Recent happenings...

Just finished re-reading Patrick O'Leary's The Gift, quite possibly my most favorite book...

Still trying to decide what to say about Barbara Kingsolver's latest essay collection, Small Wonder. She says everything I wish I could say, and better than I could hope to...

The pictures from our excursion to the National Botanical Garden are back, and I have lots to upload if only I could find the time...

Finally made it out to Tunnels. I found it less then it's cracked up to be since I spent all my time fighting a current and seeing nothing. Ian, on the other hand, saw a reef shark...

Gave up reading I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down. While excellently written, it's enormously depressing. All of the characters are the down-and-out sort who have never had a break, and the stories seem to find them as they are reaching the end of their ropes...

Have begun the packing and shipping process for our return to the mainland. I find I am blindly optimistic, despite everything I know about life and reality, that this move is exactly what is necessary. That on the other side of it I will find creativity, productivity, stability, balance, good habits, less stress. Sometimes naivete is a blessing...

Welcome to March. Our time in Kauai runs thin. . .

Detoured to the beach on the way to meet some of Ian's teammates for dinner last week. We were early, and my Monday had been a Monday and Tuesday all rolled together. Spending time with the ocean is therapy for crazy days. (How do people who live in Kansas manage??) We waded into the surf a short ways before being distracted by a dark shape in the waves breaking on the reef edge. Patience revealed the shape to be two sea turtles swimming close to shore, surfing down the backwash, finding dinner in the sea-salad growing on the reef edge. We watched them through the water, which sometimes became so shallow that shells and flippers broke the surface. The turtles mostly ignored the humans; the humans stared, slackjawed and grinning like idiots. We were late to dinner.

(This turtle was not one of those we saw that evening, or at least this picture was taken a week earlier. Ian found this turtle and trumpet fish pair engaged in synchronized swimming while we were snorkeling at Poipu.)