From work woes to rest and relaxation.

It 's been an intense week at work with the server that hosted both our e-mail and website going out of business with no notice. Not that big a deal if every thing's backed up - which we do a minimum of three times a day. Proper big deal if you don't back up the data on your website, which we left to said company that went belly up.

My friend Bill used to say there are three options with every job, cheap, fast and good. You only ever get two of them, so choose wisely. The scramble for our rebuild was fast and good......the bank balance took a hit for the team!

Suffice to say for the second week in a row I've not had my mid-week day off and let me tell you I've missed it.

This was long overdue.

My friend Ian and I went for the proverbial Sunday morning whale hunt. The ocean was as glassy as it gets, but after 90 minutes of paddling out the ultimate sighting was still elusive. Still - the joy is in the journey and it was impossible to ignore the fact that in late February we were cruising on the sea under our own steam on a gorgeous day, when we could be in England!

Going up! We finally converged with a mother and baby who swam gently and slowly along. After they dove we waited about 10 minutes before I said "I think it's wishful thinking that they'll surface in the same place", seconds later the mother exhaled a loud breath so close to us, that it took ours away.

These two are the result of an very successful Anglo-French accord.

Luckily for some, grasshopper was not on the menu.

A seed was planted months ago to give some attention to my yard and finally the plans are coming into fruition. Behold-before.....

.....and after.


And finally this week I'm super excited that I bought a new used surfboard. I'm hoping this declaration from the shaper means that despite the ineptitude of the rider - my new board will dispense what it says on the tin!

A true Hodgepodge.

For our office Christmas card this year, we decided a photo of the three of us would be a nice personal touch. Jesus, trying to get three women to like how they look in one photo took conservatively 30 shots! After one particularly hopeful (yet ultimately disappointing) round this was all we could see!

Talking of illusions, I shall call this shot 'giantess and lilliputian man'.

And while we're at it, here's an enormous head looking slightly like Noel Fielding.

Sundays are fun days at the beach. Camps are set up early with varying numbers of tents, coolers, beach chairs, toys, dogs and kids all playing in the sun. This is an especially large toy but trust me, everyone who rode in it had a smile on their face.

These two spent hours trying to balance on a board that was marginally too small for the job.

I've lived next to the same neighbors for 19 years and never once have I seen them move their boat from it's dry dock. Herbie (the owner) used to climb in and turn the engine on letting it tick over for an hour or so, but even that masculine activity has ceased. I've often wondered why they don't sell it, but as I looked out over my deck the other day I thought I might actually miss the old girl if they did. Go figure.

Mean while inside my house, one thing I'd never miss is the sight of my dirty, smelly recyclable containers. Sometimes I leave them on the counter so long that in an rash act of pure planet destroying laziness, I throw them away! Oh the guilt...

It's Thanksgiving and one of the bazillion things I'm thankful for, is that I'm motivated and heathy to play both on the ocean and off. Enjoy your turkey lurkey people and if you can't be with the ones you love, love the ones your with.

Sugar cane and nose flutes.

HC & S owns 37,000 acres on Maui and the old sugar mill at Puuanene is the last working factory of its kind on Maui. However, times they are a changing and bio fuel crops may be wave of this companies future. In January the Islands sugar industry was given a years reprieve to produce a higher yield, otherwise the economic reality of losing $45 million dollars over the last two years may claim another historic casualty.

Lets hope the research into alternative energy produces the results that (amongst others) the 800 workers want to see. The revitalization of this 130 year old company would be a positive boost in uncertain times, for the full story click here and I hope I paraphrased accurately!

On a brighter note, we have a new friend at the office. His name is Anthony and he's a talented bloke in ways you would not expect. We paid for him to tint our windows, but (trust me) we got a lot more than we bargained for. "I like your tattoo" I said, "It's based on my genealogy" he told me, "I resisted for ages because I'm not a tattoo kinda guy, but one day the words 'OK let's do it' came out of my mouth". From his Filipino background, the alligator teeth/scales running both ways give him protection, the birds represent the wind as he play the nose flute and the honeycomb represents his family.

Anthony and his magic flutes. from Sharon on Vimeo.

"Nose Flute"? I hear you say......well here's a small sample of this mans big talent. Corina and I both had the privilege of receiving the gift of a double flute private concert.

"Is that the phone ringing?" "don't worry the machine will get it". All in all it wasn't your average day at the office and how happy do we look?!

And finally, over the last few weeks natures morning greeting has been a flurry of purple snow on my back deck and I wanted to share.

Diverse amusements.

This for me is double the pleasure, double the fun. First, I get to go out and play on the water with the GoPro, then second I get to the edit the movie. The frustrating learning curve of imovie is beginning to dissipate (thanks for your patience Ely), which is making room for creativity and gratification in the editing process. In fact, if I'm honest I'm linking this not so much for the content (as you'll see), but more for the satisfaction of the completed end product.

This little nugget on the other hand needed no editing what so ever. About 6 weeks ago one of the large windows at my office (for not apparent reason) shattered. It's wooden replacement makes up for it's lack of vision by having the personality of a six year old boy! When it gets fixed next week, we'll all miss the juvenile snickering that comes with the high wind warnings in Kihei.



Finally, for some every day amusement, check out my clever friend Mikel's Daily Flounder.