Friday night (that was…the 17th, I think) we went to a party at UH for the South Asian Lovers Association (or something like that). Azeema was coordinating it, so we went.

Lots of great Indian food and music. We brought a chocolate haupia cake from Leonard’s (not very east Asian but everyone ate it anyway).  There was planned poetry reading after the dinner, but the readers didn’t show so reciting and song was impromptu. Didn’t quite understand the Urdu, Pashto, and such, but it sounded nice.

We went to the Pagers for brunch the next day. Sean and Sheryl are here with their kids for a few weeks so we had a nice visit. It started POURING while we were there but was quite nice to watch from the covered lanai.

Monday was regular work. We are rolling out of bed at 6:30 and turning on our computers. It seems to be getting harder and harder to do this as we live more on Hawaii time.

The advantage of starting and ending the day early is that there’s time for fun pau hana (that means after work). The Wall (or Walls) is only 3 blocks from our place and it’s a great little boogie boarding spot. It’s great fun to go after work. Woohoo!

We’re also only about 10 minutes from Diamond Head, my surf spot. The challenge for the last few weeks has been to get this old bod strong enough to paddle out and catch waves. Some days I can get out to the spot but that leaves me too pooped to catch anything. Ugh. I finally figured out that the spot in front of cliffs is too shallow–I could see the reef as I sailed by. A little too close for comfort.

We’ve had Kona weather for the past week or so–no trade winds and overcast. Went hiking to Makiki-Moleka-Manoa Cliffs trail on Friday (my day off) and it was MUGGY! Beautiful view of the valley, though. It had been raining pretty hard so was muddy in places and there was a huge boulder in the trail that had destroyed a number of trees in its wake on the hillside.