Sunrise.. Sunset..

..quickly flow the years... (anyone know that song? It takes me back to my grandma's house when she would play Roger Whittaker and I would run around singing along).


Dave woke me up to catch the sunrise this morning and it was quite wonderful.. the wind was alomst completely still which let it not be so cold. He took a bunch of sets of pics to work some image processing magic on and they turned out great as you can see. I'm sure he'll be posting more of his good stuff. I'm only getting it in before him cause he's passed out! Sneakysneaky!

Dave had to go back to work after the quick sunrise, but I stayed up and read for a bit before I went back to sleep. Dave ended up sleeping until about 3pm so I went for a walk out to the west end of the summit near an FAA something or other to read and sun myself. I didn't bring a cmaera, but it was really beautiful. Ii could see west Maui, Molokai, and maybe even a glimpse of Oahu. I can't be certain though, it might have only been a shadow from a cloud. I got fly-bys from a glider and a helicopter - which was interesting - I was wondering if they were wondering if I was stuck or something. Really, it was just distracting and kept me nervous about peeing behind a rock - you never know who might fly around the corner!

Dave met me with the car on my walk back and we ate a snack and headed to Dave's favorite lookout to watch the sunset as well. Dave took a cool timelapse of some clouds in the crater and one of the big shadow crawling up the horizon.

Wikipedia Article

I just realized that I forgot to do a post about the wikipedia article my friend Alex did about Nicole! About a month or so ago, Alex made an article on Wikipedia about Nicole. I had never thought about that, but Alex is all about wikipedia, and has made a number of articles about plate tectonics, surf culture, and other kinds of things, so when he emailed me asking about some facts about her life and death, it just seemed like such a good idea! He told me that Wikipedia is very strict about articles about people - they have to be encyclopedia articles, meaning no personal information like she had such pretty hair, but such stinky armpits.. - she did so much with her life it's been really nice to have that as a little tribute.

Here's the link! I'll also be adding a link to the sidebar.

A little hike and a sunset

So today I got totally sucked in to the third book in the Dune series. They're so good! I don't know why I'm suprised, but I am.
Anyway! Dave and I caught Sunset on top of the little hill by the Haleakala visitots center that's at the top of the crater. It was suprising how much it winded me to walk up there, but I haven't really been running around ro anything, so why would I be all super adjusted?
Here's Dave getting a timelapse ready.



I've really been enjoying turning the camera around and badgering him with it. He's definielty not used to it and always has t be prepared, but atleasat I got him to laugh for this one.



Sunset was spectacular of course, and I had great fun taking pics of Haleakala's shadow pointing away from the sun. It kept making me think about whether or not I'd be able to notice such a big mountain from a boat, or whether I'd wonder why it got dark so much earlier in this one area. I mean, how funny would it be to be right on the edge of the shahow? I'm sure physics-wise the shadow would be all fuzzed out at that distance, but quit ruining my fun with reality!

Trying something out...

Happy Solstice

Happy Solstice everyone! The pic is from todays APOD.
Dave and I headed down the mountain this afternoon (after sleeping in til noon!) and visited Baldwin Beach - the waves were pretty big on the North Shore of Maui today and it was a very pleasant way to spend the late afternoon. Dave went for a little jog and I sunned myself while starting the 3rd Dune book. I even got a little pink, without any sunblock, after not really having time for the beach in about 3 months... it felt very nice.

After the beach I made Dave choose how I prettied myself up (I've been feeling very girly lately - wanting to wear skirts and dresses and cute shoes that make me taller - go figure!) - surfer girl skirt or hippie dress - he chose the skirt, and then we headed up to Makawao to check out a rock shop, walk around a bit, and then have a nice dinner at Casanovas.. it was VERY tasty. Dave had the calamari and some kind of fancily done up Opakapaka and I had a carpaccio salad and some spinach ravioli. I realized tonight at dimmer tha I don't seem to be able to resist any ravioli described as "pasta pillows".. it just sounds too fluffy and delicious not to eat. We finished up with a key lime tart which was basically a thin strip of some kind of cake at the bottom and key lime flavored heavy whiopped cream with some kind of soft cheese (I think) with some chocolate lattice around the outside egde. Very tasty, but Dave wanted the chocolate mousse. ;)!

Sliding Sands

Dave and I went for a hike this afternoon down Sliding Sands. It was another absolutely beautiful day and we were quite excited to see that once again the crater was clear.
I asked to get to be in control of the camera today and managed to get a bunch of pics of Dave being Dave walking around his second home, Haleakalaaaa Crater.




I realized this time that Dave is a poser! He can't just be him walking down the path, he sees me pointing his way, takes off the glasses and gives me the "I see you taking my picture" face with the eyebrows scrunched.. =)




Every time I looked around, it seemed like there was just more and more beautiful things around to take pictures of so I tried to catch Dave and the beauty unawares..






I got lots of compliments on my favorite hat (which makes me seek out cold weather so I can wear it) so I kept it on to enjoy it as much as possible, even though the wind was extremely light and the air actually felt rather warm.




We walked all the way down to the flats, mostly to see how my body has adjusted to the altitude and see if my footsies would get any blisters.. AND (whether I like it or not) we needed to see how my attitude would hold ;).






I finally figured out how to take a cute pic with my hat on!! ..gotta take the glasses off and close my eyes. I am soooo good at the self portraits (see sean) that I can do it with my eyes closed. HA!




Silversword!

On Top of Old Smokey (aka Haleakalaaaa)

It's my second full day on the mountain! I've been cold, eating soup and ginger tea, reading to my voice recorder, sneezing my head off, and blowing my nose even after it got raw.. it's been fun. Yesterday was particularly exciting as I was all antsy to get to Lahaina and go snorkling, only to find that I couldn't actually leave the mountain due to my congestion. It was extremely strange - I had absolutely NO problems going UP the mountain the night before, but as soon as we started going down my head started feeling a bit funny, got a little headache and the when we got to about 4000 feet my head suddenly felt like something was trying to break it's way out. It was horribly painful and actually made me cry. Dave had to bring the car to a screeching halt and we had to hang for about 10 minutes before it went away. We attempted to go down a little farther but the headache was hovering around and we decided that messing with altitude stuff giving me sharp pain in my head was NOT a good idea, back up we went. It took maybe 2 more hours to get back up since we had to keep stopping to make sure I wasn't going to have any weirdness. We checked out Hosmer Grove and marveled at the ridiculous fragility of my body at times.

When we got back to the top, I finally managed to get Dave to re-woo me with his egg roll skills. We were suprised in the middle of that endeavor by two people pounnding on the door yelling about 911.. Turrned out someone had collapsed and likely had a heart attack on the Sliding Sands hike down to the crater a little ways down the road. That was another strange twist to the day. There wasn't anything we could do for them other than help them call the police, so afterward we were left to discuss how much of a difference altitude can make - 2 reminders yesterday.

After dinner, we shot up to the summit overlook and shot some pics of the sunset.. as you can see Dave is nicely photogenic, all cute and cuddly, and I, sadly am the total opposite of photogenic! It was beautiful!

YAY!

Finals are OVER and I got Christmas Wine from my parents! I've been hoarding one of the birthday wine bottles that I got last March, waiting for a worthwhile occasion and now I feel like it doesn't have to be quite as momentus. I do think I'll be taking one over to Maui so Dave and I can enjoy some on top of the mountain!

Whew!

Finals are FINALLY over... not that I'm out of stuff to do.. notebooks and other busy work are quickly whittling away my will to do anything but sit on the beach and flop around.


SO after finding out that all of us failed out medical terminology final, taking our surface anatomy final, and finally taking our anatomy and phisiology final, Jesse, Chris, Jon, and I headed to Anna Banana's to have a few consilitory drinks and some good chitchat. It was just what I needed - I'm assuming they did too. It was great fun talking story and getting to know each other even better. Chris, Jesse, and I even got to meet Jon's new girl friend!! Her name is Lisa and she was very nice (and intelligent.. for those of you who were wondering *wink*). It was good fun seeing Jon look so pleased with himself but totally meek and shy at the same time. They seem very happy with each other. Good stuff!

Jesse missed by a long shot, but Jon and Lisa just missed meeting Chris's wife Tik. The 3 of us stayed at Anna's waxing philosophical (and getting shit for being lazy) until WAY too late. I don't think I got home until 130am or something like that.

DAVE HAS AN EPOD!!!

http://epod.usra.edu/

3 down 4 to go

So I've taken 3 of the seven finals I have for school.. luckily, 2 of the classes don't have finals so I didn't have 9! That's WAY too many classes in my opinion... but who listens to me anyway?

I know I kicked ass on 2 of the tests, but I definitely feel less than confident on that third (the 1st I took actually). Hopefully it all turns out well.

Tomorrow I have Intro to TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) and point location, and Thursday I have Surface Anatomy/Palpation and Anatomy and Physiology.

Tea Ceremony #3

We had our third tea ceremony/fresh herb instructional Sunday yesterday. It was definitely more fun and interesting than the other ones have been for me. The first one was definitely the most difficult since it was only 2 weeks after school had started and I had no idea what was going on. The first 2 were also outside at Waahila Ridge park, which was nice being outside, but it was very difficult to concentrate and to hear everything that was being said and participate at the same time. This third ceremony was inside at the temple since the weather was so wet and windy.

Here's some OFFICIAL Taoist tea that Shifu brought back from China. It has a certificate and everything saying how official it is! There's a yin tea and a yang tea. This has to do with the taoist calendar... the yin tea ingredients was collected by hand only on the "yin days" and the yang on the "yang days" - I'm not entirely sure what that means - it might just be even and odd days.
We learned, over the three classes, how to conduct a taoist tea ceremony. This type of this is performed if you have a patient with a very difficult disease, to bring in the new year, perform feng shui for a house, or just to ask for help with a problem.

Shifu brought all the herbs for us to learn in from her garden. They were super high quality organic wonderfulness - all edible (my favorite!!) and fragrant. It was really helpful and interesting to get to see the whole plant that is used as medicine instead of just one part that we use for one thing, and then another part used for something else, etc. She also spoke for a while about how much care she puts into her garden getting to know the plants and giving them attention and getting to know each of them as a kind of person. This pic is of her friend Coconut that wanted to come to class.

The tea ceremonies/fresh herb classes are the one class that everyone in the school comes to. It's been great fun getting to see how the knowledge progresses in the students that have been around longer and longer than me. This is Lucia working her ink stone in preparation for the tea ceremony.

This is Jorge. He's watching Lucia prepare and is (I imagine) settling himself into a nice state of mind to receive some tea ceremony wisdom.

This is Michelle and Bowen.. they're always making me laugh! Doesn't it just look like they're scheming?
This is Dr. Todoki talking to Ele about some pictures of old Chinese doctors Ele brought in for the ceremony and some other wooden artifacts Ele brought in. When I go to the clinic, I'm working with Dr. T.
Here's Shifu behind the alter after class, checking on something... hopefully she doesn't mind a picture of her with a cell phone being on the internet. =)!

Daves Tournament

So Dave lost the BJJ tourney for the first time. Unfortunately, but maybe not suprisingly the fact that he was on Maui working pretty much constantly for the last 2 months or more kept him for his regular crazy schedule of working out and training. He wasn't ready for the competition, and for the first time in a while (in my opinion as a spectator) the competition was actually really good. I don't know how much of this was just that Dave wasn't ready this time and they were or if was just that one fucker dropped 25 pounds and sucked all of Daves energy out during his second match. I'm still feeling that 25 pounds is a little ridiculous to drop like that for something that is your hobby and not your job... but again I'm the spectator and I'm just annoyed cause I like to see Dave win (even when he's not really prepared).

Anyway! I took videos and Sean and I shared responsibility of taking stills for Dave and some of the other guys in the club and I think we got some pretty kick ass ones. I'm sure Dave will be posing htem soon, and I'll steal the ones I lik and put them up here too.