“Should we continue to look upwards? Is the light we can see in the sky one of those which will presently be extinguished? The ideal is terrifying to behold… brilliant but threatened on all sides by the dark forces that surround it: nevertheless, no more in danger than a star in the jaws of the clouds.”
- Victor Hugo, “Les Misérables”

I am SUPER tired, so this blog entry is going to be riddled with sentence fragments and other exemplars of bad grammar, but I just wanted to say that after the weeks from hell, things are finally starting to look up. Thus, I bring you the above quote, which has been a favorite of mine for decades (gulp) now, and the following bits of good news:

1. The work situation changed dramatically today. Dra. Matically. I know we are not completely out of the woods yet – in fact, now an entirely new set of challenges lies ahead – but as far as I’m concerned, things could not have gotten better without the recent strategic changes that have taken place. Sorry to be vague. There’s really no reason you need to know any details about this, especially now that things will be better, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention it at all, especially since work has been the cause of many a nightmare in recent months. Monday was a terrible day, and I drove home in silence. Today, I sang along to Switchfoot and even stopped to browse the farmer’s market in the rain. I’m still a little shaken up, but at least now I’m fairly confident that we’ll all come out of this alive.

2. We finally booked our trip to Japan for Thanksgiving. You have no idea how every force in the travel world was working against us on this one. I seriously had an entirely different itinerary planned that would’ve taken us to Tokyo and Fukuoka and even on the shinkansen with a rail pass, and I was right up to the point where I had entered my credit card number and clicked the Pay Now button, and right then, the fallout from the Japan Airlines bankruptcy hit us smack in the face for at least the second time. And we weren’t even going to fly JAL! And that’s not even all the drama. I was about ready to give up and just to go to NU Homecoming for our 10-year reunion instead (although, seriously, Noreen, how could I go without you?). But now I’ve got us booked roundtrip to Tokyo Narita, and we’re staying at the Hilton Tokyo Bay, right outside Tokyo Disney. If things continue to look up, the dollar-yen ratio will also improve now. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to pray for that.

3. “Les Misérables” the musical turns 25 this fall, and some really cool video has been added to the show’s website. Since “Les Mis” is no longer playing on Broadway, I had no idea that they had made some really neat changes to the show in celebration of the anniversary, until I saw the videos. Wow, super cool. “Les Mis” was my first stage love. I have a huge framed poster hanging on my office wall. Todd practically has it memorized because I listen to my cast albums (I have it in at least three foreign languages and like four versions in English) all the time. I am geeking out RIGHT NOW. While I am typing this. It is a bit ridic, I know, but you have no idea how geeked out I am. OK, well, this paragraph probably gives you a pretty good idea.

My office. No joke. And that “Les Mis” poster is super heavy.

4. The Cubs swept a series this week. Seriously. Talk about ridic. I miss Sweet Lou and Derrek Lee, but wow, three wins, that’s practically a record this season. Now if only they would hire Greg Maddux as the next club manager. Yes, I said Maddux. I know I have said bad things about Maddux in the past, but that was out of anger and frustration. And you cannot hold baseball season anger against me.

5. Kona next weekend for a work thing! Todd and I are staying an extra day. We’re (ha ha) I’m hoping we’ll get to see the lava flow. Not entirely optimistic about that one, but you know how crazy I am. I will try any means possible. If you have any suggestions, send them this way! I’m not sure whether they’ve re-opened the air space, so I have no idea whether helicopter is a possibility at this point.

6. I didn’t need to take a Relpax today! At work, May Rose jokingly referred to this as “drug-free Hawai‘i.” Not exactly, MR. Don’t be j just because I hoard my six pills a month.

I should probably get to bed before Todd wakes up and notices that (a) I am still up (he tried to get me to go to sleep a half-hour ago, and I told him that I was writing and that he should stop judging, whatever the heck I meant by that) and (b) I am still listening to “Les Mis.” Things are looking up, friends! And the weekend is near . . .

One really cool thing did happen this week, and that was that my friend Aarti – a dormmate from freshman year at Northwestern – became The Next Food Network Star! Aarti is truly one of the sweetest and coolest people you will ever meet, and all of us who know her are super proud of her for winning the competition. Her new show on the Food Network, “Aarti Party,” debuts Sunday, so be on the lookout for it.

Other than that, though, I have to say, the past week has been less than good. While we were watching Aarti coast her way to victory on TNFNS, I got a text from Scott saying that little Allie was being rushed into surgery. If you read my previous entry, y0u know how things eventually turned out. How badly I feel is nothing, of course, compared to how parents Scott and Keao must feel, but somehow I’m feeling the sadness about their situation a lot more deeply than I thought I could. I could barely sleep Sunday night while I worried about Allison, which of course made for a pretty difficult Monday.

Monday. Ugh. I have never been one of those people who totally dreads Mondays, but work has been ridiculous lately. I like my job itself, but let’s just say there are certain personalities I could do without. OK, mostly one personality, but there are certain things I’m actually not allowed to talk about, as ridiculous as that sounds. Yesterday, I was so frustrated, I almost snapped a pen in half while writing with it . . . which would’ve been sad, because it’s a pen a really like. On the up side, I did make people laugh during staff meeting. Back to the down side, however, I wasn’t making that stuff up.

Oh, yeah, and the Cubs (now minus D-Lee) suck. And while I did get Blackhawks tickets for March, they are standing room only because the scalpers (industry-sanctioned StubHub bastards) swallowed up a lot of the regular seats for a game vs. (are you kidding me?!) the Carolina Hurricanes within the first 20 minutes.

My problems sound pretty petty compared to other people’s, but I try to be a pretty mellow person (shut up, you guys), so all this has upset my equilibrium – so, you know, if you run into me and I’m grumpy, that would be why. On that note, how are things in your neck of the woods?

Friday, we obtained the new digital cable box from Oceanic Time-Warner, and I promptly hooked it up to the MacPro. Showtime HD worked just fine, much to my delight. Then I switched to the programming I was most excited for in HD: sports. ESPN HD was, I knew (from watching it at my cousin’s house), on channel 1222. But Oceanic’s blue screen told me I wasn’t authorized to view this channel. Hmm, odd. How about 1321 (Food Network HD)? Same thing. Grrrr! What is the point of HD if I can’t view sports or food?

So what did I have access to? I decided to keep hitting the channel-up button on the remote to find out. As it turned out, plenty: HBO, Cinemax, Starz, the Big Ten Network (!!!) . . . and at least two channels of, shall we say, programming for mature audiences . . . Yeah, that’s right. I couldn’t get ESPN or Food Network, but I had a couple free p**n channels. Huh?!

By the next afternoon, I was pretty frustrated. I needed my ESPN and Food Network fix. I called Oceanic, and the tech confirmed that I should be receiving these two channels. He pinged my box, and Food Network HD popped up on the screen. So did ESPN HD. Since that covered my basic concerns, I thanked him, politely declined the opportunity to sign up for their phone service (because, seriously, no service in a blackout = fail) and hung up.

A while later, I discovered that I seem to have lost a lot of the, errr, interesting freebies I was getting when I couldn’t see Neil Everett’s face in high-def. Apparently, I wasn’t supposed to get those. Including the Big Ten Network. Or NHL Network. Seriously, those don’t come with the package, but I get ImaginAsian TV and Disney XD HD (in which “The Suite Life of Zac and Cody” is currently on but not in HD)? I’m sorry, did I subscribe to the secret HD Clown Package?!

Clearly, this is just a conspiracy to siphon more money out of my Starbucks fund and into my sports addiction. If that isn’t un-American, I don’t know what is. Also, I don’t know the proper spelling of un-American. :oP

Haha, notice that no one is answering the gym question. Also, notice that if this poll were representative of my department as a whole, it would mean that the vast majority of the staff just must have terrible hygiene.

What did Tina get out of this, you ask?

“Wait, what?” she interrupted. “You shower in the morning?”

“Uhhh, yeah. And then?”

“What kind of Japanese are you?! Were you raised that way???”

“Uhhh . . . ”

“Is it because you went to college in Chicago?”

“No, Tina. In Chicago, I just didn’t shower.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

I didn’t realize that this was a cultural issue. In fact, I was pretty sure that when Tina broached the ethnic aspect, she was totally off-base, so I jokingly suggested that she use our kitchen white board to poll the office on the issue. (The white board is usually “reserved” for polls, puzzles and miscellaneous forms of entertainment. As of yesterday, it had been wiped clean and was waiting for a new idea.) She marched off to do just that. A few minutes later, the board was marked up with several questions:

• Do you shower in the morning or at night?
• If you shower in the morning, were you raised in Hawai‘i?
• If you usually shower in the morning but go to the gym at night, do you still shower only in the morning?
• Why do you shower when you do?

The gym thing: I live 7.6 miles from my gym. My car has air conditioning. By the time I get back from the gym, I’m no longer sweaty, and it’s not like I go to bed as soon as I get home, anyway. The point is, I’m not super gross by the time I go to bed – I’m sure that, if I were, my husband would be more than happy to let me know, just as he is always certain to point out when I have garlic breath.

Anyway. I still thought the whole thing was ridic. But an hour or so later, I asked my office neighbor, Jessica, whether she had voted in the poll. I told her the story behind it. Jess paused, then said that it was, indeed, strange that I would shower in the morning.

“Showering in the morning is kind of a haole thing,” affirmed Jess, who is half Japanese and half Caucasian.

What? First I sound like a haole (according to a total moke on the phone the other week), and now I shower like one? Not that I have anything against having common characteristics with white people, but wow, lau lau.

So anyway (again) . . . what say you? When do you shower, and why? If you’re from Hawai‘i, say so, and I’ll take your input back to the office. Leave your responses in the comments!

On the personal front, I just found out that I have iron deficiency anemia. Yeah, again, go figure. Didn’t see that one coming, even though I was deferred from donating blood once for low hemoglobin (I thought I was just having a low iron day) and nearly deferred two other times recently. My doctor called to tell me that the normal range for iron saturation in the blood is 20-50% . . . and mine was 5%. In addition, my overall iron level was too low and my iron binding capacity was too high. Whoops. There goes my quest to save the world one pint at a time! So I’m on iron pills twice a day and on strict orders to avoid donating blood for a while. We’ll see if that works. So far, I’m still tired, but it’s good to know that I wasn’t just getting increasingly lazy with age. Not JUST, anyway.

Still. I would never let any kid under my supervision walk around the mall wearing this:

Cha-ching. One thing went right today.

• One of my friends (and her family) will no longer be moving (back) to Hawai‘i after all. Huge bummer.
• I have to find an ENT sooner rather than later because I had been counting on said friend’s husband to be my ENT when they moved here.
• My hearing is crappier than I thought. Before, I knew you were talking to me, I just didn’t necessarily understand what you were saying. Apparently, now I don’t always know you’re even talking at all. Whoops.
• One of my friends is getting married next week . . . in her backyard.
• One of my friends is moving to the mainland.
• One of my friends may be moving to another country.
• A new take-and-bake pizza joint opened about a mile away from my house, pretty much out of nowhere. It’s like they bought the shop pre-fab and set it up overnight.

Needless to say, it’s been an interesting week, and that’s not even counting all the drama at work, and work has been crazy. Vacation, anyone?!

That chicken used to entertain me every afternoon as I headed home from work. The people who live in that house have an odd assortment of knickknacks in their yard, including an elephant statue that came up to the chicken’s shoulders in height, and the chicken loved to hang around that elephant. The juxtaposition was so ridiculous, it cracked me up every time. They also have a sculpture of an Indian head that’s about the same height. Anyway, between the lawn ornaments and the chicken, I was sufficiently amused.

Sometimes, that chicken would seemingly “disappear” for up to weeks at a time. Once, I didn’t see herfor a good three weeks, and I thought for sure she was a goner. But then one day, she reappeared – I guess she was just hanging out on the mauka side of the property, out of street view, behind the short brick wall and the rickety fence. (Let’s face it, this was near my onramp, so I couldn’t exactly be inspecting the yard as my car picked up speed.) From then on, I reassured myself that the hen would always make her return to the front yard.

But now it’s been months. I’m not a chicken stalker or anything, so I’ve lost count, but I’m fairly certain I haven’t seen Ms. Brown Hen in a good three months. This can’t be good. I’m fairly certain she’s either (a) become dinner or (b) been buried underneath all those lawn ornaments. Still, until I know for sure, I can’t help but look for her every afternoon. It’s driving me nuts!

Does anyone know what happened to the Pi‘ikoi Street chicken?