Boy at Crater Rim (Kilauea)

Boy at Crater Rim (Kilauea)
Originally uploaded by Prairie Brown

Berta, this photo is for you. I thought you'd appreciate the nice, floppy sun hat we found to keep Michael safe under the tropical sun. Isn't it great? (Michael has pictures of my new hat for you too.)

Boy and Turtle (Black Sand Beach)

Boy and Turtle (Black Sand Beach)
Originally uploaded by Prairie Brown

One of the things Michael most wanted to do while we were in Hawaii was to see a sea turtle, up close and personal. We encountered our first sea turtle at the Hilton in their fabricated lagoon. The turtles there are so used to people that it came right up to us and let us feed it leaves and pat it on the head!

Later in the trip, we had a chance to snorkel with wild sea turtles (Michael has pictures). On our last day, we stopped for a while at a black sand beach, and were thrilled to find a group of sea turtles basking in the sun on the beach. Michael flopped right down in the sand and got acquainted with one, as you can see.

Boy in Bed (at Our Cabin)

Boy in Bed (at Our Cabin)
Originally uploaded by Prairie Brown

On our first night in Volcanoes National Park, we found a campground immediately. When we got there, we had intended to set up our tent for the night, but we noticed a row of darling little cabins nestled in the woods on one side of the campground, and wondered how much it would cost us to rent one. Camping in the park is free with admission to the park, so we didn't think it would be too expensive to upgrade to a cabin, if one was available. We quickly found the Volcano House (the hotel in the park) and inquired about the cabins. Because it was a Thursday night, there turned out to be one cabin available for one night, for $50. We snapped it up, and were given bags containing sheets, blankets, pillows, along with towels and soap for the campground showers.

It turns out that the cabins are just as cute on the inside as they are on the outside, especially with the addition of the personalized touches we'd brought from home to make our camping trip comfortable (a Playboy bunny blanket for Michael and a Tootsie Pop blanket for me). We had a great night in the cabin, reading and giggling and really feeling like we were on vacation, and glad to be away from the Hilton where we'd spent the first couple nights of the trip.

In the morning, we headed for the campground showers, available to cabin customers. Much to our delight, the showers, while rustic in appearance, had more plentiful hot water and pressure that was more reliable than we'd had at the Hilton! On our way out, bemoaning the fact that it would be our last morning of hot showers since we'd be tent camping for the rest of the trip, we noticed a small sign announcing that tent campers could rent a key to the cabin showers for $3 a day. Deciding to splurge, we eagerly rented a shower key and enjoyed steamy showers for the remainder of the trip.

We were still on Seattle time, not having adjusted to Hawaiian time, and we were waking up at 5:30 every morning (felt like 8:30 to us). After finishing our showers that first morning, we snagged a prime campsite for our tent before any of the weekend campers arrived in the park, then set out to explore the park.

Coconut Syrup!

Coconut Syrup!
Originally uploaded by Prairie Brown

Here's the first batch of Hawaii pictures! You'll notice that I didn't take any pictures while we were at the resort. It just wasn't our sort of thing. The morning after the wedding, we went to the Kona airport to drop my dad off so he could head home. After that, we were faced with the decision to go back to the resort to eat breakfast at the huge buffet (for $30 per person) or to explore Kona a bit and find someplace for breakfast there. We chose to explore, thinking we'd eventually find a Denny's and get a reasonably priced breakfast.

We drove around for a while without any luck. Then, by random chance, while we were in an industrial park looking for a place to turn around, we saw a sign for the Blue Sky Cafe. Since we were hungry and sort of lost, we decided to give it a try. When we pulled up in front of the tiny restaurant surrounded by warehouses, we almost didn't go in. It looked like sort of a dive.

But we were hungry, and we hadn't seen anything else (other than Starbucks) that looked like it might have something for breakfast. We decided to give it a try. We opened the door and gaped in surprise. A small, gorgeous restaurant, beautifully decorated with tropical plants greeted us. After being greeted by a cheerful waitress, we chose seats next to the indoor waterfall and proceeded to order the best French toast either of us had ever eaten, served on a plate with an orchid.

The toast was made from Hawaiian sweet bread, which we both know that we like, and is difficult to find in Seattle. We later learned, when we found a Safeway to get the groceries for our camping trip, that in Hawaii, the bread aisle has a supplemental row, almost as long as the regular aisle, for this Hawaiian treat. Along with the toast came three pitchers of syrup: maple, strawberry, and coconut. Coconut? We were intrigued. We tried it on the corner of one piece of toast in case we didn't like it. It was so delicious that we were soon pouring it on the rest of our toast and devouring it. We asked the waitress where we could find it, and she replied that any grocery store in Hawaii would have it. (We found a bottle at Safeway, and it's tucked into our as yet unpacked luggage, waiting for us to decide to recreate our Hawaiian French toast.)

To anyone considering a trip to Hawaii, here's our advice: get off the beaten path! Avoid the big resorts. You'll have a better time, and you'll get much better food!

Home! (Less?)

Well, we got home yesterday from a wonderful trip to Hawaii. Hope's wedding was a huge success, and Michael and I had a great time in Volcanoes National Park. I'll write more about that later, but I wanted to post a few thoughts about our homecoming before I get to the vacation, because the homecoming was far more traumatic than the fun vacation.

Let's start with the disappointment on the job front. I should have heard from the interview committee while I was in Hawaii. Of course, no one called or emailed, and finally, on last Friday, convinced I wasn't part of the final interview group, I called the school to ask. It turned out that they hadn't selected the final interview group, and I was assured that the decision would be announced on Monday. Monday has come and gone, and now it's Tuesday morning, without so much as a hint of an announcement. I'm starting to wonder if I'm not in the final interview group. Would they tell me? I'd like to hope that they would. A couple people on the committee are people whom I consider friends, and all of them have been my colleagues for the past two years. I'd hope that they would let me know, and explain their decision. It would be simple professional courtesy. And basic communication. It's starting to feel like that might be too much to ask for. We'll see. I've stopped holding my breath, at any rate.

Now, on to the home front. Firstly, we'd requested that our landlords hold any packages that might be delivered for us while we were gone. I'd ordered a book and a movie from Amazon for Michael, and they should have been delivered while we were gone. We requested this because the mailboxes in this building are ridiculously small, and there was no way our mailbox would hold a book and a movie and a few day's worth of junk mail. Unfortunately, our mailman apparently decided to cram as much into the box as he could--including the movie, which Amazon's tracking department assures me was delivered on the 17th. By cramming the movie into the mailbox instead of taking it to the landlords as he should have, he rendered the mailbox incapable of closing. He just left it there, unlocked. When we returned, it had naturally been cleaned out by our less than scrupulous neighbors, and now one of the nasty thieving creeps we live with has the movie I ordered for Michael, and who knows what else of our mail. All of our financial information comes to us electronically, so there's not a major concern that the mail thieves took anything more than junk mail and the movie, but there's no real way of knowing what we lost. More importantly, there's no way of knowing which of our neighbors is a thief. I suspect the lunatic right down the hall from us, but it could be just about anyone. It's disconcerting to be living with mail thieves. We knew before that there was someone low enough to steal mail in the building when our Netflix movies started to disappear... Some days really make me hate people!

After discovering the mail theft, we were told by our landlords that because of the construction going on in our building, we're going to have to move. They're going to need to rip our apartment apart to fix all of the problems. They've offered to help us to move to another apartment in a different building of the complex. Naturally, I'm less than thrilled about this. I don't know if I'm going to need to be job searching in the next few weeks. I certainly wasn't planning to spend the last couple weeks of summer packing up and moving, even if it's just to a different building. Our landlords seem to think they're being nice by offering to let some of the scuzzy construction workers they've got working on the project help us move.
These are not exactly the sort of people I'd want to let know that we have nice computers and TVs. Besides, this apartment has been our home for the past two years, and I had thought it would continue to be our home for at least the next two years, while Michael is finishing school. I find it very disgusting of our landlords to expect us to be okay with just packing up and moving away from an apartment we've called home for the past two years. The sentimental value of the apartment alone is enough to make me really sad when I think about leaving. It's the first home Michael and I have shared. While I know that there will be many other homes in our future (not that we're planning to be nomatic--moving is just a part of life), this one will always be special because it was the first. I'm not sure I want to stay in this apartment complex, but I'm also feeling a little bit trapped, because we certainly don't have the time to put into a big hunt for a new place. I think we're stuck here, and we're going to have to make the best of it. Sigh.

And so, this has been the homecoming. I could potentially be unemployed and homeless by the end of the month. Okay, so that's a large exaggeration (I still have my teaching job and we've been offered a new apartment), but it doesn't feel so exaggerated right now, when I'm tired and upset about it!

Onward!

Today was my interview. I'm completely exhausted (it's HARD to talk about myself for that long!). Academic interviews are so difficult! It was me, in a room with a committee of eight people, and they fired questions at me for an hour and a half! But I made it through, and I feel like it went really well. I guess I'll find out sometime in the next few days if I made it to the next round of interviews!

Now, on to Hawaii! Michael and I just finished packing our bags. We'll need to make one quick stop at the school in the morning so that I can turn in my grades, and then we're off to the airport. Keep your fingers crossed that Flossie won't get any closer to the islands! Hawaii here we come!

And oof! Off to bed for me!

Young Frankenstein

Young Frankenstein
Originally uploaded by Prairie Brown