Oahu, Take Two

One of my most favorite places to visit is Hawaii. It doesn’t even matter which island I’m on. What matters is you’re guaranteed sun, sand, water and perfect temperatures. I’m a sucker for the beach vacation and Hawaii is so easy. The flight is longer than I’d like, but it’s warm and tropical and I don’t have to worry about speaking another language or exchanging my money. I am familiar with the restaurants, grocery stores and who doesn’t love the plate lunch?

On my recent trip to Oahu, in addition to my many plate lunches, I also tried a number of things I have never eaten before. All based on the guarantee from my friend that she wasn’t going to try and sneakily trick me into eating something from the sea. We spent a couple hours walking around Chinatown, exploring the markets (which were insane!), stocking up on some Chinese treats like “lookfun” and some other stuff I don’t remember the name for and having dim sum. It was my first dim sum experience and it was delicious. Although I’m not sure I would have been nearly as brave if I had been doing it on my own instead of eating with people who knew what they were doing.

As with most of my tropical vacations, I love to spend as much time as possible on the beach. I came armed with massive amounts of sunscreen and a big floppy hat. One morning we were hanging out on the beach and there were these two younger girls in front of us, probably in their early twenties. They were clearly doing their best to get as dark as possible. I remember those days. When I was lifeguarding for a summer job and my sole goal of the summer was to have the best tan (aside from not having to actually save anyone). When wrinkles and sun damage, sun spots and melanomas were a thing of the future. It’s amazing how quickly the future sneaks up on you. There I sat on the beach with my religiously applied sunscreen and big floppy hat, realizing that somewhere along the line I got old. By the end of my visit, I’m pretty sure the family I was with was pretty darn sick of the beach. I can out-beach almost everyone I know.

While there, my friend introduced me to the wonder that is The Cheesecake Factory. I’d never eaten there before, having been turned off by the long lines to get a table and the fact that the majority of their menu is on the “not that” side of the “eat this, not that” articles I can’t help myself from scanning. Their food is average, but their cheesecake is amazing. And I don’t even normally care for cheesecake! We may or may not have found ourselves eating there multiple days in a row, just for the excuse of sharing some delicious cheesecake. I highly recommend the Godiva and the Adams Peanut Butter . . . . and the Red Velvet. Good thing I was on vacation.

Perhaps the funniest part of the trip was when we decided to have a girls night out to go to, you guessed it, the Cheesecake Factory. I got out my new maxi dress that took me a year to find (it’s hard when you’re short) and was so excited to wear it out. As I walked into the living room, my friends’ grandfather (who is the cutest 92-year old Chinese man you’ve ever seen) told me, “your mumu is very beautiful! Did you get it from Sears?” While trying not to laugh outright, because my maxi dress I had searched and hunted for had just been called a mumu, I informed him I got it at a store called Ann Taylor. His response was “Oh. That’s too expensive, next time you try Sears.” Despite being fairly confident that I wasn’t wearing a mumu, I did seek confirmation a few more times throughout the night.

I am at the age where a number of people in my life have children. When I visit the ones with small, impressionable children, I do my best to impart wisdom and knowledge and anything that will benefit them in life. This time I think I left them with the best knowledge nugget of all . . . steamroller. You know, where you all line up on the bed and the end person rolls over everyone else like they’re a steamroller? While it works best on unsuspecting people, the kids thought it was hysterical. We must have spent at least an hour playing steamroller. I also brought a copy of the Lady Gaga CD. While Pokerface is still the overall favorite with the kids, I did get them singing my personal favorite from that album, “Boys, Boys, Boys.”

Overall a wonderful beach filled vacation with good friends. It was great that I was able to do so many different things from my last trip to Oahu a year ago. And with the rain pouring down outside in dark and gloomy Oregon, I have to restrain myself from going to the Hawaiian Airlines website and booking another trip.

Stumptown

The people who work at Stumptown Coffee are their own special breed. They sneer at you if you come in dressed in business clothes rather than looking and smelling like you just worked as a bicyclist delivery person all day. They have an aura of superiority to them and appear as though they pass judgment on those of us who have followed the “traditional” route and have to sit at a desk wearing a tie all day. But they make a damn good cup of coffee.

Some of the guys I work with are too intimidated to go in there while wearing their business clothes. Apparently they don’t like to be sneered at while buying coffee. My theory is my money is just as green as the guy in line in front of me who clearly hasn’t showered in a week. Of course I smile nicely and bat my eyes at the workers too. I’ve yet to have a problem.

While I’ve realized that the people who work at Stumptown and I are clearly different, today I had a perfect example of how anal retentive I am. I decided to treat myself to a scone today. The girl working the counter put the scone in a brown paper bag and then promptly crumpled up the top and handed it to me. She crumpled it. Who just crumples? I may have had a mini stroke. Crumpling and I just do not go together. I actually took the time to straighten out the bag and fold it nicely like it was a sack lunch. I’m pretty sure the scone tasted better coming from the nicely folded sack.

The Magic Watch

I’ve always wanted a nice digital watch with a timer for running. The problem is, I’m cheap and hate spending the idea of spending too much money on a plastic watch. Thus I find myself with Target watch #3. At this point I realize that I could have owned a much nicer one for the same price. The irony is not lost on me.

When I first got the watch, I purposely did not set an alarm of any kind. 1) Because I will inevitably lose or toss the directions and 2) once set, the likelihood of me being able to turn it off is slim to none. Little did I know it at the time, but I bought a magic watch.

One day, the alarm started going off at 10am. I have no idea how this started happening, thus the idea that my watch must be magic. It drove me nuts. Enter boy #1. Boy #1, who at this time was still in the trying to impress me phase, insisted that he could get the alarm turned off and all would be well. After fiddling with the darn thing for what felt like ever, he assured me that all was well and the watch would never make a peep again unless I wanted it to. Thirty minutes later, I was laughing so hard my vision was clouded with tears and I could barely see boy #1 glaring at me as the alarm was once again going off. He’d only managed to change the time the alarm went off at.

A few months later, enter boy #2. This boy was not trying to impress me, as we’re related, but does like to live up to his self-hyped reputation as a bad ass and a general awesomeness at life. He also insisted that he could fix the watch alarm from going off. This again involved much time spent fiddling with the watch. The good news is that he did manage to turn the alarm off. The bad news is that he also made the watch beep on the hour, every hour.

I’ve gotten used to the beep on the hour every hour, especially as I don’t hear it at night. It was this past weekend, with my mother sleeping in my living room that I realized the watch continued to go off throughout the night right where any overnight guests are sleeping. This further impressed upon me the need to buy a real damn watch. One that is not magical and that I can control.

Who on earth would have thought that a $10 digital watch could outsmart three fairly intelligent people. Normally I wouldn’t have included the word fairly in front of intelligent, but hello, we’ve been outsmarted by a watch.