Like the good little elf that I am, I’ve been hard at work on my Favorite Songs of the Year list since we returned from Hawaii. My goal is to publish it the middle of next week.
As has become tradition, I will offer this prelude: my favorite songs for each year since 2004. These are in chronological order, so Modest Mouse represents 2004, Waxahatchee represents 2020. Songs 14 and 15 in this list were co-songs of the year for 2017. There is an outside chance that could happen again this year (spoiler alert!).
Chart Week: December 10, 1977
Song: “Here You Come Again” – Dolly Parton
Chart Position: #12, 9th week on the chart. Peaked at #3 for two weeks in January, 1978.
This edition features another musician origin story.[1] I really like this one; hope you do, too.
It is a tiny miracle that anyone becomes a recording star. There are, what, thousands of people out there with the same dream? Tens of thousands? You have to put together enough songs to earn gigs, find management, get signed to a recording/distribution contract, record an album, and then fight the hundreds of other new songs and albums that come out each week for the attention of the listening public. If everything lines up perfectly, maybe you have one, minor hit. But to become an artist that is universally known and beloved, and that sticks around for nearly 60 years? That takes a special kind of magic.
Talent isn’t always the determining factor in breaking through. Sometimes a champion must be willing to put their reputation on the line to launch a budding artist towards success.
That’s exactly what happened with Dolly Parton.
Parton moved to Nashville immediately after finishing high school. While quickly finding success as a songwriter, she failed to get interest from record companies as a singer. That is until country superstar Porter Wagoner heard her voice. In 1967 he added her to his weekly TV program and traveling road show. Despite Wagoner’s mentorship, record labels still weren’t willing to give Parton a recording deal. In fact, country legend Chet Atkins, who ran RCA Victor, flat out told Wagoner that Parton “…can not sing. No one is going to want to listen to her.”
Wagoner was persistent and certain that Parton was a star-in-waiting. After several failed efforts to convince Atkins, he came up with a unique offer: sign Parton, and if the label lost money on her, RCA Victor could take those losses out of the royalties owed to Wagoner.
Seeing little risk, Atkins gave in. That was a smart move. The company made a profit off of Parton’s music in year one. Since many of her earliest hits were duets with Wagoner, he made out ok as well.
1977 was the year that Parton became a cross-over superstar. She had her own nationally syndicated variety show. I remember it well since it aired on the TV station my mom worked at in Cape Girardeau, MO. Here You Come Again album topped the country album chart and peaked at number 20 on the pop chart. The title track, a wonderful song that still charms me, made it to #3 on the Billboard Hot 100.
In 1980 she starred in and sang the theme for the movie 9 to 5. A couple years later, she and Kenny Rogers hit #1 on the pop chart with their duet “Islands in the Stream.” In 1992, Whitney Houston covered Parton’s “I Will Always Love You,” and turned it into one of the biggest selling singles in the history of music. Somewhere in that run Dolly became an absolute American treasure.
Whether you like country music in general, or her music in particular, it’s impossible to deny her infectious, force of nature personality. She’s broken ground for women in the music industry in countless ways. She’s been outspoken without being churlish or divisive. She’s used her name and money to do a ton of good for people who need help. As I type this I realize as big of a star as Dolly is, she probably has never got the proper amount of credit for her impact on both the music world and the real world.
It was Dolly’s talent and immense drive that turned her into a star. But it was Porter Wagoner’s persistence and support that helped make it possible.
I currently have one more in the queue to get to early next year. ↩
A couple flawed yet fairly easy wins after the Thanksgiving tournament for the Jayhawks. Now everyone can look ahead to Saturday’s game. Not me, though. Or at least not yet.
The last three games have brought a very nice and surprising development: Christian Braun is good. Really good. He struggled so much in the opener against Michigan State that I think a lot of us kind of wrote him off as just being a role player again this year. But he’s been scoring in a variety of ways, getting rebounds, making plays on defense, and moving the ball when needed on offense. He’s become an ideal counterpart for Ochai Agbaji, who just keeps pouring in 20 every game. As Jalen Wilson continues to struggle, Braun appears to be the player we thought Wilson would be. As long as CB is playing this well, there’s no urgency for Wilson to reclaim a starting spot or became the #2 option.
People on Twitter are still freaking out about Remy Martin. I watched him closely last night and two things stuck out. 1) He’s working hard to be a different guy than he was at Arizona State. He’s thinking pass-first every possession. Which, when you have Agbaji and Braun on the two wings isn’t a bad thing to do. I think he’ll swing back to the proper balance of shooting/looking for others. 2) His attitude seems great. He is usually smiling, doesn’t pout when Self gets on him, and is active in team celebrations.
I’m sticking by my Malik Newman comparison: he’s going to be fine and we’ll wonder what the worrying was about when February rolls around.
I had another thought about Remy last night. He is reminding me a little of Andrew Wiggins in his one year at KU.
When Wiggins made his recruiting visit, KU was playing an overmatched West Virginia squad. Self told his guards to throw lobs all day, whether they were open or not, to show Wiggs how the KU offense could be molded for his skill set. It worked, gloriously. KU got about 800 dunks in a blow-out win and Wiggins signed a couple months later.
But when he got to KU, Elijah Johnson, Travis Releford, and Ben McLemore were all gone. That left Naadir Tharpe as the only returning guard. And poor Naadir could not throw a lob to save his life. Only late in the year, when freshman Frank Mason III started getting more minutes, did KU find consistent success on lob plays to Wiggins. It felt like a waste.[1]
I thought of that last night as Remy threw multiple sweet passes to David McCormack. One would have been the greatest pass in KU history, had McCormack not blown the layup. Poor David. After having a very solid game against St. John’s on Friday, he looked like trash again last night.
If only Remy had played with Udoka Azubuike, who caught everything you sent his way and then threw it down with authority. ESPN would have reserved a spot for the Remy dime for a Dok dunk in their Top 10 each day KU played. Alas, Remy is not playing with Dok.
Two of the next three games are against former Big 8 foes. That’s interesting…
If BIFM had played more that year, would that have changed the course of that season? Maybe. The Joel Embiid injury was the biggest reason for the early tournament exit, but a more confident Frank could have steadied the ship against Stanford, and then maybe Jojo plays in the Sweet 16, and then… ↩
Blondie – Apollo Theatre, Glasgow, 1979
This is AMAZING! Debbie Harry in her white-hot prime. The freaking drummer is insane, doing his best Keith Moon impression in his gold lamé suit.
A
The Bourne Identity The Bourne Supremacy The Bourne Ultimatum
I hadn’t watched any of these since the third installment came out in 2007, when I watched all three in three days. I repeated that over three nights last month. They still hold up really well. It was good to be reminded how much they influenced the Daniel Craig-era Bond movies.
Also, Matt Damon runs weird.
A-, A-, A-
Damon’s running: C-
Eastbound & Down, season one
I’ve never watched this, but have seen the Will Ferrell blooper collection plenty of times. One of my brothers-in-law and I like to repeat “Let the boy watch!” anytime we are together. This was about what I expected: dumb yet hilarious.
Old School
I caught the last half to two-thirds of this on Comedy Central one night. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve watched it. It holds up, although I wish I had been watching the un-edited version.
A-
Arrested Development, season one.
Before our trip I was looking for something to watch and decided to blaze through season one of this classic. I’m repeating myself, but this hold up, too. Quite well, in fact. Funny seeing Will Arnett back before he started working out and got biceps.
The Report fits right in with movies like State of Play that are focused on what should be boring investigations yet translate quite well into cinematic drama.
Red Notice was kind of dumb, but mindless entertainment and perfect for a plane. And I’ll watch anything with Gal Gadot.
The Trial of the Chicago 7
This was surprisingly funny. Not in an Old School way, but more in an “I expected this to be awfully heavy and I’m laughing way more than I thought” kind of way. Aaron Sorkin FTW, obviously.
I haven’t read, yet, about how historically accurate it was. But I enjoyed the hell out of it. Terrific acting all around, headlined by Sacha Baron Cohen, who continues to amaze me with his range.
How I Grew Up in The Coldest Town on Earth
No thank you. Tuck this away for when we go through a stretch where it doesn’t get above freezing for a week or two to remind yourself how good you have it.
Song Exploder: The War on Drugs
Adam Granduciel talking about the making of the single “I Don’t Live Here Anymore.” This is great, complete with segments of the various stages of demos the song went through. I especially love the tidbit about him leaving in a vocal flub because he could never come up with a lyric that fit that moment.
It seems like most of the family has re-acclimated to being in the eastern time zone, but our days are still all messed up. A full, five-day school week this week will surely get us back on track.
Our holiday schedule is all out-of-whack from normal, though. The day after Thanksgiving is normally our decorating day. Since we were hiking through Waimea Canyon ten days ago, that wasn’t possible. L and I got a bunch of the decorations out on the Friday before we left, placing them around the house as we listened to the Cathedral semi-state game on the radio. But we left the tree for when we got home. S and I got that put up last Thursday night, completing our decorating for the season. We didn’t put up any outside lights this year. The five big spruce trees in our front yard we lit last year that remain dark. I’ve heard from several friends who are disappointed that they don’t see them shining brightly as they drive by. We also ordered our Christmas cards yesterday, a week later than normal.
These little things shouldn’t be such big mental hurdles. But everything does seem just a little off. Again, a normal week should rectify that and we’ll all be freaking out that Christmas is just two weeks away when next weekend rolls around.
Saturday was Cathedral’s winter formal, back after a year’s Covid-induced hiatus. It was a much more hectic night that two years ago, when we had just one girl going and she had friends over to our house to get ready.
C asked a guy friend of hers from St P’s to go with her (this is a girls-ask-boys deal), but just as friends, and she was awfully casual about the whole thing. Since it was the first time she went to a dance with a boy we had to give her a little slack. They were going with a big group of kids, and the plans were constantly changing, which was annoying to S and I, who like to have details locked in. We texted another parent Saturday afternoon to see if she knew what was going on. Her response was, “Good Lord, I have no idea what the plan is!” Kids…
M went with a group of girls and left our house before allowing us to take a picture of her and C together in front of our tree. When S learned M had been gone for 20 minutes, she was not pleased.
We took C to the gathering point for her friends. We stayed about 10 minutes and got a few pics before leaving. Before the group departed for the dance, there were something like 46 kids gathered at that house. Bless those parents!
We left early because the family who was hosting M’s group was having a parent party and we wanted to get there before the girls left. This group was only nine girls and not all the parents stayed, but it was hectic for a bit. We laughed later at how the ladies stayed upstairs all night while the guys were downstairs. I guess we can’t complain about our kids acting weird when the parents won’t mix. It was cool to get to meet a few new dads, though. We stood around and watched football while having stilted, guy conversations until the group thinned to a more manageable number and the dialog got easier. Meanwhile the ladies were upstairs getting into the wine and having a good-old time! The juniors all left the dance early and when they came downstairs, M said, “They are so loud and you guys are so quiet!” Facts.
It sounds like the dance went well. Both girls said the music sucked. I don’t think C and her “date” spent a ton of time together, but that was true for most of the “couples” who aren’t actual couples. Ahhh, the awkwardness of youth! I can’t judge: I didn’t go to a dance until my senior year because I was too nervous/lacking in confidence/fearful of rejection to ask anyone.
Speaking of CHS, I should note that the football team won the state title while we were away. I was able to listen to part of the game while we were getting ready for our luau. They fell behind 7–0 early and were struggling to move the ball. But the QB snapped out of the mini-funk he had been in and a junior wide receiver went off, racking up over 220 yards on the night, leading the Irish to a fairly easily 34–14 win. That wraps up a 27–2 run over the past two years, with the only losses coming to Center Grove who went 28–0 over the same stretch.
L started her first winter basketball league yesterday. She’s playing on a team that has girls from four different parishes. She was super excited when she heard a friend of hers, who is probably the best seventh grader in our part of the archdiocese, would be on the team. That girl is on crutches, though, and may not play until the second session begins in January.
The team has practiced a lot but Sunday was their first time playing together, and you never know how that will go. After her practice Thursday L said, “We are soooo bad!” She was wrong. They won their first game 44–21 and the second game 39–20. They are really good on D and have two girls who are fearless going to the hoop and can convert. We jumped on both teams early and neither game was in doubt after the first quarter.
L played solid. She scored six in the first game. She missed a couple shots late and I told her she deserved to miss them since her coach told the team to stop shooting. She only scored two in the second game. She moved the ball well, though, and played decent D. She had a couple steals both games and got some tough rebounds in the second game. Once she tried to back a girl down in the post and shoot a turn-around jumper. She didn’t come close to hitting rim. I was running the clock and a mom from the other team was keeping the book. I started laughing and said, “Not strong enough to do that yet!” The mom said, “That was a sweet move, though!”
I think playing with these teammates will help L’s game, as she’s running with legit scorers and will have to hone her distribution skills. They have three more weeks of games – two before Christmas, one after – and then I think most of the girls will stay together for the second winter session.
It will take me another week to get back into the swing of things musically, so a couple videos to share today.
“Hero Takes a Fall” – The Bangles
I read this wonderful interview with Susanna Hoffs this week. In it she said this was the song through which Prince first came to know their music. Which, of course, led to “Manic Monday,” the song that thrust The Bangles into the mainstream. Her story about jamming with Prince is great.
“Christmas in Hollis” – RUN-DMC
Y’all know what time it is!
Strap yourselves in for my mega-account of our trip to Hawaii! At around 3000 words, it might take you awhile to get through it.
After a long day of travel and another of recovery, I’m hoping today (Thursday, Dec. 2) feels a little normal. Weird things happen when you travel nearly 9000 miles in less than a week.
Our Thanksgiving trip to Kauai was, quite simply, amazing. S and I have been super fortunate to have taken some pretty great trips in our lives together. For me, this was the best and most memorable of all those vacations.
The reason is simple: it was Hawaii. It was always a dream to go there, but each time we started planning a trip we would quickly dismiss it because of the cost and distance. Our generation, especially, grew up on TV shows that built up Hawaii to be the dreamiest of all dream vacations. It took 50 years, but I finally made it.
And it lived up to every expectation.
We travelled, for the third time, with our old neighbors, the P’s. They have good friends who live on Kauai and helped to make our trip even better.
The biggest way was by hosting the nine of us, and some other locals, for a Thanksgiving dinner unlike any we’ve ever experienced. Our hosts have a couple acres tucked into the foothills on the northeast side of the island. My buddy M and I stood on their wrap-around deck, drinking beers, and staring up at the mountains in awe.
“Can you imagine coming out here every morning and drinking your coffee to that view?” he asked me. It was beyond spectacular. I made a mental note to start checking how much pediatricians make on the island in hopes of talking S into moving. And this was on our first day!
I need to back up, though. We arrived late Wednesday night (more about travel later) and by the time we checked into our rooms, it was nearly 10:00 PM HST; 3:00 AM EST to our bodies. We went straight to bed. All of us woke often that first night and were ready to get up at 6 AM local. We walked around the property and across the street to Poipu Beach. There were locals out fishing and families gathering to watch the sun rise.
And there were chickens everywhere. I knew a little about Hawaiian chickens from watching Moana, but didn’t realize they really are a thing. Like an essential part of Kauai culture thing. Apparently the Tahitians who arrived 800-ish years ago brought them as a food source and they’ve been there ever since. With no apex predators on the island, native or introduced by outsiders, they kind of took over the island. It’s pretty damn funny.[1]
So we started our first full day on the island by watching the sun come up over the Pacific. Not a bad reminder to take a pause and be thankful.
We headed back to the resort and stopped at the little restaurant by the pool to order breakfast since we were all starving. We ordered a variety of items and were pleased with all, but the banana macadamia nut pancakes I ordered were the best pancakes I’ve ever had. Second place isn’t close. As I type this I’m kind of mad that I never went back and had them again. Although perhaps that is for the best, as the second serving may not have matched the first.[2]
We needed some grocery supplies so S and I found a little shopping area with a market. The lights were on, but when we tried to walk in, the doors didn’t budge. Then we looked at the sign on the door and our watches: the store opened at 9:00 and it was 8:55. So we stood to the side and waited. And laughed how three other people tried to walk in. That first day adjusting to the time difference is a bitch!
Inside we were shocked by the prices. I know Hawaii is more expensive than the mainland for pretty much everything (gas was at least a buck more per gallon). But $11 for a box of sugary cereal?!?! $7.99 for a six pack of six ounce Diet Cokes??? We spent nearly $70 getting the basics to get through a day or so. We learned later in the week, when we went back to a Safeway in Lihue, that these prices were jacked up extra high because they were in the heart of the resort area. Normal groceries were still more expensive than in Indy, but cereal was more like 50 cents to a dollar more and not triple the price.
We met up with the P’s and checked out the pool, then loaded up and went to the beach. It was surreal to walk through a crowded beach and keep reminding myself it was Thanksgiving Day, and rainy and cold back home.[3] The girls all took turns snorkeling and saw some cool stuff: all kinds of colorful fish and perhaps an eel. We heard sea turtles were around but never saw any. A big, fat seal was sleeping in a roped-off section of beach.
The beaches on our side of the island were not great. I mean, they were fine but not like the perfect beaches of Cancun, or the massively wide beaches of Anna Maria or Captiva islands where there is room for large groups to spread out without being on top of each other. The two beaches we went to were fairly narrow and you had to work to find an empty spot. The P’s went to the north side of the island Sunday and said the beaches up there had better sand, more space, and smaller crowds. A minor quibble. The water was still amazing.
Our dinner that night was a traditional, American Thanksgiving. Our hosts have only been on the island a couple years, and most of the others they invited – there were about 40 in all – were either other visitors from the mainland or also recent arrivals to Kauai. There was turkey, beef, pork tenderloin, all the normal sides, and at least eight Costco pies. Costco pumpkin pie is the exact same price on Kauai as in Indianapolis!
Friday was our busiest and most interesting day of the trip. We left early to drive out to and through Waimea Canyon State Park. We stopped a couple times to take pictures of the massive gulch, often called the Grand Canyon of the Pacific, and hike along one of the trails. We kept climbing up to the Koke’e Lodge, where we stopped for a fantastic lunch. Then it was higher up to two more lookouts, ending at Wai’ale’ale and some jaw-dropping views of the Na’Pali coast. I’ve never experienced views like we saw that morning, 5000 feet above a steep drop to the intensely blue Pacific, knowing there was nothing but deep ocean water between us and Japan.
On our way back to Poipu, we stopped at the Kauai Coffee Company plantation to sample some of their beverages, eat some ice cream, and buy a few souvenirs.
Our second big event of the day came at dinner time: the proverbial but absolutely necessary luau. The dinner was an interesting combination. The pork, cooked in an imu oven, was phenomenal. You also got mahi-mahi (not great), adobo chicken (very tasty), and a slice of teriyaki beef that was terrific. We all tried poi, but were quickly repulsed.
Then it was on to the dancing portion of the night. The Smith Family Garden Luau has a theater set up for the performance. I liked it all, especially the bad-ass fire guy at the end. Most of our group found the performance to be a little long. “You can only watch so many hula dances,” said one member of our group.
It’s all a little hokey and cliché, but, damnit, if you’re in Hawaii you have to do it.
Saturday and Sunday were largely pool days. The pool at Koloa Landing has, allegedly, been ranked #1 in the US twice. It was a pretty badass pool but I can’t vouch for whether it’s the best in the entire country.
The island was hopping, too, so it was also tough to just walk into places with a party of nine and hope to get seated. Saturday night we went to a walk-up burrito place called Da Crack around the corner from our resort. We ate on our balconies while drinking booze bought at Costco.
Sunday evening we ate at the resort restaurant. I’m sad to say their dinner offerings were not as good as their breakfast ones. Not terrible, but not memorable, either.
Onto Monday morning. Ever since we booked our first, Covid-cancelled trip to Kauai in January 2020, we’ve been kicking around what activities we should do. Pretty much everyone who visited told us we had to take a helicopter ride around the island. I have to admit, as cool as the idea sounded, I was nervous about it. And so was L, who told me several times she thinks of Kobe Bryant every time she sees a helicopter.
This was, likely, a once-in-a-lifetime trip for our entire family. We all needed to suck it up and take the damn ride.
So we did.
And it was awesome.
It might be the coolest thing I’ve ever done in my life.
We made a full circuit of the island, flying into canyons, around mountains, tucking into valleys and gaps amongst the hills, and even flying into the remaining crater of the volcano that formed the island. The views were beyond spectacular. As was the experience. I can’t write much more about it because I can’t put into words just how incredible our 50 minutes in the air were. Sadly the pictures I took can’t convey the views, either. I highly recommend booking a flight if you ever visit to see for yourself.
Despite it being a super windy day – we were worried our flight might get cancelled – it was more gentle of a ride than most airplane flights. I expected my stomach to lurch as we changed altitudes, but it didn’t happen once. Props to our pilot, Max, who kept it smooth for us.
Kauai is called the Garden Island because it gets so much rain. Or at least parts of it do. Wai’ale’ale is one of the wettest locations in the world. Other parts of the island rarely get rain. Poipu is often dry although it does get Florida-like afternoon/evening showers. Monday was the only day we caught any real rain. It rained off-an-on all afternoon in little 60 second bursts. There were more intense showers around dinner time.
We were in our final 90 minutes or so of daylight of our trip, getting ready for dinner, when we looked out our windows and saw a rainbow that seemed to be right across the street. It was like the chamber of commerce realized we hadn’t seen a rainbow yet and punched the rain and sunshine buttons to make sure we caught at least one.
Kauai really might be paradise. The weather feels more perfect than San Diego. Warmer and more humid, but with constant trade winds that keep it tolerable. Our Thanksgiving hosts said in their three years there, the temperatures have never strayed from between 62 and 85. And the 62 feels warmer than a Midwest 62, while the 85 is cooler than a Midwest 85.
They also warned us, and this really held up in our brief experience, that the island is “like 1985 with the Internet.” Things move slow out there. The speed limits are often 25 and 35, even on the state highways. There are lots of buildings that look like they haven’t been updated in decades. Plenty of gas stations can’t take payment at the pump. There are still old, single screen theaters that actually show movies. And the pace of life seems super chill.
Travel. Man, we were all worried for a variety of reasons about traveling over the past week. But it was dead easy. Our only issue was getting out of Vegas 40 minutes late on our final flight home and, thus, arriving at our house at 2:35 Wednesday morning.
Flying out on Wednesday was like flying on any other Wednesday afternoon. Our flight from Indy was at 12:15 so we got to the airport about 10:00. There was no one in front of us to drop bags at Southwest. We got the entire family TSA Pre status, worried this trip might be a total mess because of the federal vaccine mandate hitting a few days earlier. But security was totally fine. It took us three minutes to pass through the Pre gate. Then we had two hours to kill. Apparently S, M, and L got on local TV in a report about holiday travel. They walked through the shot of the main concourse; C and I were ahead of them and didn’t make the shot.
It is, of course, a total haul to get to Kauai. Flying out it was 4.5 hours to Las Vegas, then six-plus to Kauai. I’ve never flown for more than five hours before. But that flight was only two-thirds full so we could stretch out a little. I knocked out two movies and a healthy chunk of a book on the flight and it went by much faster than I expected.
Coming home we flew threw Oakland and then Vegas. We had a tight connection in Oakland, and literally walked into our spots in the boarding group and directly onto the plane, but that was fine. Our bags made it. Other than that delay in Vegas – some of our flight crew was coming from another flight and there were 10, TEN!!!, people in wheelchairs who needed assistance onto the flight – the travel was without issue.
This is a good point to remind you that Southwest messed with our trip a few months ago by cancelling one of our flights home. We were supposed to travel Wednesday-to-Wednesday, but because of the cancelation came home a day early. I would have loved that extra day, but the weather in Kauai was expected to be rainier this week, so perhaps it was for the best.
Hawaii does not play when it comes to Covid. In order to avoid quarantining, we had to apply for a vaccine exception. That meant uploading our proof of vaccination and then answering some health questionnaires the day before we flew. Then, in Vegas, we went through a pre-screen check of our documents. That earned us a wristband that allowed us to sail through the clearing area in the Kauai airport. When I showed the lady in Kauai my wristband, she said “Aloha!” and shot me a Shaka. Dope!
There was a family in the screening area the same time that had not received a test result yet for their six-year-old. They asked the agent what their options were. Her response, “Welllll, I can’t tell you not to get on the flight. But if you arrive and the test result hasn’t come through, they might force you to quarantine. Or they might force you to return to the mainland.”
Yikes, that would suck.
Masks were required everywhere on the island. Even at the airport, which is open-aired, if you were standing on the outside curb, agents came around and asked people to put their masks back on. Businesses made it clear you needed a mask on, no exceptions. At the Koke’e Lodge, they asked to see our vaccine cards before letting us into the building. We heard some people bitching about the rules at the luau, which annoyed us. The islands were shut down totally for over a year. These people live off tourist money. Many of the places are family-run. They were just trying to stay open, earn a living, and keep people safe. Shut the fuck up and wear your masks, dicks.
We had excused the girls from school through Wednesday, figuring getting home in the middle of the night was not a prescription for a day of academic success. But C had been bugging us about wanting to go back Wednesday. “Honestly, that’s when I normally go to bed,” she told us. S got up and took her in at the normal time. I heard them get up and couldn’t go back to sleep, so got up at 8:00ish. L wanted to go in late so I woke her at 10:00 and took her in around 11. M, smartly, decided to sleep in then spend the day catching up. The beauty of assignments all being online! S even schedule patients for the second half of the day and was in the office from noon to five.
There you have it, the biggest, best vacation of our lives, so far. I would absolutely go back to Kauai again. In fact, I’m going to have to insist on it. It might take a few years, and be just S and I and other adult friends, but it is now my mission to return to Kauai if I have a chance.
There are no native snakes to Hawaii. Which is both surprising and awesome. You’d think you would have to be worried stomping on some super-poisonous serpent while walking around. ↩
In the summer of 1986 we visited the Bay Area, looking for a place to live. The first night we ate at our hotel’s restaurant and I got some tortellini dish. I had never had tortellini before, and it was fantastic. So I ordered it every other night we ate there. With diminishing returns. By the third or fourth time I did it more out of resigned obligation than desire. ↩
You know what really blew my mind? Hearing Christmas music while we were in shops. And seeing Christmas decorations. Especially snowmen. Snowmen! In Hawaii! ↩
