Sunrise at Maks.

Sunset Beach

Malia, Tammy, Me, and Wen having a lazy Sunday on the N. Shore.

February has come and gone, 2011 has been flying by. And I'm glad, it seems like just what I need; keeping myself busy, doing things I love with the people I love. 

Last weekend I worked on both Saturday and Sunday, and even though I had Monday off I had to do the Great Aloha Run (running = work). Which by the way I complete in 1.5 hours, cheehooo. And in between all that working and running, I managed to get in dinner with Wendy, Villa, Waikiki Bar night (we hit 5 bars in one night!), and taco night at my house. It was a busy busy weekend. So this weekend I had the entire weekend off, and there wasn't anything else I wanted to do but be at a beach with good company. So my goal for this weekend was to spend 80% of it in a bikini, and that I did. Now I don't get many 2-day weekends, so I felt as if I had all the time in the world to do whatever the hell I wanted, I took advantage of every minute. Here's what the weekend consisted of:

Friday evening

• Eat The Street in Kakaako with mom. Just like last time lines were ridiculous! But I did get to try my first Let Them Eat Cupcakes cupcake (li hing mui mango). LTEC is my old TGIF coworkers Nick and Kawehi's cupcake company, I'm incredibly proud of them! The cupcake was amazing, moist and tasted so delicious, I can't wait to see what's next for them! Also I was able run into a handful of old friends and coworkers.
• Not wanthing to wait in line, Wayne picked me up and we went to eat at Camilias with Anna and Wendy. ALL YOU CAN EAT YAKINIKU! I had the meanest yakiniku cravings all week, totally satisfied it.
• After yakiniku Wayne and I had a Glee Karaoke sesh at my house! "Don't tell me not to live, just sit and putta..." ahhh favoritest Glee Karaoke song right now.

Saturday... longest day EVER

• Sunrise hiking with Matt at Makapuu!! Something I've never done before and it was AMAZING!! We also got to see a whale (I effing love whales).
• After hiking and a beer run at Foodland (that's right an 8 am beer run), we headed to Sandy's and got prime parking spots close to gas chambers. The Bong kids came (Kat, Mark, Chaz, Christina, Rachel, Sean, and Tony) and we spent the whole day posted at the beach. I still couldn't find the guts to get in the water but, we did get to bury Chaz in the sand and he couldn't get up, it was pretty entertaining. Hopefully Matt posts the video of that.
• After 8 hours at the beach, I headed back into town and got ready for an evening with Courtney, whom I haven't seen in forever. We hit up the Melt food truck for dinner, and I got my first taste of the greatest grilled cheese sandwich EVER. You people need to follow @meltHNL on twitter.
• We then headed to Makiki Park to meet up with Matt, Tony, and Christina to play some basketball. Here I thought we were going to just shoot some hoops, it turned into a full court game. I haven't played basketball like that since the college days, so I was pretty rusty. Hopefully we will turn this into a regular thing because I forgot how much I love the game.
• You'd think my night would've ended there. No it kept going with beer pong at Tony and Christina's place. By the end of the night, I renamed the day "The return to college" because cruising Sandy's, basketball, beer pong, reminds me off the carefree college days.

Sunday (lazy day with the girls)

• ROAD TRIP! Time for my monthly trip up country and thankfully it was a wonderful sunny day. I was joined by Wendy and Malia.
• We started with li hing margaritas at Cholo's (it's almost like tradish already).
• After meeting up with Tammy we decided on spending the day at Sunset tanning and girl talking. It was a beautiful day, clear skies and the sun was blazing. I unfortunately was fried from 8 hours at Sandys the day before so I reapplied sunscreen EVERY hour. And Anthony stopped by to visit!
• Someone at Superbowl watching told me that Banzai Sushi at the North Shore Marketplace had the "best sushi" on the island. That being said I of course had to try it out, so before we headed back into town stopped in for a bottle of Sapporo and couple of sushi rolls. Read my review on Yelp.
• Our day ended back in town at a bbq at Magic Island with Ala and Joey. Tired and sunned-out I only stayed for a hour (sorry Ala I'm pooped!).
• Now to ended this wonderful weekend I'm watching the Oscars and typing this.

I'm exhausted, thank you to all my friends (and the weather gods) for making this weekend AMAZING.

Why hello there... it's been awhile hasn't it. It's February already, Valentine's Day or Singles Awareness Day to be exact. How will I spend my most un-favoritest holiday EVER? By doing something I hate working a double. I don't think I've celebrated a vday with a significant other EVER. My last bf claimed he "didn't believe in Vday," should've took that as a sign and dumped his ass sooner.
I've still been NONSTOP busy since I last blogged... the past couple of weeks have consisted of GNOs, dinners, Glee marathons, family dinners, hikes, movies, a hair cut, 2 nail polish changes, not so much shopping (AMAZING right), Punahou Carnival, church, a couple of dates, but mostly JUST work.

I have big decisions to make coming up...
-Should I stay or go?
-To apply for Hawaiian Airlines or to not?
-To quit Billabong for a restaurant job?

It doesn't seem like it's all that much, but those are pretty big decisions. And as always grad school is always at the back of my mind. But right now I got my sight set on trying to fight off a cold.

Any happy vday to all the coupley couples. And to all my single ladies out there, remember as Beyonce says "if he liked it, then he should've put a ring on it."

Time for a new backpack

My favoritest dakine ninja backpack is falling apart. :( time for a new onE.
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

New projects... painting. We have a Hello Kitty Themed bathroom, I working on some artwork for it. Here is my first piece, entitled "sprinkles and bowties" (i just thought of that now). I'm going to make a collection of 3 paintings for our bathroom, all Hello Kitty themed. Where I'll have the time to finish these projects I just don't know. My weeks I feel have been getting busier by the minute. My weekly schedule looks like this:
Sun - Church/recovering from Saturday night
Mon - Work (usually a double)
Tues - Work, Stump! Trivia at Manifest
Wed - Work (usually a double)
Thursday - Work, workout or family dinner
Friday - Work, go out
Saturday - Run errands, work at night
Yes yes, there are times in between those to get things done, but I feel like my schedule is just too full. Like this week for example, Sunday I busy all day with NFL football, tonight I went to trivia, Thursday I'm helping Tammy with her beer stand at a UH basketball game, Friday night I'm going out with the girls!, and Saturday morning before I work at 4 I'm going hiking. Doesn't that just SOUND tiring. AND I'm trying to get in some family time!?! GEEZ.

What I've been up to in the new year so far... same as always working, working my ass off. I'm going out more, Stump! Trivia nights at Manifest (SO FUN! We got 7th place our first time), and the usuals First Fridays, MaiTais, clubbing with the girls. So grateful for my friends. I'm also finding new projects to do like updating my Tumblr with this 30-day blog project, painting, and reading daily. You know keeping my brain healthy.
Oh I'm also putting myself on a budget. If I'm planning to move then I'm going really have to curb my spending. This will be hard considering Target just got their William Rast line in and there is a sidewalk sale coming up at Ala Moana, I'm totally eyeing out this Tory Birch Wallet, oh and I want new eye glasses. GAAHHHHHH.

The holidays are finally done. I spent my holidays with my family. Christmas was good to me, the photo above shows some of my favorite gifts, my Sony Bloggie (video blogs to come!), my Star Wars sandwich cutters from Wayne, my books, and countless iTunes gift cards. New Years Eve was spent blowin up some fireworks. It's the last year for fireworks here, so it went off this year. My neighbor across the street was so kind and gave a whole big box of fireworks! So much fun playing around my sister, it made me miss spending New Years at my Gramsy's house in Aiea. The Kawachi family would get together, eat our traditional foods (kuromame, kazunoku, soba, maki sushi, roast pork, char siu, and fresh sashimi), and spend the WHOLE night setting off fireworks. After the clock strikes 12, we head over to Daijingu to get blessed, get our omamori, and our fortunes. Last year my fortune said excellent and the year didn't turn out so excellent. This year it said pretty good, so I'm hoping it turns into pretty great. So here goes...

Hello 2011, I've never been so excited for the new year.

Two weekends ago me and Wayne went to the Newtown driving range. It was a nice sunny Sunday, and Wayne and I tried to put our one semester of golf to good use. It was nice to be hitting balls, I forgot how much I enjoyed going to the driving range. Also it was awesome that beers were $3 and you could take them to your hitting stall. I wanna go to batting cages next, I doubt they let you drink beer there though.
My posts have been pretty sporadic, sometimes I think it's because I don't really like turning on my computer these days. Too many old photos and memories. You know I always though how wonderful digital media was you could save it forever. Now as I am finding it hard and a long process to get rid of the files I want. Damn you technology, damn you for making this harder than it should be.