Obey Zolac!

So, I failed out of mini-wrimo pretty quickly. When I signed up in October, I didn't know I was about to jump back into RPing, and my new game started on the same day and... yeah, I've basically had no interest in anything else. And technically it's writing, I'm writing so much every day in the game, but... RPing is not what I need help with. Mini-wrimo is supposed to help me with my prose fiction projects, and it's not doing that for me this year. I can't even bring myself to care, because oh my god this game is too much fun, why do anything else, ANYTHING. ELSE.

In RL stuff, beginning of the month was also my second anniversary with Forrest. We did a nice little day trip to Makalawena, which is a GORGEOUS but hard to get to beach in Kona. The following weekend we had a little getaway to a cabin in Kalopa State Park.

Last weekend was crazy busy with dancing, climaxing with THE Glenn Miller Orchestra and all of us Hep Cats showing up in force to teach and perform and be awesome on the dance floor. I got all dolled up in my new red dress and did my hairs and make-up all period and wore my cute vintage-style dance shoes and felt SO FABULOUS. Look! (I'm on the left.) And look again!

Again, mostly my energies have been wrapped up in Snowblind. I am having hella fun, these people are my people, by which I mean TERRIBLE PEOPLE, I've never felt so warmly welcomed so quickly in a game, and I'm constantly crying laughing in the Snowblind plurks, everything is shame boners and severed toes and how many snowbos can we cram into the shower at once, and also how can I murder my character today?

Today what had me crying laughing was this plurk thread; I've filed all the serial numbers off and done some minor editing and I hope they don't mind me reposting this without permission, but.

( Honestly, this needs to be saved for posterity. )

So anyway, that's my life lately. What up, nerds?

Today I got paid $16/hour and free dinner to drive a bunch of NYU students around in a van. And like, see the Gemini North telescope control room, and go up to Mauna Kea summit, which are things I would do for free.

And it was just. Perfect. To slowly climb the switchbacks while the sunlight turns golden high on the cinder cones, with the whole earth and a sea of clouds dropping away beneath us and Mauna Loa growing larger and impossibly larger to the south, and the peak of Hualalai erupting into view, then Haleakalā—"Look, there's Maui!" "Whaaaaaaat, no way!"—and pulling over at the top with the swollen, luminous full moon rising just above the limb of the summit cone in the east, and the observatories gleaming like jewels in the glory of the sun to the west, and the kids gasping at the view and laughing at the way the thin air makes their heads spin, and the sky going red and indigo, and Venus, then Jupiter, then Regulus igniting above the horizon, and driving down in the dark with the full moon too bright to look at, casting shadows and illuminating objects in color vision, the sea of clouds glowing nearly as bright, the sky black and starry and the hulk of Mauna Loa even blacker, and the smudge of glowing orange cast by Kīlauea's lava against the clouds. And parking at 9000 feet with the moon too too bright but still with so much hanging above us in the sky, the Big Dipper and Polaris, Scorpius about to devour Saturn, and taking them to see the silverswords gleaming ghostly alien in the moonlight, tall flowering stalks standing silent shadowed sentinels. All the kids lying on their backs, shouting in astonishment as meteor after meteor slash across the sky, Timo asking, "Well, it's getting late, should we go?" And one girl yelling, "Noooooooo, I'm going to live here, I want to stay on this mountain forever!!"

Yeah, girl. I know exactly how you feel.

This weekend, we had an Adventure. It was not the adventure we had meticulously planned, but it was indeed so very, very adventurous.

By "we" I mean myself, Forrest, eight of our closest friends, and another group of...I think seven or so hooligans?

The adventure we planned was this: we wanted to kayak to either Honoke‘a or Honopue Valley, camp out for two nights, and enjoy ourselves fishing and lobster diving and hunting and surfing and exploring sea caves and standing in waterfalls and swimming and gathering coconuts/liliko‘i/‘ulu/bananas/mangoes/avocados/citrus/heart of palm and making big fires and drinking and stuffing ourselves with food. Our first group of ten would launch Friday morning; the second group would follow 24 hours later. We planned to launch from Keokea Beach Park, the closest sheltered launch site, and paddle down the coast, passing Pololu, Honokane Nui, and Honokane Iki Valleys to Honoke‘a or Honopue, which none of us had been in, as they are practically unreachable by land. We organized the distribution of kayaks, dry bags, water, food, fishing/diving/hunting gear, and communal supplies. We scouted the launch site and kayak route on Google Earth. Knowing that Hamakua is a famously treacherous coast, we scrutinized the wind and wave forecasts; we expected Friday to be the roughest day, but not too rough, with conditions calming down to a 5 knot wind and 1 foot swell on Saturday and Sunday as the area settled into a weak low pressure system. We decided Group One would leave Hilo at 3 a.m. on Friday, arriving at Keokea by 6 a.m. and launching in the pre-sunrise twilight to take advantage of the calmest part of the day; we'd have an easier time on the return trip, with calmer seas and the wind at our backs. If we arrived at Keokea and it was too rough to launch, Plan B was to drive to the Kona side of the island and kayak-camp to a beach on that coast, which would be much calmer.

( This is the adventure we actually had: )

Oh look I'm actually doing this two days in a row, I'M SO AWESOME, YEEEEAAAHHH~!!

THING ONE! Talked my darling dear friend Chris on the phone today, which I don't do nearly often enough. (She was one of my closest friends at college practically from day one.) It was her birthday on Saturday, which prompted a wee bit of phone tag, and we finally caught each other at a good time tonight. So that was nice.

THING TWO! There's this thing in Hawai‘i where we have chickens just sort of wandering around, wild, don't belong to anyone. Mostly they're moa, or Red Junglefowl, that the Hawaiians brought with them, but all kinda interbred with other domestic chicken breeds. Since we a) don't have a dog or a cat anymore, and b) we throw papaya skins around under our trees to encourage chickens to dig coqui frogs out of the leaf litter and eat them, hens and chickies like to come and hang out in our yard and forage where it's friendly and safe. ANYWAY, there's this one black silkie chicken that's been wandering around the last couple years or so, and she's got her second clutch of little half-silkie chicks, TINY BLACK PEEPING RIDICULOUS FLOOFBALLS AAAAAAAAAAAHHH they make me so happy. T__T

THING THREE! Forrest wanted to have a "found foods" dinner, so I'm sitting on a lawn chair in the dark, drinking a beer while he pokes at the grill. I brought a breadfruit, and he's got some oysters from his job at the aquaculture research facility and lobsters from his lobster dive and heart of palm that he brought back from his kayak camping trip up on the north coast last weekend and it's gonna be awesome, basically.

As already discussed, my long weekend at Hakalau sort of messed up the consecutive thing. I've decided to pick three things from the whole weekend and call that my Day 2.

THING ONE! Yesterday morning I had the most INCREDIBLE encounter with an ‘Io, or Hawaiian Hawk. These hawks are listed as endangered, but they're quite common on my island, and you see them flying above Hilo all the time. Hakalau, however, is the environment they evolved for, a dense forest full of their prey, Hawaiian forest birds. I see several hawks a day up there, on the hunt, quiet and intense as they glide swiftly between the trees. ...ANYWAY, I was setting up a mist net for our day of bird banding when out of the corner of my eye I saw a branch shake. I looked up to see what bird had landed, and in a low ‘ohi‘a branch about 35 feet above my head was a gorgeous light phase hawk! (‘Io come in a range of colors, categorized into "light phase," or a white chest and face, or "dark phase," mostly dark brown.) The hawk sat there for quite some time, alternately peering at me and into a tangle of ferns on the hillside, while I gaped up at it, wishing I had my camera on me. After a few minutes, it flew off, demonstrating its skill as a forest hunter by passing through a gap between two tree trunks that couldn't have been more than 6 inches wide.

THING TWO! This morning, for what I believe is the first time ever in my life, I laid eyes on the planet Mercury. I woke at 5:15 a.m. and at 6500 feet the pre-dawn sky was glorious, a dome of dark, dark blue still set with bright stars overhead, and a ring of brilliant, flaming scarlet at the horizon. The clouds were below us, and set just above them, in the middle of the fiery band of red, the small, pale face of a planet too small to be Venus. ...I wish my phone had been up to the challenge of photographing the scene, but the stars and planets were too small and unfortunately there was just no capturing that gorgeous red.

THING THREE! Just now, tiny baby gecko on my wall. :)

Tomorrow: Spring Break! Two night backpacking/camping trip with the boy to remote beach in the national park! Swimming! Snorkeling! Reading! Writing! Relaxing!

Yesterday and today: Homework! Go to the bank! Fold and put away laundry! Pay bills! Take out compost! Pick and distribute fruit! Go to class! Put in time on advisor's project! Pack! DO ALL OF THE THINGS!!

In a plot twist surprising absolutely NO ONE, least of all me, and certainly not my mother, Forrest and I are now dating. ...Seriously, we've been spending SO MUCH TIME TOGETHER, and for weeks it's been like, "Is this a date? I'M NOT SURE," and we'd go do whatever and then I'd come home and I'd be like, "...I'M STILL NOT SURE." Like, he'd insist on picking me up and buying my dinner and buying my movie ticket, but then no moves would be made. It was HIGHLY CONFUSING but also highly enjoyable. I call it Captain America Dating. You know, dating the way Captain America would date you. Extremely politely and with no indecency of any sort.

( Beneath the cut: Halloween! I won at beer pong, I lost at beer pong, Thor put the hammer down, I understood that reference, and vibranium cat taco dance party. Also, dating. )

I figured I was probably past due for a life update, because scrolling back through my posts I see that I haven't made a post that wasn't a) a Croatia trip picspam (and yes, more of those to follow at some point), b) fanfiction, or c) a meme since March. SEVEN MONTHS AGO. So, for those of you not playing along on Twitter, here's what the hell is up with my life!

When last we spoke, I was flailing about the fellowship I'd earned for my graduate studies. I am now, holy shit, halfway through my first semester, and things are WONDERFUL~! The work is keeping me very busy, and I spend a lot of time reading papers that remind me that WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE, but the work is interesting and I get to spend a lot of time with like-minded people, which is fab. There's thirteen of us in my cohort, and this semester is devoted to the core classes, so we spend a LOT of time together, which is great, because everyone is super cool, as are other students in the program whom I'm starting to get to know better. More on cool grad students later.

I'm keeping pretty busy outside of school. I'm now a regular instructor with the Hilo Hep Cats, teaching beginning and beginning-plus level classes in six- and eight-count Lindy. I'm also occasionally teaching privates. The work pays; it pays very little, but I can totally call myself a professional swing dance instructor. So that's cool. I'm sort of tangentially involved in environmental management consultation for a friend's agricultural property that my dad is a partner in, and to a somewhat larger extent in natural resource management and restoration on the maternal family's property on O‘ahu, and I've managed to get myself named Vice-President of the university's Swing Club and Treasurer for my graduate program's student club. Yeah. I'm all mad responsible and shit, check me out. Aside from all that I've got all my usual dance workshops/entertaining visiting instructors/having illicit lava adventures/seeing movies and plays/going to concerts etc., along with the recent additions of training for the 10k Run For the Dry Forest later this month and constructing my freaking excellent 1940s gender-bent Captain America costume to be worn at Halloween/the Cap 2 premiere/San Diego Comic Con 2014.

There have been marked improvements to my social life recently. None of my really good friends live on this island anymore, so, you know, THANK ZOLAC FOR TWITTER, but it makes it hard to find someone to go to the beach/go camping/go drinking/marathon movies with you. I was doing okay with just my eternal bro Eric,, but he went and got himself employed in Thailand for the next three years, leaving me ALONE AND FRIENDLESS AND FULL OF WOE. I was able to fill his vacancy with Sonia, a totally awesome member of the USGS Hakalau bird banding crew, but I knew the appointment was temporary, as her work visa was set to expire at the end of the summer, sending her back to Australia. My clever plan for Acquiring New Friends depended very heavily on people I had yet to meet in my cohort/graduate program... so far it's working out BRILLIANTLY.

My new bff is a guy named Forrest, who is possibly the coolest person in the world. He was born and raised on a small sailing boat, and he's spent his whole life sailing around the tropics with his brother and parents, spending most of his formative years on uninhabited atolls and places like the Marshall Islands. He's got a very adventurous/hunter-gatherer/general handy-man attitude; last weekend we hiked to a beach and he pulled out a bowie knife he made himself from a leaf spring he scavenged from a derelict vehicle, climbed a 50 foot coconut tree in about 20 seconds with no ropes, cut down a bunch of green coconuts, and expertly lopped them open so we could drink coconut milk. This is about as succinct a summary of who Forrest is as I can come up with. From Day 1, at orientation, I had him picked out, like, THIS IS THE GUY, THIS IS THE FRIEND I'VE BEEN LOOKING FOR. He seems to feel the same way. That first lab trip where we got bored and both ended up at the top of a tree chatting about forest foods pretty much clinched it; we have tons in common and we're increasingly attached at the hip. I HAVE SUCH A FANGIRL CRUSH ON THIS GUY IT'S NOT EVEN FUNNY.

Bff Candidate #2 is Christy, who I sort of vaguely already knew from dance things. Earlier this week I walked into the grad lounge and she was wearing a "Rogers-Stark 2012" campaign t-shirt; this rapidly devolved into an hour of us yelling, "COMIC BOOKS! SUPERHEROES! COSTUMING! CULT FILMS! WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE! OH MY GOD I LOVE YOU LET'S BE FRIENDS FOREVER!!" at each other and exchanging numbers.

So that's what's going on in my life. I'll leave it at that; I've got to meet the head of my graduate program to deposit a shit-ton of last spring's fundraiser money and then meet up with other students for our group lab project and then buy more costuming stuff and then teach a private dance lesson and maybe do homework in there somewhere.

STAY CLASSY, INTERNET.

So I had an awesome time in Lupea. This place, I can't even express, to a person like me it's like Candyland. See, it's extremely remote, and on private property, only accessible by passing through several other large parcels of private property, so it's not really a place very many people get to see. And the more I travel in Hawaiian wilderness, the more I appreciate that there's no such thing as just rainforest or just mesic forest or just dryland forest, every corner of these islands has its own unique community with its own unique mix of species, so everywhere I go I'm seeing something new. And we travelled through some amazing stuff on the way to Lupea. A highlight was the old-growth rainforest of immensely tall, broad-trunked, ancient 'ohi'as, wrapped in lush tangles of 'ie'ie vines.

And then we get to Lupea, in the saddle between Hualalai and Mauna Loa, and it's this fabulous forest of old-growth koa-sandalwood-mamane-naio forest, some big 'ohi'as and kōleas on the 'a'a flows, and just–these sandalwoods, I can't even. They were tall, like, properly tall, 60-70 feet tall (?), and many broad enough I couldn't put my arms around them. And so many of them, thousands of trees.

...Some context. Back in the monarchy days, the Chinese found out about our 'iliahi sandalwoods and sparked a wildfire of logging. Hawaiians were cutting down every 'iliahi they could find and loading them on ships to China. Sandalwood very nearly went extinct in Hawai'i. Even today sandalwood is a rare and valuable wood, sandalwood oil is going for $1000-$1500 per kilo these days. Most Hawaiian sandalwood I've seen is really a glorified shrub, maybe 15 feet tall and 30 years old at best; I've really only seen two or three specimens in the whole state that could properly be called a tree. So Lupea? BLEW MY MIND.

Really beautiful area. In the mornings, when it's clear, the views of Hualalai, Mauna Loa, and Mauna Kea are magnificent. The forest is, again, exceptionally stunning, even though the ground has been completely denuded by feral sheep, so the forest is sorely lacking in understory species and young trees. There were, indeed, quite a lot of sheep, especially on the other side of the fence. There are also feral dogs, which was a bit scary; we heard them howling in the early morning. Another unpleasant sound was the sound of chainsaws from the property next door, continuing to cut down ancient hardwoods (Lupea, thankfully, belongs to Kamehameha Schools, which has sworn not to earn a cent from cutting live native trees).

I had some singular experiences up there. I've now tasted the sandalwood nut, and wow, I can see why the rats love them so much. Something between raw coconut and raw macadamia nut. And then there was that fallen sandalwood log that was blocking the road, so Andrew picked it up and took it back to camp. And the last evening was dry and clear, and he chainsawed the log into pieces and we set it on fire. Let me tell you, there is something opulently extravagant in the highest degree to burn sandalwood. We felt like we should be sitting on polar bear rugs, eating endangered species caviar and drinking the kind of vodka that has gold flakes in it, I mean, that was seriously some Donald Trump shit right there, propping our wet hiking boots up next to the hibachi full of burning sandalwood, wafting the perfumed smoke over us. Just, fantastic. That could happen nowhere else, not in these islands anyway.

...So yeah, it was a fun camping trip, even if I want to punch every last feral sheep in the face.

I have already embarked on my next adventure. I'm sitting at the gate in Los Angeles at ass o'clock in the morning, waiting for my flight to Baltimore, enroute (eventually) to Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Bulgaria. Got about 45 minutes yet until I board... time for more fanfic, I guess! :D

Catch y'all on the flipside!

Quick drive-by update, since it's been a while. Since I wrapped up my USGS Avian Disease Project job my life has been brief flurries of adventuring all over the island in between bouts of being too sick to move. For serious, I have had this horrible cold off and on for weeks. Finally got my energy back (for the second time) in time to hike down to the bottom of Pololū Valley (FINALLY) and go dancing to The Olliephonics at the Blue Dragon in Kawaihae and eat piles and piles of delicious food (omg the lambchops with the fig-pomegranate sauce and the fern shoots and the goat cheese mashed potatoes and the jaboticaba sorbet a;lhsdlgha;ksjgkahsldfk). Had great fun dancing with a guy who just moved to the island from Eugene; he's in Kona but he swears he'll come to Hilo often so he can dance with us. All I can say is, HE'D BETTER, god, young, awesome dancers really need to move here more often.

So that was Sunday, and we got back late Sunday night, and I had just enough time to get my shit together Monday morning before taking off again into the field for the first couple of days of my new job. Up to Hakalau with grad student Josh and an intern who will be leaving shortly, taking a side trip to the summit of Mauna Kea just for fun, spending an enjoyable evening eating teriyaki and char siu axis deer and talking about Science, and waking up early to spend the day in the forest looking for birds. So many excellent sightings of ‘akepa and Hawai‘i creeper, among other things.

In theory I am now full-time employed, although I haven't actually seen my boss' face since February, and I haven't heard from him where or when I'm needed tomorrow or what I'll be doing. *SIGH* Pat is an excellent scientist and a super nice guy and I owe him a lot and I will owe him even more over the next few years, but... he is not terribly well organized. OH WELL.

The big big news is that in ten days I'm taking off on a massive trip with my mother that will involve a day of poking around in Baltimore/Washington D.C., a day of poking around London, many days hiking, biking, kayaking, etc. through Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina, and a few days exploring Bulgaria during which time I will FINALLY meet my dear friend sirona_gs and maybe I will meet up with my friend Toni as well? GUYS THIS IS GOING TO BE SO AWESOME OMG I AM SO EXCITED.

Which brings me to the question, WHO WANTS A POSTCARD??? If I don't already have your contact info you can give me your address (send me a PM if you're leery of leaving it in a comment, or email me if you have my email, or whatever); if you have a preference for where you'd like your postcard from (Baltimore, Washington D.C., London, Croatia, Bosnia & Herzegovina, or Bulgaria) let me know, and I shall do my best to comply. I'll be spending the most time in Croatia and Bulgaria, so I can pretty much guarantee satisfaction for those two locations, at least.