Where’s my Scotty (preferably with laptop expertise)?
Oh my God, it’s Friday again. How did that happen? It’s been one of those weeks like… I’m grasping for an appropriate metaphor. Okay, I’m not a big Star Trek fan, but if you imagine the Enterprise having some warp engine issues, moving slowly, then lurching forward in big jumps, as if Scotty is just learning how to drive a manual transmission… that’s my week. (Btw, in my imagined Enterprise, Bones is played by Karl Urban, because duh! Karl Urban.) Let me give you a few highlights. The week started with several days of constant rain and near-constant thunder. Monday Read more…
More Club Revelations, and Why Everyone Should Play the Uke
The Sydney short story saga continues! This week’s chunk of Club Revelations, the Sydney Brennan short story I’ve been posting in rough form, can be read here. Remember, you can read it from the beginning or skip ahead to Part 3 if you’ve been keeping up. At this rate, it will probably run to about eight parts, but no guarantees—I might get crazy one week and just post it all. If you read last week’s blog post, you’ll know my husband and I were looking forward to seeing Jake Shimabukuro perform (and you may still have The Bohemian Rhapsody stuck Read more…
The Writer’s Environs: What Plants Engulf Your Structures?
Here’s the second installment in a series I started a while back and forgot about—I mean, hadn’t yet returned to: The Writer’s Environs. The idea is to reflect on the places we live, both the commonalities and the things that make each piece of the world unique. In the first installment, I asked, What crosses the road? (Yes, pigs are still crossing our road; it’s been a very heavy pig season.) The question this week: Which plants are most likely to take over the world? Anyone who’s lived or spent any time in the South is familiar with the apocryphal Read more…
The Writer’s Environs: What Crosses the Road?
The film version of The Descendants opens with this great monologue where the main character discusses the image people from the mainland have of people living in Hawaii, that it’s Paradise and everything is Mai Tais and surfing and easy living all the time. “Are they nuts?” he says. “How can they possibly think our families are less screwed up, our heart attacks and cancers less fatal, our grief less devastating? Hell, I haven’t been on a surfboard in fifteen years.” I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. Don’t get me wrong–I’m not complaining about where I live. It’s more that I’ve been struck by how Read more…
Want to Get Some Reading Done? Hire a Terrier
You may recall (That’s Why You Don’t Leave the House) that we have occasional issues with rodentia in our rural Big Island home. Also, everywhere else we’ve lived on the island. Our first stop in North Kohala, the rats lived in the ceiling space above our heads and rolled mac nuts across it at night like bowling balls. There was a small knothole in the ceiling near the kitchen, and occasionally you’d see a rat head peering out of it like a periscope. It took us a month or more to get the rat situation under control here the last Read more…
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