March 9 – 16, 2010

I like this photo of nothingness. It’s pretty…and will make a good photo overlay for taking an ordinary photo and over processing it (which seems to be a current trend that I’m not exactly all that hip with…as in, I don’t really prefer the over processed look). Maybe it will come in handy on Kortni’s wedding photos.

March 10th.

Camden. At his very best. Groaning…Moooooom! Stop, don’t take my picture. Stop taking video…and since 1 minute 29 seconds of video is almost 500mb, sure. I’ll stop.

March 11th. Camden turned 14. We had a surprise party for him at Gino’s – he thought he was going to El Sombrero for shrimp soup with his grandpa…Awesome party, great turnout. We found a new fun party game for teen boys - “Tattoo the birthday guest of honor,” – not as bad as it sounds folks, we simply put a plain white t-shirt on him and gave the guests a pile of colored permanent markers – there were prizes for the best tattoo :) Abby and Ruby decked him out in Irish/Green garb since St. Patrick’s Day is approaching and the leprechaun beard was pretty funny!!

Friday, March 12th – I didn’t take this photo, I was driving. Camden took the photo while I was driving us all to Lincoln City where we were staying with the Wrights for the weekend so he could swim the Newport meet on Saturday & Sunday.

Saturday, after the really LOOOONNNNG day in Newport at the meet (Camden had to be there at 9 but didn’t swim until after 1 and they were WAY behind schedule and didn’t seem to care…) we went back to Lincoln City and hit the beach hoping a float fairy would leave us a beautiful glass ball on the beach…but no. We just froze. It was super cold! Pretty though, different waves on their beach than we get on ours, they get lots of big rolling waves, we have a lot of rocks just off shore that tame ours down a bit most of the time as they are coming in.

March 14th – waiting around for the next heat. Camden and Noah, everyone else is cropped out :D Cam was easy to spot, being the only bright yellow shirt hanging out – most of the collegiate fans at this meet were BEAVERS not Ducks.

 

 

 

Fashionista. AKA Abby. March 15th.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scans of directions that came with plastic toy (real) camera we bought today – it’s pretty close to a *pinhole* camera in that it’s lens is plastic & super tiny. It claims to be f/11 with a shutter speed of 1/125. This should be interesting since I just loaded it with a roll of 100 ISO slide film to cross process. Enlarge those directions and read them for a good laugh. Today is March 16th. Camera was purchased inside of a $4.99 cheesy easter basket at Grocery Outlet…it also had stickers, a really lame dry erase board that is useless because the tape that holds it down in the basket removes the dry erase surface with it upon removal, a box of mini stickers, a little tied together photo album that’s really just a few sheets of white paper between to cardboard covers in an obscure size…but all we wanted was the *toy camera* so we didn’t have to buy one on ebay for $6 and then pay another $6 to have it shipped to us…make sense?

February 1st through 6th, 2010

Alrighty folks, this weekly updating is MOSTLY awesome, except that  I have been using Abigail’s camera and it resets the time/date that tags the image data…so keeping days straight is wretched :D I will do the best I can to keep it straight.
February 1st was my mother’s birthday, folks, she is officially 36 this year…(just kidding, it’s a joke, she skipped her 36th birthday and decided to be 37 twice).
OY! It is also maddening that due to operator error, my phone was saving my images to the phone and not the mini sd card, and those stinking images have to be moved one by one to the card! GRRRR!
So, February 1, I find myself at Wal Mart after work, in thick fog…because we were out of milk at home AGAIN. Camden always gets the blame for drinking the entire gallon in one day, but he was innocent this time, he wasn’t home :)

February 2, after picking Cam up from the pool, I made him show me all of his ribbons. He got three 1sts, three 2nds and two 3rd place ribbons! Amazing boy! His fly is AMAZING now and we were all very impressed with his 200 IM and hope to see him swim that again! No ‘A’ times, but we weren’t exactly prepared to go to state yet anyhow. He did an awesome job at this meet and we are proud of him!

Wednesday, this photo is basically how I felt. Fighting off some kind of icky tummy bug for a couple of days left me wiped out. We met with Mr. Hinkel, left Camden’s computer there in the process of being formatted to Linux and updating drivers so he could get himself *back online*, however it stays in Mr. Hinkel’s room until Camden begins to show some effort in producing some kind of work. Camden still claims he doesn’t remember that part of the deal.  Remembered or not, that’s the deal (and all of the unreasonable, mean, brutal parents of teens say AMEN).

Alright folks, the dude in the sailboat is CRAZY! It’s cold, it’s raining…and that’s Kurt. We caught him taking half a day off on Wednesday (we were on our way home from Resource Link) to sail the boat to the California Street public boat ramp to pull the Zipporah out of the water for a while. Seriously, blowing rain, we had to run down to the casino parking lot so we could find a place to stop the car and take some photos – his location when we first spotted him was in the area where all of the commercial boats, barges and tugs were, and on the 101 side, there was no place to pull over and flag him down.
Thursday, that would have been the 4th, and I remember having gone in to Gino’s at 3:00AM to roll dough, suspecting that it wouldn’t be there, and guess what…it wasn’t. So instead of rolling dough, I made dough – scared the daylights out of one of the Register Guard newspaper guys on my way out – went home and went back to sleep. Dropped Cam at swimming around 3 PM and waited around for him at Gino’s until Dad called and said he’d pick him up and keep him for the weekend, he had some chores to do. SO, back home and back to bed (to the best of my knowledge).

Friday, PAYDAY. Okay, well, I nearly forgot to pick up my check. I rolled three tubs of dough and piled the car to leave for Lincoln City for the weekend. Hard to tell if we took photos on Friday because Abby’s camera time/date RESETS every time you shut the stupid thing off (yes, need to replace an internal battery because that totally BUGS me).  This suspiciously looks like me, on a last minute check of the *do I have everything we need* visual scan, before we head off toward town/gino’s/grandpa’s and then LINCOLN CITY…3 hours later than I had wanted to be leaving. Whatever. We got out of there and Angie knows about me and my straggling.
AND, I read several chapters in a really cool book, Rowing to Latitude, by Jill Freston that Mr. Hinkel suggested (and loaned me). It’s awesome so far…resulting in my not going to sleep last night until early Saturday morning.
Then for Saturday, February 6th…we have this STELLAR photo of Angie’s arm/hand, some blurry rocks covered with mussels and a wave that you can’t see that caused the chaos. Okay, so I knew lying on rocks only exposed at low tide to get a photo of incoming waves was a little risky, but Angie was already soaked anyhow after trying out a teeter totter rock unknowingly, so what did we have to lose except for a handful and pocket full of electronic equipment. UM…wish I had a nice wide angle, that would have been MUCH more fun than cell phone camera. At any rate, nothing broken. Just a little spray on us. SO, we tried some more :D 




(those are sandwiches they be eatin’)

Friday, January 15, 2010

Alrighty folks, there is a COSCO on Oahu. We couldn't stop to eat at the many, many little authentic *mom & pop* type trailers of authentic, local food, it scared Kadi, they probably aren't safe...(right. like they could get much worse than my own kitchen at home). So we had lunch at COSCO folks. Same food they sell at every Cosco I have ever been to. Comforting...yet somehow just not...well...exotic enough for vacay lunch.

We bought some mini cheesecakes and other foods Phil liked to snack on once inside and we planned his "reenlistment party" for the evening, with Apples to Apples of course.




We SAW these mochi and sent the photo to Dad and did not buy any. Dad would have bought at least one box, probaby 2. He loves mochi.

Then Kadi dropped Kortni & I off at Hanauma Bay so we could snorkel. We bought new bathing suits at Cosco (they are under our clothes, you didn't want us to frighten children off of the beach did you?) Most of our photos here are with reusable, 35mm, underwater cameras and I haven't scanned any of my prints yet. We'll get around to that eventually. We saw mahi mahi, and schools of convict something fish (black and white striped) and urchins and coral and we had a FANTASTIC time - got back to the beach to find that Kadi had been calling and texting repeatedly...as if we were going to hang out on the beach next to our phones at Hanauma? ARE YOU CRAZY?? Phil was scheduled to pick us up at 4:30ish... We didn't have time to go back in, but we had been in the water over 2 hours :D This is a MUST DO event if you are on Oahu, even if you have to rent gear. It's SO worth it (even if the locals think it's cold this time of year).

Then we have Mike. Apparently the ONLY photo I took at the *party,* during the evening time. We had yummy mini cheesecakes and eventually got around to the Apples to Apples. Phil won...I think. I know I didn't win :( Eh, whatever :D

January 14, 2010 - Phil's Reenlistment, Bowling...stuff

Sgt. Spatz reenlisted in the Marines. Beautiful day, rather short ceremony. Kadi got a certificate for being a wonderful and supportive wife.

After Phil's reenlistment ceremony, we went to lunch at Pinky's because he got the rest of the day off. Then some shopping on base, grocery type shopping. Then a quick stop at a beach I remember from my last trip, because of the "Chinaman's hat" sticking up from the water (even found a book about this beach, which is why I know they call it Chinaman's Hat).  There happened to be para-sailors there too. Two that were having trouble lifting off and one flying around. AND I found a coconut...that someone's dog apparently tried to cart off while I was down at the rest area, Kadi & Kortni didn't let the dog have it lol.

We went bowling on base Thursday night, and finished the evening at home playing Apples to Apples (oh wait, there was a brief stop at Kailua Palace to karaoke).

Lookie What I can do...January 12 & 13 in ONE post

We hit Windward Mall. I found a junk store...aka, the kind with inexpensive Asian foods that I love, and I found Korean Style Nori on sale for $0.95/3pk - tasty. YES, I bought one that I am not opening for RUBY! I also found gen mai cha for $8/lb, but didn't buy any because I just bought 2# back home. We did the crazy photo booth thing, and it's REALLY small in there. Then it was off to Spencer's to buy stuff for Kortni's bachelorette party. The front of Spencer's is full of  cool socks, tights, hats, bags...the back of Spencer's was moderatlely frightening. 
Bad photo, but it's a Kermit stocking cap folks, yes, they sell stocking caps on island. Crazy isn't it? I am not sure why they do this, but I saw them all over.




I found a photo of myself marking the ladies room at Windward, and a Hello Kitty store (yes, I thought of Patricia, NO, I did not buy the very expensive, I LOVE NERDS bag, even though it was so totally cute!! The party store had the most disturbing poster I have seen in quite a while hanging in the window. Yes, they put purplish hair on that child and made her look...like a freakish leprechaun - eerie. Sorry folks, that's just a bit too much, she looks FIVE...just not cool.

After the mall, off to Chinatown. I like Chinatown, it doesn't scare me. Marines are not supposed to visit Chinatown because of the crime related to it, but we were on a mission. We needed mangosteen and to eat something at Pho 97 where Randy & Loan said we should have noodles. We didn't have time for noodles as we were on a schedule, but we did grab some spring roll type things that I like, one veggie, one pork, and they were YUMMY!!!


After that, it was off to Duke's Waikiki, then to the open air market and Kortni and I didn't just find this cool waterfall with Koi pond, we also found 7 for $20 t-shirts!!

I will finish later :D OKAY - the 25th is officially LATER!!
Kadi kept us busy...very busy. Pics from the 13th...

We went to North Shore...we did not buy any overpriced drinks in frighteningly carved monkey coconuts. I think it was supposed to be a monkey.


There were tomatoes in my coconut milk based clam chowder - folks, I'm all for exotic foods, but this chowder was just flat WEIRD!! and gave me stomach cramps.

Then walking through shops (apparently we didn't come to go to any beach or see the water, surfers, etc...we came to North Shore to eat at that surfer tourist restaurant and walk through shops). I liked this piece of artwork...cuz it's 3D - it has cool stuff on it, and fish and it's my favorite colors :D

You weren't supposed to take photos at this crazy...art gallery? I'm not exactly sure what it is, but it looked like an art club/gallery/hippie fest. After several photos I came across a sign in the ground that requested "NO PHOTOS." Yeah. whatever.

We went to beaches with high surf, strong current warnings. Didn't make them any less beautiful :D it did make us less beautiful as high winds blew our hair all about :D