osheas::blog

Well the Really, Really, Really, good shit wine party was this last Saturday. We had about 30 people. I was worried for a while when we were getting RSVPs back say they were busy or out of town. It all worked out, although a number of friends whom we were looking forward to seeing couldn’t make it.

We asked everyone NOT to bring wine and for once they seemed to have listened. We forgot to tell then not to bring to much food. We could have fed a small army. The tri-tip was amazing and gone in about 5 minutes, maybe less. The beer can chicken came and went as did the lasagna and most everything else. The good news is we have some great leftovers. Who knows, we may finish the carrot cake tonight. The cheese cake didn’t last long enough for leftovers.

As hoped we have whittled down our wine supply by about 20 bottles so most of our collection is now in the wine fridge. I got to spend a little time with almost everyone but not enough time with anyone. I told Eileen this morning that our next party should be small and more intimate. Then she reminded me I have already planned parties in October and another one in December. Oh well, the best laid plans…

Paradise is proving to be a hard place to get a reliable Internet connection! I am now in the lobby of our hotel in Hilo, and have a good wireless signal (for now). I managed to upload the wedding pics on Flickr, so here they are!

Hilo is the complete opposite of Kona - it’s lush, tropical, and wet. It’s been preiodically pouring, but the temps are in the 80’s, so it’s pretty muggy. Many tiny green frogs “sing” in the trees nonstop. I think this is where they must have filmed the Tarzan movies. We’re staying at a little place called the Dolphin Bay Hotel. It’s cute, and far enough away from the water that we should be safe should tsunami hit (we went to the Tsunami Museum today, so it’s on my mind). Volcano National Park is on the agenda for tomorrow.

Gonna go get everybody and head off for dinner. Aloha!

My niece’s wedding was yesterday, and it was a lovely ceremony, in the Na’ Aina Botanical Gardens overlooking the ocean in Kilauea. Destination weddings (this was the first I’ve ever attended) are beautiful, but I wouldn’t want to take on the hassle of arranging one. They were coordinating arrivals up until noon yesterday. Phew! As guests, we had a lot of playtime leading up to the event, though we did provide shuttle service for people in the afternoon as we had rented a minivan.

My poor sister slipped on some rocks and sprained her wrist while snorkeling on the afternoon of the wedding so had to attend sporting a splint and sling. She was sore, but mostly embarrassed. The reception was at a restaurant in Kapa’a, a little town about 15 miles from the Botanical Gardens. I haven’t had a chance to upload wedding pics, but did get up some photos of the area where we stayed in Princeville, and Chuck’s first scuba diving adventure, in which he forgot to take the label off the lens of his new underwater digital camera (oops). They’re here. More to come!

Update: That was no sprain, my sister BROKE her wrist. She’s waiting until she gets home (and the swelling goes doen to get it casted, so she’s having to be pretty careful. It’ hasn’t been too bad for her, except she can’t get it wet.

We are in Michigan this weekend for the start of our on-the-road-June travels. Chuck’s niece is graduating from high school so we came out for the event. It is always bittersweet to attend events like this: my mother died when I was so young, and my whole family situation was so fractured that it can be sometimes hard to watch the families, and extended families gather and celebrate. There were the parents, and the grandparents, and the siblings, and who knows who else all gathered to see the kids get their diplomas. My problem is that I am reminded at these functions of all the people who were never able to see me do those things. And even after all these years, it can still be painful. What I wouldn’t give to see my mom just once more… I guess that’s why I’ve always disliked the pomp and circumstance of these occasions; I am reminded not so much of my success as of my loss.

Hey, am I selfish or what? I took an event that had nothing much to do with me and made it all about myself! Nice! Katie looked great, didn’t trip (a couple of kids did on their way p to the stage, and one girl lost her shoe), AND got her diploma, so it was a very successful night. The graduation was indoors, which surprised me (they are always outdoors in California). At the end a couple of kids sang the school’s alma mater (who actually ever knows the words to their alma mater, anyway?), and one of them had the voice of a professional. That kid could go on American Idol and win, he sounded THAT good. Unfortunately, the alma mater was really short, so he only got to sing a verse or two. By the time we really grasped how good he was, the song was over.

Here in rural Michigan, high school graduation is viewed as a big deal - maybe THE big deal - of these kids’ lives. Looking out into the audience, I was struck by the fact that this is the heart and soul of Middle America. And I can’t wait to get home to California.

When it takes a week to celebrate a birthday, it takes a while to get all of the various media taken of said birthday together. So here are more photos of our biplane ride over Carlsbad, taken with our Canon digital SLR. These are really spectacular shots, and as we had the big telephoto lens, Chuck was able to catch some very neat shots of a hot air balloon that passed us while we were flying. I also did a little movie-making, and have a Flash movie of the takeoff. Yes, it was that noisy. It’s an open cockpit, don’t forget!

This past Saturday we had the final leg of the celebration: a run in the morning in Angeles Crest National Forest in which we crossed 60 streams (to be honest, there was so little water that we ended up pretty much crossing one stream 60 times). it was a lot of fun and a very soggy affair. I bravely took a camera and got very wet trying to keep the camera dry. At the last crossing, I made Chuck go back across the stream so I could film the historic moment. Mia faithfully went back with Chuck, even though she doesn’t like water all that much. The other dog you see running with Chuck is Paris, a black Lab/Golden Retriever mix, and she ran back because she just really, really likes water - any water, anywhere. You can see from this movie that there were a lot of dogs attending (I counted six total, though only four appear in the movie, including one toy poodle puppy who was carried almost as much as he ran bu showed a lot of heart and looked like a drowned rat when wet).

Later that afternoon we had a bunch of people over to the house, and drank a lot of wine and ate a lot of food and generally toasted Chuck’s new decade and new age group (this latter relates to running - a new age group means you theoretically increase your chances of placing higher in races; or not, as a whole lot of Boomers are turning 60 along with Chuck and are a whole lot faster than he is). All in all, a fabulous time was had by all. Photos are here of the party and whatnot.

The celebration came to an end on Monday, when we got a notice from Blue Cross that our health insurance premiums were increasing $200 a month because Chuck had entered a new age bracket. Old Man O’Shea, indeed.

Yesterday we were over at our friend Bev’s. She lives a fair piece from us in Camarillo (can you say “back of beyond”?), so we planned on making a day of it. Our mission: hook her iMac G5 up with a second monitor using Screen Spanning Doctor. See, the iMacs out of the box can only mirror with a second display and as a budding graphic designer she wanted the full glory of two screens. We brought over a little mini-DVI to VGA connector (not to be confused with the identical looking adapter that works on the Intel iMacs) and a 19″ LCD monitor and downloaded the software when we got there. A few minutes later the two screens were happily spanning. Awesome! We had anticipated having to wrestle the computer into submission after a long battle so this quick fix meant we had more time to visit and play (and go hiking in Point Mugu State Park - photos here of the hike). When we got back from hiking one thing led to another and we somehow wound up trying on tiaras. Let me just say that dressing Chuck up is NEARLY as much fun as dressing up Mia. I can’t wait to see him in the evening gown that accompanies the tiara.

On to the diva smackdown. I’ll let you decide who best channeled their inner princess:

We picked him up late yesterday afternoon, and had to hightail it out before they could give us the blow-by-blow about the car. We’re going back this morning all of that stuff. But we had a BLAST driving Max to and from Pasadena last night!

Mo’ better photos coming today.

The eagle has landed! Max Mini O’Shea is here in Long Beach and we may be able to pick him up TODAY!!!!!

Excuse me, I have to go explode now.

Max Mini O’Shea is as we speak on his first (and probably last) ocean voyage. He is on a ship crossing tha Atlantic. The dealership tells me he’ll be in Ontario on or around October 16, and should be in Long Beach on or around October 23, at which point we can go and visit him while he gets the final once-over and a few little tweaks and upgrades. Here’s hoping the schedule stays firm - at this rate Max will be home by then end of October, not quite two months from the original order placed September 2 to delivery.