HOTEL WAIKIKI

*Just so you know you're at a safe site....

Happy Aloha Friday again.  The last happy Aloha Friday of the Summer.  For tonight's post, I want to discuss dairy blogs.  Opps, that's "diary" blogs....just re-checked the spelling.  Anyways, I don't personally care to hanai (adopt) a family on the Internet, and that's why I only follow a very few blogs that talk daily about their family members....lolo wife, pupule husband, their giraffe, rascal kids, etc.  That's not to say that I'm anti-family in an Internet kind of way.  However, there's that thing out there called real life too, and everybody everwhere has their own cast of characters within their ohana (family) with the associated plots and subplots.  For the rest of the world, in general, I'd have to TiVo their family episodes.

At any rate, I don't find diary blogs that recount 365 day after 365 day the adventures of their immediate family members, exciting, unless I know the author of the blog personally.  Which I don't.  Which, I mean to say, is that I don't know any blogger at all in person in real life.  And that to me is cool.  Understand, it's just a "me" thing.  That said, a few diary blogs do otherwise captivate my utmost attention because its authors have a narrative style that's smooth or naturally hilarious.  Their cast of family members is intended as a vehicle not the substance, or at least, that's how things seem to have worked out from my side of the computer screen.

Thursday's Overload

After not having visited Cute Overload for a while, the sight of Seaweed the Turtle's birthday party brought to mind the current controversy over Leona Hemsley leaving $12 million to her doggie and nothing to her two grandchildren.  In relative terms, the birthday turtle only received a can of sardines.  While you're struggling with the disparity, look at the paws on the turtle.  And the party hat.  Btw, my own opinion about Leona Hemsley's will is that it's really none of anyone else's darn business. 

A stipulation of the $12 million bequest was that when Hemsley's doggie, Trouble, dies, that Trouble be interned on Hemsley's side in the family mausoleum.  It still remains anyone's guess whether Hemsley's two grandchildren were offered the same deal in advance and balked at terms.  Would you be absolutely honest with me friends, would you have accepted millions now in exchange for eventually being interned next to Leona Hemsley?  Or would you have had reservations?

Ouchless Tuesday

via Sueblimely-Discovering Blogging   (click on band-aids to order)

Lunar Eclipse

Tonight over Hawaii, the moon disappears into the shadow of Earth at.....10:52pm....or was it 11:52pm....nobody here seems to know for sure.  As why hard.  Just another example why mainland people might think Hawaii people stupid.  I told this girl, who we'll leave as anonymous, "that we gonna have a lunar eclipse tonight."  Her reply: "Where?  At your house?"  Yeah, bring over some potato chips.  And dip.  Freak.  Anyways, you know who will have the best seats in the house to watch tonight's lunar eclipse?  Waikiki surfers who regularly surf the waves in moonlight.  Nice way to end Summer.

Sunday Kuhio

You might enlarge the photo above to get a closer look at the side street off Kuhio Ave. in Waikiki.  Analogous to our brain cells, fond memories are parked on our brain's own "side streets."  Albeit, your brain may have only main avenues without branches, and the aforementioned hypothesis doesn't apply to your cerebral chattel.  Nonetheless, that's how my brain cells seem to function.  If I only had a map.

The Saturday Evening Journal

Tomorrow is launch day for Hawaii's Super Ferry based in Honolulu harbor to Kauai and Maui.  Always wondered how the Super Ferry would survive in the climate of the airfare wars between Hawaii's two major inter-island air carriers, and now I know, Super Ferry is offering seats for $5 until September 5th.  Need to bring your car aboard the Super Ferry....just add another $5 to your fare.  My caveat about ferrying cars to neighbor island, in addition, to the increased traffic it'll bring there, is that, the Super Ferry may inadvertently serve as bridge for an exodus of permanent campers to Maui or Kauai from Honolulu.

Also....just discovered that the French don't use shower curtains.  Apparently, the French consider shower curtains unhygienic.  That I can understand but, why isn't there even a two-inch high curb to separate the shower stall footprint from the rest of the bathroom floor so bath water will not form lakes, of that, I perplexed.  Naturally, after every shower there's a big mop-up job.

Friday.

Happy Aloha Friday, hope the past week has been good to you in many spectacular ways.  Just saw Homer Simpson promoting Burger King's double wopper on TV with his unique style of bloopers.  You probably knew yourself that Homer Simpson was the newest mascot for Burger King.  Don't watch much TV, so it caught me totally unawares.

I'm actually watching the University of Hawaii girls' volleyball game against Michigan.  Hawaii trailing 1-2, but tied up in the 4th game.  How the heck on opening night of the volleyball season?  *About tonight's picture....it has as much in common with tonight's post du jour as Homer Simpson having enrolled in a university.  Synergy?  Yeah, that must be it.  Meanwhile, Hawaii just won the 4th game.  Tie tie, two a piece for each team.  Winner gets free woppers.

I Don't Smoke It No More....I'm Tired of Getting off from the Floor.

Suffice it to say that the Seattle Hempfest is growing larger and larger every year.  That's allegedly, "hemp" that they're celebrating....not weed.  Weed is still illegal in the U.S.    Historical fact: the Constitution of the United States was written on hemp paper.  Anyways, the sight of the hemp spokeswoman in today's picture du jour brought to mind a notion that hit me a few years earlier ala Newton's apple.  Namely, why is it that females aren't allowed to, or haven't yet, worn bathing suit tops at the beach with the similar idea as the exhibit above.  Allow me to elaborate.  Bare with me, whatever.

You procure the identical fabric and glue emulsion that they make waterproof Band-Aids® with, step 2 you fashion assorted shapes in an array of colors from the cloth....stickers, for lack of a better word.  Fashion conscious girls peel and attach the individual bumper stickers onto their boobs, and walaa, instant and convenient bathing suit tops for the sand, with the added advantage of being nearly surf proof.  Beats two-piece bikinis outfits.  A further possibility....mis-matching stickers on the left and on the right.  To keep you abreast, another Newton's Apple just hit me on the bull's eye.  Or was it a guava.  Maybe.  At any rate, how's this sound to you....soon available, Opihi brand™ bathing suit tops?  Guaranteed to....

Wednesday's Less is More

Last month, I noted that the management of the International Market Place had demolished some stores and buildings in the process of renovating the selected area.  My suggestion to the management, in virtual sense, being that I only discussed the matter with you on my blog, I didn't approach the management of the International Market Place, themselves....was to leave the vacant area more or less as an open space.  Plop some outdoor tables and tree planters in the clearing at the most.  As it is, the two-story tall retail buildings in the International Market Place are packed so tightly together, that potential clientele can't see forest for the trees.  Even the retail shops in the Waikiki Hilton have wider offsets between each other.

However, apparently, the management company has elected to leave an open area after all, based on the asphalt pavement in today's photos.  Obviously, the freshly laid tarmac will serve as the new trailor park for bumper-to-bumper jewelry carts and kiosks within your next few eyeblinks.  Still that's an improvement over the former situation.  You'll be able to see the once hidden shops at the second-story level surrounding the plot.

*If you like, mouse-over today's two photos and you'll see the same property during last month's construction stage.  Mouse-off the photos, and the original pictures will reappear.  Clicking on the photo will give you the normal enlargement.  If you want to compare before-and-after stages by using old and new pictures side-by-side, click on either of today's pictures, then grab the pop-up that appears by it's title bar to move the pop-up out of the way, and mouse-over today's photo.

State of Hawaii Admissions Day

Today, if you want to celebrate Hawaii Statehood (Aug. 21, 1959) by eating or chewing on something, then buy yourself a manapua, or a lau lau.  Don't spend all that money dinning out at a fancy restaurant because that's not what Hawaii is all about.  Because I said so....period.  Thought I couldn't hear dissenting opinions from my side of the computer screen, did you?  I wouldn't be so brazen and suggest that you hook some fresh water salmon from the Ala Wai canal, or pound your own poi because that's too much work.  At any rate, choose something simple to eat in observance of Hawaii Statehood.  Maybe some mango seed.  Or a package of Stadium-brand boiled peanuts.   

Last Friday was designated as Statehood Day on the celendar mainly in view of the 3-day weekend thing.  However, if you prefer to celebrate Hawaii's admission to the Union on it's rightful 21th, dine simple.  Doesn't make a difference before or after you hoist and hang the Hawaiian flag up-side down.  I surmise that the fellow in the picture (Bishop Museum archives) is selling manapua.  I didn't know him personally.  His lithium batteries probably ran out way before I was even born.  Maki, die, dead.  But his happy spirit still survives in neighborhoods here and there throughout the State. All for nought, manapua man didn't have a blog.

Ghost Riders

I was riding around Diamond Head Crater and after I was pass the scenic lookout area at approximately this spot (red dot), this person on another motorbike stops in the very same left turn lane that I happened to be in, right along side of me.  Not behind me as he should.  But next to me on his motorcycle like we were planning to line dance.  Now, we have two adjacent motorcycles stopped side-to-side to each other at the same stop-line, both pausing to turn left the instant the opposing traffic clears.  But I ain't in a mood for a duet.  At any rate, my new motorcycle aquintance is not saving himself a stop, as he still has to come to a complete stop at the stop line obviously I had left too much space in the lane.  There's no traffic light at this particular intersection, so under the present situation, anyone want to stand in front of us in the middle of the road and wave a flag to signal the start of a race....around a sweeping corner?  This intruder is not by all appearances that badass that he would purposely provoke a race around a turn but that's what his punk gesture could amount to, he stepping in front of the line.

Well, I haven't been riding a motorcycle for that long, but I'm already well aware that navigating a turn with a motorcycle demands superior control in comparison to riding a motorcycle straight.  Believe me, motorcycles simply don't turn well unless you know how to operate the reins.  For example, to successfully execute a turn at 25 mph on a city street on a motorcycle is anyone's guess.  As things would have it, I remembered something this guy I use to work for, reminded certain members of our crew while we were having a few pau hana beers where customarily fellow workers would make spontaneous challenges to their workmates involving anything under the stars to liven up the evening, "that you gotta know when to hold"....fold and call....being the other two options.  I took his advice on the hold option.  Today.

See, the thing about today's motorcycle soup du jour, is that, it reminded me of one day when I was riding my "bicycle" home after pau hana (finish work).  I was in Waikiki and this guy on another bicycle who was two football fields behind me caught up to me at a stoplight.  But instead of stopping his bicycle behind me, he stops right along sides me at the stop line.  "Hello," he greets me.  "Hello," I echo back to jackass.  I know that this guy is planning to peddle his bicycle in front of me as soon as the traffic light changes and assume the lead postion in the peloton of two.  He's already edging his front tire forth to get an advantage off the blocks.  So the traffic light changes, and I'm off leaving the suckkah in my dust.  And the further down Kalakaua Ave. we rode, the more I purposely increased the distance between us.  In all fairness, I had been lugging 5-gallon buckets filled with concrete up a stairway that day at work, and if my challenger even thought he could outrace my legs on a bicycle, the imbecile picked the wrong person on the right day, and the nincompoop can buy himself a yellow jacket for all he's worth.

However with today's pre-empted motorcycle race, things were a bit different.  Namely, I just can't imagine myself racing another motorcycle around a turn, and each of us upping the ante the deeper the race continues around the turn in the road.  Not only would the people living in the neighborhood disapprove of our loud antics.  But we could have inadvertantly taken each other out.  That, dear reader, would have really spoiled my day.

Another Untitled

The graphic above was the cover of a Honolulu Weekly newspaper a few issues back.  For today's story, I was on Kuhio Ave. (middle street) in Waikiki smoking a cigarette and this girl passes my line of sight a few feet away from me.  She was well built.  Not like a brick sheethouse, but well built still.  Solely via the readings on her onboard instruments panel, she interpreted that I was focusing on her too un-randomly, I really wasn't you believe me of course, in the same motion, she brushes back her hair from the front of her T-shirt, and on the rolling contours of her T-shirt is printed in large size letters.... "In Your Dreams."  Like yea, cry me an Ala Wai canal.

Of ATM's, and Lack Thereof's

Happy Aloha Friday as usual.  A few months back, the Food Pantry grocery store in Waikiki leased out the very same store footage where an ATM use to be, to a coffee shop.  As far as I know, that was the only free ATM around my neighborhood that was close by.  Correct me if I'm wrong.  Anyways, having been itself situated in the same spot for years, the ATM in the Food Pantry had acquired itself the same status as a landmark.  Much dismay, freak, ensued after Food Pantry tossed our trusty ATM out the door to make way for the new coffee shop.

The absence of the ATM had been a regular source of inconvenience for me and I'm sure to other Waikiki natives as well.  Of course, I could have walked a few blocks further to my bank's Waikiki branch and used the branch's outside ATM.  But....you know.  To my delight, I noticed this week that Food Pantry had brought back the ATM.  Perhaps, due to popular demand.  I don't know for sure.  Also, you know the new spot in the above photo where the current ATM is sitting in the Food Pantry....that use to be where the only community bulletin board in Waikiki to my knowledge was located.  In turn, the bulletin board was replaced by the much anticipated opening of Beard Papa's back in September 2005.  I just thought you'd like to know.

Thursday's Entry

 

I had to pick up some saddle bags for Iron Horse today to be fully equipped to carry stuff with me on a ride.  The weather service projected that the relatively harmless remnants of Hurricane Flossie would pass south of Honolulu at 2pm today bringing some high winds, and driving on the freeway at 2pm to Pearl City, I personally will vouch that the weather service was 200 percent right about the high winds.  I really couldn't find the ideal saddle bags, either the bags on the rack were the large-size that I had in mind, but too large to fit on a medium sized 600cc Honda Shadow, and the only other size was saddle bags in a more compact size, insufficient capacity, but that would fit properly and could be attached securely.  The salesman very well understood my dilemma....paraphrasing...."ah heck, just come back and buy a second pair of saddle bags if the one you bought isn't satisfactorily."  He done it too, obviously.  The photo above is back in Waikiki after I parked the horse attired with its new saddle bags on the street, and went into Starbucks for some welcomed ice-coffee and reflected to myself, know what, I haven't ran into too many things to take pictures off in Waikiki lately.

A Wednesday Late Post

This is the view from my dentist chair in my dentist office overlooking Ala Moana Beach Park with the roof of Ala Moana Shopping Center showing in the foreground.  If you have to have your teeth fixed, this is the right place to have the repair work done.  Wouldn't you agree?  The portion of the dental work not covered by my dental insurance cost me $500 for starters.  Essentially, dear reader, the picture cost me $500 so far, which means a lot to me ( ? ).  I'll figure that one out later.  In the meanwhile, do not copy the above photo without my express permission, or else a dental filling will jump out of your teeth without any scientific explanation.

I use to be a regular reader of a blog authored by a female dentist in Oz (Australia), and I asked her if she wouldn't mind diagnosing my teeth if I Emailed her photos.  P.S., it wasn't my style to accept things entirely for free.  So there would be an appropriate payment for her in the mail.  N 2, that HOTEL WAIKIKI (this blog) is not an actual hotel so I couldn't trade a free hotel room for a week in exchange for legal tender.  She Emailed back that "no need".  For one reason or another, I never did Email her the photos of my teeth.  Nonetheless, it was a nice gesture on the female dentist's part and it's nice to know that there are people like her in our virtual world.

Hurricane Flossie

   

My 5 regular readers already know that the above Hurricane Button was always a regular feature that I pasted on my sidebar during past hurricane seasons, but I've been a bit delinquent this year in more ways than you could imagine or that I even fully remember. Clicking on the Hurricane Button takes you to a website that let's you trace present and past hurricanes starting from 2004.

da 13th

I've been receiving mail from the IRS for several months already.  Never opened a single darn envelope until now.  Because I was absolutely certain that inside the IRS envelope would be lurking a bill for taxes past due.  Which would be strange, in the sense, that I received a tax refund of $1600 from the IRS this year.  So it just had to be that the IRS sent me too much and was seeking to recoup the dollar amount of their error.  Anyways, I was just about to toss the latest IRS notice into the trash, but gave it a second thought.  Yeah, I was struck with excruciating guilt.  Inside the IRS envelope was a form that stated that I might be eligible for more of a refund if I met the requirements printed on the form.  In fact, I do met all the requirements.  Perhaps the IRS computers mixed me up with someone else.  We'll see.

---

I had a $50 mail-in rebate from Sprint that I sent in last week.  In order to qualify for the rebate, you must have purchased a new phone and of course renewed your phone plan within a certain time period.  It was stipulated that I had 30-days to send in the rebate paper, after purchase.  Otherwise po-hoe.  However, after reading the fine print on the Sprint rebate form, although I had purchased the Sprint phone within the relevant period, I discovered quite to my dismay, freak, that my specific 30-day period for a valid post-mark, itself, exceeded the cutoff period for sending in the refund form....because I had bought the new phone at the tail end of the time frame that the special was in-effect.

In other words, I bought my new phone with less than 30-days remaining before the final deadline to send in the rebate.  Hypothetically, it's like they alloting you 30-days to mail in a valid rebate after purchase, conditional that you "also" must too mail in the same rebate before the end of 2007, and you went buy da phone on December 13, 2007 with less than 30-days remaining in the year.  Thus their advantage superceded your disadvantage otherwise known as tough sh-eet.  Two deadlines conflicting with each other.  Nevertheless, I mailed in the rebate form to Sprint anyways last week.  Checked my Email today.  There's this letter from Sprint notifying me that Sprint has received my $50 rebate form that I mailed to them and it is being processed.

You Too

   

Tonight's rant may cause irreparable psychological damage for life upon those who fill the shoes that this rant is directed to.  Huh?  The world will end too?  Irregardlessly, without further ado....it irks me to no end that people actually take the trouble to post YouTube videos on their webpage.  This behavior demonstrates an absolute lack of creativity on the part of the blogger who uploaded the YouTube clip to their website.  Yeah, I'm fully aware that most bloggers are not professional writers.  Bloggers certainly don't face real world deadlines.

According to me, the most revered talent that a writer would possibly wish for is to have the uncanny ability to come up with intriguing stuff to write about on a daily or weekly basis, or chapter after chapter, without fail.  Dub it originality.  A knack for innovativeness.  Everything that going through the motions of posting a YouTube video isn't.  With the obvious exceptions of either having dug through the mountain of YouTube daily submittals well past the current Top-Most-Viewed-Videos on the YouTube's website and unearthing an overlooked nugget, or being the author of the featured YouTube video, itself.  Feel free to disagree.

Saturday's The Daily Planet

Here's a photo I took last month of a bunch of teenage paddlers.  At first, I didn't know what to make off this ragtag crew.  Did they swipe the canoe?  Were they in the act of making off with their heist?  Or were they, despite all false appearances, real canal men and real canal women making steam over the submerged shopping carts and rubber tires lying at the bottom of the Ala Wai canal?

Hurricane Flossie is generating some drizzles and a lot of humidity as it approaches fair Honolulu.  I don't know about the particular part of the Island you're at, but in Waikiki it's humid.  As we speak, I've been reading blogs for some two hours straight.  "as we speak"?  No cigar there.  Anyways, I don't use that RSS feed or whatever they call it that alerts me when a favorite blog of mines has posted something piping hot off the press.  I've already noted in the past that I'm basically a reader of blogs more than I would be a writer of my own blog.  I could subscribe to instant alerts to new postings, but I rather check back and forth and "discover" new posts.  Then it's sorta like finding "breaking news."

I may visit 75 personal blogs on a nightly basis, but as customarily is the case, less than half of those blogs will have had submitted a new post du jour.  Then there's my media blog list which always has something new which isn't as much fun.  And just in case you're wondering whether I have an addiction, I do in fact have an internal alarm clock that beeps after an hour or so of non-stop blog reading.  Oh, another thing I thought noteworthy enough to mention in tonight's ramblings, is that, like it or not, few readers will ever read your archives, nor mines, nether.

Thus, all that magnificent masterpieces that you've scribbled digitally in the past might well never have had existed to a new reader who recently stumbled upon your website.  Past postings simply do not appropriately fit the bill as, "news," no more having exceeded its lifespan.  Allow me to pontificate.  Or ask Oscar the Cat.  Naturally, if you're writing a blog to record a journal so that one day, later in the future, you can recheck back on the world shattering events of a specific day of your personal existence here on Earth, than your daily or weekly posting has a value all to its own.  My blog is not a journal, but bare with me, a chronicle of my temperament and demeanor ("poi-dog sound and fury") on a particulae day posted in my own version of "The Daily Planet."

Today is

Happy Aloha Friday.  I was kicking back on Kuhio Ave. (Waikiki's middle street) and you know that homeless elderly lady I mentioned a while back.  She's the one who keeps a heap load of her personal belongs next to her and sets up stakes just at the very spot on Kuhio Ave. that I like to take an occasional break.  As I said before, she's clean, but she attracts other bums, and that crowds me out.  Previously, her relatives flew in from Texas to get her off the streets, but she flat out refused their offer.  One of the relatives told me that they would get a court order to move her into where ever they place these people.  The lady was gone for a period of a week, then she came back to "my spot."  She came with two suitcases, and as the weeks went by she accumulated more accourtements to her collection such that now her belongs take up about an 8-feet by 2-feet area. 

Today, the lady picks up an empty plastic bottle from a public trash can and shuffles the discarded bottle about a foot from where I was sitting next to a coconut tree.  She explains that she's setting aside the plastic bottle for someone she knows who recycles beverage containers (5¢ in Hawaii).  Alrighty.  While we're on the topic, I ask her why she don't stay in this house that she's always claiming that she supposedly owns outside of Waikiki, in Kaimuki or somewhere, instead of camping out on the streets?  That, she don't need that big heap of personal belongs and other opala (rubbish) she has pack ratted next to her because her landfill makes me feel too uncomfortable to kickback on her god's little acre btw which she misappropriated from me.  She retorts that she owns this house in Waikiki that is right next door to where I was sitting.  Scratch that other fictitious house.  Then the lady sits by me.  I tell her, "No sit by me.  I no like you sit by me." She continues that she holds the lease to the Waikiki manor, but the owner no like let her in, so she's waiting and holding vigil for the owner to relent and let her move herself and her belongs in.  All this predicated on a lease that she claims she signed with the house owner back in 1979.

Wednesday's Tidbits

It felt like 90 degrees on the sunny side of the street today in Honolulu.  I checked the Internet but officially it was 89 degrees.  However, that's at a specific point on the island, at the Honolulu International Airport, the site of the official thermometer.  Makes you kinda wonder why they don't place giant-sized thermometers around the city as they do large clocks.

Anyways, I was reading in last week's edition of the Honolulu Weekly, a letter-to-the-editor writer noted that in Germany, manufacturing companies are required by law to retrieve all their packaging that their products came with after purchase.  Whether it be electronics or shoes.  The customer just needs to unpack the item he or she purchased and leave all the cardboard and foam at the retail counter.  The original manufacturer is liable from that point thereon for the cost of shipping the discarded packaging back to it's factory.  I suspect that there's are subcontractors who specialize in this retrieval service for any number of large manufacturers and even other companies that perform the actual recycling.

    

Hello....

This friends, is just the kinda thing that make mainland people think that Hawaii people stupid.

*this post will disintegrate in 5-seconds.

Saturday's Din

Today was the kind of day that everything and anything started to bother me.  For the life of me, from where I caught it, what it is made of, I cannot say (paraphrasing from Shakespear's The Merchant of Venice).  Haven't you had those days yourself?  If you did, I'll see your one, and raise you two....or something like that.  Anyways, I stopped by Starbucks in Waikiki to have a cup of coffee.  I like this particular Starbucks because you can step out to have a smoke and step back in real easy.  As frequently is the case at this Starbucks' location, the counter workers were talking so freakin loudly among themselves, didn't even come up for air, that it became distracting.  I'm aware that Starbuck employees are mainly college students and working at Starbuck's is where they cram in as much social intereaction as possible in-between study sesssion back at the dorm, but as I was saying, today even normal things were bothering me.  Had to walk out of the coffee shop and buy some Q-Tips at the Food Pantry.  Opened the box of Q-tips and started cleaning my ears on Kuhio Ave.  After that, I went back into Starbucks to finish up my coffee.  Even bought a re-fill.

Aloha Friday Came a Day Early

Yesterday upon my arrival home, this lady who lives in the same apartment building, as me, starts yelling at me. Earlier during the week, I had requested of her husband to cease and desist asking me for free cigarettes. With sarcasim of course.  Only to receive back a stink eye in return. Which instigated a, "you....and your wife." Buy your own cigarettes. Already.

So, I get home and just so happens that pupule wife of lolo husband is sitting outside our apartment building's front entrance, and she's all advanced case rabies at me for having the gaul of making the profound accusation that she actually tried to bum cigarettes off of me.

"I never ever did ask you for cigarettes, blah, blah, blah, blah....and I know which apartment you live in, so you better watch out for yourself because I-know-people." I had to refresh her memory about her panhanding, citing past incidents. Including, "fuckin bitch." A few.  Also, shouting back at her something to the effect that her threats to my health and welfare only served to make life more interesting. Her jailbird husband, having served out his term in prison, is currently living with her. Shudders.

This is all starting to get boring.  So, I make my leave. Only to have her follow me into the elevator, where the hostilities continue. I say to her, "Why your jackass husband even had to cry to his wife?"

August Dusk

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swiftest completion of their appointed rounds."

   

Judging from the aprons around the paddlers, the crew must have paddled all the way out off the Ala Wai canal and a few mile at sea, then back.