I’m back after what felt like a brief hiatus but maybe was longer than I thought? I have been really busy relaxing and most importantly enjoying having Brian back.
Brian came home the day before Thanksgiving. So while I was prepping for that meal I was also prepping for his homecoming (filling the fridge with Beer, making a sign, cleaning then making a mess and cleaning again, baking cookies for homecoming).
Homecoming is as chaotic as it sounds. Millions of kids eager for their dad’s to get home. Waiting for the boat to be slowly pulled in by the tug and to dock and then the bridge put up… I think it was hours between me waiting at Missing Man monument. The first two pictures above are from that point, it’s the best point in my opinion to watch them first come in. There is a cafe and bathrooms. No shade at all (recall this is where I became a lobster that one time). However, there is a tree that you can take cover while you wait. My friend Caitlyn made a last minute decision to make a sign, so I joined her. I think it came out ok all things considered (I made one on both sides, but you’ll have to wait for the Christmas card the see the other side). Brian commented the bright letters were hard to see, so I’ve made note for next time 😉
I managed to get in the car and drive just a couple MPH over speed limit (bases are really strict) to get to the pier to watch them pull in with the lei on.
There were sandwiches and drinks and cookies me and another family made. However I didn’t eat because I ate at the cafe earlier, and your stomach is kinda in knots anyway. I bought a submarine cookie cutter. Turns out Hawaii heat and humidity is not a good match for sugar cookies, but we managed. The periscopes fall off pretty easily, something to keep in mind for future transiting.
Finally, after what felt like hours (I think maybe two in seriousness), the sailors started coming off. What emotional chaos! So many moments I captured and I won’t post for privacy reasons, but there are a couple that give you the gist.
It was certainly good practice, but it was a huge photography challenge! I was able to get Caitlyn to capture ours. I don’t think it’s all that exciting, but you can be the judge.
I definitely cried upon hugging him, to which he said “It’s only been a month”. *cue eye roll*
After this it’s still not over, and it was another 45 minutes of him making sure the boat was good before we could go home.
There are sailors who need to stay even longer to shut down the reactor. Then some have “pull in duty” where they can’t even go home until the next day (the boat is never completely empty of sailors for obvious reasons).
The next day we had Thanksgiving. I made the turkey in our Traeger grill and it came out OUTSTANDING. We hosted one friend who’s husband is deployed as well. I have stuffing and the turkey NAILED. I also made apple crisp and mashed potatoes, gravy, and cranberry sauce. My friend brought green beans and sweet potato and a pecan pie. I started the Turkey really early, I was really anxious about the day and cooking it for some reason… well it ended up being ready by 11:30am so we kinda had Thanksgiving brunch. Honestly it worked out. Once we finished, we played a board game (Burgle brothers, it’s my fave) and then Jess left Brian and I to relax for the remaining afternoon/evening.
We also made some family phone calls. Super thankful to have Brian home for a bit.
It’s been rainy these past few days, like all day instead of passing showers. I told myself that I’d go to museums once this weather hit, so Jess and I chose the Bishop Museum. The Bishop museum is a museum dedicated to Hawaiian culture and history. It was really impressive, I thought it would be a lot smaller.
There are multiple buildings and a big field. The first building we explored was the natural history part. I didn’t take many pictures inside, but the exhibits were centered around this big volcano model and all about the ecology of Hawaii. I didn’t realize that the chain of islands was formed because the tectonic plates would move between volcanic eruptions. I also found out that there will be a new island likely in 100-300k years from now. Buy the real estate now, people!
Then we ventured into the actual Bishop building. It started as a place to train the Hawaiian army and then turned into a boy’s school.
We saw a neat exhibit on Polynesian tattoos and one on the Hawaiian royalty succession. Then we made it to the great hall, which has three floors dedicated to Hawaiian living (the Gods, the farming/fishing, etc)
We also encountered Parley, an organization trying to reuse microplastics. We had a really great conversation with them. They’re trying to melt and give a second life to the plastics washing up in our oceans. We were able to take home a carabiner (he’s injecting the plastic into the mold for these in this next picture) and we want to go back and ask for a plastic slab they made to use for a project (I’ll post about this at a different time if it works out).
They can also make bricks, but right now their quality isn’t great. They’re supposed to snap together, but my guess is the tolerance of the molds and material fluctuation is too high and often they don’t fit together. We think they should use them as planters.
After, we ventured to Kaka’ako for some food at SALT. SALT is similar to Quincy Market or Bow Market in Somerville, it’s like a big restaurant food court. We landed at Moku, and I had delicious ahi tacos. I wasn’t a fan that it’s counter service (you order, take a number, and they bring it to you). The nice thing about SALT is there are a couple garages that do parking validation. Sundays street parking is free and we were able to find a couple spots as well.
Today we went to Ho’okua’aina, a kalo (taro) farm in Kailua. We helped with weeding the lo’i, kalo fields.
We started with learning abouth the aina (land) and kalo plant in the hale. We sat in a circle and gave our names and which aina we claim as our home. We also talked about why we were there, and my answer was because I wanted to learn more about the land and give back to Hawaiians as a small thank you and out of respect for being able to live here.
Then the work began! The mud kalo mounds are surrounded by moats or trenches. These can get up to waist deep; the ones we were working in made it up to my knee, and thigh for some of the shorter people joining us.
We pulled up weeds and put them in buckets or off to the side as best we could.
There were all sorts of animals… frogs, tadpoles, and ducks were the most common that we saw. I attempted to keep the mud off of things but that became a lost cause in short order. My camera survived, however, and we were fortunate to be able to shower most of the mud off there before getting in our cars.
What a day this was! I gave my camera a good sponge bath after this. I think I’ll go back but more prepared this time for just how fast things get muddy. We have a lot of people who want to go again, so I think there will be more.
Wouldn’t be a proper birthday without starting with a sunrise walk!
I had to do a little bit of work, but then I took a half day and mid afternoon Jess picked me up for our grand Birthday adventure! We started with a hike to Likeke Falls with the grand plan to loop to Old Pali Rd or go back down and up Old Pali. At one point, the path splits and you have to follow the arrow to the right to find the falls.
The trail was not muddy, but sometimes this can be a disadvantage because there’s nothing to dig into and it ends up being slippery. Between the roots and rocks we made it without falling.
0.4 miles in and we made it! Really quick hike. I specifically chose this because I knew it was relatively easy and I wanted a low risk, high reward hike for my birthday. November is supposed to be the rainy season, but we haven’t received much, so the falls were pretty dry, but SO beautiful.
I chose my attire so that Brian would be there in spirit.
The water was cooler than ocean water, but pleasantly refreshing. The rocks weren’t slippery at all, which seems strange from what I’m used to in New England. Decision time, go down and find Old Pali or cut across? We decided to cut across because the trail was actually stone lined. The path itself isn’t an official trail in all trails, though, so we were going a bit into the unknown. I actually also decided to try my micro spikes on the way back (down is slipperier). Let me tell you, after putting those on I felt like Spiderwoman. Which is great because that was about to come in handy. Soon after stones the path became overgrown with leaves.
I know this picture doesn’t reveal much, but see how the path disappears in front of the tree? It’s a very steep uphill there. Hard to get good footing to get a picture, so just use your imagination. This is where my spikes really came in handy.
Little did we know we had to go down a very steep decline.
I learned that really leaning back on your way down so your feet are more horizontally planted and having cleats makes you feel like you can do anything (don’t worry, parents, had I slipped I would’ve merely landed at the bottom, unlike some Hawaii hikes where I would’ve landed 5K feet off a ridge).
Thankfully after this decent we were right on Old Pali, and now you can see pictures of it!
After this point, there’s a little shortcut to the left you’re supposed to take to get back to the parking… but we ended up walking all the way down to walk back up again. We also came across a father and son harvesting start fruit from a tree (the father is taking this picture). They let us each take two home.
Next we headed to get pizza at Pizza Mamo in Chinatown. I’ve heard a couple people recommend this place, and the real reason we went was because it was near where I wanted to get my cake. We parked at this lot and paid, but the receipt didn’t print… on point with Hawaii. Retrospectively we should’ve found a meter.
Anyway, we pre ordered the pizza leaving the hike and it was ready upon arrival. We originally tried to eat outside, but the sun was scorching us. So we moved inside, but then the guy told us about this place with a courtyard next door that would let us sit there. Turns out it’s a really cool Mexican bar place called Encore Saloon that we decided we’d love to go back to.
The pizza flavor was DELICIOUS. I am personally a thicker crust fan. We also worked up an appetite from the hike, so it was extra delicious. Chinatown was interesting… there was a homeless man outside PizzaMamo that was yelling a lot. But there were all these little hidden gems of restaurants. It was relatively quiet. We’ll definitely go back.
Then we made our way to Slice by HB Baking. I have had my eyes on this place for a while. Go look at their Instagram! They are ice cream cakes of complete decadence. Jess wanted to get two slices, but I encouraged us to start with one, and she ended up agreeing with me. This was pumpkin pecan ice cream, some fall flavored pound cake, and banana pudding with the best whipped cream frosting I’ve ever had. 11/10 would go back here.
Finally, as if all that wasn’t enough, we made it back to Lanikai in time to fit in some snorkeling.
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And even got a birthday honu! (It was really cloudy for some reason today, and the sun was behind clouds, so hard to see)
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I was in my pajamas by 6pm. I’ve been joking about how this sure beats any rainy November New England Birthday 😉
Not pictured/documented are the communications on a variety of platforms I received and the presents I opened.
I obviously missed having my best friend with me, and communication has been rough/non existent the last week or so. But he managed a couple Happy Birthday emails (in case one didn’t get through).
Here’s a throwback to our probably third date? We went for mimosa flights for my birthday at Friendly Toast in Cambridge and made it a tradition… well sort of… until COVID ruined it.
Let me start by saying that every year I feel loved on my birthday, and I know that that’s what matters. And that this day was GREAT. I had such an awesome time. This is just a reflection on them in general. The past couple were a bit tough, I think because I was hoping someone would’ve planned or done something for my 30th (they didn’t) and there were quarantine shenanigans (I actually had a nice lobster dinner that year, so actually that was great). I don’t know why it feels like I’m missing out on something… I think because I see “all” these people on social get parties planned for them, or surprised, or have something special, and it makes me feel like no one cares to go through the extra effort for me, and I don’t really get why. Ever since I lost my last best friends to weird circumstances, I feel like I haven’t been able to truly find that again (Brian is not much of a celebrator, nor was their family growing up, so it’s something I have decided not to expect from him). So I have no “bestie” to do things like that that seemingly everyone else does. Anyway, I’ve always just owned my birthday celebrations, because when I don’t I’m disappointed. I was sad Brian wasn’t there to experience these things with me, but it was the perfect day otherwise, and God has filled the hole with a new friend who was thankfully down for my crazy plans for the day. I’m not sure what I feel like I’m missing not having someone that would plan a party for me, but I think it comes down to social media and just how high expectations get set, and maybe feeling like I still don’t quite have a bestie. Again, this is simply a reflection and not meant to say I don’t feel like I’m loved or that I didn’t have an awesome day, because that’s certainly not true. My 32nd was a blast and I don’t think anyone could’ve planned it better/done anything to make me enjoy it more, and I felt completely loved. So I’m not sure what this dissonance is really about, but I’m sure it has something to do with social media. Anyway, here’s to hoping year 33 is a little less tumultuous.
Last Sunday a couple friends and I went to a Sip and Spill workshop with Design Management Hawaii where we drank wine and made a resin craft of our choosing. It was harder and easier than I thought. Basically you start with mixing the resin (equal parts of two things, I forget what) and then mix colors and add shimmer if desired.
Pour the resin in the desired layering.
Use the heat gun but don’t go back and forth go straight on (I had a surprisingly hard time with this, I thought back and forth was the motion) and be careful not to burn the resin (which I ended up doing, but she fixed it)
Then you blow torch it to add bubbles. Mix and repeat for desired effect.
I was obviously pretty busy with my craft, it takes about 30mins to harden, so you have to work somewhat quickly. But I did manage to get the ladies to take a couple pictures.
Here’s my friend Jess using good old man power to blow hers.
Here we’re stuff some silicone molds with leftover resin to make snowflakes… I’m very pumped about this because I have a good friend who loves teal I’m going to send one to.
You can use your finger to start the blending process before blowing. Or anytime really. This is my other friend Jess hard at work.
This is the wine we tried, it’s from the same salt and cellar company I tried during apple dipping. The board is an example from last class that Jess and I were aiming for. I wish I had known that the resin spread more and to use less. I also wish I had a practice go at it. But overall I’m pleased with the result, and the idea is to use it as a serving platter so there’ll be food on it anyway. I had Stanfield laser engraved on it, I’m picking up the final result in the next day or two and might update this post with it.
my result
I also bought this really awesome tray that came from the St. Regis Princeville resort on Kauai. It was bought and rebranded and no longer exists as the St. Regis Princeville. I thought it a really cool momento. The resin inside was done by an artist.
After the previously very active and eventful caramel apple dipping event, I went to Henna and Wine the next night with KOSC. Much more low key. Henna refers to the die used to make temporary tattoos. Typically seen in Indian weddings.
I asked for a turtle and hibiscus on my foot. The first picture is it with the black henna “ink”. Then it starts to crust and you flake it off to leave a reddish toned tattoo.
P.S. people, if there is ever a dirty plate in the picture when I ask you to take a group photo, MOVE IT. Thanks 🙂
A lot more low key event, the henna each takes like 6-8 minutes, it’s really quick. We ate apps, my caramel apples, and drank wine. We also eventually played telestrations and cards against humanity.
I guess it’s fall, isn’t it? I think being in San Diego for most of October, “fall” has flown by. There is a slight crisp in the air in the morning, it’s getting down to 75 deg, and at night and the sunsets so early… 6pm… 😉 By the way, we don’t time change, so now you East Coasters are only 5 hours off from me.
Well, I managed to pull myself into one fall event, caramel apple dipping. What a process! I think she makes it more intricate than it needs to be… but basically:
Melt Caramel
Prepare toppings if necessary
De-wax apple
Add chopsticks for sticks
Prepare toppings mix in a bowl
Dip apple in caramel, let drip/clean off excess
Immediately dip in coating mix and smoosh on once caramel starts to be too hard
Let cool in fridge/cooler
Melt chocolate and add chocolate drizzle
I’m not typically a huge caramel fan, but this one was subtle enough and the coating flavors drowned it out.
We started with a wine pairing session. There is a spouse who reps for Scout and Cellar and picked out three wines to match three pre-made caramel apples. (the apples were left just peanuts, middle bacon, chocolate, spiced nuts, right tropical with coconut, ginger, white chocolate). The wines were good, none really stood out to me but that’s because I’m not a huge real wine fan (I’m a huge sweet wine fan, like sangria or truro wine)
Then we moved into the assembly. Here’s a pic from almost every part of the process.
I did this event with SOSA (submarine officer spouses group). I don’t often get to see them because they plan events during the day. This was a nice Friday night event. Thankfully I was going to an event the next day and brought the apples (they were a huge hit). I would never finish eating them all on my own!
I would never do this by myself. Way too much of a mess and prep work. Woof! We were there for a total of 3 and a half hours. Maybe one day when I have kids but I can’t imagine the experience getting better with that…
I can sometimes feel out of place at SOSA events. These ladies tend to be a little classier and on another level than I am. For example, I brought pupus (the word for appetizers here) and made spanikopita (from frozen, not homemade… sorry fam). I put them in a tupperware, not really thinking much of it. Well, it felt like everyone else brought theirs on their finest China display platter… It was a bit embarrassing. I guess I just didn’t think the occasion called for one. No one said a word about it, and I’m sure I’m one of the only who picked up on it… but it’s one of those things. There were other things that went on that were just off putting that I can really talk about here, but I’ll say I just don’t feel I can be truly authentic with them sometimes. It was a lot of fun and I’m glad I did it. KOSC is definitely becoming more my people. When I brought these apples to Henna and wine (see other post), I literally just displayed them on a bright green cutting board and it was totally acceptable among the other food displays.
A friend of a friend is in Hawaii (this seems to happen a lot) and she wanted to go see the waves on the North Shore because there were 15-20ft swells. So, we ventured up there last Wednesday. We stopped at my favorite Acai bowl spot, Hale’iwa bowls for a quick lunch, and then tried to view turtles at Laniakea. Turns out that during high tide and high swells there isn’t much room left for turtles, so there weren’t any out to play.
Then we ventured up to Sunset beach where she was told there would be a lot of surfers. However, on our way there we passed a beach park that was really active. We kept going anyway, but there was next to no one at sunset beach… so we backtracked to that busy beach and found street parking. This turned out to be the Bonzai Pipeline beach (also known as Ehukai beach). There were still only two surfers and two boogey borders and a ton of spectators. But, the waves were super impressive and fun to observe. The surfers are really far off from shore, so even as good as my zoom lens is, these are cropped which adds to the blurriness.
The surfers that were there did not surf a lot… there could be a million reasons why, but those first few pictures were a lucky grab from basically right when we sat down. So I took probably a million pictures of the waves, trying to capture the essence just right. Here are some pictures of just waves.
The white thing on this one’s head is a helmet.
This gives you better perspective of just how far away they are. There is still a lot of sand you don’t see.
Here’s a boogey boarder.
The waves created so much splash mist it looks like it’s raining.
What a sight to see. 10/10 recommend experiencing this once in your life. The swells don’t come often right now, I keep checking to see when the next one will be and it won’t be until well into November. I’m hoping Brian can make one day work, it’s just outstanding to watch. Glad Anna was there to push me to go see this one!
I recorded some video and captured good waves, you’ll see a boogey boarder at 30 ish seconds in.
I’m not sure if I mentioned this but I’m head KOSC hiking coordinator. After the last debacle that was Old Pali, I really wanted to scope out this hike before doing with with a group. So Jess and I went for a hike to check it out! It’s five miles long, but not a lot of elevation gain (my watch recorded 866ft total). The difficulty here is the length and the technical side, which it can be really muddy. When we went, it was fortunately not muddy at all. However, the hike I have planned is for later in November, and November is supposed to be really rainy…
Anyway, per recommendations on AllTrails, we parked at the bottom end of the loop and walked up toward the entrance. This way, you can end without having to walk back up the road to your car. Great advice. To get to the hike itself you enter a park/campground and drive up quite a ways, so the views are pretty spectacular without having to work hard.
There were quite a few offshoots to go closer to the edge of the ridges. It definitely has the potential to be really muddy, and there were a few very root-y places, but overall it was very nicely even dirt.
This is by far my favorite shot.
Along the way there are remains from a plane crash from WWII.
And then we saw a group of people picking fruit. We asked them about it and they gave us some, I guess they are guava berries. They followed us a bit afterward and pointed out a fruit that was more oval and said “Don’t eat those, those are poisonous”. The thought didn’t even cross my mind to think if the first food was poisonous, but thankfully I am here to tell you it wasn’t. I’ll make sure I don’t go eating random fruit off trails.
The scenery was also diverse along the way and some of the tree groves were just beautiful.
I loved loved loved this hike. Only some parts of it would be technically challenging in mud. I did borrow hiking poles from Jess, and am now convinced I’ll be buying myself some for future hikes. I brought my shoe spikes but definitely didn’t need them. I didn’t fall or slip.
As I started taking family shoots I realized it could make a great FRG fundraiser. So I offered my time and skills to the FRG and they took me up on it! We did 15 minute increments and six families signed up over a course of two days. Let me tell you, I don’t want to edit again for a while.
I say that, but I think part of it was the location we picked (Kamehameha Beach on Hickam). It ended up being “busy” (relative term for a military beach, it was actually pretty quiet for a Hawaii beach). I had to edit out a few people and a big, blue sun shade tent out of probably 25 pictures. Phew!
Each family paid $40 and I received $20 and the FRG received $20. I gave them all edited photos of my choosing, we guaranteed three good ones but most of the time they ended up with more.
Day one ended up being one couple and we had the bench set up in a weird way, and I feel bad because it made the pictures a little misaligned. Basically, either the horizon was horizontal or the bench was horizontal. If the Horizon was, the tree looked crooked. Anyway, we ended up shifting the set up on this little patch of sand. However, by the end with the rising tide the sand bar disappeared. You can see here my horizon line is still a little crooked. I did rotate in post processing, but obviously not perfect!
I’m learning that there are limitations to the software I chose. There are basic things I wish it did, like I think other software will auto rotate for the horizon with a click of a button. I think other software can also blur faces. I chose the software I did because it uses AI to enhance photos, so I can let the algorithm take care of most of what I need. I also picked it because it’s not subscription, so I paid once and don’t have to pay monthly. It’s the part of me that doesn’t want to pay for months I didn’t use, although I’ve been using my photo editor quite often (more than I realized).
Anyway, we fixed the horizon/bench issue by moving the scenery. However, other issues were that back to the left where you see the bushes was the huge bright blue sun shade tent. Also, the bright sun made it difficult for people to open their eyes to look at me, but it was the best lighting and again best for horizon lines. All things to learn and think about!
There were a ton of great shots that came out of these sessions and the families were so much fun. I’m really proud of the work I’ve been doing and think for $40 the results were on par with the value (especially including all that editing time).
I might ask permission to share more photos, but you at least get the gist of the shoot with the above one. Great learning experience, and it’s very interesting the time difference between shooting a couple and a family. I also was worried I wouldn’t have enough poses on the bench, but we did the shaka and sometimes isolated kids and did kisses. Then we also took people away from that and did spontaneous shots like dancing, jumping, walking, etc. I felt a little weird when I ended up with so much time after a session! But they go quicker when it’s not a full on family shoot.
