Uno Night

Sometimes after dinner we will have some cheap family entertainment with the Uno Deck. Its a simple game where you match the color or number of the card to the card in play. Of course there are some interesting cards which make it harder for other people on the table, but, for the most part a 3 year old can play it. video

Butt Cam

Well, I've had a lot of fun with the camera teh Suz got me for Father's Day. Recall that, I have this old semi-buckled long board in the garage which I put a camera mount in the front of. I've already uploaded about 3 (uno, dos, tres) videos surfing with the front mounted, rear facing camera ON the board. The board wasn't getting any younger SO, I put a NEW hole in it. This one is on the left rail, about half-way down. I thought I'd make it interesting and have it point about 45 degrees to the right. As I am a "natural-foot" surfer, the idea was to show the wave walls coming down from the right. In reality, I think it became more of a butt-cam.. hey-what's-that-up-there-cam. Oh well, with all the wind, and water and the fish-eye effect, at least it came out interesting. Here's a still. I'll work the video in with some other segments from another sesh later this week. Stay tuned. Thanks!

9/17: uploaded video with this footage

Hawaiian Waters

The company had the annual summer party at Hawaiian Waters Adventure Park this weekend. The kids and I all got there around noon and joined the rest at the pavilion area of the park. There was an all you can eat buffet, a drawing for prizes, and lots of party games. Sue joined us as soon as she could after her work. After the company event was done we all meandered around the park and rode the excellent water slides. The End.

Felicia

Gene Hackney, and old friend who used to live in Hawaii, and hurricane Felecia, both came to visit us at the same time. Gene used to live over in Kailua, and as his amazing luck would have it, it is the Eastern shores that are being affected by the tropical storm. Sue and took the beautiful drive over the Ko`olau range after work and met up with Gene near flat island. The wind fetched surf was honk'n especially for Kai Lua.

Faces were consistanly over seven feet. Crowds were also pretty intense. When they get an opportunity on that side of the island, everyone goes. Today was no exception. A couple of times dropping in, I felt like I was on the city bus. Surfers on my left and right on the same wave.

Afterwards Gene treated teh Suz and I to pupus and drinkus on the front porch of his rental. Then, we went to Buzz's in Kailua for their signature rum drink. We got all caught up on how he Patty and the have been doing this year in New England.

Ehukai to Waimea

Video from North Shore Swim Series race #4
more at teh Suz blog

Dinner and Fireworks

We had burgers off the George Foreman grill at Eric's brand spank'n new place in Waikiki. Afterwards we all went down to the beach to swim and catch the 7:45 fireworks show. Here' a pic of all 5 kids playing in the water fountain on Leward street.

Lunch in the City

I did another training swim with Kate Costello, and also Brian Denaro this morning. After the three races so far Kate is the women's overall first place by about 45 seconds. So, I was super bummed when I found out that she's headed back to the mainland to bridesmaid a friends wedding tomorrow. She won't be back for the final race.

We had a good training swim regardless, the course from Ehukai (Pipeline) to Waimea Bay was very flat this morning making it an easy swim, Kate and I both spotted a couple of spotted stingrays. Brian went further outside the surf zone and didn't see much. Our times ranged from fifty minutes to one hour.

At work I'm still tasked with better integrating the Map Interface Layer Framework into more of a standalone resource. It's a lot of reading, and understanding other peoples code so it was nice to have a long lunch break with teh Suz. We both had a doctors appointment down town, so we packed most of a lunch and then picked up a dollar chicken sandwich each to go with it. We found a great spot to eat on Hotel Street about a block east of Bishop St., near the HPU campus mall. The area has tables and an onyx-like step of waterfalls that drowned out the city noise. It was a nice oasis for a lunch break in the middle of Honolulu hulabalo.

Hot Wax

Our house guest Scott left Friday afternoon. We all missed having an excuse to go out for food and drink too much. The kids also missed having an oddly buddyesque adult in the house. Aloha Scott, Na Hui Ho!

Suz and I were hoping to finally have it together for our garage sale by Saturday. Alas, with all the house guesting and family de rigor it just didn't happen. We came up with a novel idea though, split our objective into smaller chunks! Wow, crazy right? So Saturday morning we came up with the four week master plan to be ready for the worlds most amazing (music please) garage sale, coming soon, the first weekend of September. Later on Saturday Sue made me do another training swim for North Shore race #4. We took the fam wagon up to Pipeline they dropped me off and got chow and met me fifty minutes and sixteen seconds later at Waimea Bay. Who is this agressive athletic supporter?! and what did she do with my wife? I love it!

Today was fun too. We made it in to church and after the kids had their naps Sue had a spa appointment at Paul Brown's down in Ala Moana. The kids and I went across the street to the park while Sue had here appointment. They swung on banyan trees, climbed on rocks, and Ben even caught a fish! Heading back to Ewa we took an hour to swing by the Bishop Museum. It was Suz' first time in. We saw the temporary insects exhibit and the indoor volcano. The exhibit features a three story walk-in volcano and several substations demoing volcanism as hot wax in minature.

After that it was back to the Ewa Beach shack on the shore for grill cheese sandwiches and Mai Tais. Good Times!