I am not an assiduous brusher. I give my teeth a once-over in the morning, never floss, and rarely bother to brush again at night. (Amusing aside: the first week or so that I stayed at Jeff’s, we both brushed our teeth every evening. After a little while of this, I started to suspect we were just doing it for show, and asked if this was the routine. Turns out he was just a morning brusher too, so we quit the facade.)

The best part about my lax oral hygiene is that I have fantastic teeth. Every six months after my dentist cleaning, the dentist and assistants all ooh and aah over my perfect teeth, and tell me to “keep doing what I’m doing!” No doubt they assume I brush after every meal and floss regularly.

I like to consider this a consolation prize for my genetic predisposition towards clinical depression and chubbiness….

… really does not describe my latest business trip.

Bruce (my boss) and I landed in Kona at about noon the day before our meeting began. With a whole afternoon to kill, I somehow managed to talk him into his first attempt at snorkeling; we headed south of Kona to Kahalu’u, where I practically tripped over a turtle (which Bruce missed). There were lots of fish out and about, but all I had was a little disposable underwater camera that I haven’t had developer yet. (I mainly brought it for evidence that Bruce actually went snorkeling, but I probably won’t post those pictures, in the interest of keeping my job.)

I let Buce pick the next activity; we cruised on down to Captain Cook to visit Greenwell Farms coffee plantation. We skipped the full-on tour, but loitered for a while in the coffee-tasting shed, sampling different brews and petting the ancient dog that lounged there in the shade.

We finished off our “free day” with pizza at the Kona Brewery (Best. Pizza. Ever), and headed up into Waimea, joking that our vacation was over and it was all work from now on.

Thursday was, in fact, mostly work, aside from our evening jaunt into Kawaihae for dinner.

Friday, however, was practically a vacation day.

It started out like work in more ways than one: I got up extra early to go for a jog. I’ve blogged previously about jogging in Hawaii, and how it’s so much easier than exercising on the mainland! It’s just such beautiful scenery; you want to be out and about at 6am. On this particular day, the wind was whipping around Waimea something fierce, and had picked up to 30+ mph gusts by the time I walked/jogged to the small Waimea airport and back. Still, it was a gorgeous trip – aside from the extremely dead cat lying in someone’s driveway, well into the point of mummification. Yum.

Next we sat down to more of our business meeting – but to my delight, we ran out of things to work on around 11:30am, and no one seemed inclined to force the issue. So Bruce and I were left to our own devices for the entire afternoon!

Our first stop was Mahukona, a small boat harbor north of Kawaihae that I’d been told had decent snorkeling. The entry is a small metal ladder of the pier, into a channel that can get a wee bit surgey if the waves are going (which they were starting to do when we arrived). I stayed close to the harbor, since the wave action sucked me back and forth quite a bit, but still had a pleasant swim. Bruce got totally nailed by an enormous wave that splashed up onto the pier right after I exited the water.

Next up: Spencer Park, just south of Kawaihae. This was a great spot for surf wimps like myself: TOTALLY FLAT, sandy entry, and some halfway-decent snorkeling. There were tons of coral heads with juvenile fish, and I even spotted a little eel on my way back into shore.

Our final beach visit was near the Mauna Lani resort. We parked at the “beach access” lot, and started walking down the access road. We walked, and walked, and walked. We walked past lava fields, under trees, and by enormous lava tubes. We walked past a golf course, by some private residences, next to a lagoon, and finally out to the beach.

After all that walking, I was initially disappointed to discover that the visibility at this cove was totally crummy; I could only see about a foot, and there wasn’t any coral to be had. Of course, as soon as I dropped my camera back by my towel and hit the water for a camera-less swim, I landed on the world’s friendliest sea turtle.

Seriously, this guy wouldn’t leave us alone. I first bumped into him in about 5 feet of water, and he kept cruising right up to my mask. I had to dodge out of his way several times. Then he headed into shore, and amused himself for about half an hour bumping into kids and checking out those of us with masks and snorkels. At one point, I was basically lying down on my back in the sand and about 2 feet of water when he SWAM ACROSS MY LAP. Talk about not being shy.

We finished off the day with another trip into Kona to stuff ourselves with the delicious Kona Brewery pizza before we had to head back home the next day.

That’s what I call a good business trip.

They always know how to find me.

Last week, while I was workout out on the elliptical machine in the gym, I felt something tickle my upper arm.  Figuring it was just a stray hair, I batted at it with my other hand – and came away with a spider dangling from a string of web.  I guess it dropped down from the ceiling.  I just about killed myself falling off the machine as I flung and scraped and shook it off.

This morning, I sat down at my desk and pulled the keyboard closer (it tends to slowly migrate further in on the desk during the day).  And a chunky-looking spider came RACING TOWARDS ME from under the keyboard.  I let out a shriek that could be heard through all of IPAC, and scootched back in my chair so hard I wedged it under the lip of the desk behind me.  It was early enough, however, that none of my usual spider-killers were anywhere to be found.  Luckily, I was rescued by Martin the custodian, who no doubt now thinks I am a crazy person.

And now the underside of my keyboard is all cobwebby.  Gross.

The rains came too late this year for a repeat of last year’s wildflower performance in Southern California. Nonetheless, with the help of desertusa.com, we tracked down a thick patch of poppies and other flowers in Lancaster, just a little north of the Poppy Preserve.

I headed out Saturday afternoon with A2, Caroline, and Sachin (both of whose names I’ve most likely just misspelled). The drive up was green at first, but by the time we passed the aqueduct and headed into Santa Clarita it was just brown, brown, brown. It was hard to believe anyone had reported good wildflower photography anywhere in the area, and it still looked brown as we exited the freeway and drove past the Poppy Preserve. The hills that were covered with orange and yellow last year were brown. The sides of the road where we found all sorts of blues, purples, and random patches of poppies? Brown.

But when we passed the Poppy Preserve to the west and turned north, we saw it: a splotch of yellow and orange in the distance that was shockingly bright next to all the brown around it. We headed over dirt roads and around mud puddles, attempting to follow the vague directions from the website, and finally discovered this:

I spent a lot of time crawling around on the ground trying to find good angles to shoot from, and waiting for the wind to pause for a split second. I decided I might as well get a cute picture of me out of all that wriggling around in dirt, so I pestered A2 to come snap a few shots.

A little further to the south, we found a fun convergence of joshua trees and wildflowers.

The rest of my pics are here.