sionnagh is renting a four-bedroom house on O‘ahu. If you live there and you are a really nice person, you should totally rent one from her! If you don’t live there, but you would like a place to stay for a visit, you should still rent one for her. (At $175.00/week, it’d be a lot cheaper than a hotel, and you’d have access to a kitchen and the company of a very nifty person.) From her post here:

Aloha,

Jay suggested that I post that I still (and again) have a couple of rooms for rent here on Oahu. I'm asking $600 a month, or $175/week. It's very close to the bus line, which will take you around the entire island. If you're interested, I can send pics or more info. I'll probably keep at least one of the rooms for this sort of thing through May.

Hugs,
Tigris

[EDIT: As of December 30, the rooms are still available.]

My last few days have been wonderful. First I should mention something I forgot to post about last time: I got in a nice long phone call with sionnagh on her birthday (July 8, or Double Independence Day as she calls it). Aside from Hamlet, the best dog in the world (see userpic), having a problem with a cut on his paw that won’t heal, it sounds like she’s doing really well. The fact that she had a birthday party the previous night, on the 7th, and it was still very much in evidence in the background of the phone call, speaks well. :-)

I already posted about last Tuesday at Walden Pond with surrealestate, which was delightful.

I had been planning on making a brief day-trip up to BiCamp on Sunday morning, so that I wouldn’t completely miss BiCamp this year, but surrealestate offered me the use of her tent Friday night, so instead I went up Friday night and came back Saturday afternoon. I am so glad I did that, and so grateful to surrealestate for her hospitality. I got to see all sorts of wonderful people from out of town, such as onemintjulep (and I got to meet his sister, the_elle_word), K. and her sweetie A., and a couple people from New Hampshire who don’t use LiveJournal. Also got some hugs in with lilbjorn and docorion, of course.

Swimming on Saturday at the swimming hole was excellent and delightful. (Crossing the rocky, slippery riverbed twice with no shoes I could get wet was somewhat less delightful. I’m very glad that my cellphone was in one of the two pockets (of six) that didn’t get utterly, utterly soaked when I fell. But swimming was totally worth it.)

And oh, my, the stars! If I believed in a Creator I would thank it profusely for the gift of small bladders forcing me to go outside in the middle of the night. Wow.

Then I came back on Saturday to a truly spectacular evening with my gorgeous girlfriend plumtreeblossom. You will forgive me if I don’t go into too much detail. Oh, and there was also good conversation!

Then we had a yummy and relaxing breakfast at The Broken Yolk (a little diner very near plumtreeblossom’s house, and the only place in the Boston area that I’ve found that has biscuits and gravy) before she went to Theatre@First for a work day or a rehearsal (I forget which). She’s a delight and I love her. (By the way, if I can let you in on a little secret, we’re dating.)

For the rest of the day, I got a little stuff done around the house — not nearly as much as I had planned, but given that I now have clean clothes to wear, I can’t complain too much.

Then yesterday (Monday) morning, I popped some corned beef and veggies in the crockpot, and last night cathijosephine came over for that and a beer. Had a great time with her, and I felt good about cooking, because I haven’t been doing nearly as much of that as I want to lately; it had been quite a while since I had the crockpot out. And it came out very good! I mentioned that I felt silly wasting all the broth but didn’t know what to do with it, and she had the awesome idea to cook pasta in it! So that’s what I did, and I just had some for lunch, and oh, my is it yumminess! That cathijosephine is smart! Walked her home (which was nice, because it was a gorgeous night and the first exercise I’d gotten all day), so I got to stop in and cuddle Chickenfinger a bit. Then I came home and puttered around on the computer for far too long and got to bed late, but I slept in a bit (I don’t have work today) and I feel really good today. The plan for the afternoon is scheduling logistics and house cleaning and organization before Diesel.

Well, plumtreeblossom and I made it home, despite two delays and a quite serious sprint with our carry-on bags to a different terminal in Philadelphia to discover that our connecting flight had left and we had to go back to the original terminal to get on the next flight.

Our checked luggage has not made it home, and had not made it to Logan several hours after we landed. (plumtreeblossom needed to go to an event at theatreatfirst, so she grabbed a cab while I tried to find our luggage.) It may yet show up, but I am *ahem* displeased.

Suffice it to say that I will endeavour to avoid US Airways in future if possible.

In the past, I’ve mostly flown American, and they’ve had good coördination between ground and air about connections, and they’ve handled the case where a plane with a large number of people making a specific connection was delayed very well. Also, in the one case where I couldn’t find my luggage (which wasn’t their fault — another passenger with similar baggage had walked off with it), they gave me a meal voucher so I could get some food while I was waiting for them to try to track it down.

There are some good things I can say about how US Airways handled our troubles on the way home: A flight attendant whom we asked for connection information reseated us in aisle seats near the front of the aircraft so we could get off very quickly (which didn’t actually let us make our original connecting flight, but was probably instrumental in our managing to get on the flight we did make, so we were an hour and a half late rather than two or three hours late), and the person in baggage services we filed our tracking request with was very sympathetic and polite. Oh, and another person working in the baggage area gave us useful advice.

Anyway, our time in Vegas was great! It was excellent to see sionnagh and for her to meet plumtreeblossom, we had a couple really excellent and shockingly inexpensive meals among many very good and quite reasonably priced meals (reminder to self: eat at the Caravan Café at Sahara again next time), we had lots and lots of fun, and subtracting the money we spent on the casino floor from the money we won on the casino floor, plumtreeblossom and I both came out a bit ahead, which means the casino paid us $15 or so to sit and entertain ourselves for a couple hours and drink free strawberry daiquiris. (We spent most of that couple hours at video poker machines that advertised a better than 100% return; I think they’re loss-leader machines. But they brought us free drinks there all the same.)

We also got to see the Star Trek Experience at the Hilton and a really impressive aerial silks performer at Circus Circus as well as nifty aerial work as part of the Bite show at the Stratosphere. And we rode the monorail to the other end of the Strip and saw the impressive exterior of the MGM Grand and sat and had a very pleasant time on the patio of a bar in New York, New York and, um, I’m sure there’s lots of other stuff I’m forgetting. Like the toothbrush story; I’m definitely forgetting that.

Oh, and I won singing stuffed chickens for plumtreeblossom and sionnagh and myself at Skee-ball at Circus Circus. (That’s another reason I hope our luggage is found.) sionnagh’s is named Tandoori, plumtreeblossom’s is named Pot Pie, and mine is named Cordon Bleu.

Pictures may follow in a few days. (Fortunately, I pulled the memory card from the camera on the theory I might look at pictures on the plane. Unfortunately, the camera itself is in my checked luggage.)

All in all, it was a fabulous trip and we had a wonderful time!

[EDIT: We saw the smoke from this forest fire in New Jersey from the air. It was impressive.]

Just wanted to say I’m having a great time here in Vegas. Good food, a walk this afternoon, yummy daiquiris, a little inexpensive mindless gambling (I spent $45, and walked away 40min later with $43, so cheap entertainment), and of course wonderful time with plumtreeblossom and sionnagh.

So plumtreeblossom and I had a lovely morning, with inter alia brunch at a little hole-in-the-wall diner near my house. It was pleasant and sunny when we went in. When we came out it was grey and windy and cold and we thought a storm might be coming in. But by the time I dropped her off in Davis, it was sunny and nice again.

Sadly I didn’t get to see any of Somerville Open Studios, but darxus (aided and abetted by cathijosephine met me at Marathon Sports to buy shoes. See, I have this problem that I buy cheap shoes, and more than half the time they’re crummy and hurt and fall apart right away, so I’m not willing to spend good money on shoes, since it’s not a good investment because they probably won’t work out. The more clever among you may detect a certain amount of circularity to this logic. Anyway, inspired by darxus’ experience getting fitted for shoes there, I met them and got myself a pair of significantly less cheap shoes.

They gave me 9½ wide shoes, which is crazy, because I take 9½ regular. These new shoes feel weird. For example, my little toes don’t hurt. How can you tell you have your shoes on properly if your toes don’t hurt? But I’ll give them another couple days...

Then we went to Cambridge Common for lunch. Since I had had brunch fairly recently, I just had an appetizer — yummy, yummy sweet-potato fries! I have to go back there.

Then cathijosephine and I wandered around in quest of a fax machine, getting distracted by a bookstore along the way, and finally succeeding at a Staples. Then we went back to darxus’ place for a little bit. While I was there, I got a call from docorion, returning my call earlier when we were trying to figure out where we could send a fax from. So I asked him if he had dinner plans, and since he didn’t, I met him in Davis and we went to Redbones for barbecue and had a great time hanging out and chatting.

The one downside to the day is my back. I hurt it recently, probably yesterday morning when I was moving some boxes of papers into the crawlspace above the garage. (This involved carrying heavy bulky boxes up a ladder, so I was holding them in odd ways to keep my center of balance over the ladder.) It was distinctly noticeable yesterday, but wasn’t too bad. (It was still an excellent excuse to get a massage from plumtreeblossom, though!) Today it’s gotten worse over the course of the day. In particular, it really doesn’t like getting into and out of the car, which I’ve been doing a lot of. I look forward to a good night’s sleep and hopefully it will be better tomorrow morning.

In other news, in less than a week, plumtreeblossom and I will be in Las Vegas, meeting sionnagh and her father for a couple of days! That will be delightful; I’m looking forward to them meeting each other.

Now it’s time to take my painkiller and go to sleep. G’night, all!

plumtreeblossom and I celebrated St Patrick’s Day with the delightful dan4th and dabunny. We started with dinner at Christopher’s in Porter Square (mmmm, the sirloin tips in garlic sauce were to die for!), and then all hung out chez dan4th et dabunny. One of the better St Patrick’s Days I can remember.

Then plumtreeblossom and I retired to her place and promptly collapsed. In the morning I found us tickets that we can actually afford to Las Vegas in May to meet sionnagh and her father! That was great, because the last time I looked I hadn’t seen anything cheap enough, and it would have been a shame to miss the opportunity to see her while she’s on the mainland. While I was doing that, plumtreeblossom made us bacon and eggs, and we had a nice relaxed breakfast.

Then I went to the Diesel to meet eisa, who was here for the weekend. It was a delight to see her! We got lots of catching-up in and had a great time before I took her to South Station to get her train home.

You know, I’ve got a good life.

Had a great last few days in Hawai‘i, including a trip to the water park with sionnagh, our friend K, and her daughter D., and a games night at which I got to meet a bunch of sionnagh’s friends and play Web of Power and Frank’s Zoo.

Oh, and the Crockpot Fairy has visited sionnagh. :-)

I have a very tight connection in LAX, which I made it in time for despite my flight from HNL being delayed. Only now my flight from LAX to ORD is delayed, so my connection in Chicago is now iffy. Wish me luck.

Yours very sleepily,
beowabbit

Thursday and Friday, we went to Mokuleia Beach on the north shore (of O‘ahu). Very secluded and stunningly gorgeous. For sheer natural beauty, it may be my favourite of the Hawai‘i beaches I’ve been to, largely because of the green mountains looking like folds of very fertile fabric that face it. It was a bit windy (pleasantly so) and wavy. We didn’t go out very far for fear of undertow, but we got some good swimming in.

On Thursday from the beach I got to talk to plumtreeblossom on the phone — that was a delight!

Thursday night I also made it to a meeting of the Honolulu poly group.

Today we’re going to a water park and a Mardi Gras party, and tomorrow (my last full day) to a flea market and to a games night that sionnagh organized for me.

Having a delightful time, and loving the time with sionnagh, but also missing my people back home. I’m soaking up sun to bring back with me for you all!

I forgot to mention last night that I have fallen in lust with sionnagh’s car. It’s a 2000 Honda Insight hybrid (a two-seater), it’s comfy (for me, but probably not for zzbottom or docorion), it drives great, and it seems to get around 53mpg. I want one. Evidently 2006 was the last model year they made them, but I couldn’t afford a new one anyway. Not that I can afford a used one, either, but the next time I can spend that kind of money on a used car, which will be, I dunno, maybe 2049, when I will be 82, I’m definitely getting one.

Then of course I’ll need to get a pickup truck to help people move and for camping trips and big grocery runs. The Insight is wee. (And sexy, like certain other wee things of my acquaintance.)

I’m here and happy! On the way home from the airport, sionnagh took me to a Japanese curry house. Two choices of sauce (mild or spicy), a choice of how much rice they serve it with, several bases and toppings to choose from, and that’s the menu, aside from a few salads. Really good; I’d love to find a place like that in Boston.

We got to catch up over dinner and in the car, and then there was a wonderful reunion with all the wonderful dogs!

I slept really well and woke up energetic and happy and hung out with the dogs a bit. When sionnagh got up we went out to brunch and then met her friend T. and two of T.’s daughters (4 and 14, I believe). We went to Chinatown, under the misapprehension that there was a lunar new year’s festival still going on, but we wandered around a bit and ended up having dim sum.

Now I’m hanging out at T.’s house with her kids while she and sionnagh are out at a meeting. Fortunately, the 14-year-old is good at translating what the 4-year is trying to say. :-)

Have I mentioned that I wore sandals, shorts and a T-shirt today? Yay!