Once again, I found myself required to make the five-hour flight to Hawaii for business. We’ve been having more face-to-face meetings than usual with the Keck half of our team (building an archive for one of the Keck instruments), because two months from now we’re undergoing an “Operational Readiness Review” which should be buckets of fun. About two-thirds of the time, the Keck folks come to LA – but we get our fair share of trips to Hawaii as well. Sometimes, we’re even forced to stay at fancy, expensive hotels. And it’s completely unavoidable that our meetings tend to fall just before or after a weekend, making it nearly impossible for me to not tack on a little vacation.

While our 2-day meeting up in Waimea has been, well, work (go figure), the days as a whole have been pleasant and almost as relaxing as full time vacation. It probably helps that I actually enjoy spending time after hours with my fellow travelers: Bruce (my boss) and David (project scientist, who does a really good drunken rendition of my Hamper Story).

The three of us all arrived early in the afternoon on Wednesday, several hours before we could check in to the Hilton Waikoloa (the aforementioned “fancy, expensive hotel”). The trip was a breeze, no doubt due to the fact that I somehow scored a first class ticket. (Beside the fantastic amount of elbow room, I think my favorite part was being served a warm chocolate chip cookie with milk, on a fancy little tablecloth carefully placed over my tray table.) We picked up one of our rental cars and headed to Kona for pizza and beers at the Kona Brew Pub, where I drove David completely bonkers by pointing out every cat, lizard, and mongoose that I spotted in the brush next to our outdoor table. (Yes, I said mongoose. This island is so cool.)

After killing a sufficient number of hours, the boys dropped me at the airport to get the second car, and we met up again at the Hilton. The drive from the airport to the Hilton is absolutely gorgeous – wide open spaces covered with black lava rocks or waving silvery grass, intensely blue skies, and an unending variety of cloud shapes entertained me on the drive up the coast. By the time we checked in, I was totally in the island mood.

My first few visits to the Hilton had left me rather unimpressed. It wasn’t because of any lack on the Hilton’s part – they have boats, trams, spas, lagoons, pools, waterslides, turtles, rocky beaches, funky statues, exotic birds, and for crying out loud, a dolphin-populated pond. It was the sheer sense of overkill that did me in, and the hyper-resort atmosphere created by the crowds of sunburned teenagers and japanese tourists.

But this time, the place has finally won me over. I think it started when I discovered the balcony of my room here in the Lagoon Tower overlooks DolphinQuest, where for $175 per person you can spend 20 minutes being introduced to dolphins. (You also have to make reservations several months in advance.) I can never decide if I feel sorry for the dolphins or if they’ve got a good deal going, but it was definitely fun to be able to watch them cavorting just outside my window.

Our first order of business after settling in was hitting the pool. The Hilton scored some more points with me when David and I discovered the waterslide. I can get some serious momentum going on these things – with occasional unfortunate consequences where my bathing suit is concerned, upon landing in the water. Ahem. Luckily, any sudden adjustments I had to make were hidden from public view by the enormous amount of splashing and foam generated by my landing.

Despite the fact that we were all subjected to the sight of each other in bathing suits/trunks, it was a darned nice way to spend a few hours. By the time we finally pulled ourselves away from the pool, it was basically time for dinner and a collapse into our beds.

I’ve been so good with my workout schedule lately that I was determined not to screw it up on this trip. Since the gym here at the Hilton has funny hours and costs $20 a pop, and the pools aren’t really designed with laps in mind, I only had one viable option: jogging. (Insert snort of laughter here.) And it gets worse: I was scheduled to meet my colleagues at 7am to head up the mountain for our meeting, so this jogging thing would have to happen really, really early.

So please forgive me if I take this chance to gloat: two mornings in a row, I got my ass out of bed at 5:20am and WENT FOR A JOG. (Where is Anna and what have I done with her, you ask?!)

First I tried jogging around the Hilton, but the paths around this place are a total mystery to me, and I wasn’t a big fan of tripping and sliding on wet flagstone, either, so I finally left the complex and headed along a bike/jogging path that leads back up towards the main highway. And I have to say, after years of making fun of people who go jogging at 5:30 in the morning while apparently on vacation, I think I finally understand the appeal. It was a stunningly beautiful time of day to be out and about, and the agonizing pain, labored breathing, and gallons of sweat actually seemed like a fair price to pay for the experience. I think if I lived here, I’d do this every day. All kinds of funny little birds were scurrying around, and the few people I bumped into were friendly and smiling through their sweat. The air was cool and breezy this near the water, and the sun just barely starting to peek over the mountains to the east.

This morning (the second day in a row that I woke up at 5:20 and WENT FOR A JOG), I had an additional half hour before I had to meet Bruce and David, so I decided to top off my jog with a stroll over to the dolphin lagoon. It seems like 6:30 or so is when the dolphins are most awake; they were goofing off and chattering at each other, and one was rolling around in the sand in the shallows. You can’t get too close without paying up the nose, er, that is “reserving your Dolphin Encounter,” but it was still an awfully nice view to enjoy while stretching the cramps out of my legs.

This evening was even better, if you can believe it. Bruce drove David to the airport to catch a red-eye, leaving me on my own after 6pm. I’ve been kicking myself the last few days for not packing a camera, but this evening I grabbed the video camera (which can take stills) and went for a stroll all the way to the far end of the Hilton in search of a good spot to wach the sunset. I finally found the perfect location back near my end of the place: there’s a stairway down to the rocky beach, and you can walk out onto the lava rocks and watch the surf roll in. There was also plenty of tidepool action to amuse me while I waited for the sun to get lower in the sky. Hermit crabs of all sizes were crawling all over the place and chasing each other, and I even spotted a funny little goby (my favorite kind of fish) darting around between rocks.

Pics (or some sort of screen grab) to come – I just discovered I didn’t pack the FireWire cable for my video camera, so it’ll have to wait til I’m back in SoCal.

I finished my evening off with more strolling around the Hilton, some chocolate cake, and a boat ride back to my building. The sky is totally clear tonight, and in the pockets of darkness between buildings and lit pathways, the view from the back of the boat is phenomenal: we have Total Milky Way Visibility here.

And so ends the business part of my trip. (My job doesn’t suck, huh?) Tomorrow I kick off the “real” vacation; two days of diving down in Kona. In other words, it’s JUST GOING TO GET BETTER. Somebody pinch me.

On my way back from the gym, I noticed Caltech has put tape up around the new sod that covers the soccer/baseball field (atop the new underground garage). They must have run out of yellow “CAUTION” tape, because they’ve used red “DANGER – DO NOT CROSS” tape instead.

Oooh, I’m scared. Will I succumb to a fatal dose of grass stain if I cross the tape? Or maybe the sod is covering up an enormous sinkhole to the center of the earth? Is campus security hiding an alien spaceship under the new soccer field?!?! Oh, the possibilities…

I knew last night would be surreal, but it surpassed all my expectations.

My dive-club buddy Carol invited me to join her to the Hollywood Bowl’s annual “Sound of Music Sing-Along.” It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like: they play The Sound of Music on an enormous screen in front of 18,000 people, with the words to the songs displayed so everyone can join in.

But the most surreal part of the day was before we even found our seats. We arrived at the Bowl around 5, and the pre-show wasn’t until 6, so we grabbed some food and parked ourselves on a bench for dinner. Suddenly, a familiar face strode by, and I found myself being greeted with a big hug – it was one of my sponsor-group hallmates from freshman year at Pomona. This was a bit out of the ordinary on several counts:

1. I haven’t seen this guy since Pomona, had no idea he was in LA, and we weren’t really even very good friends after freshman year
2. Carol is also a Pomona grad (we discovered this just last December)
3. But I was really confused, because I thought this person was in jail. He had a psychotic episode his senior year, and stabbed a teacher in the neck.
4. He introduced me to all of his “church friends,” which also confused me because the guy I remember from freshman year was not remotely religious (though he was into philosophy)

Turns out he spent two years stuck in a prison hospital (I’m glad it was that and not normal prison, or longer – he had been clearly not in his right mind at the time of arrest, and I’d always liked him). After a little Googling around, I found his blog which describes how he became a Christian while stuck in the normal jail waiting for his trial.

So, that was a bit out of the ordinary.

Then, a few minutes later, we spotted actor Jeffrey Jones – who also happens to be a convicted felon.

Good grief – were we ex-con magnets?

We took our seats in time for the great-grandchildren of the “real Captain Von Trapp” to come out and sing a few numbers (most from the movie), and then sit through a very, very, very long costume contest. The contest featured lots of entries dressed up as “My Favorite Things,” quite a few transvestite Marias, far too many very small children who were dressed up simply as “Cute” as far as we could tell – and the winner, a carbeurator. That’s right: part of a car engine. Why, you ask? Don’t you remember the scene where the nuns steal the parts out of the Nazi’s cars at the end of the movie?

The carbeurator won a 7 day cruise to the Mexican Riviera. Nice!

Finally it was dark enough for the movie to begin. I’ll try to describe some of the more bizarre highlights:

• They gave everyone little bags of “stuff” to use during the show – kind of like a Rocky Horror Picture showing. We had little poppers to set off when Maria and the captain first kiss; fake edelweiss to wave during the song; little pieces of curtain material to wave at Maria and yell “Look behind you!” when she’s trying to figure out play clothes material, etc.
• The participation went beyond singing along. Everyone cheered at Maria, hissed at the countess, booed at the Nazis, made barking noises at Rolf (?), and yelled “Wheeee!” with Liesl after her first kiss (very loud!)
• Lit-up cell phone displays have replaced lighters as the thing-to-wave of choice. Looks very cool.
• People who aimed laser pointers at the screen were very annoying, and got yelled at by 18,000 people. Except for when they aimed the pointers at the countess; then it was funny.
• We sat next to about a dozen nuns. Not real nuns, of course. They brought rice krispies to throw into the air at the wedding scene.

I didn’t make it home until about 1 in the morning – I was EXHAUSTED, having been up since 5:30am for a 2-dive trip to Catalina! I guess I’d better blog about that later; in the meantime, here are Jeff’s pictures.

I’m halfway through my four day weekend, and I have to say that I have been extraordinarily productive so far. (Jeff was productive along with me today, but yesterday he just went to work like usual, so he has some catching up to do.)

My productive-ness yesterday consisted of car errands and apartment cleaning. My blue-underneath, gray-from-dirt Honda was about 1K miles overdue for an oil change as well, so I dropped it off at the dealer and walked the half mile or so back to the apartment. At 8:30 in the morning. On my day off. I told you I’d been adjusting my schedule to earlier hours!

While my car was being serviced, I launched into a cleaning frenzy. I made it through all the scouring and floor-mopping, and as much of the vacuuming and dusting as was possible given the general level of clutter, before it was time to pick up my car and go get it cleaned. Yup, after at least a year away (it might even be more), I finally took my poor baby to the carwash! They had to put it through twice, and I wound up giving a 110% tip to the guy who did the final hand-wash and inside-scrubbing. That job sucks, especially in summer.

Finally, everything was clean – just in time for Jeff’s arrival home. Lucky boy.

We treated ourselves to dinner at Far Niente with my friends Torrin and Barb. They were both really impressed with the place; Barb commented it looked like a good place to spot movie stars (in fact, we never have). Both our usual busboy (Roberto) and our waiter (whose name I never remember) recognized us, and we splurged on some expensive wine. Jeff commented afterwards that we’d given Barb and Torrin an awfully skewed impression of our typical Friday night routine!

Today, I forced Jeff to join me in some spring cleaning. I thought we’d spend an hour, maybe two, trying to clear some junk out of the office closet and the apartment in general. We’ve been talking about building some bookshelves this weekend, and it seemed like a good idea to get a little organized first so we’d have a clearer idea of what we’d need, and where we’d want to put it.

Well, six hours later, we were still going. Every time I finished clearing all the junk out of one closet, I’d find another one. Then another drawer. Or another file cabinet. Oh look, what’s this random pile of video tapes back here? What’s in this stack of cardboard tubes? Do I really need to keep this ratty gray stuffed cat that I once dressed up as a sci-fi critter for a DragonCon?

Eeks.

We were brutal. Against all our packrat instincts (actually, I think Jeff is a MUCH worse packrat than I am), we ruthlessly chucked anything we had forgotten we owned, or couldn’t see using in the next few years, or couldn’t remember why we kept it in the first place.

By 5pm, I thought we were done. I took these pictures to illustrate the magnitude of the cleanup process – piles of stuff to throw away or give out:

Pile size as of 17:00:

Trash

Donations

Sadly, I was wrong. At least 5 more VERY FULL trash bags were put together over the next few hours, and one or two more donation bags full of books.

There were a few tough decisions to make. It seems like there’s always a pile of stuff that you don’t really want to keep – it just collects dust – but you can’t imagine throwing out, for “sentimental reasons.” I probably had more of that stuff than Jeff! Interestingly, most of my sentimental stuff no longer held the attachment that it used to, and I found myself throwing away old tapes, old journals (no worries; I long ago typed them up!), and random mementos that were falling apart.

I came across my collection of convention badges from all the science fiction conventions I’d been to. In college, these were a fun dorm room decoration. These days, they’ve been stuck in a manilla envelope under a pile of clothes, and I honestly can’t see any future time when I’d want to display them. So I decided I’d just take a picture (in case I ever really wanted to see what they all looked like) – and into the junk pile they went.

We broke for dinner – and then tackled the kitchen. Among the things to land in the trash: oatmeal from before I knew Jeff (neither of us eats oatmeal), several rock-hard sacks of brown sugar, a grease-fire extinguisher that had been buried back behind so much stuff it was impossible to reach anyway, Jeff’s old nametag from working at Macy’s, 3 of the 10 or so spatulas that we apparently own, and bits and pieces from long-discarded coffee makers.

I’ll spare you a photo of the kitchen trash.

We also own a remarkable number of cookbooks (more than 10), considering how little cooking we do.

But the really sad thing is that we’re still not done! After completing the kitchen, I breathed a sigh of relief – our apartment was junk-free. And then I noticed the closet in the living room. And remembered the cupboard in the bathroom. And there’s one more kitchen cupboard, come to think of it. But I really think that’ll be all…

Our original plan this morning was to clean, then split up – I’d hit the gym for a few hours, while Jeff got bookcase supplies at Home Depot. We figured we’d still have all evening to start work on this masterpiece of wood, and maybe even watch a movie. Instead, all we did was throw shit out. Thank god our manager is out of town; he would have been apoplectic seeing the number of bags we tossed into the building dumpster.

It’s been quite a week. Work’s been insane, I’ve been acclimating to a slightly different sleep and workout schedule, and Jeff and I have made great strides in the eating-in department. :)

Still, I managed to squeeze in some scuba trip planning! My work is taking me back to Hawaii for a Thursday/Friday meeting at the end of July. I have a few more vacation days available than Jeff, so I decided I might as well use one and extend the trip through Monday, so I can get some diving in on Saturday and Sunday. (diving over by 2pm on Sunday; plane takes off 1:30 Monday – if you were wondering why I’m diving the day before flying!)

My original plan was to dive both days with friends and colleagues. One of the guys who will be in the same meeting, coincidentally named Jeff, is finishing up his scuba certification this month, and we talked about going out diving with his outfit up near Waikoloa. It sounded like a lot of fun, since I’d probably get to dive some more northerly sites. However, he was only available on Saturday. My old college friend Julie was available both days and up for anything; she’s also a pretty inexperienced diver, though she finished her certification with Jack’s in Kona a few years ago.

So my initial plan was to split up the diving: a day up north, and then a day with Jack’s. This would mean moving my gear around a lot, but no big deal. I also still had to find a place to stay.

After several on-line attempts to discover good rates, I finally found the best deal at the Royal Kona by calling, and booked myself for Saturday and Sunday nights. Then Jack’s Diving Locker wrote back to me that they actually had a THREE-TANK, ADVANCED dive trip going out on Saturday, with 2 spots left. Jack’s, of course, is right across from Royal Kona.

My plans to dive with Jeff went out the window (sorry, Jeff), and I instantly signed on. This meant I was dumping Julie, too (sorry, Julie!), since Jack’s has requirements on divers who sign up for their advanced trips, that she doesn’t yet meet. But now I’m diving right across the street from where I’m staying, and my gear stays in one place – and I get in FIVE dives instead of a measly four.

Julie gave me a call yesterday to say she’s still up for diving Sunday, and is actually quite content to do just one day of diving to ease back into it, so it’s all good. She’ll also keep me company in Kona Saturday night, and probably stay until I head back to the airport Monday around lunch.

I can’t wait! It’ll be a little strange diving someplace exotic without my own Jeff (and his camera). I’m hoping to borrow or buy a video housing, so I can take more footage while I’m there. If not, I might at least lug along our old Reefmaster for some point-and-shoot pics; we’ll see!