someone brought cookies to the office today. everyone has their part to play: some people bring cookies, some people eat cookies. thus, i was standing at the snack table eating cookies:
other girl in the office: "oh! what's that?"
me: "uh...cookies?"
girl: "oh wow! are they home made? store bought? home made? home made?"
me: "what? i just work here."
girl: "what'd you say? did you bring them? are they home made?"
me: "ok look. i just got here. there's cookies on the table. i'm eating them. if your primary concern is determining who actually baked the cookies, then you are clearly missing the point. the point is to eat cookies."
(i walk away, and another coworker goes to get a cookie)
girl: (to newly arrived coworker) "are those home made?"
fucking hell.
i got up at 5am. i couldn't get back to sleep. not that i got that much sleep to begin with, i just couldn't sleep anymore. so i grabbed my board and headed to the north shore. and while i pulled up to the break just as the sky became lit enough to paddle out, there were already 6 other people in the lineup.
among the people in the lineup was a rough-looking local father and his son who was probably about 15. when i first got out there, the father was busy giving mean and intimidating looks at the other surfers. there's really nothing worse than people like that.
to mr. angry local surfer father-man: ok, let's assume for a minute that you're actually native hawaiian instead of some variety pack of caucasian and asian. maybe you're angry at the white man for taking your land and overthrowing your government. sure, you have a reason to be upset, but how does being a dick to everyone with lighter skin than you make your point any clearer? no. why does sharing your surf break really piss you off that much? one reason: you're just a dick. what about the aloha spirit hawaii talks about? maybe that only counts when you want it to. but, ok, i'll give you whatever wave you paddle for, because that might be all you have in the world. (that and the fact that you're bigger than me. momma didn't raise no fool).
anyway, the waves were fun and big and fast and good. and on top of there being enough waves to go around, i got to overhear the angry father's commentary on who was on the list of the "most dangerous people" in the lineup: (quotes are from angry man)
first place went to the chubby old lady who would "try paddle for everything, every little bump, and never, never take off on anything".
second place went to the old "china man on the longboard". i couldn't figure out why he was "most dangerous person #2" and the fat longboarder with a large bandage covering his left eye didn't make the list.
apparently, being angry and audibly complaining about things doesn't mean you're also smart.
after the session, i picked up a portuguese sausage omelet sandwich at zippys and headed to work. it might be a good day...
i got away this weekend. no thinking involved. and since my last post, i've dropped almost $1,000, and spent a few hours looking at individual grains of sand. it's been that kind of weekend. here's a not-entirely-organized description of what i did. i'm probably leaving important things out. deal.
it started with the much-anticipated dashboard confessional show at pipeline. it was ok. for one, the club was filled with about 300 people. i was one of maybe 50 people who were 21+. the majority of the audience were highschool kids. i guess the whole teen-angst-punk-rock-i-dont-know-how-to-deal-with-my-emotions subjects of most of the songs kind of lend themselves nicely to a highschooler's ears. the show itself was ok. they (or HE. i've read that the lead singer does all the song writing and concept birthing, and direction leading) played most of the songs off their new cd, but did throw in a couple of nondescript songs off of an alleged future release. they also threw in their version of wheatus' teenage dirtbag which sounded like, well, a live- and somewhat poorer- version of the original. they didn't sound bad, they didn't sound great. the novelty of it being a live performance balanced out their less-than-perfect playing and most of the lead singer's slightly flat belted out high notes. i give it a B. or maybe a B+. maybe. but only because people were looking at me like i was cool because i had a 21+ wristband on.
saturday was the day i picked up the new board (mine is the "M-BM", except it's white, not blue). man, it's pretty. it cost a bunch of money that i wanted to spend on other things, but whatever. it's pretty.
then i went to kahuku to camp. i got to put in an hour or two of surf, which was good. then the rest of the time was spent eating, playing volleyball on the sand, and lying in the spot on the shore where the waves just barely roll up on your legs while you have your face a few inches above the sand, looking for the right kinds of shells. we were looking for shells that the others i was with called "niihau shells". they're small and cranberry colored. they're apparently very plentiful on niihau. anyway, it was relaxing and wonderful. until the mosquitos came out at night. then it was hell. the morning was less hell-like, thankfully. the people i was camping with caught a baby tiger shark from shore. 3-3.5 feet long. i decided not to go out and surf there that second day. go, mit!
this morning was another trip to the dentist. an old filling is problematic. i no longer get scared or even care one way or another about going to the dentist. i actually wasn't sure i had an appointment this morning. i got up and just had a hunch (they called sometime last week to confirm, or so says this post-it on my monitor at work), so i called and found out when it was. i paid the almost $500 for the past few appointments and that was that. and no, i didn't get the beautiful afghani dental hygenist. it was a losing effort today.
now i'm back at work and i'm reminded of why i was so happy leaving on friday.
being that today is/was a holiday, last night was a night for, as my coworker described, "going deep". which i can only guess means partying harder than one normally would on a thursday. now, that would be fairly easy for me to do, as my normal thursday routine involves working out, watching an hour of tv, reading something (maybe), then sleeping. i would tell you about the going-out-ings of last night, but momma gave me the talk about how alcohol is the thing tha ruins good irish boys. (hi, mom). so the story will have to go untold.
i drank one beer, had some pizza, and went home after discussing the upcoming election and other political issues. yes. yes.
today is a holiday. for hawaii. "kuhio day". he was a prince or king or something. i never said i knew anything about hawaiian culture, sorry.
but i'm at work, because i have nothing better to do. surf is small and mushy, so the plan is to work today and take the holiday some other day. i just have to see if the boss people will buy off on it.
ok, last night i bought a new short board. i'd been feeling kind of down lately, and sleeping more and working less wasn't really helping. so i figured that i needed a lift. also, i have a friend that works for local motion, who hooked me up. it's apparently the shape that some of the pros ride; it's a "general purpose board that allows for high performance in a variety of wave shapes and sizes". huh. sounds good to me. it's real pretty and i got a huge discount and a ton of free stuff. it's a win-win. i pick up the board saturday. i'll most likely be late to work a bunch of next week.
so i don't really know what's going on, i don't pay all that much attention to my local news, but check it out: www.honoluluadvertiser.com. there's been a ridiculously large number or people dying here. maybe the deaths have just been in the news more than they used to be. or maybe people actually ARE dying more.
i just want to tell all the people in hawaii to cut it out. seriously. in the past few months, there hasn't really been a week where we haven't seen a few traffic-related deaths. and now, the trend seems to be toward dying in a house fire.
i say it again: cut it out, hawaii. it's supposed to be paradise here, and all that's going on it people dying. we should be happy and celebrating UH making it to the quarter finals of the NIT (they lost to Michigan last night), or the two pretty little girls in the american idol contest (as of today, they're still in it).
i like the IHOP girl, myself. she's purdy. and even after her looks fade and her voice gets all wobbly, she'll still be able to whip you up some pancakes. can you ask for much more?
why is it that when food or drink is free, i cannot stop myself from eating. i heard that fish do that, too. supposedly you can put a metric butt-load of fish food in the tank, and they will just eat and eat and eat until they die and/or explode. that's like me. i got a free lunch with the boss, and now i'm either going to die or explode. or both.
i'll keep you posted.
so maybe it makes me lame or old or soft or a plethora of other names you could throw at me, but i don't care. i've been listening to john denver all afternoon, and he's gotten me out of a funk.
that's not to say that i don't like shoot-'em-up bling bling booty shakin' quality rap. cause i do. i'm down. i'm hip. fo' shizzle, nephew. i don't know what happened or how or whatever. maybe it wasn't even the music; it could have been the chocolate cake. either way, i'm ok now, for now, and i say thank you to john denver: you sung like an angel, partied with muppets, and died like a kennedy. thanks.
i got to see him perform with the honolulu symphony a few years before his death. it was a really good show. it was so good that i forgot i was at the show with my troubling girlfriend and her screaming parents. yeah, it was that good.
i spent most of this morning thanking the Great Spirit that i didn't have to go out into the field today. oh, i guess i did some work, too. and some reading of online news and stories and fun. "some".
and then i read these words, like "interest rates" and "greenspan" and "money" and i get all sleepy. i really with i had a better handle on money. both in terms of knowing how to handle it better, and in terms of physically holding more money than i do now. i need to be a lot smarter. or...
i sometimes with i was a lot dumber than i am. not to say that i'm the smartest man ever (though i claim that sometimes), i think i'm just too smart to go along with my gut feeling. my innards get into a messy battle with my "gut" saying one thing and my head saying something else. and like the war of words that bugs bunny so often plays on his adversaries, my gut starts arguing FOR the actions that it originally argued AGAINST. then i get more confused and unsettled and it sticks in my chest like those horrible burps that just won't come.
i saw it written and i saw it say
pink moon is on it's way
none of you stand so tall
pink moon's gonna get ye all
-nick d.
so everyday i get to work and i look at my online bank account to see if maybe someone has taken all of my money and i've lost every reason to live. i've been lucky so far (fingers tightly crossed). i just recently opened up one of those "money market" deals where i get a whopping 2% on my money. "2%!!??", i scoffed a few months ago, "that's barely anything!" but then i realized that in the more normal saving account offered by my local hawaii banks provide an interest rate of 0.04%. (four hundredths of a percent). i'm pretty sure that the amount of coins i find on the street adds up to more than .04% of the money i have in the bank. stupid.
and the point of this story really wasn't supposed to be about interest rates or how i only have $7.5k left in school loans to pay or how i have just enough money in the bank to quit today and live comfortably for another two months AND buy myself a reasonably priced new short board. no. that wasn't the point, either. i can't really remember what the point was, but maybe it has something to do with how that money is gonna do cool things for me someday soon. it's gonna help me go places i want to be and do things i know i need to do. money might not bring happiness, but maybe it'll help me find what i'm looking for.
so, i like basketball. i even play basketball twice a week, wednesday and saturday, fairly religiously. but i don't know if i like basketball enough to really buy into the march madness of it all. i enjoy watching basketball on tv sometimes, but for an entire month? and watching teams that i've never heard of and probably couldn't even guess their location? eh. probably not.
what i really like is the way the tv people make everything seem so dramatic. life IS basketball. the same type of athelete profile pieces that they play during the olympics between events. the story about how the point guard's dying mother's last wish was for her son to go out and get to the third round of the tournament. the narrator speaks in his artificially low voice while the black and white camera pans across a table littered with medical bills and pictures of the mother and point guard as a child. it's not just another student athelete, it's a warm, soft, gooey soap opera. brilliant.
i do get into it much more during the last few games of the season/ tournament/ playoffs. i really get sucked into the drama of it all. i mean, i hate watching baseball (i even hate playing baseball), but i'll sit there and watch the world series, and even some of the earlier post-season series if the redsox are in.
so the least athletic-looking guy in the office comes around with the empty tournament brackets and tries to get everyone in the office pool. i figure it's more of a community bonding, get-people-to-like-you kind of thing. and instead of choosing between the teams based on whether or not i've heard of them (Gonzaga clearly will beat Valparaiso. i'm suspecting "valparaiso" isn't even a word), i went with espn page 2's assessment. it has kentucky winning it all. and why would i go against ashley judd? seems like dumb idea to me.
anyway, if i lose, it's $10 lost. but i look like i'm part of the office community. and they'll continue to let me play their reindeer games. or maybe i'll win. and i'll use the money for a one way ticket out of here.
i'm still at work. it's dark. that's not so abnormal for new englanders, but it's crazy talk for someone in hawaii. and i just realized that the wap-enabled chairmanlau-on-the-go doesn't display entire posts, only excerpts. i'll get on that. this weekend, maybe. i promise new pictures and logos and tag lines and wap-abilities and a seamless coordinated template on all pages. AND pretty girls. and, yes, strippers.
saturday was a good day. or, at least it started that way. i got up and ate a tasty home-made ham and cheese sandwich on the drive up to the north shore. it was gloomy and rainy, perfect surf weather. and when i got out into the surf, holy crap. the set waves were probably around 6 feet, and they sure cleaned everyone out of the lineup. here's how it works: in general, the larger the wave, the further from shore it breaks. the lineup of surfers are positioned to be in the right place for the majority of waves coming through. so, when the large sets roll in, it's a mad race to get out over the waves. if you don't make it, the wave crushes you and drags you along with it, toward shore.
it's an amazing feeling when, by the luck of where you were sitting in the lineup or the fortune of being able to dive deep enough to get under the wave, you're the one person that made it out past the set waves. you can look to either side and see no one. looking toward the horizon leaves you nothing but a huge wave rolling toward you that you're still paddling frantically to get out over. and a look toward shore only shows you a long and wide wall of white rolling toward shore with an occasional board or arm or leg popping out here or there.
and if you're lucky, you can get into the right position in time to catch one of these big set waves. you get to drop down the 12-15 foot face of the wave and pump along the line to gain some speed and crouch under the lip as it curls and crumbles over your head. then you make it out from under the mini-tube your'e in and you feel the rain drizzle on your head as you lie back on your board and paddle back out for more.
it was a nice morning.
i followed it up with some dim sum at my favorite chinese restaurant, called "happy day" (no joke). it was a good meal.
then i played ball and sprained my ankle really bad. fricking cosmic realignment.
ok, america. i know you're busy. i know that you might not always have time to be reading your favorite blogs at your computer in peace. sometimes you have to be on the road, miles from the nearest internet connection. it sucks, i know. i'm here to tell you that i've come to solve this problem of yours.
ChairmanLau.com is now WAP-enabled. so when you're on the go and don't have the time to sit in front of a computer to keep up with the latest happenings, you can fire up your cell phone or pda, or whatever you're using to view the web while on the go, and point it to wap.chairmanlau.com.
chairmanlau for a new world.
so today is a for real sick day. i woke up feeling worse. so my body might be losing the fight, but i have those company sick days to rescue me. so, as i understand it, i'm getting paid for today which i lie in bed sick. beautiful. i'm still looking for a way to stop working entirely, but this is a nice little treat i'm not really complaining about.
now here's the question: should i try to stay at this computer and do actual work? or should i go back to that comfy couch and rest and watch some tv?
back are the days of two to four line posts. i'm just not feeling like sharing right now. the thoughts in my head are bouncing around a bit too violently. give me a day or two. i'll probably be back. probably.
i went home sick from work today. my head is going to explode. and i realized that if i don't use the sick days that i'm allowed, i just don't get those days off. so why would i stay at the office when i'm sick? i don't know either. i did some work at home (which kind of ruins the idea of being sick), so now i'm going to sleep. ugh.
no, they can't spell. and i think it's been a long while since they've come out with anything good (i assume the song i'm thinking of is called i believe: "i believe...that love is the answer. i believe...that love will find a way). but they're giving a free show at pearl harbor. i'm at work picking up my navy contractor pass that we need for work. hopefully that'll get me in past the gate and into the show. we don't really get any good bands or shows here in hawaii, so i'm taking every opportunity i can.
later in march, i'm going to see dashboard confessional. fun fun. probably not as fun as wyclef, but it'll be good.
i woke up this morning well before the sun. i took about half and hour to eat and figure out where i was, then i was out the door. i rolled into the parking lot at rock piles just as the sky became light enough. i grabbed my board from the car and walked out to the end of the rocky-boulder pier. today was the calmest morning we've had in a while; none of the trees around had even one swaying branch. the sky was a dark blue-grey, but the sun rising behind the mountains lit up the outlined undersides of the silver clouds with a very out-of-place reddish orange.
and while the sky looked amazingly beautiful, the surf did not. if something told the air to be calm and still, the same message wasn't passed to the ocean. and on top of the surf being choppy and bumpy, the swells rolling in from the south-east were small and inconsistent. i paddled out, anyway. morning sessions aren't always about the quality of surf, they're more about starting your day the right way.
in the lineup, there were three of us: myself, another shortboard and a guy trying to learn how to longboard. i striked up friendly enough conversation about the surf forcast and how the waves have been behaving this morning. and while i eagerly awaited a large set to roll in to make a natural break to our conversation, it never came. and we were left there sitting in an awkward silence. all i had left to ask was what time it was. 6:45? thanks. with that, i paddled off to where the pocket of the wave should be forming.
with three decent sets coming in, the morning session wasn't a complete bust. the sun had just risen above the koolaus, which meant it was probably time to get to work. i caught one last wave, made a turn off the bottom and turned up the face of the wave. snapping off the lip, i ended the wave with a cutback that left me sinking into the back of the wave. at this point, i'm reminded that while my board was perfect for the me of two years ago, we've gone our separate ways: i've gained a good 10 lbs, and the board has certainly lost some of it's buoyancy.
i paddled in past a group of 5 highschool-aged kids paddling out. i'm glad i got to surf out there without them. i showered and walked to my car, where i noticed just how many people were there: pulling into stalls, taking out their boards, getting ready to paddle out, talking story about the surf or their lives or their kids. it's a nice feeling seeing the sun rise over the mountains and to know you've already accomplished something with your day. it might have been even nicer if i didn't have to rush home to shower and hurrying so i would make it to work on time.
in the last few days, i've been running more. it's not perfect, but it works as a replacement for surfing. it allows me the time to be alone with myself to figure out what i'm thinking and feeling about everything. out there, there aren't any new problems to face, there aren't any other concerns to worry about, no broken things that need fixing. my soul can be free and happy. i can figure out what i need to figure out. and somehow, it all seems to happen without me having to think so hard about anything. i need much more of that.
we've made it, america. from humble beginnings to the humble existence we've become accustomed to, look how far we've come. ok, not that far. but this is the 100th post. yay.
this is a happy post, though. work moved me to the desk in the corner, so i can actually get some real work done during the day. i'm eating lunch now, and i've probably already done as much work as i would have done all day while sitting at the desk i used to be at. maybe i should go home already.
this is a happy post because i've figured something out. i'm not sure what it is, and i'm not sure what i've figured out about it, but i just feel like i have a firmer grasp on where my life is going and what i'm going to do about it. and no, things in my life aren't perfect now. they're ok. but the beautiful part about it is that i have a clearer vision of what the next couple of months will bring me. and some of the things in the vision are not so good, but the ending (at least the one that i want and can possibly get) is happy. it'll take a lot of luck and fortune and probably a lot of convincing, but it might all turn out amazingly. so just know: the planning is going on, the preparation has started, and changes are in the works.
stay tuned.
everything is moved to MT. it did this strange creation of titles for each of my blogs by automatically taking the first 5 words of each entry and making that the title. i might be going back to change those. i don't know if i like it. many of my entries are too short to merit their own title.
oh, and the template is fugly and generic. though it still looks better than all of the free blogger templates.
but the point is not to diss blogger. the point is that we've taken another step along our bumpy road, america. we'll get there soon...
things will be messed up for a while while i switch entirely from blogger to MT. let's see if i can do this without erasing everything i've written for the past months.
i just killed the two flies that have been terrorizing our entire office. they were big and gross and liked to fly at people's heads.
what would this place do without me? it'd be a lifeless, fly-infested, pee-pee-soaked heck-hole.
this weekend was intense. i ran in the "34th annual oahu perimeter relay". . our team of 7 people split up 22 legs of the race. i ended up running just under 20 miles, split into three legs. i actually did fairly well. i ended up with mile splits of just over 7 minutes. and i'm not entirely incapacitated today. yay for me. i'll put up pictures of the race later this week. despite the fact that i was running and in pain, the race was beautiful. here's a quick recap:
-leg #7. my first leg was 5.5 miles of dark windward side oahu. it actually poured and then lightly rained on me the entire time. i ran from the end of kahalu'u to kualoa ranch. oh, and it was 1:30 AM. i'm not sure if it was the rain or the cold air or the patches of clear sky that let through the amazingly bright starlight through, or maybe the sound of the breaking waves on the shore to my right, something made the running just wonderful. i had a slight tensing up of my shins, but it went away pretty quickly. i think i passed 3 or 4 other runners, i felt pretty good. when i got to the exchange point to pass the baton, the next runner wasn't ready. she was in the car resting. they told me they had just told her that she had 10-15 more minutes before i would come in. huh.
-leg #13. the second leg was the longest (7.2 mile) and most difficult and slowest. the difficulty, however, had less to do with the length and more to do with the fact that i had just gotten up from a 2 hour nap. i, apparently, was pretty lucky to have gotten 2 straight hours of sleep (i started the run at about 7am) the rest of the team got by with a hour here and there. i was dehydrated and stiff, but i loosened up ok. i ran from waialua high school to the beginning of kaena point. it started out pouring, but the rain clouds stayed where they were and i ran away from them. it was pretty neat to keep looking back at the sky i was running from and seeing how specific an area a rain cloud can dump water on. a few miles into the run brought the road much closer to the ocean. the water was perfect and beautiful. perfectly sizable set rolling in without the typical windy-choppiness that typically messes up the surf on the mokuleia side of the island. but i was running. sweet. for the first time in the race, i had a complete disconnect between my body and mind. i didn't have any specific pain or weakness (my shin splints went numb probably around the 4 mile mark), but i couldn't manage to run faster. i tried and tried to tell my body to go faster, but the legs were just not gonna listen. i eventually got to the exchange point, drank a ton of water, ate some of the free bananas and gatorade, and then hopped in the car to meet the rest of the team on the west side.
-leg #20. my last leg was from dillingham park to the airport. 6.5 miles. it was hot and muggy and 1:30. the good news was that i had eaten a bunch of spam musubis, some bananas, and a few chocolate covered donuts. i was set. this leg was hard to fight through. and it was far less scenic than the first two. i followed along the bike path behind the highway, near streams feeding into pearl harbor with signs warning potential swimmers or fishers of the recent sewage overflows, as if they needed more than the smell to notify them of that. about two miles into the run, we left the bike path for the steaming highway shoulder. i ran with this army guy for a while. he told me all about his weekly work outs and how his knee was hurting. "not the top or bottom of the knee, but more on the side. right...here." he talked about his knee for at least a mile. it seemed to be like the sirens of the ancient times, the more he talked, the more i wanted to pace with him, the slower he ran, and the slower and smaller my steps became. i got into this groove and was in this trance. after pacing with him for about a mile, one of his team's support vans drove up just ahead of us and parked on the shoulder, waiting for us to pass to shout encouragement. it helped motivate me to ditch mr. pain-in-the-knee and run at a decent pace. so we said our goodbyes and good lucks and i went on my way. i somehow ramped up the speed and kept getting faster and faster. i passed three runners on my way to the next exchange point. if it weren't for a few horribly timed red lights i had to stop for, i would have passed three more runners that finished just ahead of me. when i got there, the runner wasn't ready. i was told that i wasn't supposed to finish my run for another 10 minutes. i apologized and walked over to the free water and oranges.
-the finish line. i made the mistake of not stretching before curling up in a ball in the back of our support car (an old volvo station wagon). and getting out and walking around was painful. lying down was amazing, though. we finished in a total of just over 20 hours, which is fairly respectable, i think. the race is about 140 miles, so it averages out to be splits of just under 10 minutes.
i got home, showered, ate some french bread and butter, a lot of water, and a beer. i was asleep even before my head hit the pillow.