Command performance at Moiola

After deciding not to sub in middle school today, I set out to be a dad for my kids. First, I took Tim's car in to my local shop, trying to figure out why it won't pass the smog test.

Then Jen called about 9:15 and asked if I could run down and pick up their video camera so she could tape Jeslyn's performance at the Moiola variety show today.

Since I am such a lover of the arts, I decided to allow you to vicariously enjoy the variety show through my eyes.

The first performance was a jump-rope duet. Now you don't see those every day. These two girls jumped to the tunes of the Village People's "Y.M.C.A." I don't think Bruno would have many good things to say about it. Don't understand why he wasn't there since DWTS ended last night (don't get me started on that). Unless it was their plan to hit their foot on every third jump, they could have used a bit more practice. The positives were that they correctly spelled YMCA correctly both times, and they didn't break their jumpropes.

Next was a young man, aided by his father, who demonstrated what he had learned in his self-defense. Unlike dance, voice and jumprope I know little about self-defense, so I wouldn't presume to critique his performance, except to say his dad's in a lot of trouble when the kid gets bigger.

Next was a little girl who sang. I forget the name of the song. For awhile, I was afraid she did, too. I'm going to give her Chelsea's (voice teacher friend of mine) number.

Then a sister duet of "Mammie's little baby loves shortnin bread." They were pretty good, as were their costumes. The little sister did an excellent job in her role of mammie's little baby.

Then came a couple of girls in cheerleader uniforms. They had a "W" on the chest, so either they weren't Moiola outfits or they put them on upside down. They did a routine to the "Macarena". (Where was SB 1070 when the Macarena came across the border?) The nice thing about the Macarena is that we could have guessed the song even if the CD player stopped working.

Then came a pair of sisters who were apparently the stars of the last 2 shows. They did a dance/hula hoop routine, and would have been the stars of this year's show except for the performer that followed them.

The little first grader did a solo dance routine the "My Friend the Witch Doctor." The choreography was impeccable, her energy level was so contagious that the audience got caught up and began to clap in time with the music. I won't bore you with the technical names of all her dance steps. Let's just say her walla walla was full of bing bang. Standing ovation at the end (OK I made that part up). Did I mention this performer was my granddaughter Jeslyn?

After that I, and much of the audience, lost interest. There were still a few acts to go, but like a good Angel fan I left with the program about 70% completed. I vaguely remember a 5 year old boy doing karate and another playing the piano, but they were so depressed at having to follow Jeslyn that you could tell their little hearts were not in their performance.

Back to other child, Tim's car still wasn't fixed, still didn't pass smog so I took it to a GM dealer in town. This was 2.8 miles from home, so I disdained their shuttle and walked home to help prepare me to watch my friend Bob walk 60 miles on his 60th birthday, and many of my friends run the July 4th 5k in Huntington Beach.

All in all, a good Daddy Day.

A Day at the North Shore

Today worked best for our jaunt to the North Shore, and for once all of the things we wanted to do we got to do.

Started with a stop at the Dole Plantation. Not a big whoopee for me, but Jan and Karen (my sister) have a great time there. Jan loves the two quilt booths, and bought a pillow slip for our living room--turtles, I think.

We then went into Haliewa and introduced them to Giovanni's Shrimp Shack. For those of you not familiar, it is a side-of-the-street stepvan, that sells shrimp in 3 styles--lemon butter, hot and spicy, and scampi. This is one of two locations, and it has become quite popular without any advertising that I know of. When Jeff is with us, I eat a few of the hot ones, but they are VERY hot and so I got the scampi, which is full of garlic and makes everyone in the car uncomfortable but me. Don't think it was my sister's kind of place--sitting at picnic tables with "icky" spots on them, peeling the shrimp with many napkins at the ready, pepsi out of a can, etc. There are now about 4 other vendors at the same location, most of whom have plenty of time to watch the people eat at Gio's.

We went then to our favorite place to shop, which includes my favorite mexican place in the islands, Cholo's. We actually saw an advertisement for them on TV this year. Might actually miss eating there this year, unless we make another trip north before we leave Sunday. I went instead to the Aloha General Store, which is my spot for shave ice. This year I opted for blue raspberry with blue vanilla, and it was a good choice. Jan also found the wind chimes she was looking for in this store, wooden ones cut and painted with a "turtle" motif. Jay bought Karen some jewelry at the Black Pearl store, which apparently uses up her gift allotment for the rest of the year.

Drove up and stopped at what I think is Sunset Beach, where we hope each year to find sea turtles sunning themselves. We hit the jackpot this year, with one already on the beach and 3 more that crawled up while we were there. There are always a couple of volunteers to spread a rope cordon around the turtles to keep humans away. This rest is very important for the life expectancy of the turtles, so the volunteers make sure they are not disturbed.

Stopped at Dole again on the way home so that Jay could buy some chocolate-coconut-covered macadamia nuts, which he very unselfishly shared with me.

The only downside was my stop at a little golf shop just across from Schofield barracks. With the airlines charging $100 per flight to ship golf clubs, I've decided to buy a simple set and just find a place to leave them in Hawaii since we try to play every year, and would play more were it not for the shipping and/or rental fees. Well, this guy had a used set of irons that were off brand and wanted $700 for them, which is twice what I paid for my Callaway Big Bertha's at Roger Dunn. So I guess I'll find a cheap set on the mainland, pay to have them shipped once and then have a set over here all the time.

Came home and made leftover tacos with some of my favorite salsa--mine! Lakers beat the Suns, so all was well. Then the Dodgers had to go and lose to San Diego, the first time they've lost since we've been here, which means Dodger fans will probably not pay now to keep me here. Bummer.

Confessions of a Spoiled Man

The last few days have served, among other things, how spoiled I have become, and how much I take for granted. The above picture is the front of our first stopping place in Hawaii, the Waiohai Beach Club by Marriott in Poipu. Our beach is below. It is our second time there, and it was much better this time, mainly because our view included a part of the beach instead of the corner of a building.

It's kind of blurry (as are others) because I didn't enlarge them BEFORE downloading, and am too lazy to find them again, but you get the idea.

Marriott is in the process of opening their latest Hawaii project, called Kauai Lagoons, and we agreed to attend a preview, mainly for the $100 in gift certificates, and to see what was in store for us when we tried to trade into it.


Here is the outside of the building, and as we were driving up, it was nice, but we've come to expect that from Marriott. Then, we walked into the unit and were greeted by the view below. The pictures don't really do it justice, and if you go to vacationclub.com and do a resort search for Kauai Lagoons, you will get better pictures.

This is the view from the living room. What you can't see from this picture is that the sliding doors are accordion-like, so basically the ocean front becomes part of your living room. It is 61 feet above the harbor, overlooks the golf course. We were both pretty much overwhelmed and had decided that if the price was right, we were going to go for it. Well, the incentives were unbelievable--I'd list them, but Jan wants to tell the kids in person when we get home, so let's just say it was a relatively easy decision to make. We both decided that if it came down to being able to keep only one timeshare, this would be the one.

That's where the spoiled part comes in--unlike our first timeshare purchases, we are going to have to finance this one. So, for the first time in 5 years, we have a payment other than our mortgage. It means I'll probably have to sub a few more days than I had originally planned, and we probably won't have the mortgage paid off as soon as we would like, so I had a bit of buyer's remorse the next morning. We've come up with a way to make it more palatable, but it's still an area of our finances we haven't had to deal with in awhile. But, spoiled that we are, we wanted it and went for it.
So then we came over to Ko Olina, where we have owned for about 5 years, and then next part of our spoiled lives was brought into focus. We were excited because they have opened a new building, closer to the water, and we had requested the new building. Well, apparently our wording wasn't complete enough, and we were put into a building we don't really like. Poor us.

Have to put up with sunsets like this, though we have to walk all the way out to the water to get a shot like this this time of the year. Poor us.


The view from our room is sort of like this, only better. The lanai is in the shade for most of the day, so Jan can park her fair-skinned self out there without fear of sun poisoning. But, still, it's not the building we wanted so we are still kind of snippy--especially since we had to call housekeeping to finish cleaning our unit, and I'm sure that never happens in the NEW building.




What else do we have lined up for the week, to keep our minds off of how miserably we've been treated? Well, Thursday morning one of my former runners who lives here is coming over, and we will have a blessed time discussing the last 25 years of our lives. One evening a fraternity brother who lives here is taking us out to dinner.

Sometime this week we will visit Giovanni's shrimp shack. Which is what we lovingly call a "roach coach" permanently parked on the North Shore. They cook 3 awesome flavors of shrimp, and it's become a staple for our visits.



This is our favorite mexican restaurant on the island, again on the north shore in Haleiwa, and I can't wait to go there.

My friend Don told us of this place, and we ate there last year and plan to go again if we have time this year.

A little past Haleiwa Joe's is Sunset Beach, where we can usually find at least one turtle sunning himself on the beach, surrounded by his protective lifeguards.

So, how can someone have all of these experiences crammed into a 2-week stay, and still whine about the "injustice" of his non-preferred room location? It's simple--I'm spoiled. My facebook pages are full of status reports of people that are still grinding away at their jobs, I'm in paradise, and complaining.

Jan had the perfect remedy for our malaise--she called Jennifer. She talked to her for awhile and handed me the phone. We had a 5 minute conversation, which helped remind me she still needs her Daddy from time to time, and I felt better. For the rest of the day, I

1) made salsa 2) watched the Lakers, 3) followed the Dodgers on the internet 4) made tacos.

I'm fine now.

Gloatin-free vacation.

My wife says I'm mean when I adopt my "I'm in Hawaii and you're not," attitude so I will try to be nicer. We've always looked forward to the days of retirement when we could travel in "off-peak times" and so far, so good. There was the 27-day road trip to Canada in October, and yesterday we flew to Hawaii for the second test of that philosophy. Thanks to Jeff for getting up before dawn to drive us to the airport.

Off-season benefit number one was taking only 18 minutes from car to gate. We had gotten our boarding passes online, but still had to check bags and go through security.

Delta flights are now like Jet Blue in that each seat has an individual monitor. The down side is that since we were flying over water, no satellite TV was available. The good thing is that, because of that, all of the on-demand movies were free. I started off with "Invictus", which turned out to be one of the best movies I"ve ever seen. Of course I'm a sucker for sports movies, but this was more about the rebuilding of a nation than it was about rugby--and I know about as much about rugby as the people I often sit next to at Angels games know about baseball. I was near tears for most of the movie, mainly because, like most good sports stories, I knew this had really happened. It was a storyline that probably would have been panned as being unrealistic if it hadn't been a true story (see "Victory," a late 70s Stallone movie which pits war prisoners against the German national soccer team!!) I came away thinking that it's too bad Nelson Mandela was not available to become an advisor to President Obama.

I then watched "What About the Morgans?" Not quite in the same class, but I felt I needed an escapist chick-flick after the heaviness of "Invictus". "Morgans" indeed delivered that. Since I didn't have enough time for another movie, I watched much of Robin Williams "Weapons of Self-Destruction" and laughed for the rest of the trip (this show not recommended for conservatives).

Landed in Honolulu, had about a 3-hour layover before our flight to Kauai. Since there were 2 Kauai flights before us, our luggage was waiting for us when we got off the plane. Benefit #2--no one in front of me at the Hertz counter, and I was back to pick up the girls and the luggage in about 10 minutes.

Arrived at the Marriott Waiohai in Poipu right at the 4 pm check-in time. This is our second stay here, and since we traded in and are not owners, we were kind of apprehensive about our lodging location. Last time, we were in the main building, far from the water, with a view of the corner of our building. I called last week, explained that while we weren't Waiohai owners, we DID own 2 Marriott properties, and would appreciate the best view that was available. Well, we have a partial ocean view, facing the southeast away from the courtyard noise and can see the public Poipu beach from the balcony. Made a point of going back to the check-in desk to let her know how pleased we were.

Since we hadn't yet been to the grocery store, we headed to the local hangouts for dinner. Our original plan was to go to Poipu Tropical burgers because we knew it was good, but we also knew there was a Roy's in the same center. We decided to see how crowded they were: Benefit number 3, they had an immediate table. Since (a) it was Mother's Day and (b) I hadn't gotten Jan a card and (c) it's her favorite place to eat in all the world, Jay (my brother-in-law) and I decided that Roy's would be a great idea.

Got up just before 6 Hawaiian time--a lot later than I expected to sleep given the time change. Went out on the balcony to watch the sunrise and listen to the roosters. Took a walk on the beach--tide was out so there was a dry-land path to the rocks and tidepools and I visited them.
Came back towards the room and spent about 10 minutes in the hammock stretched between two palm trees right below our room. Getting ready to go get groceries, go to the Farmer's Market, and other than that relax and enjoy. Karen and Jay have been to Kauai before, so guided tours will not be necessary.

The downside of off-peak travel? My kids and grandkids are not here since they have jobs and school. We thought of skipping Hawaii next year, but Jolie was so disappointed about not going this year we promised to book next year at a time when they could come. Jeff didn't really want to come this year (he hates flying) but as he let us off he told Jan, "Now that I'm here at the airport, I wish we were going."

So I tried to keep the bragging out as much as possible. I am amazed at the blessings of God that have allowed me to spend my "golden years" in such never-dreamed-of luxury. I DID miss my church family this weekend, and I suppose the final benefit (for now) that I can think of is that when we get back in 2 weeks it will be too early for all of them to have started their vacations and I will be able to see them all right away.

Just the Other Night.......

I have reconnected with many of the kids I taught and many of the people who grew up with me, through Facebook, and it seems to be one reward after another. But there are a few people who were very pivotal for me that I'm still hoping will wind up on my facebook list. One is the point guard I coached who was in Jennifer's class and I know is in Long Beach somewhere but as far as I know is not on facebook.. Well, last night through a friend referral, I reconnected with the girl who was probably responsible for 90% of the drama in my life between the ages of 17-20. I was convinced that I had found the girl with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life. Problem was, most of our interaction involved working out her problems with her boyfriend at the time, a boy that always seemed to be among my best friends. We wrote often during that time, while she was still home and I was in Pasadena, and one of our conventions was to insert the name of the song title that was playing while we were composing the letter. (Example: "So I had ("Monday, Monday") breakfast this morning."). I held onto those letters for a long time after we were married, not to Jan's detriment, but to preserve a historical record of some of the major events of my young life.
Then I met Jan, we got engaged and married, and this young lady wound up getting married a short time before we did. After that we pretty much lost touch, except for a couple of run-ins at hometown (Central California) events. Once cliche says you never forget your first love, and every time I went to the town where I grew up, there was usually an event or location that took me back to those bittersweet years. When Garth Brooks finally got around to singing, "Unanswered Prayers," I realize that song pretty much summed up my feelings.
There is a certain amount of irony in that we are going through a series at church entitled, "I have a Friend Who...." and the 5th in that series will be one about not believing in answered prayer. We probably all know people who are bitter towards God because their prayers have gone unanswered, or at least not answered to their specifications. The Garth song reminds us that the unanswered ones can be one of His greatest gifts. A union of this young lady and me would have probably been an unmitigated disaster. "I look at my wife, and then and there I thank the good Lord for the gifts in my life."
So, even though I really don't have the desire to know what my life would have been like if this girl had felt the way I did, she was a big enough part of my life for me to want to know, "how she turned out." Well, now I know, and the answer appears to be, "very well, thank you."
She and her husband are still married, which means they are also approaching their 40th anniversary this year, they have a 2-year-old grandson who, strangely enough, appears to be the light of their life.
In all my wildest dreams, I never thought our lives would get reconnected to the point where we would be sharing stories and pictures of our grandkids. Thanks, again, facebook--and to her classmate Gayle who let me know as soon as she was on facebook.
They say that if you truly love someone, then their happiness is every bit as important as your own. Well, I'm ecstatic that her life has turned out so well. And I'm sure she feels the same way about mine.
(For you who know your 60s music, she was the girl "with sunlight in her hair.")