Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Fun With Pineapple

Well, it's that time of year again, folks (not that it was that time at this time last year, since it was the first year....I thought it was that time that time too, but that time ended up being later....it just wasn't time yet....but that was that time,and this is this time, and this time it is indeed that time....uh...this time................yeah.......again, or something).

That's right! It's pretty nigh on pineapple season!

Honestly, I had my doubts about posting about this, but I was telling Annie about it on the phone today, and she chuckled (do women chuckle? Is this one of those things like sweating/glistening? Should I say "giggled" or something?) laughed a little during it, so figuring that's worth something, here I am working on my gnome-sized keyboard, tapping it all out for you.

Yes, it is raining and I am bored. Why do you ask? :)

So with everything else going on here at the farm lately, the pineapples have been a bit neglected. Therefore I took it upon myself the other day to do do something about that. I set aside an entire day to work on the pineapple, and I've been working on them here and there each day since.

And I. am. torn. up.

I've got scratches, cuts, scrapes, puntcure wounds, bruises, swollen nasty bits where part of the plant is still stuck in me, nicks, one or two gashes, blisters, calluses, and sore muscles. I've got them on my hands, my arms, my legs, knees, elbows, on my back, my chest, on my butt, in my armpit, under my fingernails, and I think I even have a few chunks of plant still stuck in my forehead (for the record, safety glasses only direct the damage directly into your forehead right between your eyebrows....there should be some mention  of that in the documentation, but there isn't).

On Dogs and Yurts and Kennels

Dagny is too smart for her own good.

Today, while I was at Honoli'i, she figured out that if she pushes hard enough on the back screen door, it'll pop open, thus granting freedom to Lucy and herself. Normally I wouldn't worry too much, but since our neighbor has adopted a shoot-on-site policy in the interest of protecting his chickens, it's potentially a bad thing. I guess I'll be closing the main door from now on, just in case.

Fortunately, neither dog wandered very far, but given the type of reed grass tangled in her fur, it seems they explored toward the back of the property. Also it seems Lucy found something to roll in, but it wasn't the compost pile (thank goodness) and it doesn't smell too bad, and she's not too dirty.

Luana is too smart for her own good.

Being one of the dogs who inspired the neighbor's shoot-on-site policy, Luana requires a watchful eye. And when you're not around, she has to be in her kennel or she'll wander.

A few months ago, she got the urge to not be in her kennel, so she pried the chainlink away from the metal pole at the bottom of the cage and crawled out. We fixed that and leaned a palatte against the fence so she couldn't repeat the escape.

Lately she's been taking over Kiko's kennel instead. I always figured it was so she could see more, since it's on the end and has three uninstructed sides. I learned the other day that she had more sinister motives than that.

She actually pushed the entire cage so that it rotated about 20 degrees which made one corner rotate off of the concrete slab upon which the kennels sit, creating ample room for her to crawl out. Fortunately, she went to the yurt part of the property rather than toward the neighbor's place.

When she first did this, I wasn't home, and I thought maybe there was a gunshot or some thunder or something that freaked her out enough that she was bouncing around and it happened by accident. But a few days later the dogs were up and I was in the yurt, and Kiko was barking like something was going on, and I checked it out. Sure enough, she was moving her kennel again, and almost had enough room to get out.

Point of the story: If I'm ever locked in an inescapable prison somewhere, please mail me these two dogs. If neither can figure a way out, I'm sure the two of them working together will have no problem with it.


Surf Machine Update

a.k.a. "One Man Enters, One Man Leaves (in a clumsy hurry)"

I woke up before my alarm this morning. 5am. Got ready and drove up the hill to pick up Gordie. He was very encouraging, saying the waves yesterday were great, and that he thought today should be the same. I figured it didn't much matter as I was planning on sticking to the inside (closer to shore) as possible. When we got there, the waves were a pretty good size, with maybe a 6-8' face, with bigger ones rolling in on occasion. We met with Steve (neighbor from up the road) and Haili (Steve's daughter) who go surfing nearly every weekday morning. I caught the expected mix of razzing and encouragement, and one warning to stay inside.

So finally it was time to get in the water.

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Return of the Surf Machine

To be clear, I'm not writing this because I actually believe you care. I am writing this to pad my post count for March. ;) You see, March is historically my bloggiest month. I guess the advent of spring just naturally makes me blabby. So in order to have more posts this month than last, I've gotta crank out at least three more posts before the end of the day tomorrow. Otherwise the blog gnomes will go on strike and stop letting me use their keyboard.

I'm also writing because my back is stiff from weeding and I could use a break.

So there I was, weeding and minding my own business, when Gordie pulled up. Turns out he cashed in one of his furlough days and went surfing this morning. He then handed me a beer, and proceeded to tell me about the morning.

No, I don't normally drink beer this early in the day, but when Gordie hands you a beer, you take it.

Turns out, he wants to go again tomorrow, and I have been cordially invited, and I'm stoked.

Sure, I'm going to make an ass out of myself, especially given the projected conditions:
http://www.surf-forecast.com/breaks/HonoliiBeachPark/forecasts/latest
But I figure if I wear my glasses with the funny nose and moustache, no one will even notice my surfing.

Full recap of events tomorrow.

That is all.


Monday, March 29, 2010

On Dogs and Photos

I mentioned in an earlier post that I'd try to get some photos today of the dogs for the blog.  And, as fate would have it, the clouds and rain broke for a bit around 3:00, and I took the dogs and the camera outside.  And that was the extent of my luck.

Cameron Walter, Surf Machine

Well, I've finally gone and done it. It only took one year, two weeks, and four days to make it happen, but I finally went surfing.

Learning to surf has been on my list of things to do in my lifetime (everytime I tell anyone this, they look at someone else knowingly and quietly say "Bucket list," so I'm saving you the trouble). The trick for me here in making this become reality has been two-fold: getting my hands on a board to use, and finding someone willing to provide a bit of instruction.

Pet Update

For those of you may be curious and have not spoken to me on the phone, via email, or through carrier pigeon, both Dagny and Lucy have made it to the farm and are both happy and healthy. Both have adapted well to farm life, and are behaving wonderfully. It was an ordeal that I really don't want to take the time to type out here, but let me just say that if you are a pet owner, try to hang on to all documentation you get for everything done to your pet at the vet hospitals, because I learned the hard way that you never know when you might need them, and you can't count on the vet to have records, no matter what Colorado state law says.

Ok....gotta stop there or else I'm going to get worked up about it.

So, Lucy got here first, which in retrospect was probaby a good thing. I had a few days with her to work directly on possible trouble points, i.e. the other dogs and cats. Honi was a great sport about the whole thing. He never freaked out, and that really helped Lucy adjust. But I think because of her years of squirrel chasing, and her slightly obsessive nature, it took several days for Lucy to finally stop following Honi everywhere. Now she's pretty much leaving him alone, although if he suddenly runs or jumps anywhere, Lucy very clearly thinks, "It's a squirrel!" and is off chasing him again. Even that behavior has subsided quite a bit now that Lucy has a new facination: pigs.

Dagny, on the other hand, has been really nonchalant about the cat, only occasionally licking his face when she is presented directly with him.

Luana doesn't care about the new dogs one way or the other. Kilo, on the other hand, feels he has to establish his male dominance or something, so whenever Lucy was around, he'd growl and maybe show some teeth just to let her know he meant business. This is pretty standard behavior for him. He did the same thing for the short time we had River, the stray that walked out of the jungle and lived under the yurt. It's such a low, monotone growl that we've taken to calling it his "Kik-enstein" bit, or his "Franken-beeks" routine, depending on which one prefers. As adamant as he was about pushing Lucy around with it, he stopped immediately when Dagny arrived, turning all of his attention toward her. Apparently he can only apply his Lon Cheney Aversion and Dominance Technique to only a single target at a time.

While Lucy was very responsive to Kiko's aggressions, Dagny frankly could not care less. This had Kiko so flummoxed the morning after her arrival that he actually took a couple of nips at her. Dagny's response: "Go ahead, tough guy. I'm 80% hair. When you're brave enough to actually reach skin, then we'll talk." So, while the growling continues, Dags goes on ignoring, and eventually Kiko will get bored.

As I write this morning, all four dogs have worn themselves out barking at the pigs on the neighbors' properties, and are all sleeping here on the porch. One of them is even snoring.

If I get some time tonight, I'll update this post with some photos.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Hilo Characters (Part 2)

It's a drizzly morning before a busy day, so I thought that I'd try and put down the last few of these while I'm enjoying a quiet cup of coffee.

The Lady at the Bank:
So, there's this lady that works at the bank that I use here. She is perpetually grumpy. It always seems as though you're causing her a terrible inconvienence simply by being within eight feet of her desk. And I'm not the only one who thinks this. Both Kalewa and Kaleo knew exactly who I was talking about when I simply said, "So, there's this lady at the bank...." and they both said "The grumpy one?"

So of course I've taken this lady on as a personal challenge.

When I opened my account there, I could tell she was grumpy, so I laid on a little charm, and eventually she warmed up a bit. At this point I figured that all was settled and we'd get along great in the future. But when I went back for some other banking business, she was all grumpy again, but I just wrote it off to her not remembering me. So I turned on the charm again, and she warmed up again, and I thought, "now that's that."

But a few weeks ago I had to get something notarized, and of course she's the Notary Public at the bank. And of course she was grumpy. And of course she still had to charge me even though I have an account there. But I wasn't going to let that stop me. I was determined to be the one person in town this lady is not automatically grumpy toward. So again, I pile on the charm and make a lot of small talk, and she really starts to be less grumpy. I've got her smiling and telling jokes and the whole bit. Mission accomplished.

Yeah, right.

A couple of days ago, I've got to get something else notarized. So I go into the bank, and there's everyone's favorite grumpy person, sitting at her desk, staring off into space presumably mulling over in her mind those things which make her the most grumpy.

So I walk up and say hello. After a brief and almost inaudible sigh, she asks what she can help me with. I say I need something notarized. She says notary hours are over. I say, "You're kidding.....What time are they over?"

"Three o'clock," she says.

"But it's only 3:03," I say.

"Sorry."

"And you are sitting here doing nothing anyway."

"Sorry."

"You really can't notarized this?"

"Sorry."

"Well, what about the other branch? Do they have a Notary there?"

"Yes they do, but I don't think it'll do any good. They have the same Notary hours over there."

"You have got to be kidding me."

"Again, sorry. But I would certainly be willing to notarize that for you tomorrow, provided that you brought it in between the hours of 9-10:30 or 1:30-3:00."

"That's not going to happen." And I left.

So I've finally decided that this poor lady is grumpy beyond repair, and I feel sympathy for anyone related to her, and from now on I'll only be using the other branch location.

The Dude at Walmart:
I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but due either to a lingering European influence here or the large number of homeless people or the even larger number of hippies, there are very few public restrooms available in town. If you've got to pee, you can't just stop at a 7-11 and go, even if you're willing to buy something. They just don't have a restroom there. So if you spend any amount of time in town, it's important to know where there are available restrooms: the bus stop, at certain parks, in a couple of shopping centers, and of course at Walmart. Because while it appears that there is no law here as there is in Colorado that any place that sells food or drink is required to provide a restroom, of course Walmart has one since not having one would only provide another reason for a customer to leave.

The other day I found myself on that end of town and the morning's coffee was cathong up with me. So I stopped in at Walmart and went into the men's room. The place was empty, and I was standing there taking care of business, when suddenly this guy says, "Uh-huh."

Fortunately, I didn't jump enough to get any pee on my shoes.

Then more talk from the stall. "Yeah. Yeah. All right."

And I'm thinking, is this guy talking himself through the procedure, or what?!?

Then, "No, no, that's not what she told me. I heard *something something blah blah blah*." Sorry, but I honestly stopped listening once I realized he was talking on his cell phone.

Then, as I'm finishing up and moving to the sink, he says, "Yeah, no, I'm just hanging out."

To which I said, loudly enough for the person on the other end of the line to hear, "You're not hanging out! You're taking a dump in the Walmart bathroom!" and then I left.

Ok, I didn't really say anything, but I almost did. I'm a wuss.

Still, I understand that once in a while a very important call comes in at an inopportune moment, and you've got to take it. But if it's not an important call, do you really have to answer? Especially in a public restroom?

Now I figure that everyone I call is sitting on the toilet when I'm talking with them. If I'm not off of the line before the toilet flushes, I know I've been talking too long.



Well, as Mr Rogers would have said, those are the people in my neighborhood. I'll add more when I meet more.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Hilo Characters

Ok, ok..... I can see how, due to my most recent lack of posting here, some of you might think I was the lone casualty of the "2010 Hilo Tsu-not-i" (as I've taken to calling it). Well, that's not the case. In reality, I'm alive and wellish (I've gone and caught a sniffle). No, my lack of posting is simply due to the fact that I've been pretty busy. Mostly with farm stuff. So busy in fact that not only have I not posted, I've also not spent any time in the studio.

I know. Craziness.

At any rate, I find myself with a free evening and a few things to write about. No kooky adventures, per se, but some interesting people I've seen lately around Hilotown.

Moses (no, not that one, and no, he had nothing to do with stopping the tsunami, so please don't ask):
So one of my current jobs to do (as the Correas are on vacation) is to collect buckets full of scraps from various restaurants and health food stores around town. We use the scraps to create compost. It's a lot of fun. I pull up the other night, and there's this guy out front with a harp. Yep. Not a guitar, as is common, or a ukelele, which is just as common, but a harp. Granted, it wasn't a full-scale concert harp, but it was half as big, I'd guess. Given that this is in front of the most upscale health food store in Hilo, and as they've got a patio for patrons to use, I initially thought that it was not only reasonable, but probably would be quite entertaining. As I went in, he appeared to be warming up or tuning or something, so I just went in. On my way out, I said hello, and started up a conversation. His name, as I said above, is Moses, and it turns out that the harp was made by a member of his family. Now that's pretty cool. He doesn't have the knack for it, he says, but his family makes all sorts of instruments, not just harps. Now I'm really interested, because hand-made instruments are some of my favorite things (in a sound of the music kind of way, not a The Sound of Music kind of way).

But here's where it gets weird.

I ask him to play something for me, and he looks at me funny, and says "I have been." And the it was my turn to look at him funny.

"Huh. Sorry, I guess I wasn't paying attention," I said.

"Nah, nah," he says, "You see, people are used to hearing music a certain way. I'm trying to free them by giving them something in an entirely new way. You know, make them stop and become aware of the new way."

For a brief moment, the thought flickered across my mind: "Whoah.......jazz harpist."

Now I've got a couple of bucks out to suppot this guy's harp busking style, and I'm starting to think things aren't going to turn out as I'd originally expected (much like this other time I was in a shop in the red-light district in Maastricht, but that's another tale for another time).

So I ask where the family land is, and he tells me I should come up and visit. He told me the directions to the place, and said "If you're at mile marker seven, and you still can't find us, just ask someone. We're such a big family that everyone in the area knows us."

"Oh yeah? How big a family?" I proceeded to stupidly ask.

"Right now, there are 56 of us."

"Ohhh.". *it all clicks into place*

Now as intriged as I am by a giant local hippie cult full of harpists, given that this guy here not only does not know how to play the harp, but would rather make up a story about freeing people's minds than learn how to play said harp, I decided that I would continue from this point on to stay well clear of Moses, and just wave at him knowingly from a distance while muttering under my breath, "Crazy hippies and their harps."

Afterword: The health food store has since asked Moses to not busk upon their premisis, so he's moved onto an island in the parking lot in front of Borders bookstore just next door.

Lady in Line at the Grocery Store:
Some of you may know that grocery store people love me. As do gas station people, most liquor store people, and the occasional pet store clerk. But I digress.
So I'm at the store buying my required items for St. Patrick's Day (in my mind, if you don't have corned beef, cabbage, potatoes and Guinness on the 17th, you're just not properly pretending to remember your pretend Irish heritage). So there I am, in the check-out line, and there's this lady and her kid in line ahead of me. Now, she may have been acting this way because she loved me (in case I didn't mention before, moms also love me, so being in a grocery store, this was a potential double-whammy), but I really think this lady was just like this all the time. And it was bizarre.

I've had a lot of time to think about this, and I believe I've finally got it figured out.

This lady was a three-way cross between a stereotypical Jewish mother, Joe Pesci's character in Goodfellas, and Napoleon Dynamite.

I'm seriously not kidding.

Somehow, to her son, she was laying on the familial guilt, passive-agressively threatening bodily harm in a jokey kind of way, and standing there as if awkward not only in the store and in the situation, but also in her own skin.

I was mesmerized.

One second she was telling her son that even though tomorrow was her birthday, and all she wanted to do was go to the beach with her family, that he was old enough to decide if he would go or not. And (not kidding) in the very same breath started going off on how when she makes dinner for everyone, she always takes the last and smallest portion for herself because that's what moms do.

All I wanted to do was to lean over to the kid and say, "Just offer to take your mom to the beach right now and see if that shuts her up."  But I didn't. Because I've seen Goodfellas.

When she finally got to the checker, I was fully expecting this exchange:

Checker: "Sorry ma'am, I accidentally rang that chapstik up twice."

Lady: "What's that?..... What did you say?"

Checker: " I was just saying I'm sorry but that I may have rung that up twice and if..."

Lady: "You're sorry? You? Sorry? How are you sorry?"

Checker: "Ma'am?"

Lady: "I'm just saying, if someone tells me he's sorry, I wanna know what kind of sorry he is. Are you saying you're sorry, as in pathetic? Are you saying you're sorry because it's the polite thing to do? Are you saying you're sorry because you thing we're playing the classic game brought to us by Milton Bradley? How are you sorry? That's all I wanna know. In what way are you sorry?"

Checker: "Milton Bradley? Sorry to correct you but it was Parker Broth-"

Lady: "All I know is that when I go out and catch a tasty bass for my family or I whip up a great big bunch of danged quesadillas for them, I always take the leftovers after everyone else has had theirs, because that's what a mother should do, and even though all I want to do tomorrow for my birthday is go to the beach and my own family won't come with me, well, that's my problem too, as a mother, but what is really important, what really matters now, is for you to tell me what it is you mean when you tell me that you're sorry."

Checker: "I'm sorry, but I don't..."

BAM!!!!!!

*lady pulled out a huge gun and shot the checker in the hand*

Lady: "Who's sorry now, huh? Are you sorry now? Sheesh.... All I wanted was some chapstik, dang......."

Aaaaaand.....scene.

Fortunately for me, envisioning this situation in my head distracted me from any further attention towards her, and there must not have been any real drama at the register, because I don't even remember them actually checking out.


So....... Whoah I've written a lot. I get so carried away sometimes. I guess I'll stop here and try and do a part two in a day or two.