One year from my last holiday post...

Hope all of you have a wonderful holiday season!



(I've e-mailed this to various people/posted this in multiple places, so if you've already seen it - well, lucky you. You get twice the holiday blessings from me :p.)

A kid called me "ma'am" today, which I'll just think of as him having manners. But then he asked if I was looking at the DVDs for my kids. Thanks a lot, kid - I feel 10x older now.

I let a family cross the road in front of my car when I was at the mall earlier, and the little boy sitting on top of his father's shoulders waved and yelled, "Thank you!" It was so cute and totally made my day :).

Almost three hours of sake + amazing sushi = my first Sushi Sasabune experience! Everything was so good - melt-in-your-mouth good. I was actually scared when I first got there, as the stories I've heard made me think they're the Sushi Nazi much like the Soup Nazi from "Seinfeld", but it really wasn't that bad. The stern-looking sushi chef even smiled once in a while. I was still sufficiently scared to keep my cell phone ringer off, my chopsticks away from the shoyu, and my camera in my bag though. If you know how much I love to take pictures of food, you know that last one wasn't easy :p. The experience was indeed pricey, but worth every penny.

Look - I got a new toy!



Yes, I finally caved in and got one. I know it's outdated, but I don't play video games often enough to justify dropping $600 on a PS3. Plus, I'm also waiting for a Wii. I'm slightly more partial to Nintendo, and would've gotten a GameCube or something, but the game I really want to play is on the PS2. Maybe now I can actually get better at navigating through video games.

I've been watching the Travel, Discovery, and History Channels a lot lately. All are fascinating, but the History Channel is particularly depressing. It often reminds me of how fucked up and scary humans can be, with all the truly messed up things we've done and how we don't seem to have learned much from them.

On the other hand, the Travel and Discovery Channels are much more uplifting. It's nice to see/hear/learn about different places on the Travel Channel until I can experience them for myself, and it's always fun to watch the MythBusters burn/break/blow up/destroy shit in the name of science. Actually, I would love to have a job with either of these channels, but not on that eating bizarre foods show. That's just gross.

Here are some pictures of various signs, just for fun. Instead of posting them one by one or making an album, I made a slide show:

Of these, I would like to bring your attention to the "map" to the lava flow. This "map" was a hand-drawn piece of paper clipped to a clothesline somewhere by the beach.



There are several things I find disturbing about this "map":
1. You are "hear".
2. The "important" "landmark" is a "white trailer", which is at the end of an unspecified road.
3. It says to walk 2 miles in an unspecified direction (well, it says to walk toward steam plume, but that's hardly a stable direction).
4. It bears the warning "at your own risk".
5. It wishes the brave traveler "good luck", perhaps implying that luck will be needed.
6. It has the traveler walking 2 miles somewhere (see #4). I don't know where, but it's straight to "danger", with a drawing of a skull.

Getting there might not be so bad, but I imagine coming back would be difficult and involve getting lost...on volcanic rock...in the middle of nowhere. And this is if I ignore the obvious, which is that the "map" looks like it could've been drawn by a kid who got bored in class one day and started doodling. My friend Iruma still wanted to go, but it was two against one so she lost. Maybe it would be worth exploring in daylight, but it was getting close to sunset when we saw the "map". Besides, we've already done the getting-lost-at-night-in-the-middle-of-the-volcano thing the night before. We'll save the new adventure for the next time we go back.

I've often wondered about the difference(s) between geeks, nerds, and dorks. I've discussed this with different people, but there hasn't really been any agreement. So I turned to the internet.

"Piled Higher & Deeper" by Jorge Cham - Definition of Geeks (part 1)
"Piled Higher & Deeper" by Jorge Cham - Definition of Geeks (part 2)
"Cat and Girl" - Oxford English Cat and Girl

I previously considered myself a dork, but now I'm not so sure. After looking at these comic strips and definitions at dictionary.com, I still can't decide. But these days, there's an internet quiz to decide everything for you, and this one told me I scored as 78 % Nerd, 69% Geek, 47% Dork, which apparently made me a "modern, cool nerd". Hmmm...moving on...

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As Stephen Colbert might say, a big "wag of the finger" to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences/Academy Awards for not getting their facts/credits straight. The Departed was based on a Hong Kong (Chinese) movie, not Japanese. You're the Oscars, for crying out loud. Get it together!

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Oh, it's now old news, but I continue to be excited about the third Spiderman movie, fifth Harry Potter movie, and seventh Harry Potter book that will be coming out.

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Speaking of Spiderman, does anyone else besides me have fun picking up on the Stan Lee cameos in superhero movies? I saw him on last week's episode of "Heroes". That man's so cute...and brilliant. Oh, I missed this week's episode, but I intend to catch a re-run, so please don't spoil it for me.

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I'm tempted to try and get a PS2 and/or a Wii. There are crazy, stupidly addicting games on those consoles. Not that I really have the time to get sucked into the evil black-hole of video games.

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Oh boy. I guess it doesn't matter whether it's geekiness/nerdiness/dorkiness, but the truth is that mine apparently knows no bounds :-x. And it's getting worse every day :-p.

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And as of today, ho venti sei anni. Mamma mia! Yikes.

During the holidays, I put together a little album of Hawaii pictures and gave it to several people as Christmas gifts. It includes some of the things/places I love about Hawaii - a small taste of Hawaii through my eyes, so to speak.

( Visuals )
I <3 Hawaii.

If/when I leave, this song will be playing.

It's the holiday season again, and for the first time in years, I'm not spending Christmas and New Year's in Hawaii. I was looking forward to a white Christmas, but apparently there's currently no snow at my destination so it might not happen. Oh well, I'm sure it'll still be fun. Hope everyone have a wonderful holiday season filled with tons of good food, good cheer, and other good stuff! See you in 2007!