Obey Zolac!

Upcoming movies that I just discovered and am excited about:

Django Unchained. NEW TARANTINO MOVIE. CRISTOPH WALTZ IS IN IT. AND LEONARDO DICAPRIO. AND SAM L. AND ZOE BELL. AND OTHER PEOPLE. AND IT LOOKS AMAZING. Haha, now that Quentin's taken on Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, looks like he's moving on to American slavery. Oh honey, you're so cute~. JUST KEEP MAKING AWESOME MOVIES OKAY.

Anna Karenina. Tolstoy novel. Directed by Joe Wright, who directed Pride & Prejudice. It has Keira Knightley in it. And Jude Law. AND AARON'S JOHNSON. (Although apparently now he's married he goes by Aaron Taylor-Johnson.) And other people. And IT LOOKS GORGEOUS OH MY GOD.

WATCH THE TRAILERS OMG.

In other news, I think I'mma go see Brave today. I've heard it's good, but not as mind-blowingly awesome as other recent Pixar efforts, but I cannot resist the draw of Scottish accents and feminism.

-Oh my god you guys, I love the people I live with. Thursday night was sushi night and everyone from the RM house and the other USGS house came over and we had a massive pile of sushi and miso soup and tofu-mushroom wontons and this beautiful monstrosity Brent invented that he called "redneck sushi", which involved bacon wrapped around cornbread wrapped around smoked pork, onions, and barbecue sauce (OH MY GOD YOU GUYS). And we were all hanging out in our kitchen drinking beers, seven people from all over the U.S. and Canada (the Italian went home early with the Californian), and someone– not me– referenced The Mighty Boosh, and everyone understood the reference. And then proceeded to make more. ...COOLEST GROUP OF PEOPLE EVER. Also I watch Supernatural and Top Gear with Sean, and he lurks around with vague, amused interest when I watch The Vampire Diaries. (Btw look_alive, Meredith Fell, lololol.)

-Last night was hella stormy. Woke up at 2:30 in the morning to booms of thunder that shook the house, generated by lightning a mile or less away. This continued for a few hours... I sort of drifted in and out of sleep. I'm sure there's new snow on the mountains. Again. (I think I failed to mention that the storm that hit us in Kapa‘a dumped HELLA SNOW on the peaks. I have pictures. Which I will maybe someday show you.)

-Boomer, my Droid phone, succumbed to her Cylon sleeper programming and went BATSHIT INSANE yesterday morning... ignoring my commands and scrolling and punching buttons with random and gleeful abandon. So I drove her down into Hilo today and took her to the Verizon store... dude said original Droids are starting to reach the point of obsolescence and that Boomer would probably continue to be glitchy, so I cashed in on my upgrade and got a Droid 4. She's shiny and beautiful and smart and her name is Athena. (Number 8 Cylons are the best Cylons. Ilu Grace Park. ♥)

...So yeah, I'm hanging at my Dad's house stealing internet. I'mma head up to Mom's for a bit and pick up my shiny new REI gear and some other stuff, buy some gas, buy some mochi and plum wine for Girls' Day (and a Happy Girls' Day to you all~ xoxo), and have some dinner with Dad and Bev before heading back up the hill. I'mma maybe try to wrangle some of the other interns into driving to southern Ka‘u or South Kona tomorrow to try and find some sunny weather and a beach, because it has been hella damp for way too long. And then Monday it's back out into the field.

Fieldwork's been going well... aside from issues with the weather, and that GIANT KOA TREE that fell and blocked the road and forced us to find an alternate way out, and the power steering breaking down in the pickup truck, and other suchlike shenanigans. But the cabin is dry and the pit toilet doesn't smell too bad and there are only a few spiders, really, and we've been catching cute birds and I'm getting more proficient at handling them, and we put up more poles so we should catch more birds next week, and maybe we'll catch one of those Hawai‘i Creepers that's been taunting us, and hopefully we won't catch that hawk. (IT'S HAPPENED BEFORE.)

I really do need to find time to do a picspam. I have discovered that I can catch wireless if I sit outside my house, but it's been so rainy that that's not often a feasible solution. And of course I live in the woods half the week, so I have very limited exposure to even that limited amount of civilization. But it's high up on my to-do list, I swear. It's just. THERE ARE SO MANY THINGS. T_T

Here, I'll leave you with the latest Avengers trailer. It's a little like sex. (Just, you know, click the thing that says "Watch Trailer".)

LOVE YOU ALL. ♥

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. )

Sooo, what have I been up to recently besides feeling like I've been punched in the face? A LOT. I shall attempt to be brief.

-The Embalmer's Ball! Friday before Halloween, awesome live music, nice dance floor, quality pupus, pirate theme!

-Went to another Halloween party the next night with the folk dance crew, had a good time but ducked out early to hang with Eric and Micah and Kira (high school friends). We drove all the way to Waikoloa to catch happy hour at Sansei's, this awesome sushi bar. Everything on the menu was half-off, and everything was delicious, and the waitress took awesome care of us and the chef made us dessert even though he usually doesn't, and it was fried ice cream and it was DELICIOUS. And then we drove to Hapuna and lay on our backs in the sand and watched the stars and the meteors and talked about movies and Micah fell asleep and the rest of us went skipping up and down the beach, and then we got back in the car and Eric opened the sunroof and drove the back roads while we stood with the wind in our faces. Didn't get home until after three in the morning, but it was so worth it.

-On Halloween went to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the very first time; had a lot of fun and of course Tim Curry is always sexy even/especially in drag, but all in all I think The Room is a more hilarious experience. Or maybe it's just that I'm usually drunk for that one.

-Was sick for a few days. It was sucky and lame.

-Had the most awesome day at work EVER last week Thursday. It was almost the most boringest day ever. Everyone else in the team was off in Ola‘a or Kahuku and it was just going to be me and Laurèen doing koa processing all day. This means eight hours of sitting in one spot, peeling open koa pods and stripping out the seeds. I remembered to bring my iPod and speakers, so that was a good start. And we're sitting there and we're telling each other, "Hey, we could go to the volunteer house and watch movies, that would be okay, right? It doesn't matter where we do the work so long as we do it, right? Maybe?" And then boss-lady Sierra walks by and says, "Hey girls, you should go to the volunteer house and watch movies!" and we were like, "WOW SIERRA WHAT A GREAT IDEA." And then my iPod died, so we went to the volunteer house and watched movies. And we sat in big squishy armchairs and drank tea and there were KITTENS and we watched Spirited Away, Top Gun, and Aladdin and it was the BEST DAY AT WORK EVER.

( Continued under the cut: epic adventuring, downtown dance parties, boys boys boys (okay just one), recs for fun and profit, and PICSPAM OUT THE YINGYANG. )