Read This

Book #14 of the year, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, was a spring break favorite. A little Flannery O'Connor, a little mystery, and a lot interesting. Read it.

The Tsunami

I finished up the previous post, still very relaxed from 3 glasses of rioja, and got ready for bed. I read through my RSS feed as I drank a few bottles of water to rehydrate, and as I turned off the TV to go to sleep, my dad called and said there had been anearthquake and a possible tsunami.

Now, if you know my dad you know he doesn't always listen to the details...so I didn't really think much of it. But, a quick search of the googles and I knew he was right. Our hotel was directly on the beach on Waikiki, and another quick search showed we were in the tsunami inundation zone. I didn't know what to think...I had watched last February when the tsunami was nothing but a few big waves on the beach, but I had also

seen footage of the Indonesian tsunami. Actually, the think that instant

ly came to mind was Nate from Oprah telling his story about losing his partner in the tsunami. Not sure why that stuck out, but it did.

The hour or two after hearing about the tsunami was cha

otic. My dad said he was packing so I followed suit. He was on the phone with the airline, deciding if we should stay or go. Eventually, after hearing th

e area would be shut down, we decided to go. We drove to the

airport, which seemed to be opene

d, and tried to get a hotel room. All of the hotels at the airport were full. We drove around for a while, eventually making the decision we were best off back at the hotel.

Civil defense sirens had been blaring hourly since about 10 PM, and as we drove back into Waikiki around 1:45 AM, cops were on the street making lo

udspe

aker announcements to clear the streets. We made our way back to the 14th floor, littered with refugees from lower floors curled up with their comforters in the hallway. I knew we were going to try to fly out around 6 AM, so I tried to get some sleep until the event started. It was diffic

ult because every 15 minutes or so the hotel made annou

ncements over an intercom system...I had no idea the intercom even existed.

Around 3 AM I got up and went out on the balcony. It was ca

lm, and lots of people were on their balconies watching. There were a few helicopters in the sky, beaming light down on Waikiki. I'm not sure if the were sweeping the beach for people or checking out the surf. At one point four or five people from a

hotel down the way got in the water, but as soon as the helicopter appeared they got out again.

The event itself wasn't really that dramatic, although it was interesting. You could see the water receding, being drawn out by some unseen force. When it came back it sounded like a freight train, but the waves didn't come up too high. I watched this hap

pen a few times, the water turning foamy near the shore, but other than the receding and waves coming back, it was really a nonevent on Waikiki. Which was great. Around 4 I went back to sleep, and by 5:30 we left for the airport.

The pictures aren't great, taken in the dark of night with a camera phone, but they do show a bit of the strangeness of the ocean, and the helicopters flying around.

Gotta Say...

Gotta say...despite the cold I have I just enjoyed an a.m.a.z.i.n.g. dinner at The Beachhouse at the Moana. I am clinging to a piece of research I read that says that moderate exercise during a cold helps to shorten the duration, so I spent 30 minutes or so on the elliptical today hoping that I would be able to better enjoy the last few days I have in Waikiki...

and enjoy I did. The appetizer was a bowl of Maui onion soup which I shared with my mom, and for mains a filet mignon (again, shared with my mom) which was cooked per.fect.ly. Sides were parmesan mashed potatoes and garlic butter/cayenne fresh corn. Mmm.mmm.mmm. Along side...a few glasses of an outstanding rioja. And for dessert? Yep...rum creme brulee. delish.

And the atmosphere...grand. A banyan tree in the courtyard, uplit, music....a beautiful dinner.

Sick.

Ick. I hate being sick...especially on vacation. My mom has had what sounds like whooping cough (it's not) the whole time we've been here, and I finally caught a bug. I can't complain too much though because there's no better time to be sick than when you have absolutely nothing to do.

So, the plan is to wait it out on the beach. I drove around the eastern part of Oahu yesterday, and have been toying with the idea of making it to Pearl Harbor at some point, but today the idea of sitting on a chair and maybe reading is winning out due to said cold.

On Tuesday I sat on my chair and finished book #13, The Oracle of Stamboul. I really enjoyed it...there was kind of an ominous feel as though the protagonist could fall into danger in any number of ways at any moment, but it never happened. I would highly recommend it. I'm not sure what today's reading adventure will be yet.

Beach Books

I continued Books 10 and 11 today (Greg Boyd where have you been all my life? and um, Jay-Z, boooooring), and read #12, Michael Pollan's Food Rules. It's short, and if you've read his other books, repetitive. Not a bad reminder though.

I am writing this post from my balcony in Honolulu, and I could not be more grateful to be here right now. It's lightly raining this morning, but I have coffee, the air is warm, and the scenery gorgeous. I'm here solely due to my parents' generosity, and loving every second of it.

As I mentioned in the previous post, nothing went quite as planned yesterday, but it all turned out to be good. I woke up late, my flights were delayed, but I still made it and with little chaos (save the man behind me who thought I should not recline my seat and SHOVED it up when I did).

I also got some reading done. I finished Book #8, Super Sad True Love Story. I enjoyed it. It's futuristic, and somewhat depressing, but the main characters have something just quirky enough about them that they're loveable. I can't say it's my favorite ever though, and did take me a while to wade through reading bits and pieces here and there.

Book #9 was read on my LAX to HNL flight, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother. If you've watched any media at all you've heard about it. And I have to say, I think Amy Chua might be on to something. Not entirely, but at least in part. Why not assume strength and instill discipline in children? She certainly makes some glaring mistakes, but it seemed like an honest struggle on her part.

I started books #10 and #11, which couldn't really be more opposite. #10 is Greg Boyd's Present Perfect: Finding God in the Now, and #11 is Jay-Z's Decoded. Greg Boyd is definitely a better writer than Jay-Z, but I think I'll stick through Decoded, despite it being somewhat boring so far.

I have quite a few books with me (I will be protecting my Kindle from water with my life on this trip!), and am hoping to finish a few more while I'm here.

It's 6:45 and I'm an hour late...

So, I get kinda paranoid the night before I fly anywhere. I usually have a hard time getting to sleep, and wake up every couple of hours to make sure I really did set the alarm clock for the right time.

It was during one of those panics last night that I realized my alarm clock was flashing 12:00 AM. No good. It took me a minute to figure out what was going on, and I realized that the door to the battery compartment was missing, and the batteries were falling out. I shoved them back in and in the fog of sleep tried to figure out what to do next...turn the light on. Look at my watch. Try to remember how to set the time. The clock is atomic and given enough time usually sets itself, so I hadn't had to reset it for a while.

I glanced at my watch and saw that it was almost exactly 12:00 AM, so I set the clock for that, the alarm for 5:40, and went back to sleep.

And then I woke up...and the light in my entryway was on. It doesn't go on until 6:15 AM, the time when I had been planning to leave the house...yikes.

Long story short, I was late. My friend Jenni had been trying to contact me for about 20 minutes as she waited on my driveway, but I keep my phone in the living room so it doesn't wake me up, and somehow slept through the doorbell.

Thankfully I overplan so I had plenty of time and made it to the airport and through security to my gate by 7:10 for my 8:05 flight.