here, but that seems a little trite. Still, Horatio...

Honestly, even the most conservative organized religions have quite a bit of mysticism and supernaturalism about them. Transubstantiation, the choirs of Angels, stigmata, pretty much anything from the Old Testament, even the belief in a higher power itself is a kind of mythos and superstition. So why do we so easily dismiss that which we can't immediately explain? When my father was born and, let's face it, he's not that old - the suggestion that DNA was the heritable material of life, the code for every single aspect of who we are biologically - that would've been sneered at as preposterous. The entire vocabulary of existence reduced to four letters? Please. And yet, now I can send a Q-tip and $60 off to Utah and get a full profile of Maggie's lineage. We can cure some diseases with gene therapy. Every woman who gets prenatal care is offered testing to determine the likelihood of certain heritable illnesses. Heck, when *I* was born, ultrasound screening in pregnancy was mythical. Now, three decades later, you can get 4-D images of your unborn child at a shopping mall that are almost as good as having a window in one's uterus.

So why is it that we so easily discount some of the oldest lore? It's kind of weird, when you think about it...

Oh! Also weird? Some woman in her 60s was attacked by a shark right down the beach from us yesterday (we're staying in Kihei). Thanks, Jenn, for alerting me to that! Fortunately, the most dangerous thing I've seen around here (aside from the sailors) are the jellyfish I encountered on my beach walk this evening.

More pictures up tomorrow. But right now, it's 11:20pm local, and y'all, ghost stories or not, it's time for bed...

Maui no ka 'oi.

So we're on Maui.

It was one long-ass and arduous day. Somehow the inter-island flight was more hassle than the trans-Pacific one. And, the TSA stole my mustard.

But my day started out very lovely. I got up before dawn (because I do this) and hoofed it down to Waikiki Beach, which is a mere 6 blocks or so from our condo in Honolulu, and yet, I hadn't made it down there through the whole week. So I wandered over there this morning, and spent like two hours taking 700 or so pictures of surfers, and sunrise, and water, and then after while I just started shooting people (in a snap, snap kind of way, otherwise you'd be hearing about this on the news instead of on my blog). I tend mostly to take environmentals; I'm all about depth of field and perspective shots and still life, I think because this is what translates best from my brain to my lens. Which at this point is mostly a matter of skill, which is of course a matter of experience. So I've decided I need to spend more time shooting action and people and life life.

I sat for a while at the beach and then on a street corner and just watched people. I tried to stop thinking technically and start thinking with my grander sense of life, my more ineffable, artistic sense. And I got some pretty darn good shots. And had a very good time feeling more connected to humanity in general.

The rest of the day was a series of fiascoes. Did I mention that the TSA STOLE MY DAMN MUSTARD?

So, I'm giving up and going to bed. Fortunately for me, my parents were very kind and let me have the bedroom with a window, which happens to be the "master" bedroom (there's some feeling that I may have earned the upgrade, but that's another story for another day). So I'm going to go take advantage of that...

Guess where I am.

Go on, guess.

Yep, I'm at Starbucks. How I wish we had wifi at the condo. This twice a day habit could be hard to break once I get home.

So today is our last real day on Oahu. There's a tiny plane in my future tomorrow, which will take me to Maui, until Friday, when a tiny plane will bring me back to a series of big ones. A long series of big ones. This makes me sad.

Got up and shot the sunrise this morning at the Somethingwithalotofvowels Blowhole. It was less spectacular than some I've seen, but still quite beautiful. Then came back and napped. Went to Starbucks, wandered a little, ate lunch, napped again. Then the folks and I drove out to Pearl Harbor, although we've been to the memorial before (and it was kind of late to go to the museum), but there was a shopping mall we needed to find. Not that we went into it (well, I did run into the Borders), but mostly my parents wanted to prove that they weren't misremembering it (and the one we went to Thursday, which we thought was it, really, really was not).

So now we're in a different Starbucks. My parents are reading the Sunday Honolulu newspaper. And I've just been informed that my father is a sleepy head, so I guess we'd better get going...

Clearly, he should've followed my lead and napped more today.

Hawaii By Night

(...is actually the name of the strip club across the street from where I'm sitting. But it also seemed like a fitting title...)

I'm sitting outside the Starbucks at Kuhio and Seaside on a lovely, breezy, Honolulu evening. There's a couple of street performers down the way, and the low rhythmic drumming pulses like a heartbeat as the nightlife flows by. This really is a very pleasant city. Beautiful scenery, lovely weather, wonderful people. Hawaii has such a unique and adaptive culture. I'd love to know more about what goes on when the tourists aren't looking.

I get the sense, though, that I wouldn't actually want to live here. I'm not really sure why I think that.

When we were in medical school, one of my colleagues was in the military, and discovered that if you didn't match into any of the military programs, you could go through the general match process and get into a civilian one. He thought, no problem, and just didn't interview at any of the military programs, so that he could match into a civilian program closer to his family. Great idea, right?

Except...

He was one wicked smart guy. In the top ranks of our class, good CV, excellent board scores. He looked so good on paper, in fact, that at least one of the military programs ranked him without even meeting him. And he matched in Hawaii.

I always have felt kind of bad for him in that Hawaii and Iowa are a long way apart. And that was the same year I matched into a program I wasn't expecting (although, I ranked them third, it was kind of my fault. Or, at least I had a hand in it). And I can imagine being stuck on an island in the middle of the Pacific can be daunting for a Midwesterner. And certainly one person's paradise can be another one's hell.

But still.

I have distinct memories of a weekend sometime about January. I was in the middle of a q2 weekend, which meant I hadn't slept all night, and was due for another sleepless night of call the next day. I already hated my life and my program and felt for all the world like the worst resident ever. And I dig my damn car out of where it's been plowed in, and I drive home, and there's four fucking feet of snow in my driveway.

I thought of my friend from medical school at that moment. I thought of the night we'd spent out drinking with a bunch of our other friends during Senior Disorientation Week, and we talked about how we were both trying very hard to accept where we'd been sent, were trying to be optimistic, but when the veil of denial was lifted by a large bucket of something rum-containing and fruity with eight straws and half a bottle of maraschino cherries in it, neither of us was really very happy with the way things turned out.

I felt like FedExing him four feet of snow.

In the end, I lost touch with him, because I lost touch with almost everyone during that year, and he's not on Facebook (which is how I've managed to reconnect with a lot of my classmates). I still think about him once in a while. He was a good guy, and a good friend, and I hope that in the end, his misstep worked out as well as mine ultimately did. I thought about asking if anyone knew if he was still on the island, but his residency should be over, and I expect that he isn't.

Besides, how would I explain that big soggy box he got intern year?

Wordless...or, you know, not...

My folks and I drove up the coast today, circled back and hit the Pali lookout, then doubled back towards Pearl City. I kept stopping and shooting like 100 pictures at a time. I shot a total of 600 or so (well, since we got here, but mostly today).

But do you think I remembered to put the SD card back in my netbook before I came to Starbucks to check email? ::sigh::

Tomorrow. Pictures. Really.

This morning started out kind of poorly. I got an email from my dog sitter saying that my electricity had been turned off. So, apparently, when we thought we'd fixed the billing problem last month, we were mistaken. Fine, fine, so I tried again to pay it online, and couldn't get my bank card to work, which I discovered was because my apartment complex cashed both the check they said they lost as well as the check I wrote them because I lost the first one. And apparently, also, Gomer's former employer (he got a new job when the gym closed) has started billing me for my training contract again, despite the fact that I was told it was nullified in May.

Do you know how hard it is to handle that sort of shit from like 5000 miles away?

But we got it taken care of. Or, at least the power is turned back on. And apparently Bank of America will credit back the check amount (although not the resultant overdraft fee, bastards). I'll deal with the gym tomorrow.

(PS - Rod Stewart's "Maggie May" is playing here in the Starbucks, which is of course the song that gave my dog her middle name (although we spell it Mae). I miss my dog.)

And the day got better. We piled in the Subaru and wandered around, as I said, stopping like every ten feet so I could shoot the equivalent of a couple of rolls of film. I so totally heart digital. And especially my Rebel. I'm still working out the finer points of dSLR photography ("Wait, the f stop means what, again?"), but I'm rather pleased with the results.

And in typical fashion for my family, there was much getting lost and trying to read maps and - Claudia, you'll appreciate this - many, many, many U-turns. Then we came home for naps. I wandered around the main street for a little while, looking for whatever caught my eye, and found a really very neat little pendant that I bargained down to $10. Now I just need to find a chain, but then, I did need a goal for tomorrow...

I fly back a week from tomorrow. I'm a little sad about that, frankly.

Oh, and I need someone to pick me up from the airport. I guess I should start asking people about that....

"In 20 years, there will be a pork roast in your luggage."

So here's a funny story.

I've been to Hawaii a couple of times before. My parents are big fans (understandably), and so whenever they have enough frequent flier miles accrued and can finagle the timeshare, we go. This has worked out to I think four times in my life (they went once without me. I think this is my fourth trip, although I'm not entirely sure...). And having done this a couple of times, they've learned a few tricks. Not the least of which is that everything on the island is expensive, so we tend to pad our suitcases with some staple items that we can buy cheaper here. The timeshare always has a kitchenette, so we eat what we take and then have room in the suitcases to bring stuff back that we acquire there. Makes sense, right? For this trip (which is really the first time I've gone as an adult), I have spaghetti, sauce, peanut butter and strawberry preserves, etc.

About 13 years ago (holy shit...), we went after I graduated from high school, and we took Claudia along (because what 17 year old wants to be stuck on an island with her parents for two weeks when she could be exploring the city of Honolulu with her best friend, boarding surreal buses full of people who don't speak English and having sketchy guys offer them weed on street corners?). Which, great, we fly in, we get there, and we're at the condo unpacking, and my mother produces from their suitcase...a pork roast.

Claud and I were like, what??

They'd frozen it here, packed it in a cooler, and dragged the frozen hunk of meat like 6000 miles. Which had more or less thawed by the time we got there. Which was, apparently, the plan.

Claudia was fairly baffled by this. I kind of rolled my eyes - after all, they were *my* parents (I was a little more used to them. Suffice it to say, neurotic apples do not fall far from their trees). Although...in retrospect...I'm not sure I actually ate the pork roast. I don't think they ever did convince me that no food safety rules were breached by letting the thing ride in the cargo hold...

I had a really nice day in Chicago today. I bought a new 75-300 zoom lens for the Rebel. Claudia and I drove out to our favorite restaurant from my college days, just over the Indiana border, and then we drove around my college campus for a while (wow, have they made some interesting architectural choices...). And then we met up with the whole crew for dinner, including my two completely adorable nephews, who are now one and three (again, holy crap). We ate, we laughed, we talked, we had a good, good, good time. And they made fun of me for packing food in my suitcase, which led to the comment that became the title of this post.

Gosh, I miss y'all up here.

And then, in like 7 hours, my uncle (the actual, genetic one) is coming to take us to the airport, so we can all spend a really long time on a plane. And then be in Hawaii.

I don't think there are any pork products stowing away in our luggage this time, though....

GB

So today was the little Greek gathering. There ended up being about 30 of us. It was loud, and funny, and a heck of a good time. My aunt Aphrodite gave a speech about how all of her bridesmaids' daughters turned out to be doctors, because no one ever told us we couldn't do it, so we did it!

I laughed, because, well, plenty of people have told us (or at least me) we couldn't do it. Or shouldn't, as it were.

Our generation has finally stopped caring, is all.

I love being Greek, even when I don't like it so much. We're loud and outspoken and emotive and all about family and our people invented art and democracy and all other things that are good (don't believe me? Ask any Greek you know. Go on, ask them). We're critical and passive-aggressive and we may even do a better job of guilt than the Jews, but we're there when you need us (and we'll bring food). We're pushy and full of life and we assimilate everyone we can and we're out to feed the world. Opa!!

(I'm thinking of offering a class for Greeks entitled, "What needs to not be unsaid" (yes, that's deliberately convoluted). Lessons will include things like "You're welcome to take credit for my success if you want, the line forms over there," "No, really, I'm not actually a kid anymore (although you're welcome to continue to think of me as 'Little Katy')" and "It's really okay to say 'I'm proud of you' instead of 'don't let us down.'" The advanced class, which I'm thinking of calling "What we can learn from the white people," will have offerings such as "Catastrophizing: when it's okay to not make everything into a crisis," "Toning down the histrionics," and "You really don't have to bring up everything I've ever done wrong because I apparently took a 'tone' with you.")

It was a wonderful time. We ate and caught up and laughed and told stories. We stayed until they started breaking down our tables. And I got presents, which, bonus.

It's been a good week at home.

More fun.

More good times tonight. It's 1am (for all those of you who are apparently keeping track of my nightlife, a-HEM) and I just got home from the city. Ahh, the life of a socialite....

I had a lovely breakfast out with my folks, after unintentionally sleeping in (so needed it!), and then spent the morning teaching my 76 year old father how to set up and use his very first iPod, a tiny silver Shuffle which I bought him for Christmas, and giving my mom a tour of Facebook. They both were quick studies. Then I stood in line for a while at the Verizon store only to discover that I can't upgrade my phone for another 8 days, and then headed towards the tall part of the state (we have the world's tallest building, here, you know. Spires so don't count). I spent the whole afternoon with Claudia - we went to lunch (Lalo's, for those of you familiar. Yum), and then to Target (one with the cart escalators! Those crack me up) and then for coffee. I knit, she tolerated it well. We chatted. We looked for husbands in the Reader, but did not find any. We then met up with my cousins (not my genetic cousins, but the daughters of my "aunt" and "uncle" who live in NC) and a couple of their friends for dinner and drinks. Good company, good beer, good food, Northside night life. You can't beat it.

It's almost a shame I have to go back to my real life in two days. But, they'd probably notice I was missing at work....

(PS, Peng - don't forget you have to pick me up at the airport!)

Preparations

So I'm post call. I left the hospital around 11:30, came home, picked up the girls, ran some errands together (Maxine was excited about the bank). Then we came home, ate some lunch, and napped for a while. I dragged my sorry ass out of bed around 4 and made it over to A Southern Season, who was having a lovely after Christmas sale, made a panicked trip to Wal-Mart because I decided I didn't like the suitcases I had, and then came home and packed.

It would appear I have a stowaway....

Sadly, I don't think they'd let me take her in my carry on, either.

"What?"

Cute Thursday

I had a very cute vacation day. It was nice.

I got up, and went to my shrink's office (we're trying to squeeze as many sessions in as we can this week while I have, you know, time. It's not that I'm that crazy). And got a visit from the very cute cat who hangs out outside her office, I suspect because my shrink feeds her and it was time for breakfast. But she's this adorable little black thing, and this morning I noticed that she was missing the top of her left ear. So I said, oh! She must be an Operation Catnip cat!


(Not my shrink's random stray cat, actually my friend's ex-random-stray-cat-turned-housecat, Max, who IS an Operation Catnip cat)

No, she says, that's a raccoon nip.

Hmm. Not the same. But apparently she is altered, and she's awfully darn cute. Sometimes she comes to the window during our sessions and "listens" intently. It feels sometimes like I'm getting two therapists for the price of one.


But I think she's actually trying to get me to feed her by the sheer power of her kitten telepathy.

I then came home and met up with my psuedo-aunt and we set out in search of decent pizza, which she assured me we could find at this place called Z Pizza. It was good, actually. New York style, but, it'll do.

We then went wandering around Bond Park, which is nearby their house and is very nice and has this cool amphitheater where they occasionally have concerts.


The trails left a little to be desired - they weren't very clearly marked and were in desperate need of mulching after the winter, although a few of them had been. But it was a nice walk.


I ended up taking a lot of pictures of trees and roots and funky stuff, because not a lot is in bloom there yet. Although the Dogwood are. Isn't this the Dogwood state? I think it is...



We did see a couple of cute little lizards. I wasn't fast enough with the camera to get pictures of them.

So then we went to Starbucks, and then to a very cute used book store, where I only spent $8 and only acquired two hardcovers. It was actually one of the best used bookstores I've been in - clean, very well organized, didn't have piles of random books lying all over the floor (like this place I used to go to in Chicago. Or, say, my house). And they had a lot of current stuff - I could easily have spent a day's pay or so there (remember, they don't pay me much per hour, but I work a lot of 'em in a day). It's called Mr. Mike's Used Books and if you live in the Triangle, you must check it out.

So then I dropped her off and went to get groceries and I happened to notice the little shop next door happened to be open and they're always advertising that they sell Danskos, and, well, even though I keep falling off of my Danskos, I'm really getting sick of wearing my tennis shoes to work. So I went in. And I found these very cute shoes:



They're called Aravons and they're made by New Balance (of course). And they're JUST WICKED COMFORTABLE. They have memory foam inserts and just enough heel and are adjustable width throughout the whole instep and foot and oh, I'm so excited to wear them to work on Monday. I'm going to have to paint my toenails tomorrow.

I did ultimately go to the grocery store, and was checked out by the cutest adolescent boy on the planet. And not in that, Kate-stop-thinking-that-you're-almost-thirty! way, but he was just adorable. He was nineteen and has lived here for about 6 years but before that he lived in Mass (-achusetts) and you know he still kind of had the accent but he really liked it here because the winters were awful and oh, I had lived in New Hampshire, so yeah, I knew all about the winters, man, the snow up in NH was terrible holy cow they'd get four feet and not even call it a flurry and you know he used to go through like a container of Parmesan cheese a week because that was like all he would eat that and this spray butter on pasta did I remember that spray butter because that stuff was wicked good and man whatever happened to that stuff it was this one particular kind with the blue top and it was like actual butter not that greasy nasty mess you can sometimes still find. The whole thing amused me so.

And then, of course, as is customary when I go to that grocery store, I pick up a hamburger combo from the little place next door and I get Maggie a cheeseburger, and I don't even have to tell you, that's always a cute event. But tonight, I was ripping it into bite sized piece and tossing them in her food dish and Maggie was bouncing up and down and for some reason, she really wanted the pieces I was holding over the ones already in her dish. So I gave her one, and she galloped back to her crate to eat it, and then came back, and begged for me to give her another one, and did the same thing. And by then all the hamburger was torn up and in her bowl, so she gave up and just ate it out of there. But the whole thing was, in fact, way too cute.

::sigh:: It was a nice day.

Zzzzzz....

I slept through today.

So not kidding.

Woke up at 9:30. Got up. Went to see my shrink. Came home. Slept. Until I woke up, and then took a nap. And then I fell asleep. I'd better get up so I can go to bed....

Ahh, vacation...