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Remembering Hawaii

Yaaawn. I didn't sleep well last night. For whatever reason, I woke up around 1:30 am. I think it was because someone was knocking on a neighbor's door. And knocking. And knocking. Louder. And LOUDER. I couldn't get back to sleep after it finally stopped. I think the last time I looked at the clock it was 3:54 am. I know I woke up a couple times more, but I didn't note the time. Today, I'm all sluggish and slap-happy all at once. Luckily, I had a meeting this morning and after that someone asked about my wedding, so that really helped time move along this morning. Of course there are still 5 hours left in the day, and I have no idea how I'll focus in and get stuff done during that time. That's the hard part of a long absence from work. I have to start things rather than just pick up where I left off.

This morning on the way into work, I listened to an NPR story on the attack on Pearl Harbor. As you may well know, today is the 63rd anniversary of the attack. The story focused in on an item housed at the Smithsonian Postal Museum. Before I butcher any other details, I'll just recommend that you go to NPR and listen to the story for yourself. Having just been to the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial a month ago, I found myself really moved by the story. At our wedding, a few of our guests asked us to be sure to visit the memorial and to take plenty of pictures. Many said they didn't expect that they could make it there in their lifetime, but wanted to know what it was like to go. I honestly, didn't fully understand their requests. When we arrived on the island of Oahu, we said that we'd "get the memorial out of the way" on our first full day. All of the tourist magazines and coupon books offered "two for one" deals and special tour coupons further adding to my misunderstanding that this was another stop for the tour bus. It was far from that. As I stood in front of the wall below and read the names of all of the people who were buried in this watery grave, I was overcome with sadness. Here I was starting a fantastic new life, and there they lie entombed in twisted metal and cool deep water forever. The memorial in it's simplicity is quite powerful in my opinion. People have asked me about the highlights of our trip, and I haven't mentioned it, but it surely was an important stop to make.

Since I have my camera, I'm happy to share a couple other images from our trip to Hawaii. We spent the first three nights on the island of Oahu at a hotel in Waikiki. We drove up to the North Shore where the waves were just starting to swell to their annual high in anticipation of all of the major surfing events. We saw the infamous Banazii Pipeline and a few other noted surfing spots. From Oahu, we traveled to the Big Island. Upon landing, we noted that it was like being transported to Mars or the surface of the moon. We danced around like idiots to illustrate this point:

We would've walked across hardened lava to the coastline to see the lava flow hitting the ocean, but my back really hurt and it was getting dark and we didn't have a flashlight and it was a 3 hour hike. Here, I pout:

After the volcano adventure, we drove back towards Kona stopping at another national park to see how people lived on Hawaii back in the day. Here we pose like the statues. I highly recommend posing like a statue whenever you stop to take someone's picture with one. I've been laughing for about five minutes once I remembered what we were doing.

Alright, that's enough for today. If I'm good and remember the other memory sticks, I'll share more tomorrow. Now I have to go back to working for the man.

Oh, and Jane - did I do a good enough job of including people in my pictures of Hawaii? I saw that guestbook entry. I live to please you.

1:09 p.m. - December 07, 2004

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