It's not all paradise

I mentioned this homeless camp in a previous post - http://henrysmumsotherblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/aloha-aka-notes-from-small-tropical.html.
Seems that the end of the camp is in sight: According to Hawaii News Now - "Hundreds of homeless people are told they have to leave Keaau Beach Park. Take a look at some of their living conditions along the Waianae coast...http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/slideshow?widgetid=50331"
I found it disturbing to see people living like that. I don't find it any less disturbing hearing that they have to leave because I am sure few are there because they like to live rough.

Give up ...... to be happy

A Facebook friend posted a link to this article this morning. And it's good and true. And, no, nobody asks anybody to give up their big screen TV or their big honking SUV.

http://www.purposefairy.com/3308/15-things-you-should-give-up-in-order-to-be-happy/

Bad fan behavior

About once a year, we watch the Sharks play hockey in San Jose. Since we go so infrequently, we splurge on tickets these days and try for really good seats. Yesterday was that day. The Sharks were playing the Dallas Stars (there's a serious rivalry going on between those two teams.).

The above pictures were taken during warm-up and at the very beginning of the game (a long time before Ott, No. 29, got a game misconduct and was ejected from the game).

Our seats were two rows behind the Stars' bench, not so terrific for watching the game as we found out, but very interesting for seeing what exactly goes on on a bench.

Things started out well, the Sharks scored in the first minute and added two more goals to the first one. The people next to us and behind us were well behaved. But the young couple in front of us got louder and louder and more obnoxious with every beer consumed (and there were quite a few of those).

She kept yelling "Let's go Sharks" with increasing frequency and volume and towards the end of the third period, he started verbally abusing one of the Stars players loudly. Neither the attacked player nor the coaches reacted in any way, I'm sure they are used to this kind of obnoxious behavior.

It got to be so bad that we moved a few rows up and had to explain to the usher why. She was very understanding.

"Don't be those guys." Really!

Rain

I'd be crawling up (or down) tress, too, if I was this small and it had been raining as much as it has lately. The blue sky in the background is temporary. There's more rain coming.

Finally made friends with my soldering iron

I am taking yet another online class (I like those - if I felt like it, I could work in my jammies), this time it's all about soldering (with a soldering iron).
After a few disasters yesterday - cracked glass, pulled off tape - I managed to make friends with the soldering iron today.
I realize the pendants aren't perfect, but, sometimes finished is better than perfect. Really!

I did it .........

........... and nobody could be more thrilled than I am right now. I finished my bezels, all the soldering, polishing, hammering, riveting, all done. This week, I poured resin after dragging my feet for days.


This is how it started, empty, pretty crummy looking bezels.


These are the first two I poured, using my photographs.


These came next, this time I used images I bought from Sharon Tomlinson, one of my teachers for this class, on etsy. ( http://www.etsy.com/shop/allnorahsart?ref=seller_info)



And the last two show a side view just to show off the high dome I managed to pour. That's the nice thing about ICE Resin, it domes. Of course, things didn't work out anywhere near as well on the other bezel I tried doming. It looked great, but as soon as I turned my back, it all spilled over the edges.
Still, I'm quite stoked about these, maybe in part because I actually, finally finished something.

Lucky

Friday morning we had to take L's car into the shop for repairs. He left first, I followed a few minutes later.
As I was driving down Big Ranch Road, I saw several cars stopped on both sides of the road and as I kept going a car that had plowed into a telephone pole at obviously fairly high speed. I didn't see L's car on the way so I kept going, slowing down to let a sheriff's department car pass in the other direction. Had to wait at the bottom end of the road for another sheriff's car, a police car, an ambulance and a fire truck.
When I got to the repair shop, L was visibly shaken. Turns out the car that had hit the telephone pole had missed him by about a foot. He didn't have his cell phone with him so we drove to the sheriff's department to leave contact info in case they needed us. Turns out the police was in charge of this. They did take his info and CHP contacted him that afternoon.
Between news reports and the CHP we learned that it was a 30-year-old woman driving the car. She had had a diabetic episode, lost control of the car when her blood sugar dipped and is now in the hospital at UC Davis in serious condition.
L was incredibly lucky she missed him. He was ready to take his car into the ditch to avoid her when he saw her weaving off and back onto the roadway hitting a mailbox first and the pole at the end.
Here's a picture:
http://napa.patch.com/articles/driver-injured-in-crash-on-big-ranch-road#photo-8937389
And from the local paper:
http://napavalleyregister.com/news/local/woman-injured-in-solo-crash-in-north-napa/article_1db3cc62-43d4-11e1-87ff-001871e3ce6c.html

Getting there

This is obviously a work in progress. I'm taking another online class with Deryn Mentock and Sharon Tomlinson that involves both mixed media art (very hard for me) and metalwork.
This is my first attempt at the metalwork part of the class - it involves both cold and hot connections. It's not finished, I still need to make and attach a bezel to the copper piece, but it's getting there. I really only took the picture to show my teacher what I was having problems with - the solder didn't flow.
I know I said something about putting up pictures from the Hawaiian vacation - but I've been sick for almost 2 weeks. Quite unusual for me. I was dragging a bit when we came back from vacation, sounded like a cross between Barry White and Sam Elliott for a couple of days (quite amusing for somebody who's only 5'3") and then got hit hard by what apparently is going around town: sore throat, head cold, chest cold. I'm finally feeling a bit more like myself - about time, too.
I'm far behind with everything, including putting up pictures. But, since my class ends in mid-February, I figured I'd better get moving there. The artwork has taken me so far outside my comfort zone I'll need a GPS to get back home, but it's been fun. Not something the public will ever see - most likely - but fun, anyway.
So, hopefully, I'll be catching up really soon and there will be pictures.

Aloha - aka notes from a small tropical island

We spent Christmas on Oahu again this year, I guess that's as close as I get to a tradition.
The days went much too fast, probably because there was one day I spent on the sofa - not by choice but because I was still struggling a bit with whatever I had brought over with me from home.
I did take some pictures, that'll be another post. For now, I'll link to the photo album on FB - because it's so darn easy to upload from the iPhone:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150467596328129.363226.708398128&type=1&l=d1ebea3675
They are eclectic to say the least: posters, a statue of Duke Kahanamoku, Occupy Honolulu, flowers in the gardens of Queen Emma's Summer Palace, sunrise, sunset, photos from the North Shore where the surf was not very impressive and one of the lines outside the Ugg store (yes, there were so many tourists from Japan shopping there, that there were lines waiting to get into the store).
The notes, in no particular order:
There's an Occupy Honolulu, only 6 tents and a large tent that seems to serve as a business office. The message here seemed to be "Free Hawaii" (I've seen that before along with a picture of a machine gun), I guess not everybody wants to be part of the US there.
Japanese tourists - everywhere, especially at Ala Moana mall and the main strip in Waikiki. The exchange rate makes it attractive.
There are more solar panels on houses than anywhere else I've ever seen. Makes sense, the sun shines a lot, but I bet there's some big subsidizing going on. Those things are not cheap.
There also is at least one huge wind farm, along the road of the North Shore.
Shrimp trucks - something to be found along the North Shore. We only tried Macky's and found it to be so good, we made a special (40 min.) trip back.
Obama arrived a few days after us and there was a warning on the news about possible traffic jams (what? You mean worse than usual?). He stays on the windward side of the island in a nice, upscale area where there's golf and a lovely bay that was closed to other tourists so he and his family and friends could enjoy. Large fines to anybody daring to approach.
Friday evening, the road around the corner from our hotel was closed, there was heavy police presence, the Coast Guard was patrolling the marina and tourists stopping were strongly encouraged to move along and those whose hotel happened to be on the closed-off street were only reluctantly allowed to enter. Turns out that Obama and friends were eating at Morimoto's.
There's a huge homeless camp along the road to Ka'ena Point - approaching from the southern part of the island (we also went to the end of the road from the North). We knew the road dead-ended somewhere just short of the point and we'd never been, so we decided to take a bit of a drive. The area leading out that way isn't touristy at all, but nothing like that camp, which looked like it had been there for quite a while. We got to watch a woman washing her kids by hanging a waterhose over a bridge into the stream below. A little disturbing, to say the least. I find there's quite a bit of poverty on Oahu, once you get away from the main tourist drags, things can get quite seedy.
Rain - it rains just about every day and it did more so this time around then on any of our previous trips.
Of course, that also leads to spectacular rainbows. No pictures of those, we always were in the car at those times.
Newscasters wear Hawaiian shirts - not the anchorman, but the weatherman and the traffic man.
It's windy there, very much so. Thankfully, my hair is long enough to be pulled back. Hats are iffy, mine almost got blown off when we went to the overlook along the Pali Highway.
Waikiki is a shopper's paradise. The same kind of labels found on Rodeo Drive in LA, just lots more of them. Mostly aimed at the above-mentioned Japanese tourists.
The water there is gorgeous, lovely shades of blue and turquoise. No decent waves while we were there, not much good for big-wave surfing anyway. Fun to look at, though.
Traffic's hell, especially in Waikiki. I found the following quote on Frommer's: "Oahu residents own 600,000 registered vehicles, but they have only 1,500 miles of mostly two-lane roads. That's 400 cars for every mile, a fact that becomes abundantly clear during morning and evening rush hours. You can avoid the gridlock by driving between 9am and 3pm or after 6pm." And I can attest to that.
Still, it was lovely to get away and I think there'll be plenty more visits in the future.

Too much time at sea?

According to the description, a 7 week deployment turned into 7-1/2 months. During that time, 15 babies were born (fathers got to go home to see mums and babies) and 5 people got to go home for their own weddings. The HMS Ocean is returning home on 9 December.