Touchdown

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We got in around noon, found the beach house with reasonable efficiency (it's < 500 yards from the one where we stayed in 2006), walked a distance that Google claims is half a mile but it felt a lot farther to a fabulous local cafe serving traditional Hawaiʻian food with ingredients fresh from the proprietors' back yard, ate way too much kalua pork, shuffled back to the beach house, headed to our neighborhood Safeway while the kids played on the beach, bought SPAM® and mai tai fixins, and now we're lying about the house, sipping Mixmaster Martin's magnificent mai tais, contemplating the hot tub in the back yard, and listening to the celebratory sounds of a beach wedding taking place kitty corner from our lanai. Yup, that's how close we are to the beach. I can still juuust barely see the outline of the Koʻolau Mountains in the dark in the other direction, and stars coming out. The wind is blowing in the coconut palms; the shwackity sound of the leaves keeps making me think of rain.

One of the weirdest things for us Seattleites + one Hamburger to get used to in Hawaiʻi is that the sun goes down around 6 PM, yet it's still warm. For me, if it's this warm out, I expect/demand that the sunset should wait until at least 10 PM and should take its time when it finally arrives, whereas if it's 6 PM and dark it should correspondingly also be cold and rainy. The tropics don't seem to care what I think about this.

I miss Vanya!

Tomorrow: no particular plans, as it should be.

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