Obey Zolac!

So this is really ill-advised, because I am SO TIRED OMG and I need to make a good impression tomorrow. But.

Okay so first of all work last Thursday was super fun, they set us interns loose in an area I've never been before, some patches of dry forest on the Hōlei Pali, where we scrambled around on sharp, precarious ‘a‘a flows (redundant) on a very steep slope, collecting tissue from a rare plant for a genetics project and seed-collecting. It was a really cool area with a really neat plant community and FANTASTIC views of the coastal plains. If I ever have time to, like, take two breaths I will maybe post pictures.

Friday morning I went to Maui Party, and. I just. Oh my god. ( SOME OF THE BEST FUN I HAVE EVER HAD IN MY LIFE. )

...Anyway, I need to be ASLEEP, I've gotta be up in... less than five hours, now, because I am going up to Hakalau for a couple days after all, to learn how to put up mist nets and handle tiny birdies and take their blood. And then Thursday will be my last day with NPS, and then I somehow got roped into teaching the Blues mini-lesson at the Lounge, and Thomas and Joaquin from Maui Party are expected to show up which is AWESOME because Thomas was one of my very favorite dance partners and vice-versa; both of them, really, are amazing leads, and. Friday night is Jazz Mele at the Hilo Town Tavern, and Saturday night is Island Swing Orchestra at the Elk's Lodge, and my new internship starts on Monday and I really can't think about the rest of the month yet, it's just too exhausting OH GOD WHAT IS MY LIFE.

IT'S WONDERFUL, THAT'S WHAT.

We're getting to one of those times of the year where the ratio of Fun Stuff Filling My Life to Time I Have To Sit Down And Tell You About It tilts sharply toward the former. So, recap! I shall attempt to be brief. (HA. HA HA HA.)

So Ted's Blues workshop was super excellent and fun; first workshop I've taken as a lead... I feel accomplished! Having Ted and Lea as house guests was super excellent and fun, too. Seriously, best house guests ever, they were swift and sneaky about pouncing on things like dishes and laundry, aside from being polite and thoughtful and just nice people in general. I had a great time playing tour guide with them, too; we had a fun day at the National Park, and a fun day exploring lower Puna (and nice weather on both those days, too, which was a bleeding miracle), and I took them to the Mauna Loa Macadamia Nut Factory and Rainbow Falls and around the Downtown Hilo shops. And their last two nights we invited Amy over and Ted put on some music (which is largely the same as my music, apparently), and we enjoyed tasty local brews and played Candyland and Apples To Apples and I just barely beat Ted in an excellent game of Stratego and I introduced everyone to the fabulousness that is Bananagrams.

I snuck away on Friday night to go to the HAVO Employee Christmas Party, which was fun. My boss, Mark, was one of the guys in charge of decorating the Volcano House, and he and his buddies chopped down a bunch of faya trees and stuck them in the corners and strung lights on them. ...Morella faya is, btw, an invasive alien species, and one of the top two worst problems in the Park. So. BEST USE OF FAYA EVER. There was also bamboo and monstera staplegunned to the walls and lights everywhere and live Hawaiian music and a roaring fire in the fireplace and small adorable children running around, this is important for the ambience, okay... it was very nice. And Caitlin and I arrived just as the last of twilight was fading, and the view over Kilauea Caldera with the light in the clouds and the silhouette of Mauna Loa and Venus setting over the orange glow of Halema‘uma‘u, and a huge, full moon rising behind us, clear and bright... GOD, SO BEAUTIFUL. ...Anyway, the food was traditional lu‘au fare, all the good stuff, kalua pig and rice and laulau and mac potato salad and chicken long rice and poi and haupia and THE MOST AMAZING TAKO LU‘AU EVER and it was delicious. And after Santa showed up (what a rockstar he is too, seriously, all the dude has to do is show up and wave at people and everyone cheers, everyone's happy to see him, for serious, what a pimp), Caitlin and I decided it was TOO GODDAMN COLD to hang around the main party, so we took our wine and plates of dessert over by the GIANT MOTHERFUCKING FIRE and sort of oooooozed across the couches and just talked for a while, which was nice. ^_^

( And so on and so on, BITCHES DON'T KNOW ABOUT MY TROPICAL RAINSTORMS, sekrit LJ is not so sekrit, plus enjoyable spam. )

Okay so it's past my bedtime already and as usual I am underslept (there is really not enough time in a day to work eight hours and commute and do all of the things I want/need to do), but I'm going to do a drive-by post of THINGS, because if anything I am about to get busier. When the fuck am I going to do my Christmas shopping oh my gaaaaaaaaaaawd!! T_T

First off, Ted Maddry is here with his girlfriend Lea... he's here to teach a Blues workshop this weekend. Mom's on O‘ahu for work, so I picked them up from the airport and fed them and showed them the ropes. It was instantly clear that they are both fabulous people, as I have come to expect from the traveling Swing/Blues instructor crowd; I'm really looking forward to learning from Ted and to hanging out with them and showing them around the island for the next week. Ted bought us beer (Maui Brewing Company Coconut Porter oh my gaaaaaaawwwwd~!) and said some really complimentary things about my mother (that he's been hearing her name from everyone on the circuit as a workshop coordinator who is supremely excellent to work with, and having corresponded with her for this workshop he can now see why) that I hope he will repeat in her presence, because awww~.

So, yeah, I'mma be busy playing tour guide and Blues dancing and having fun, and then next week I'm going on a Waipi‘o-Waimanu backpacking trip with some people, which I am super excited about; with this trip and the Labor Day Mauna Loa summit adventure that's two out of three crossed off of my Big Island Backpacking Bucket List... now if I can only get Pele to cooperate so I can camp at Nāpau-! ...Oh man, and then I've got the Haleakala backpacking trip coming up in January... SO MUCH AWESOME HIKING YAY.

And now a list of Things To Flail About:

- For those of you who enjoy Red vs. Blue, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog, the sillier bits of Doctor Who, and/or THINGS THAT ARE AWESOME, I highly recommend The Visitor from the Future (Le Visiteur du Futur), a French science fiction/comedy web series (don't worry, it comes with subtitles). The show is, in general, much like its title character: adorable, frenetic, and slightly insane (oh my god I have such a crush on the Visitor and his crazyface, for serious, SO IN LOVE), and it's full of time-travel shenanigans and robots and zombies and silliness. So. WATCH IT.

( Continued under the cut: rock and roll, naked Fassbender, jet packs, lava, SPACE, and that guy I like. And Batman eats a pony. )

THAT TOOK WAY LONGER THAN I MEANT IT TO, OH GOD I'M SO TIRED, okay bye now!

Chris and Campbell are gone. *sigh* They'll be on Maui by now. ...I think I'm experiencing withdrawal. It feels weird to miss people you've only known for a few days, but there you go. (If I'm honest, I miss Chris more than Campbell; not that I don't love Campbell– I do, she's fabulous– but Chris is my Texas clone. Even if he doesn't like coconut. Or mushrooms. Weird.) This isn't the first time this has happened, though; both times Andrew Sutton visited when I was here, there seemed to be a hole in my life when he left a few days later.

How does the Swing/Blues scene churn out such amazing, wonderful, awesome people? And why don't more of them live in Hilo? (Not that I don't love our awesome Hilo scenesters, but. THERE IS ALWAYS ROOM FOR MORE AWESOME.)

Although... when we were out to dinner last night at Café Pesto (still my very favorite, Café Pesto you are the restaurant of my heeeeaaarrrttt!), Chris and Campbell started asking us pointed questions about Hilo real estate prices, and then admitted they were maybe sort of a little bit kind of seriously thinking about getting a house out here. At which point Mom and I were like, YES PLEASE, BY ALL MEANS, WE THINK THAT WOULD BE A REALLY REALLY GOOD IDEA, YOU SHOULD TOTALLY GO FOR IT! :DDD

For serious, how awesome would it be if we could dance with them/hang out with them all the time? DO WANT.

Man, at this rate I'm never going to have time to make my post about all the many exciting things that happened in July. Stuff keeps happening!

Campbell and Chris are in town, and I didn't have work today (Did I mention I'm only working part-time now? I'm only working part time now.), so I took them up Hamakua for the day. It was a gorgeous day (a few light, brief showers notwithstanding) and we had a blast.

We took the little four mile Old Highway Scenic Route between Papaikou and Pepe‘ekeo, stopping and pulling over at Onomea Bay and taking the shoreline access trail. I taught them about One Lane Bridges, ‘awapuhi battles, kukae pua‘a vanishing caterpillar tricks, native and non-native plants, Hawaiian myths and legends, how to collect and eat shoreline foods, how to sex a crab, and how to greet people like a local. We poked around the streams and wild shoreline, climbed a banyan tree, and obtained a coconut.

We stopped in for lunch at The Fruit Stand a.k.a. The Smoothie Place a.k.a. What's Shakin' (I think it's actually called) for lunch and smoothies. This place has become famous, and deservedly so. Their smoothies are 100% fruit and fruit juice, no added sweetener, and most of the fruit is picked fresh from their own gardens. I had a delicious wrap too, with chicken and black beans and salsa and melted cheese, and green salad and fresh papaya, pineapple, and banana on the side. DELICIOUS.

Next we drove down to the shoreline access trail in Pepe‘ekeo, which was fabulous. We had the place to ourselves, and enjoyed walking along the tops of the cliffs under the ironwood trees, watching the massive breakers roll in and hurl themselves onto the rocks. We saw koa‘e kea (white-tailed tropicbirds) and sea turtles. We watched a massive pod of dolphins swim by, intent on reaching their destination to the south, with one (duly christened 'Bob') lagging behind the group to goof off, jumping and spinning and flipping. We visited the sea arch and poked in streams, and we scrambled down the cliffs to the shore and explored caves and tidepools and discussed constructing beach homes out of live ironwoods. I taught them about blue-eyed hermit crabs and rock-boring urchins and tubeworms and sea cucumbers, and Chris and I enjoyed a refreshing impromptu soaking courtesy of a rogue wave. We collected a strange orange fruit with bright red seeds (later determined to be a kind of bittermelon) and headed back to Hilo, stopping off for malasadas in Papaikou on the way in.

Chris had been slowly deconstructing the coconut, using only his hands and spare rocks and fenceposts. He continued this exhibition of manliness at the end of our driveway– with great success!– and we enjoyed fresh coconut and coconut water.

And then we had the first Blues class of the workshop, and lots of people showed up and there was awesome fun and dancing. Really really looking forward to the rest of the workshop. And tomorrow night, after classes... Hale Pohaku for stargazing! :DDD

In other news, the lava has slowed down since the initial outpouring. But HVO's got the cool pics and videos up!