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where our wasted time becomes your wasted time

maui

Adjustment

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This is what I looked like after I got back from Maui. Notice the slant? I’m standing up straight. If you mouse over the picture you’ll see what I looked like about a week later. A little better, right?

You might recall that while on Maui, a tsunami (spelled right the first time, thank you very much) came while we were on the beach, picked me up and deposited me, neck first, on the beach. After that Brad said that I always looked angry because when I turned to look at someone I turned my whole body. You should try it sometime. I think Brad was scared of me for the first few days.

Side Note: Turning was actually a little more complicated than that. The first step was to just shift my eyes in that direction to see if I could see the thing without any head movement. If that didn’t work, I could get maybe 20 degrees of turn in before it started to hurt.  After that I could get another 20 degrees by rotating from my shoulders. If I needed to see a little further astern I could  rotate from the hips for about 45 degrees. That gave me nearly 90 degrees. If I needed to see anything back further than that, I would have to actually move my feet (if standing) or start to hurt something (in all other positions).

Anyway, about a week ago I went to my doctor and he checked to make sure I didn’t actually hurt any part of my spine and then gave me some muscle relaxers and told me to try some hot and cold treatments. If it didn’t get better he would send me to a physical therapist.

It didn’t really get much better, and everyone told me to go to a chiropractor (Again, first time. I’m really hot in the spelling department today). So I made an appointment with the parent of two of our Lincoln Lutheran students. Beth recommended him, and his boys are smart, so I figured he must be too.

When I hear people talking about chiropractors it seems like they go every 3 days for approximately 14 years and then they are better. Ron looked me over and said he thought he could help and that it should take two visits (including this one). So that’s one point in his favor already.

He explained what he was going to do and then got to work. He said my back looked fine, but did three “things” to my neck (what are those called?). The first one was just a little simple pop. The second sounded like he took a bundle of eight to ten sticks (missed my only chance to use the word  faggot there) and broke it in his hands. It was a lot of popping. Yes, it hurt. Then he did another one that wasn’t so bad.

I instantly felt a lot better.

No, I didn’t. I felt more or less the same and he gave me some more instructions and I made an appointment to come back in two days. But by the time I was walking out to the car I did notice a change. It still hurt when I turned my head, but it didn’t hurt in my neck anymore. It hurt in my shoulders. It was a much nicer kind of hurt.

Lauren didn’t know I went, and she noticed right away that I was turning from my neck instead of from my shoulders. I thought I was turning the same way that I had been, but I guess not. I do notice a difference now. If I’m not stretching my neck left or right past the comfortable point (something the chiropractor told me to do every hour) then it doesn’t hurt, and when it does hurt it is more of a muscle ache. I don’t know how to describe the difference, but this pain is less painful. It’s not that it is less severe, it’s just different.

The worst part about this whole thing is that I won’t be able to make fun of Brad and his “bad back” anymore.

Thinkin’ ahead

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A couple of weekends ago Lloyd and I cooked some brats on the grill when it was so blasted hot and our air conditioner hadn’t been fixed yet.. (Y’know, ‘brat’ should really be spelled differently. The way it stands now I just see/imagine naughty children getting a good sear.) Anyway, I came up with a brilliant idea for those ancient chicken tenders cluttering up the freezer: cook them!

Yessir, I actually cooked them, and for the next couple of meals, half the work was already done. “What are we going to eat? Well, how about some vegetables and chicken that is ready, you crazy genius!” or “Just a delicious salad with pre-cooked chicken!” I felt so amazing!

While Lloyd’s been gone, I grilled another batch, minus the children sausages. It has been a life saver.

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Hawaii Update

Curt’s first day on Maui started off, as every day in Maui should start off, with a sunrise walk on the beach. It was a lot of fun with Curt, because I have been having beautiful sunrise walks on the beach for almost a week and had forgotten a little bit howreally amazing they were.

I had decided yesterday that today would be my first sunrise swim on the beach and Curt was happy to jump right in with me. The air is just a little cool in the morning, but that just makes the ocean seem warmer and we stayed out for about 30 minutes. That brings total Sunrise Walk On The Beach time to just under 2 hours son were back just

before 7:00. We putzed around the house a little more than usual this morning before getting started. Brad, Curt and Samith all had work related things to do. I played mother hen and packed our bags for the day.

We went up to the big tourist town (I’m sure Brad will supply all of the actual names in his post) and there wassome souvenir shopping done. We also went into a couple of art galleries. I’m not sure how we ended up in them, but everyone seemed to enjoy a little time looking at art. It was strange.

Next came my reason for jumping in the car this morning. The largest Banyan tree in the United States. The main trunk is huge and there are about 20 other trunks (it’s that tree that sends down roots from the air and they form new trunks). It covers just under an acre of land. We got there about lunch time, but I wasn’t hungry, so while everyone else went to eat at Cheeseburger in Paradise I camped out under the tree and communed with nature.

After that got old I scoped out 7 shave ice places to decide which one would be Curt’s first shave ice. It is unfortunate that they had just eaten as we just got small ones. To really appreciate them you need more.

Next a quick trip up the beach to the Hyatt Sheraton because they have a really nice beach and there is, legally speaking, no such thing as a private beach in Hawaii. The beach was amazing and the waves were huge. This is evidently not normal, but the waves were ten feet high if they were an inch.

It was great fun to play in them, but I got rolled over the wrong way by a really big one and ended up hurting my neck. I’m currently taking Advil and Rum and am beginning to feel better. By tomorrow I hope to be able to turn my head for the helicopter ride.

We ate dinner at the wide spot on the side of the road that Brad found via Yelp months ago. It is. Little chicken stand. We each got a quarter bird with corn and rice.

Curt and I ended the day the way we stated it; at the beach. I have not gotten the prerequisite amount of reading at the beach in yet and since it didn’t hurt to read, and only hurt a little bit to walk, we want down to the beach and read and/or slept until sunset. There are more pictures on Flickr now, including ones from the Snorkeling Trip.

Maui Day 4

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Lauren here. Lloyd and I are not doing well in our coordinating of information. Here is his write-up of a couple of days ago.

Lauren out.

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If you’d like to read about Maui Day Three, Brad has a nice write up.

Today started out like every other day in Maui with a refreshing morning walk on the beach. I’ve done this enough that I recognize some of the other people who walk on the beach at the same time I do (about 5:30am). One guy I’ve stopped and talked to twice now is interesting. He’s from Denmark and retired to Maui about 5 years ago. I can’t recall his name, but he said it means ocean (I have to way to verify this). I suspect I will see him tomorrow as well.

I got back to Brad’s about 7:00 and Samith had been up since 3:00am working. I’m not really sure when Samith sleeps. He is always up when I go to bed and usually up when I get up. I had a traditional Hawaiian breakfast of Special K Red Berry and when 8:00 rolled around we went snorkeling.

Brad’s fellow teacher Paul and Paul’s brother Jim took us snorkeling. They are really great people and it was good to go with people who knew that they were doing (and who had equipment that we could borrow).

Snorkeling started out poorly for me. Everyone else had experience snorkeling and I think Paul thought that I did as well. I thought I made it readily apparent from my ineptness that I had not, but when were were all done and eating lunch he was surprised and said that wasn’t a great spot to do your first snorkeling.

But it was a great spot to snorkel, and by the time we were nearly finished I was no longer worried that I would die with each passing moments. This was sort of a new experience for me. I’m more used to convincing other people to do things that they are scared to do rather than being the reluctant participant. Samith did a nice job of making sure I was still alive and I would probably have turned back if it wasn’t for him. One of the first fish I saw looked up at me with a look that seemed to say, “Dude, you don’t know what the hell you’re doing, do you?” I’m not sure if that look was meant for me specifically or if he gave it to all the snorkelers.

But I did eventually figure out, more or less, what I was doing. And even while I was terrified, everything was beautiful and interesting. Just about the time I was scared I was going to die we saw a sea turtle. They are really amazing. Jim touched it, and I think Brad got really close too.

There were some underwater tunnels and Paul and Jim swam through them. I didn’t realize that the hole I was looking into was a tunnel, and I was more than a little surprised when Paul came swimming out of it. Samith purchased a disposable camera in a waterproof case so there should be some snorkeling pictures tomorrow.

We snorkeled for a couple of hours then went out to eat at a fish place. It was very good (Brad has not yet steered us wrong on eating establishments). I had the Fish Tacos, because they were the specialty of this little shop. The owner came out and explained the 17 ingredients in the taco and how to best eat it. The advice was necessary.

After that we headed off for the mandatory shave ice followed by the mandatory afternoon nap.

In the afternoon we drove up the Iao valley which is right up the road from Brad’s school. Surprisingly, he had never been there before. It was a beautiful rain forest. There are other parts of Maui that are rain forests,  but we have not been there yet. We will probably go back up the valley when Curt gets here. He’s more of a hiker than Samith is. Instead, we walked around about a mile of paved trail. It was nice that Brad knew a lot about plants, because we saw a lot of them.  We saw both a cat and a chicken.

The evening was finished up with another wonderful meal (this time at an Asian noodle place) after which we went to Costco to drop off Samith’s film. We will pick up the film tomorrow and then I can put up some snorkeling pictures.

In the mean time, here are the rest of today’s pictures. Oh, and I washed my colors and whites together and now have pink underwear and socks.

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Lauren here again. At the time of this writing, Curt is well on his way to Maui. Happy traveling!

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Hawaii, Part One

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Lauren here. Before Lloyd types up his stuff, I just want to complain that even though he is on vacation, I will be doing half the work for his posts. “I can’t upload pictures from my iPhone,” he says. Grumble grumble.

So I will open the photo texts he sent to my iPad, mail them to myself, download them from my e-mail to iPhoto, resize them, export them to the desktop, then upload them to the website. But I shall do so grudgingly. (But not too grudgingly, because I really like getting all those photo texts! Keep those coming!)

Ok, Lloyd. Fill this up with some text.

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Okay, so I didn’t know what pictures Lauren would post, and I don’t know what part of the adventure she wants me to write about, and I don’t know if she will want me to write about each day and since we, for some reason, only communicated in texts today I’ll just start with these pictures and then ramble on from there.

airport

This is the airport in Maui. I was initially not very impressed with it, but when we walked through the doors that directed us to baggage claim, we were outside. The whole baggage claim area was in this ‘open on one side to the outside’ huge vaulted space. It was impressive, but Samith decided that he couldn’t wait there for the three hours that it would take for Brad to arrive.

samith

Instead we rented a car and drove to the beach. We could have walked to the beach, but we wouldn’t have had any place to put our luggage. So it was more like we were renting a trunk. We went to the beach (this is not difficult on an island; just pick a direction and drive). But it was very  dark. Still, a nice start to any trip: a midnight walk on the beach. Then Samith got himself a tropical drink and we drove back to the car rental place 2 hours later, returned the car and retrieved our luggage from the trunk.

We got to Brad’s house and settled in for bed. We all woke up around 4:30am, because we were mistakenly under the assumption that it was 9:30 and a reasonable time to get up. Clearly this called for a sunrise walk on the beach…

boys on porch

But when we got outside Brad saw that they were burning cane in the distance. As he had always wanted to see a good old cane burning, but hadn’t the chance afore. So we got in the car and proceeded toward the burning cane. But then Brad noticed that the smoke was too high in the sky and the cane burning was well over. So we proceeded to the beach anyway, but too late for the sunrise.

After a pleasant walk on the beach where I started my sea glass collection, we loaded back in the car to go get some breakfast. Brad took us to a wonderful little place where I had an omelet with 3 things I’d never had before and Brad and Samith had banana pancakes. We also tried a fruit whose actual name I can’t seem to remember, but that I’ve been mistakenly calling papyrus all day.

Next stop: Walmart where we load up on all of the things that three guys who don’t really cook think they might eat over the course of the next few days. Peanut butter: creamy. Jelly: raspberry.  Total bill: $130. Oh, and there was a package of powdered doughnuts for $12.00.

After that went back to Brad’s house to unload out goods. It being 9:30 in the morning at this point we decided that naps were in order. Samith took his at Brad’s place. Brad and I waked to the beach. It is a grueling 5 minute walk, but well worth it. I built a little sand chair and put a towel over it and Brad setup his beach chair. We were about 20 feet from the water and under a beautiful shade tree. I read a bit and Brad worked on more insurance things. But we were only there for about an hour, because there were little gnats that found me attractive in a somewhat unwholesome way.

More napping ensued back at Brad’s place and at about 1:00 we fixed some ham sandwiches, ate them, and headed across the island so that Brad could deposit a check at the bank and visit his school to pick up a pay stub (more insurance business).

Then back across the island to Big Beach. It was great. Beautiful sand. Fun surf. Good Company. We were there for a couple of hours and then drove back. On the way back we stopped off for Shave Ice. It was to a snow cone as snow cones are to ice cubes. The Ice is like snow is supposed to be. The flavors were diverse and incredible (you could have up to three). There was ice cream on the bottom and cream on the top. We will have to go there again.

Next was a pizza place where we had some of the best pizza I’ve ever had. Is this starting to sound over the top? It really was a good day.

On the way home Brad and Samith dropped me off at the beach and I walked the last couple of miles while the sun went down and the stars came out. If you’ve been counting, that was 5 trips to the beach in the last 24 hours. I highly recommend Maui.

Now, at 9:30 we are watching Django Unchained.