Thanks for Thursday off.

It was windy with small surf yesterday for the 4th annual Paia Bay Invitational surf contest. No one cared, as coolers, boards, dogs and chairs headed to the beach for some cheap entertainment. Hat’s off to Ian, Danny, Scotty and the rest of the crew who put their humor and good mana into what has become their Thanksgiving Day ritual.

Everyone loves a pretty girl and Danielle was making the lads especially thankful she showed up to surf yesterday!

I’m sure GP fiddled with the heats to create this exact moment!

Surf a heat, drink a heat, surf a heat, drink a heat (it was in the rules)!

Here’s Scotty coming in for his next round of brewskies. Blimey I think his neck is thicker than my thigh, I’ll whip out my tape measure next time I see him and get back to you on this mind numbing statistic.

And the winning wahine is ............MICHELLE! Sure she flashed her boobs in an excellent attempt to sway the judges, but as they were already half pissed she actually won on skill alone! Her prize was $1,000 of Danny and Scotty money (ie; nothing) and a bottle of marbles, just in case she loses a few of her own. Nice one Cyril!!

Post contest and head down a few beaches, those with big enough boards headed out for a sunset sail.

Where was I when all this activity was going on? Well being the hard core athlete I am, I deftly got sun tan lotion in my eye and it watered excessively for an hour (cue violins) so I left early. Still (being the trooper I am) I prepped myself for the next Turkey event, but thanks to my exhausted eye muscles got a headache, which took me out of all social activity and to bed by 8:30pm sober and pouty!

Luckily it's another beautiful day in paradise so this morning I'm clear eyed, not tired and heading to the beach on a Friday - score!

Stacks of friends.

Look at us, like a pair of lab rats! Without getting technical these are some of treatments I’ve been receiving for my headaches for the last four months. As well as chiropractic adjustments here I’ve got a cold lazer on my liver while my feet are in a detox foot bath. Meanwhile the loop on Renata’s shoulder is providing a healthy dose of pulsing magnets that penetrate deep into the tissue and cells. Of course clearly, laughter is always the best medicine.

And talking of laughter, there was a lot of that at Chelsea’s birthday party last night. It was a poetry/performance party that always brings out hidden talents. Here’s Anna reading to us and if you were so moved you took your turn. I read a couple of Spike Milligan classics, one being;

Said Hamlet to Ophelia,
I'll draw a sketch of thee,
What kind of pencil shall I use?
2B or not 2B?

Friends who are musicians supply great perks at a soiree such as this, Nathan and Gail (among others) provided some great entertainment and sweet moments with the guitar. Original creations and well known classics kept us entertained until I looked at the clock and it showed 11:58pm. I fled like Cinderella not because my 1993 Ford would turn into a pumpkin, but because I’m 47 3/4 and staying up any later costs me too much energetically the next day!

On another note entirely I commute to work past one of the last few working sugar mills in Hawaii. When this mill eventually shuts down, we'll lose one of the great guages of wind direction and strength! So may that day be long off ,coz today I'm heading Kanaha and will look toward the smoke with great anticipation.

Oddly I was behind the truck of a Chimney Sweep the other day and thought, "chim chimmery chim chimmery chim chim chiroo, where's the demand over here to clean chimneys & floo"? AND the driver didn't look anything like Dick Van Dyke or have big chimney sweep sticks loaded on his van which was very dissapointing and made me question his credibility. Blame Disney.

What age do you act?

There was a lot of imagination at play yesterday as I watched these three little girls entertain themselves.

Their favorite topics seemed to be fish and models, as they vacillated between posing for Vogue on the reef and diving porpoise like into the water. They stuck stones in their bikini tops giggling uncontrollably and maturing pebble by pebble, until it all became too much. Then they threw away the offending rocks instantly reverting back in years, swimming off effortlessly and back to their own age group.

Portrait of a young man searching for breast enhancing rocks (dude behind you)!

Of course it's all fun and games until someone gets an urchin in their foot.

It bugs me when I see 4 and 5 year olds tramping around as 'mini me' versions of their mothers, hand bags, heals and halter tops included. It sucks that people actually buy this garbage which blurs the line between adult and child. I can almost stomach it in teenagers but WTF, kids need to be kids. I was in Indo about 5 years ago and it was so refreshing to see and feel the energetic age appropriateness of all youngsters. God, can some one put my teeth in, grab my senior buss pass and tell me where the hell I left my cardie?

Ok having said all that once you reach a certain age, for god's sake don't act it!

That's more like it...but no crying like a girl when you get the urchin in your foot (there's no pleasing me)!

Innocent as charged.

I once had a psychic tell me that my fear of losing data stems back to a previous life as a scribe. Ill fortune fell upon me when mead (or what ever swill I was drinking back then) spilled on to the important documents I was working on, ruining them forever and costing me my life!

Crikey it’s no wonder I’m a bit twitchy this lifetime about losing data. Just ask my business partner Nancy, she’s had to endure many a head scratching hour wondering WTF is wrong with me as I’ve paced and lost sleep over a problem that has not yet occurred! So I do what any obsessive person would do, I back up three times a day at work, a forth to a memory stick as I walk out the door and we have an IT God who shows up weekly to check our systems. This overkill is what it takes to sooth my worried brow.

So when the hard drive crashed on my laptop at home this weekend, it was progress indeed for me to only lose my head for half a day to feelings of anxiety and impending doom. Still given that I lost it completely the last time, I’m feeling exonerated from all past wrong doing. Plus for the record it was the cat that knocked the mead, that spilled on the parchment, that ruined the data, that put me in jail, that hung me dead.


I shoulda quilled an extra copy......have you?

Random shots from last Wednesday.

When I look at this photo I feel tranquil.....when I looked at the waves she was going to surf, not so tranquil.

Looking at so many denim crotches remains me that good ol' Leeds United has been suffering not only from double groin injuries, but double entendres as well!

I've driven by Kanaha Pond a thousand times and finally stopped by to see what wildlife was actually there....hmmmmm it was a bit disappointing, mostly for the fish.

Nice day at the office. It's hard to know which I'd have more fun with, taking the pictures or having my picture taken.

Da fence.

......and what did you do last night?

Bag lady extraordinaire, self bagging was never so fun!

Cuntstable Crompton at your service. (yes, that is the correct spelling)!

He's just a sweet transvestite caveman from transsexual Paia, yes ladies and gentlemen it's Uli Walger.

Here's Darian.....well just being Darian

and Sid looking vicious.
Remember kids-reduce, reuse and recycle!