I'm back from my quick 5.5 day trip to California. Great fun, great company, so much greatness that I will have blog about it later. So for now I'll blog about Erinrin, the dog we dogsat for like 2.5 weeks. I love how dogs are just welcoming when you get home. It's like they're saying, "Oh boy, oh boy, your home, I've missed you alllllllllll day." What I hated about dogsitting... they're freakin smart, and they know when they are being sneaky bitches. That and she threw up a couple of times and chewed Malia's retainer. I can't wait to get my own dog, preferably a Shiba Inu, though I hear they are hard to train. Oh well I was hard to train and look at me now, fresher than a muthaf.....! (just kidding).
The second photo is of the moon, when it was supposed to be 14% bigger than usual. It didn't look too much bigger than it usually did, tho. But I'm glad it was a clear night and I was able to get a good shot.
Ahhhh now I'm off to work.... I miss you California.

I was blessed with another WHOLE weekend off. Sometimes I think it's work it to be scheduled 12 days straight to get 2 days in a row off.... sometimes. And it was another weekend spent in a bikini. I enjoyed another Triple B Saturday with the bong crew (Triple B=Beach x Basketball x Beer Pong). After a full day of sun at Sandys, Courtney and I tracked down the Melt truck for another taste. We both had the Magical Mushroom Melt, messy but oh so awesome. Basketball was great, we tried to play at Kanewai Park (my old stomping grounds in college) but they took out the lights and the people didn't want to play with us. So we headed back to Makiki Park for some full-court ball. After two quick games and a shower, we ended the night with beer pong and king's cup at Tony and Christina's. The SOD's (Supervisors on Duty me and Chaz) defeated Stock-Peter and Tony AND Sales-Matt and Christina, what can say that's how we roll!
Sunday was spent at Lanikai with Malia and Kat. I haven't been to Lanikai since the break up, it was our favorite beach and we loved going into Kailua to eat. Slowly I've been returning to the places and things that we both called our favorite, and reclaiming them as just my favorite. Making new memories, sharing my favorite eating places, shops, etc. with other people I love. It was good to be back. Before we hit Lanikai we stopped in at Kalapawai Market, I had my usual Feta-Veggie on Foccacia with an Italian soda, oh how I've missed Kalapawai. Hands down the best sandwiches on the island.
It was a great weekend, sad to see it go so fast... no onto 10 days of straight work, then I'm off to Cali. It's a good thing I got some sun while I could I probably won't be back at the beach till April sometime!

I'm becoming quite the east-side adventurer, if I say so myself. Ok well maybe not so adventurous because I keep revisiting the same beaches, the same hikes. But I pretty much go every weekend. I had so much fun going sunrise hiking with my coworker Matt, I made Wayne come with me on a hike the week after. I thought it would be a great photog adventure, and that we'd get some great photos of the sunrise and hopefully some whales. Unfortunately everytime I busted out the camera, the whales decided to go back into the ocean. Bastards.  But at least I got some good photos of our hike and of Wayne.
After we headed to Cafe Kaila for some breakfast, but had some awful service... well not service as a whole, awful seating service, read my Yelp review.

Team Billabong Waikiki

I've been getting basketballin on lately. I forgot how much I love playing basketball. In college we used to play weekly, in freshmen year daily! I'm not the greatest player, but back in my prime I think I was a decent defensive player (I think it was my long arms). I'm not so much the shooter or point guarder because I get really nervous. In time hopefully I'll get my swag back.
I have another whole weekend off ahead of me... I'm excited. We already have a hike+beach+basketball sesh+maybe yakiniku planned. I can't wait, hopefully the weather will cooroperate.
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We survived our tsunami warning. Anna and I passed out in the living room watching the news, hoping to not have to work. Unfortunately we both did, but fortunately nothing was severely damaged here. My thoughts and prayers go out to Japan (one of my most favorite places in the world). I've already pledged money to the Red Cross (text REDCROSS to 90999, and $10 goes to the Red Cross and will be billed to your phone bill). We were watching the footage at work, the tsunami almost looked like storm scene in Ponyo, devastating.

Me and Anna getting ready for the tsunami

View from Hookipa during last year's tsunami warning.

There's a tsunami warning right now. Though my heart goes out to everyone in Japan, I can't help but to be reminded of last years tsunami warning (lamest tsunami warning ever). I went to Maui for the weekend AND super excited to go freaking whale watching. EVERYTHING got cancelled due to this so called tsunami warning. It did get rescheduled for the next day, but of course with my luck the weather COMPLETELY sucked. Meh.
I miss Hookipa btw. Oh Maui.

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."