Monday Scrunch!

i hate being such a procrastinator, but can't seem to help myself. if it's not directly in my face, i probably won't deal with it. it has to, basically, jump up and slap me! this morning i got the big slap, so from then until now (about 8 hours, so far) i've been writing resos to submit to the oahu county convention (democratic party) coming up on may 2. hard work. due today! but that's what i get for committing to actually write these things. and smart me, i got other people, experts in the field, to send me things to include in a draft and then wrote them up straightaway. i can truly say that i'm not always clear myself about the issues, but i get clear in trying to write them up in resolution form. in the back of my mind are all these other pressing issues: two more weeks of school, unread journals that are due back tomorrow, missing-in-action students (where the heck are they?), uncompleted and two years overdue manuscript for a book about the sovereignty movement with information that is probably old news by now (so much for contemporary history!), finding a place to live in the next few weeks, reports due, meetings, meetings, meetings! i hardly have time to take photos! where's the fun stuff?

but i am including a nice pic i took at zippy's yesterday, out in the parking lot. the ferns were beautiful and worth capturing, i thought. after the meeting we took nyrell to the stadium flea market. she didn't shop, but i did--ended up buying cookies, macadamia nuts and assorted unnecessary things. it made me feel better, which tells you something about me. i'll shop for self-validation as long as it's cheap :-) after that we dropped nyrell off in waikiki and went to diamond head beach, down that narrow road where there's never any parking. i took a zillion pics of birds that i seduced with crushed cookies. i liked this one (above). i'm including a short video of the beach so y'all can hear what i heard and, if you live away from hawaii (like gabe) you might remember what the water sounds and looks like here in hawaii nei. not at all like atlantic ocean beaches. i remember visiting my son in providence and looking for a beach. what i found was rather dreary and grey. my son's father-in-law took james and me on a cruise on his boat in what i considered 'cold' weather. i was bundled up, anyway. james said it was 'cool'. somewhere out in the bay, near where the old beautiful mansions are--newport?--the boat stalled. we were drifting in the cold, almost dark ocean. some kelp or something got tangled in the motor. so my son strips off his shirt and dives into this really dark and unfriendly ocean to untangle us. i had stress! not sure why, as he was an adult and obviously used to doing this. but the ocean seemed unfriendly, and i was used to friendlier pacific ocean water, smell, color, sound. i guess i'm weird. enjoy hawaii's beach sounds!