Aloha!

Aloha!
So here I am in Hawaii doing my first post. After an 18 hour day on Saturday consisting of 3 different airplanes and bad in-flight movies (Mamma Mia, Journey to the Center of the Earth, good god -- Brendan Frasier, what the hell happened to you?), I arrived at the Honolulu International Airport. This confirmed my suspicion that Hawaii was exactly like Jurassic Park, misty and densely populated with ferns. I fervently prayed that one of the large cargo crates would crack open and forth would spring a raptor to devour the parents who thought it would be a good idea to bring a screaming infant on my 7 hour flight from Portland to Honolulu. But alas, no dinos.

That night I stayed in Honolulu, which sad to say, looks a lot like the financial district of Boston. But fear not, dear pilgrims, on Sunday I went over to Waikiki to discover that I live half a block from Waikiki Beach! Baller! See accompanying pictures. The beach was what you'd expect, tans running the gamut from pink and painfully blotchy to perfectly bronzed, the air smelling faintly of sweat and coconut sunscreen. Nobody here wears clothes, bikinis are standard, whether or not you should be wearing one. I went to the grocery store in a bikini with shorts and a tank top and found myself woefully overdressed. Back on the beach boulevard I found tan, wrinkled old men playing chess. The top picture is the beach with Diamond Head (big green mountain) off in the distance, when you get close to it, you can see that it is circled by birds, which I pretend are teradactyls (and this fits in nicely with my Jurassic Park theme).

In other news, today was my second day at the office. I was hideously overdressed yesterday in a suit whereas 90% of the menfolk lawmen were in khakis and aloha print shirts, no joke, pastel flowered shirts. I was getting an assignment from one of the partners today who looked me over and asked, somewhat concerned, if I was feeling alright. "It's just...you're a little pale. Unnaturally so." Or maybe he said "uncommonly so." Regardless, he smiled and changed the subject smoothly. Everybody here is tastefully bronze. I, on the other hand, am translucent. But not for long.

My new favorite past time is to go and sit on the stone breakers at Waikiki beach (second picture) and watch the newbie surfers get wrecked. It never gets old. It's like a bigger, better youtube.

Please do not expect wildly inventive or snarky posts right away, I am jet-lagged and still trying to adjust to Eden. This post is more to establish that I am alive and well in paradise.