The Arnold reunion - Day 1

I was up at 3:45 this morning. The less said about that, the better. CM kindly drove me to the airport, where I had one of the smoothest boarding processes since 9/11 using SeaTac Airport's Save a Spot checkpoint option (no, they aren't paying me to say this, though I wouldn't complain if they did). The Alaska flight to Sacramento boarded on time, but departed nearly an hour late due to some unknown mechanical issue. Thankfully we had no cases of Feral Human Syndrome aboard and everyone stayed reasonably chill. The flight itself was blessedly uneventful and I slept at least part of the way.

Sacramento was a new airport for me; I wandered around a bit looking forlorn before finding the shuttle bus that took me to the car rental area. Eventually I got to the Thrifty counter, where they'd reserved me a cute little Nissan Versa *meep meep* car. After a few minutes of tossing luggage in the trunk, adjusting mirrors and turning down the radio which had been turned ALL THE WAY UP TO 11, I headed out.

It's about a two-hour drive from the Sacramento airport to the little Calaveras County town of Arnold. On the way, you drive through suburban sprawl, farmland and high desert. I stopped at a CVS in the little desert town of Valley Springs for a quick bathroom break and some road snacks. Past the desert, you begin to encounter the rolling "golden hills" and oak trees typical of rural northern California, and then start your ascent into the Sierra Nevadas on SR 4. Things change subtly, the oaks slowly shifting to evergreens, the underbrush becoming less dry and more green, the dirt by the roadside turning a vivid orange-red, and sweet peas blooming here and there. The road becomes narrower, more treacherous on the turns. Your car has to work at besting the incline, especially if it's a little *meep meep* car.

Somewhere between the airport and Arnold, Captain Midnight texted me to let me know that V had been in an accident and her car had been totaled. Fortunately, V herself was unhurt, nor was anyone else seriously injured, but she'd been badly shaken up by the accident and was very depressed at losing her transportation.

I describe Arnold as a "town," but according to the Census Bureau it is a "census-designated place" of about 3800 people. It's a typical little mountain town where the local cost of gas and groceries is so astronomical that most locals drive to Costco, nearly two hours away, to stock up every few weeks. I stopped first at Big Trees Market to pick up some late lunch (a mediocre stromboli and a banana) before checking into our rental cabin around 3 p.m. Since I was the first to arrive, I started up the air conditioner (it was unusually hot for the area, regularly getting into the mid-90s while we were there), then locked the place up and went for a drive around Arnold.

My mother's side of the family has been renting cabins and staying in Arnold for a week of summer vacation since at least the 1970s. One auntie now lives in the area full-time. (She wasn't there while we were visiting, but that's a story for later.) The cabin we typically rented when I was a kid, close to Blue Lake Springs, was still there -- but I didn't recognize it at first, as someone had bought it and added onto it to make it even larger. Some things were pretty much the same, though: the lake itself, the Giant Burger at the side of Highway 4, the twisty road that led up to Calaveras Big Trees State Park. My sibs and I didn't find a cabin close to Blue Lake Springs that was available to rent, so this time we picked a place nearby in the Lakemont Pines area.

I headed back to the cabin, took a nap, read a little Pride and Prejudice (yes, first time ever reading it; took me long enough, right?) and wondered where my sibs were. They had intended to drive out from Utah, and I thought they'd be in the area sooner than they were. Plus, nobody was responding to texts. I decided it would be better to get up and do something than sit around worrying, so I went for a pizza run. By the time I got back armed with pizza, the fam had showed up. So we sat around eating pizza, chatting about our various adventures getting there and deciding on who got which room. Michele and I decided to share the big king-sized bed and we bunked down for the night.

Sleep was... sporadic. I kept worrying about V and the accident. There wasn't much I could do for her from where I was, but I knew she had to be shaken up and unhappy, and rest doesn't come easy when you know someone you love is in a bad state.

Adventures in Pennsylvania: Angels, Bellefonte, knitting and laundry

On Monday night we watched Penn State's production of Angels in America Part 1: Millennium Approaches (well, the dress rehearsal). It was a remarkably ambitious production for a college to put on. While I obviously have some opinions on the depiction and accuracy of characters described as Mormons in this play, I think I'd be hard-pressed to write a play with, for example, Muslim characters without doing a whole lot of research and frequent fact-checking with people who are actually practicing Muslims. In any case, the play doesn't concern itself with specific religious beliefs as much as it is a meditation on human integrity and hypocrisy. (If you have any kind of belief or set of beliefs, you're probably going to act at least once against them. That's human nature. From there it's a question of whether you'll persist in selectively applying your beliefs, return to doing what you believe is right, or pick a new set of beliefs altogether.)

Tuesday was laundry day. If I'm going to be on a trip for more than three days, I'll do laundry so I don't have to carry dirty clothes home in my suitcase. (Besides, I have a moniker to uphold!) I picked up a tiny bottle of Gain at the Dollar Tree, took about an hour and a half chillin' & sudsin' at a local laundromat and spent most of the rest of the day decompressing, as you do. Especially when you're out of your typical comfort zone.

Nittany Lion image by Eric Firestine, Penn State Daily Collegian

On a tangentially-related note, it seems like everything in State College is named after the Nittany Lion, the Penn State mascot. If I opened a yarn store here I'd be legally obliged to name it Knittany.

On Wednesday, I took the advice of one of the Penn State theater professors and visited Bellefonte, a little Victorian town about 10 miles away from State College. It's wonderfully picturesque: built on a steep hill with a river winding through the bottom of the town, an old brick match factory, a historic railroad that offers fall foliage rides, lots of Victorian "painted lady" houses and storefronts, a county courthouse with a copper dome, maybe a dozen old churches, some gorgeous bed-and-breakfast houses -- and at the very top of the hill, behind the courthouse, there's an old Union cemetery overlooking the town and surrounding hills. It really looks like something out of a movie.

Bellefonte train station image courtesy of Bellefonte Cultural and Historical Association

I also stopped by Giant, and serendipitously witnessed Marty, their loss-prevention robot, at work. The googly eyes on this guy turned what could easily have been a tall, somewhat intimidating robot with an Evil Empire vibe into something a little bit more whimsical.

Today (Thursday) brought with it snow flurries, wind and general weather cruddiness. This meant that even if we'd wanted to engage in some outside adventures, the elements were not with us. As a result, we mostly just packed up, ran last-minute errands, drove around for a while, and eventually got bored and headed for the airport.

The State College Airport is teensy. We're talking Fisher-Price Airport size. They have, I think, a total of 3 gates and a single restaurant/souvenir shop, plus bathrooms and a car rental area. When there aren't any flights scheduled to depart for a while, they just shut down the entire TSA security checkpoint and take a coffee break. We took a teeny airplane from State College to Chicago O'Hare -- which is sort of the opposite experience, a humongous international airport with multiple terminals -- and managed to catch our next flight back to Seattle just in time.

And now we're home again, home again, jiggity-jog. I'm going to sleep like a piece of lead.

Adventures in Pennsylvania: scrapple, caches and ice cream

Today was Miss V's first day visiting Penn State. After we breakfasted from the magic breakfast nook, I dropped her off on campus and began my daily quest for local adventure.

My duty was clear: this being my first time in Pennsylvania, I had a moral obligation to try the local delicacy known as scrapple. The Naked Egg Cafe, just off PA-26, was happy to oblige, with a plate of eggs, toast, home fries and scrapple with maple syrup served on the side. Paula, my awesome waitress, recommended trying maple syrup on the scrapple, and I am here to report that it took Mystery Pig Loaf to a whole new level. Scrappletastic! I was too busy wolfing down breakfast to take a pic, so you'll have to take my word for it that The Naked Egg serves some mighty good scrapple.

Seriously, if you've not tried scrapple and you don't have some dietary issue forbidding it, you should give it a shot. It's remarkably tasty. Crispy outside, creamy inside, very slightly smoky and sausagey with just a hint of pork liver. If you like sausage and/or fried mush, you will like this.

Thus fortified for the day's shenanigans, I did a bit of necessary shopping, then a bit of unnecessary shopping (ah, Five Below, how you tempt me with cheapie goodies! Why are you not in Washington yet?), then proceeded to look for a geocache. After a walk in the woods, during which time I got completely turned around (for future reference, maybe don't go caching alone in the woods on an overcast day in an unfamiliar area where you don't know your cardinal directions), I had success both in finding the cache and making it back to my rental car in one piece. Yay for another state souvenir! Yes, we've already established that I'm easily amused, thanks.

Back to the hotel to drop a few things off. Then I went to the one place where the camera actually came out: Berkey Creamery on the Penn State campus.

This little number is called Death by Chocolate. I can think of worse ways to go. Though it still doesn't hold a candle to German Chocolate Crunch from BYU Creamery. (Sorry, Penn State. You were a worthy adversary.)

Now I'm getting a few online-related things done and waiting for V to give me a call so I can pick her up from campus. As you do. If anyone asks, I DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING today. heh.

Adventures in Pennsylvania: the breakfast nook

(As per usual, events are backdated to the day when they occurred, but will only be posted after the fact, because reasons.)

Miss V and I are on a graduate school scouting trip for the next few days. We've already finished our time in North Carolina, scoping out UNC Chapel Hill. (No pictures because I was too lazy to take any.) Now we're in Central Pennsylvania considering the joys of Penn State.

Well, at least V is doing that. Me, I'm prepared to wander around during the day and Goof Off, which seems to be what I do best in these situations.

But before I do anything else, I must share with you the wonders of the Breakfast Nook. See, every other hotel I've ever stayed in that offers complimentary breakfast has some sort of breakfast room where the meal is offered buffet-style to all patrons who care to rise and shine for it. But in this particular little budget motel, when we checked in they gave us a short order form asking what kind of continental breakfast we wanted (coffee, tea or hot chocolate; bagel with cream cheese or several different flavors of danish; apple, orange or cranberry juice), and every morning at a time we specify, they come by and deliver our order to the in-room breakfast nook.

"Wait, what on earth is a breakfast nook?" I hear you cry.

I'll show you.

Here's the breakfast nook (helpfully labeled), just beside our door. There's another opening (not shown) on the outside.

And at 7:30 every morning, here's what we find inside the breakfast nook: breakfast! Complete with a small carafe of hot water to make hot chocolate. Noms.

While offering breakfast this way might be more labor intensive for the hotel, there's less waste -- much less uneaten food to throw away later, because they find out in advance what customers want to eat and provide only that. Kinda clever, no?

Besides, I kinda like how breakfast magically appears. As regular as the mail, but much more tasty.

Later: adventures around State College.

Time travel

OK, right now my house is a midden. Seriously. Last week Captain Midnight and I pulled everything off the floors in the front room and our bedroom so we could get the carpets cleaned, an action sorely needed (ten years in the same place + lack of carpet cleaning in all that time = gross carpets). Now the carpets are clean and dry and the furniture is mostly back in place, but much of the "everything" that was on the floor has been temporarily relocated to the kitchen and the dining room table. You'd think I would be spending every waking hour attempting to find a place for all this flotsam. But no. Instead I went out yesterday and bought a blank book for the purpose of making a smash journal.

There is actually method to my madness. Most of the detritus we have on the kitchen floor is composed of half-finished craft projects in bags and plastic bins. If I finish (or get rid of) some of these projects, no more detritus. But the mess on the table, I've noticed, is mostly made up of items best described as "ephemera" -- old theater tickets, playbills, flyers from museums and churches and other places we visited on vacation, cable car fares, Oyster cards, BART passes, that sort of thing. They have no home, so they've been taking up valuable real estate all over the house. Instead of letting them continue to take up space or summarily tossing them out, I thought I'd give them a home by making a smash-style travel/tourism/theater journal where items could be pasted or slipped into the pages and given some explanation with accompanying text. Yeeees, I guess it's a scrapbook, but without the bajillion fancy papers and die cuts and stickers and other crafty cruft that, if I felt compelled to use it, would drive my tenuous sanity down to the piers and send it off on a cruise to Alaska.

How does all this relate to time travel? Patience, Grasshopper.

The oldest travel-related item I've found (I'm sure there are others that are older, but for now they remain hidden in the archaeological dig that is my bedroom closet) is a cable car fare receipt from April 1987, during my senior year of high school. I seemed to remember something about a choir-related tour around the Bay Area that spring, but my memories were hazy. So I found this.

Yes, it's my little red book! (Not to be confused with this little red book.) I have a habit of picking up magical-looking little blank books and turning them into diaries, and this one, about the size of my hand, with gold patterns stamped on the covers and spine -- well, I couldn't pass it up, obviously. This particular diary spans the period between September 1986 and June 1987, which was my senior year of high school and the brief period before I launched directly into college. It's short enough that I read the whole thing.

Teen angst galore, people. My first serious boyfriend going off to college, the subsequent breakup-by-mail, woe-is-me entries, plays, dances, TPing people's houses, multiple crushes, that sort of thing. A representative selection from choir tour, when we were staying in the barracks at the (now-closed) Naval Air Station Alameda, since it was cheap accommodation:

We were quite tired when we got back to the base, but we managed a few shenanigans anyway -- the boys' dorms are on the second floor across from ours, and there is a bit of yard between us. Naturally, they had to yell out their windows to us. One of the girls started to play [cassette] tapes and tried to do a dance [I remember she'd brought along a lot of Erasure], but it failed. Then the guys had to try to start a game of frisbee by throwing it between the dorms. All in all, things were weird but enjoyable. Not for Mr. Lindsay [our longsuffering choir director], though. He was tired and bummed out in the first place, and now here are all these nutsy guys flirting long distance and throwing frisbees out the window.

The memories started out hazy, but every word brought back another detail from tour. I remember the open windows, the guys and girls leaning out of them and yelling across the yard at each other, dancing around like goofballs in our respective dorms, the scent of blooming trees in the air, and a boombox playing lots of '80s synthpop. And the feeling of being young and giddy and willing to do anything. (There's a reason why tour romances are a thing.)

And that's why you keep a diary. It lets you time travel in your own life. Yes, like Quantum Leap, but without Dean Stockwell following you around like a creeper.

Having now read this diary in its entirety, two observations spring to mind: 1) I sure hope I've become a better writer in the years since 1987. 2) Though I think I've matured a bit, some things about me haven't changed. I still talk too much. I still worry too much about what kind of impression I've made on others. I'm still super socially awkward, especially around people I like. I still don't do housework as often or as well as I think I should. I'm still not fond of my weight, although oddly enough I worry far less about it now than when I only carried about 20 extra pounds on me. And yes, I still yearn for romance (oh, Captain Midnight, you're my hero!).

Are you asking for a CHALLENGE?!

No, not this kind of challenge.

I'm most likely to reconsider my conscious choice not to own a smartphone when I'm traveling. When I'm at home, my daily habits are set up so that I don't really notice not having a cell phone. Travel is another matter. If I'm sitting next to my gate and wondering how much time I have left before boarding, I have to go in search of a public clock or subtly peek at the iPhone of the stranger seated beside me. If I'm stuck in a strange city with a two-hour layover, I can't call Captain Midnight and tell him that I already miss him. (Pay phone? It is to laugh. If you can find a specimen of this endangered species, it will charge you an arm and a leg for a call.) If I intend to use public transportation, I have to plan ahead and print out a map and schedule before I leave home. I have a fairly good sense of direction, but if I'm in an unfamiliar city I tend to be very careful so as not to get lost. Should I become curious about something new I see or experience on my travels, I just have to put that curiosity on hold -- no looking it up on the spot. And if I ever feel a bit bored while on public transit or in flight, I'd better have remembered to pack a good book or a knitting project in my carry-on, because retreating into an electronic pacifier is not an option.

With that said, I think I notice many more details -- all the little finches flying around the Long Beach terminal gates, for instance, or the conversations the flight attendants were having in the back of the plane, or the unusual view of the Wasatch Front from the FrontRunner tracks (especially the slightly creepy up-close remnants of the Geneva Steel plant, since the rail line ran right past it) -- than I would if I were to spend the whole trip glued to a smartphone. And I know I would do just that, based on the way I'm consistently glued to my computer at home.

All this is coming up again, of course, because my sister Julie and I got into a playful sparring match on social media about my advanced case of Phonus Lackus, and her continued unwillingness to read any of the Harry Potter series. And I posed her a challenge I might later regret: that if she would read all seven Harry Potter books (no, I'm not insisting on Fantastic Beasts or Quidditch Through the Ages or The Tales of Beedle the Bard or even Cursed Child), I'd get a cell phone.

Well, she says she's downloaded book #1 onto her tablet. So I'm doing some initial research into phone plans. (If she'll go through with it, then so will I.) What I really want is a dumbphone that can handle talk and text equally well. I don't need a billion apps or Internet access or even a camera -- just talk and text. That's it.

So, my 3.5 readers, got any suggestions for a dumbphone with a good QWERTY keyboard?

Behold, Utah!

Got up at Oh Dark Hundred and flew from SeaTac to Long Beach to Salt Lake, then got on the FrontRunner and eventually picked up a rental car. I've been at my mom's place for about an hour. And I plan on being here some two weeks, so all you Puget Sound folks are getting a well-deserved fortnight's respite from Soozcat, The Chick Who Won't Shut Up!

The view from Mom's balcony. It's right purty.

Mom will be going into a rehab center for a week to 10 days, getting care and information on how to handle her long-term convalescence (a broken hip takes about a year to heal completely). "So what will you be doing then, Sooz?" I hear you cry. Well, I will be doing whatever needs to be done, running errands and cleaning house and entertaining Mom and otherwise keeping busy.

Oh, and sleeping. I intend to sleep very heavily tonight, since I think my current collective sleep strength is Brief Nap. (Mornings. I do not like them, Sam-I-Am.)

ADVENTURE IS OUT THERE!

"Out there" in this case being Utah. OK, you may not think Utah is very adventurous, but when you're about to embark on an approximately 16-hour road trip driving solo on a paucity of sleep, it FEELS pretty darn adventurous, I tell you what.

So I'm off to pick up the V from school! I'll probably see you all on the flip side.

Miss V goes to college

Once upon a time there was a Little Miss V. And after a while she grew up to be a Big Miss V and was ready for some solo adventures. So she and I and about 300 pounds of V's Stuff got into the Small Silver Car of Errand-Running and went merrily driving across four states (all of which were in various states of smogginess, due to lots of wildfires across the American West *koff koff*). I had warned V about the general scariness of Utah drivers; after observing them up close in their native habitat today, she's a believer.

But eventually we got to where we were going...

...namely, the dormitories of her new university.

After going through check-in, V wasted no time unloading her gobs o' Stuff.

Dorm sweet dorm!

She brought lots of decorations with her (not pictured here) which she will be putting up to make this room more homelike. Her roomie (also not pictured here) hasn't moved in yet.

Please wish Miss V the best of luck as she embarks on her next big adventure!

A Can-tastic vacation

Miss V has lived with us since 2007, and in all that time Captain Midnight and I have never once taken her to Canada. (Appalling, no? It's not that far of a trip, but for various reasons the opportunity never seemed to present itself.)

Well, the school district gave V a long weekend off for mid-winter break, and since she's had her passport for some time we had no good reason not to go. So off we drove toward the nearest border crossing to enjoy a few days in Vancouver.

The dollar-to-loonie exchange rate, though not as favorable to Americans as it once was, is still pretty good -- as of this writing, one U.S. dollar is worth about $1.25 Canadian -- and Miss V is always looking for a good bargain, so the moment we were settled in our hotel, she made a beeline for the nearest Dollarama. Much squeeing ensued, especially when she discovered all the craft supplies they had available.

Me, I just got a giggle out of the Thrills gum slogan.

In fact, if I had to pick a theme for this particular trip, it would be "bargain hunting." The next morning, after an excellent breakfast at the Red Wagon Diner, Miss V and I scoured what felt like every dollar store, loonie-twonie store, secondhand shop and discount mart in a very wide radius around Vancouver. Captain Midnight, who has nearly infinite patience, tolerantly endured all this shopping (although he briefly showed signs of losing his will to live when we entered a fabric store. I said nearly infinite patience). We also found a pocket-sized specialty store that sold nothing but buttons, and an antique/curio store called Salmagundi West (in the pointiest end of a flatiron building) filled with everything from sock aliens to mammy dolls.

And, of course, we had to take V to Granville Island. We didn't make many purchases or even see everything there was to see -- it was cold and wet, and someone had forgotten to bring along a windbreaker -- but we managed to take her to a few art studios, drag her into a couple of stationery stores (ah, Paper-Ya, how I love you!) and introduce her to the joys of poutine.

I call this one "A Girl and Her Uncle." By then she'd borrowed my coat because she was freezing to death.

But we still hadn't visited the destination V yearned for most of all: the massive two-story Daiso store in a Richmond mall. That was soon remedied.

Most Daiso stores in the USA are relatively small, packed with all manner of household goodies. This place was like one of ours, but ON STEROIDS, and it had a much wider variety of items, including some... interesting... toys.

Captain Midnight spied this one first. His comment: "Nore than Eats the Mye!"

Other contenders for the Odd Toy Award included this series of weirdly rotund plushies:

Bigger Tigger...

...Pig-Iron Man...

...and Hello Fatty.

Meanwhile Miss V was shoppin' it up in the crafting section of the store. Her method of shopping is complex, and takes at least two passes: first she runs around the store grabbing everything that takes her fancy, then she pauses to reflect on her choices, and finally she puts half to three-quarters of it back where she found it. Consequently it took quite a while for us to get out of there, enough that by the time we were finally done it was getting well into the dinner hour and we were famished. Fortunately, we were in Richmond, which has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to Asian food. I was in the mood to try some xiao long bao (soup dumplings) from a local emporium of deliciousness. Unfortunately we were in no mood to rack up roaming charges on our phones, and I'd forgotten to write down the address of the restaurant we'd planned to visit.

After about half an hour of hapless meandering, we got the idea to pull over and ask for directions. V went into a Dollar Tree (well, of course she did) and while she couldn't find proper directions for the restaurant where we intended to go, she did get a very warm dining recommendation from a fellow bargain shopper who had seen V in the Daiso earlier. This recommendation led us to Chen's Shanghai Kitchen, a little dive in a strip mall with high native factor and a whole lotta deliciousness. And yes, they did have xiao long bao, although we all ran into trouble when we tried to retrieve them from the steamer intact. Once we were filled with dumplings, long beans, sticky rice and general contentment, we retreated for the night to our hotel.

The courtyard of our fancy digs. Beauty, eh.

The next day we had nothing in particular planned, so we roamed free. We ended up finding the restaurant we hadn't been able to find before (Shanghai River) and feasted there for lunch, enjoying what was easily the best Shanghai-style beef soup I've ever tasted and more xiao long bao (because yum). After another brief trip to Daiso, V and I stopped into a Real Canadian Superstore to get... Real Canadian Stuff, I suppose. Superstore is best described as Canada's answer to Wal-Mart -- lots of generics, lots of President's Choice store-brand stuff, lots of low prices. We stocked up on ludicrous gobs of Canadian chocolate (because YUM), several bags of potato chips (Canadians have a much wider variety of chip flavors than we do, for some reason), a few sodas, and the Big Mistake of this trip... a small bag of longans.

See, Captain Midnight has a real fondness for longans, which he developed during his brief time in Singapore, and when I saw fresh longans at Superstore I thought, "Woohoo! SuperSCORE!" Except Captain Midnight was our designated driver, so his hands weren't free to eat the longans I'd brought him, and I didn't think to switch places with him, and our next stop was the border... and when the U.S. border agent asked the fatal question, "Are you transporting any fruit?" we made the mistake of answering honestly. As we soon discovered, longans from Vietnam are perfectly acceptable to sell and consume in Canada, but not in the USA. Not only did the Agriculture agent seize our longans, but it also triggered a full search of our car for other potential contraband. Did I mention this all went down on Friday the 13th? At least we knew enough about the vagaries of U.S. law to scarf down all our Kinder eggs before we reached the border.

Sadly divested of our longans but otherwise content with our adventures, we proceeded home, where the Roxy-cat expressed her pleasure at seeing us again by freaking out and lolloping wildly around the house for several hours. The chocolate is already gone, and the chips have been broken into, but Miss V should have lasting memories of her trip as long as the Dollarama disco ball continues to hang from a hook in her ceiling. She's already planning another trip (or as she puts it, another shopping spree).

And here we have Idaho...

Well, here we are in the glittering urbane metropolis of Shelley, Idaho. The town's primary claim to fame is growing potatoes, and its annual festival is named Spud Days. The high school football team is the Russets, and the school mascot is a big baking potato with a cape and a crown. No, I'm not making any of this up.

Yeah, you think I'm joking...

Captain Midnight's older brother and family moved here about a year ago, so we're staying with them for a few days before continuing our journey to Utah. At the moment CM is performing some arcane geekery with the house wi-fi in hopes of getting it to work better on every floor. (If you're reading this, it probably means he succeeded.)

This evening we went to the historic Virginia Theater (pressed tin ceiling and all) to watch a local theatrical production of Arsenic and Old Lace. It was surprisingly good for a local theater production. (That sounds like damning with faint praise, but I hope you know what I mean -- community theater can vary drastically in quality from place to place.) Surprisingly, the standout actor wasn't the lead who played Mortimer Brewster, though he wasn't half bad. The best of the lot was Chris Brunt, the actor who played his brother Jonathan. He gave the character a reading I've never seen before, much more Ted Bundy than Boris Karloff -- capable of being externally charming, but also primed to turn violent at a moment's notice. It made the character, and the performance, that much more interesting to watch.

Florida through the five senses

I haven't had the time or inclination to cover my entire vacation in Florida as it occurred. However, I did make some short lists of things I've encountered with my five senses, to wit:

Things I have seen so far in Florida:
Orlando International Airport.
The inside of a rented condo.
Publix.
Hollywood Studios.
Epcot Center.
Wal-Mart.
What intense heat and humidity do to a short fat chick such as myself.
The Magic Kingdom.
Several summer thunderstorms.
A double rainbow all the way (so intense!).
A Buzz Lightyear hoodie.
Disney's Animal Kingdom.
Lots of geckos.
Kennedy Space Center.
An alligator in the wild!

Things I have heard so far in Florida:
The droning of hundreds of ceiling fans.
Cicadas.
The voices of Paul Frees and Thurl Ravenscroft. EVERYWHERE.
Lots of Sherman Bros. songs: "There's A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow," "In The Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Tiki Room," and the infamous "It's A Small World."
A distraught father bellowing "Bauti! Bautistaaaa!" as he searched frantically through the crowds for his missing son. (Every parent's nightmare...)
Lots of regional Southern accents.
Lots of foreign languages (but mostly Spanish).
"Heart, We Did All That We Could" sung by Teddi Barra.
Buzz Lightyear calling me a space cadet. Hmph.
The sound of Donald Duck hitting the back wall of a theater.
The entire baritone sax line of the song "Under the Sea" until I knew it by heart (we got stuck on the Little Mermaid ride).
The soft whirr of a passing monorail.
Some guy rapping as part of a Disney parade (?).
Fireworks a-poppin'.

Things I have smelled so far in Florida:
Fresh popcorn.
Fake skunk smell on the Imagination Station ride.
Genuine dog poop smell at Downtown Disney.
Cleaning solution.
The sweating masses yearning to breathe free.
Nine-pound lemons.
Chocolate.
The slightly sulfurous scent of Florida tap water.
Cotton candy and churros.
Norwegian pastries.
Chlorinated water.
Chick-fil-a take-out.
The grandma's-basement smell of Pirates of the Caribbean.
Moroccan food.
French fries.

Things I have touched/felt so far in Florida:
The kind of humid heat that feels like running into a watery wall the moment you step outside.
Camel spit from Aladdin's Flying Carpets in Adventureland.
My honey, on a daily basis.
The grab bar on the Hollywood Studios Tower of Terror. FOR DEAR LIFE.
Someone else's camera, to take a picture.
A pop gun at Toy Story Midway Mania, as I vainly attempted to unseat my honey as reigning champion scorer of the vehicle.
Bubbles! Lots and lots of bubbles!
The large crypt that makes music in the standby line at the Haunted Mansion.
A Publix shopping cart.
Handrails, queue ropes and safety bars.
The residual heat of a freshly pressed penny.
The weepy condensation on the outside of an ice-cold glass of water.
The dark, scaly, dry skin of a large Middle Eastern lizard named Morpheus.
Cockroaches crawling under my seat in "It's Tough to Be a Bug."
A good percentage of that final splashdown on Splash Mountain.
Heat rash. Meh.
A moon rock.

Things I have tasted so far in Florida:
The funky, slightly sulfurous taste of Florida tap water.
Hummus and sweet peppers.
Powerade Zero (helpful replacer of salts when you've spent the entire day sweating your brains out).
Eggs made by my honey.
Chocolate.*
Dole Whip.*
Ghirardelli ice cream.*
New York strip steak in a simulated drive-in movie theater.
No sugar added raspberry sorbet.
Chicken curry at Tusker House.
A Chick-fil-a salad.
Breakfast buffet at the Crystal Palace.
Chinese watermelon soda and a few other international flavors at Club Cool.
Taco salad at Pecos Bill's.
Salad, soup and soft-serve* at Sweet Tomatoes.
Salmon teriyaki at Mitsukoshi.
Fall-off-the-bone tender lamb shank at Marrakesh.
The sweet kisses of my husband.

*Yes, I know, naughty diabetic, no biscuit. However, I did lots of walking and lots of sweating, and frankly it didn't make that much difference to my blood sugar. So. There.

Shoulds

I should probably tell you about our current adventures in Florida and what we've been doing over the past few days. I should tell you about the incredible heat and humidity and the Disney parks and all the cute little geckos running around.

I really should, I guess.

But right now it's 12:40 a.m. Florida time and I'm completely spent. So no stories of adventure for you. Sorry.  zzzzzzzzzzz

Oahu: Day 5

Our last day on Oahu.

Having fun, Captain Midnight?  "You betcha!"

How 'bout you, Miss V?  "I LOVE IT HERE!"

But there was still one vacation-y thing that Captain Midnight and Miss V were keen to do: snorkeling.

So the fam all suited up and headed down to Turtle Bay (not to be confused with Turtle Beach, which is a different place).

Well, most of us suited up.  I was lame and chose to stay on the beach due to BIG FAT TUM AND THE THUNDER THIGHS, which if you're wondering is not a good name for a rock band.  Yeah, I know it's stupid.  I'm not self-conscious about my age or my height, just about appearing in public in a swimsuit.

So instead, I went and looked at tidepools.

You don't want to fall over on these rocks.  They're pretty sharp.  And the wind was coming in pretty strong that day; I was in some danger of falling over.

The tidepools featured some modest flora and fauna, including one little black crab who beat a hasty retreat, muttering crabbily to himself, as soon as he saw me coming.

I also proved there are shells to be found on Oahu beaches, though they're not very impressive.

Meanwhile, Little C was busy looking for monk seals...

...and Captain Midnight and Miss V were busy snorkeling.  They saw lots of brightly colored fish in the bay, including the humuhumunukunukuapua'a featured on CM's shirt.  (It must've thought they were groupies.)

 Seems legit.  And sandy.

Misses E and V had themselves a good time.

The rest of the fam had fun goofing around in the water as well.

Since CM's mom and I were both out of the water, we decided to walk around to the other side of the hotel...

...where conditions weren't nearly as sheltered.  You can't really tell from these pictures, but the waves breaking on this other beach were huge.

No surfers were crazy enough to try them in this weather.

Beautiful, though.

We went back to the house, had some Thanksgiving leftovers, and just happened to be around when a couple of wild piglets got into the cul-de-sac and started roaming around.  Unfortunately, none of the pictures we took turned out very well.  Maybe Little C has better ones on her camera.

Then Brian, Captain Midnight and I went out geocaching (and waymarking) while V and E biked over to nearby Kahuku to do some shopping.

Captain Midnight also had to stop by the university ceramics studio to see how his pot was doing (he'd thrown a few pots with Brian a while earlier).  This one has a nice shape, but it would be a challenge getting it back to the mainland.

We also took a look at this island...

...which decided to look back at us.  Eep.

It really was idyllic.  At any moment I expected Mr. Rourke to appear and announce, "Welcome to Fantasy Island!"

We had many adventures in geocaching which were not photographed, including getting eaten alive by mosquitoes and meeting up with a couple of homeless guys who were hanging out near a local cache. Afterward we headed back to the neighborhood to get Shave Ice: The Sequel.

For dinner, the whole family reconvened and drove to the Kahuku Grill.

If you go here, expect delicious food, but don't expect it to be fast.  Their single chef takes orders only as fast as he can cook them, and it's easy for things to get backed up during the dinner rush.  We were there for nearly 2 hours.

After our meal we scampered home, did our last-minute packing, piled into the rental car, drove down to Honolulu and promptly got lost by following the driving directions on CM's phone.  Only after we'd followed its advice to two different dead-end streets did we decide to ignore the phone and suss it out by ourselves.  This turned out to work much better.

Once again I had to go through a patdown at Honolulu Airport, because I steadfastly refuse to go through the Cavity Search Photo Booth.  (Boo.)  TSA bigwigs, take note: I will gladly walk through a metal detector.  I don't have any problems with getting my luggage screened.  But when your stooges start treating me like a convicted criminal without any proof I've done something wrong, I do have a tendency to get uppity.  What happened to the legal concept of "innocent until proven guilty?"  Especially when there's a good chance I will miss my flight back to the mainland because of the Kabuki-theater crap you're pulling at a checkpoint.  We all know just how effective it's been at finding terrorists so far.

But we needn't have worried about missing our flight.  United Airlines had us sitting on the tarmac for two-plus hours after we boarded, while the maintenance crew worked on the plane.  At some point during these shenanigans, the experience became

Day 6: Welcome to Bonus Stage

If I'd known then what I know now, I would've booked another direct flight home with Alaska rather than playing patty-cake with United.  They had set us up to catch a connecting flight in San Francisco.  Needless to say, after 2 hours of delay on the tarmac in Honolulu, that flight was long gone.  So we sat in the San Francisco airport on Tuesday morning, bleary after the red-eye flight, while Captain Midnight engaged in a pitched battle with United's customer service.  Their idea of a generous offer was to toss us a couple of complimentary drink tickets and a coupon entitling us to a percentage off our next flight with them (neither of which was particularly appealing to a by-now tired and frustrated Mormon family), and to put us on a flight leaving near midnight. Uh, no. Don't get me wrong, San Francisco, I like you a lot, but I didn't want to be cooped up in your airport all day, nor did I cherish the thought of dragging multiple pounds of luggage all over the city.

Fortunately we noticed another United flight at a gate just across from ours, scheduled to leave for Seattle later that morning.  We took the initiative to put ourselves on standby, the flight turned out to have some seats free and we were on our way home, no particular thanks to United's tepid customer service.  The general caliber of our experience led us to make a firm decision regarding future flights with United.  I'll let you figure it out.

And that should bring us back up to speed.  We went to Hawaii!  It was awesome!

Thanks for having us, Brian and Caryn and family!

Oahu: Day 4

Sunday.  We had our church meetings at the Hukilau Chapel, which has an interesting bit of local history.

See, back in 1940, the wooden LDS chapel in La'ie was destroyed by fire.  Members of the Church, led by Viola Kehau Kawahigashi, decided to put together a fundraiser so they could rebuild their meetinghouse. They decided to host a hukilau (a traditional net-fishing method) at the nearby La'ie Beach, with a dinner and hula show to follow. People who attended the hukilau were charged $5.00 a head, and the members took in $1,250 at the first hukilau gathering in 1947. These events were so popular that they continued to be held regularly as a local tourist attraction until 1970.  Not only did these Church-sponsored gatherings bring in enough money to rebuild the chapel, they also inspired songwriter Jack Owens to write "The Hukilau Song," and eventually these dinner-and-dance shows led to the founding of...

...this place.  The beach where these shindigs were held was renamed Hukilau Beach...

 ...which it is called to this day.  So there's your serving of Useless Trivia for the day!

One of the side effects of rebuilding a meetinghouse in piecemeal fashion is that the Hukilau Chapel is oddly stitched together, as though local builders just cobbled together additions as they could afford them.  Consequently, some rooms are not directly accessible from the main building, and you have to go outside and walk around the grounds to enter, say, the Primary room.  On at least one occasion the Church has considered demolishing the Hukilau Chapel and building a standard chapel in its place, but let's just say that didn't meet with local approval.  People worked and sacrificed to build that chapel, and they have an emotional investment in the building, warts and all.  I can understand that.

The meetinghouse is also an odd mix of local and non-local details.  The jalousie windows let in the light and the wind from the sea, which only makes sense in the local climate.  But the standard metal folding chairs found in nearly every LDS chapel in North America don't fare so well in these conditions; almost every chair shows signs of rust and corrosion from the humid sea air.

And, as always, there were chickens.  My friend Laurence gave me a haiku challenge to sum up the Sunday experience on Oahu -- the peace of a church meeting, the sound of the wind in the banana plants, etc. -- and I came up with this:

Hukilau Chapel
Bands of chickens roam the streets
Cluck cluck cluck, swish swish

Yeah, that's about right.

After church, Caryn decided that even though it was February we should have a Thanksgiving dinner together as a family.  So we gathered together and had turkey and all the trimmings, and pretty much put ourselves into a food coma for a few hours after that.

Rising from our coma like zombies, we decided to follow Brian and Teddy the Wonder Dog on their evening constitutional to the BYU Hawaii campus.  Teddy has done this so many times that if you try to walk him somewhere else, he gets confused and starts pulling you in a different direction (as Miss V found out when she tried to take him for a walk).

This institution was originally called the Church College of Hawaii.  There's a long tradition in the Church of encouraging members to get a postsecondary education, and it was difficult and expensive for Church members in Polynesia to attend BYU in Provo, so the Church founded this college on Oahu.  It became a university in 1974.

The McKay Building entrance features a mosaic of Church president David O. McKay with a large number of Hawaiian school children; across the top of the mosaic are the words of the Pledge of Allegiance, and along the bottom is the motto of the state of Hawaii:  Ua Mau ke Ea o ka 'Āina i ka Pono (The Life of the Land is Perpetuated in Righteousness).

A little more info on the mosaic.

And now, because I must keep a promise (and because this building is conveniently located between BYU-Hawaii and the PCC):

Behold: THE ENCHANTED TIKI McDONALD'S!

This building is truly odd.  Apparently it started out as some sort of wedding venue in La'ie, but was later bought and transmogrified into a McDonald's restaurant.  It has a two-story fake waterfall inside, and it offers a localized McDonald's menu with taro pie, haupia pie, banana pie, saimin, and a half-dozen items with Spam in them.  So that's fun.

Next up: our last day.

Oahu: Day 3

So after days of semi-patient waiting for her particular kind of fun, Miss V was finally rewarded on Saturday.  After a leisurely start, we drove down to Honolulu to shop at the Aloha Stadium Swap Meet.

This temporary shopping center rings Aloha Stadium and is filled with all manner of goodies to warm the cockles of your materialistic little heart.

It's about a mile's walk to complete the full circuit of the swap meet.  You can find everything from souvenirs to food to clothes to cell phone accessories on sale.  Even green coconuts, which were being sold out of the back of a pickup truck by a wizened little guy with a baseball cap, a cigarette and a machete.

I picked up some postcards and a package of li hing mango for my mom.  Captain Midnight got himself a Lava Blues T-shirt emblazoned with a humuhumunukunukuapua'a.  And Miss V?  Well, she went a little crazy with the whole "7 T-shirts for $20" concept.  Let's just say she's not going to run out of casual tops any time soon.

Now, I'm well acclimated to the rain and cold of a Pacific Northwest winter.  But "Hawaiian winter" looks and feels a lot like "Northwest summer."  Plus I'm diabetic, woefully out of shape and chronically dehydrated.  What did this all add up to?  Why, the magic of heat exhaustion, my friends!  I completed a mere circuit and a half of the swap meet before the dizziness and nausea hit.  Gleah.  Captain Midnight went forth and picked me up in the rental car, gallantly running the A/C while I panted like a German shepherd and sucked down a bottle of water.

Eventually we dragged Miss V away from the premises.  We then embarked on a drive that would take us more or less on a circle route of Oahu.  First stop: the island shopping paradise known as Costco.

Yeah, I know, "why Costco, Sooz?"  After all, the Costco experience is pretty much the same everywhere you go -- your basic big ol' steel-trussed box fulla economy-sized goodness.  But each one carries local products unique to the area, and lemme tell you, I have never seen SO MANY MACADAMIA NUT PRODUCTS in my entire life.  Plus they had some Korean barbecue flavored pork jerky for sale.  It was pretty much a moral imperative.

(By the way, if you ever get the chance to buy Korean barbecue flavored pork jerky, do it.  Seriously choice.)

More driving.  Along the route I spotted this sign, which filled my soul with equal measures of poetry and glee:

Is this the street that launched a thousand memes
And burnt the cheezburgers of lolcat fame?
Sweet Ohai, be thou immortal on this blog!

Um.  Clearly I'm no Kit Marlowe.

Our next stop?

Pineapple Central!  Also known as the Dole plantation in Wahiawā.

The inside of this place is full of souvenirs...

...including my own personal favorite, the tried-and-true penny smasher.  Plus they're pretty much selling pineapple-flavored everything as far as the eye can see.  And Dole Whips.  Mmm.

Captain Midnight and I wandered around outside for a bit to take a look at the grounds.  We did not take the Pineapple Express train nor get lost in the world's largest outdoor maze, but we did walk through the exhibition gardens.

Yes, those are little pineapple plants underneath the directional arrows.

Also, does anybody happen to know what kind of tree this is?  The odd stripy bark caught my eye.
ETA: Captain Midnight did his homework and informs me that this is a rainbow eucalyptus.

Speaking of eyes, CM and I noticed a feral cat living in the drainage hole just at the entrance to the plantation.  He had the most amazing luminous green eyes.  Unfortunately, he skedaddled into the hole the moment he decided we were getting too close.

Having satisfied our lust for all things pineapple, we drove on to Haleiwa where we met up with Brian and Caryn and the kids and had a late lunch at the Grass Skirt Grill.  Mmm, grilled ahi plate.  Plus I got to steal some bonus fries from Captain Midnight.  Forbiddenlicious.

We continued up the North Shore to Laniakea Beach, informally known as Turtle Beach.

It's quite beautiful, even without any turtles on the beach, though Miss V and Little C did spy some turtles in the surf.

Then we drove on to Waimea, where they spied a few surfers in the surf.

Another photo, another chance for Miss V to be fabulous.  She was really loving the beach, and wished she had brought her swimsuit with her when we left that morning.

I didn't take all that many photos on the beach because I was getting lazy and tired.  Rest assured, though, that there were wild chickens on the premises.  Then we completed the loop around the top of the island and back down to La'ie on the windward side.

A long day of fun requires a shave ice when you're done.  Brian and Caryn's neighbors down the street make and sell shave ice concoctions right from their driveway to help support their son, who is currently off being a missionary.  They didn't have any sugar-free syrups, so I just had a snaky lick of Captain Midnight's shave ice instead.  Mmmm!

Next: a day of rest means almost no foties.  Sorry.