Why I love my morning coffee...

Every morning, I wake up, grind my coffee beans, brew my coffee and go to work.  Lots of people drink coffee on their way to work.  Now, who cares? I do.  I don't just like my morning coffee...I LOVE my morning coffee.  By 6:45 every work day, I have four cups of brewed coffee in my giant travel tumbler or two in my Starbucks reusable "looks like a paper cup" mug.  So...why coffee?  Here's why:

• I get to make lotsa noise grinding my own beans and I get to control the size of the grind.  Thanks to Chris, I think I have 20 different grind sizes.  I've got it set midway between a fine and medium grind and it stays there.
• I get to control how weak or strong I make it.  I've got the simple ratio called One-to-One.  Not complicated.  Some days it's a smaller scoop and on those other days...heaping scoops.  Be been accused of mud-like coffee, but hey, if you don't like it, don't drink the coffee I make for me.  I make it the way I like it...not for anyone else.
• It smells so good and helps me wake up.  The smell of coffee is like a warm hug in the morning.  It's like, "Good morning, Cindy!  Your day will be just as good, as me". I love the smell of coffee shops, too, but who can afford it everyday?  I'd go just for the smell, but I think having it in my own home is just faster.
• I can put it in a reusable Starbucks travel cup that looks like the paper cup and people actually believe I buy Starbucks daily...oh yah, right...like I could afford that.  I spent the whole dollar for the reusable cup only because I an a ten cent discount if I actually buy coffee there...which I don't actually do.
• I can add any of those flavored creamers to my coffee and it tastes just like one of those expensive ones from Starbucks but without my wallet screaming
• It makes me all warm and cozy on my ride to work
• Caffeine, caffeine, CAFFEINE!
• I'm awake...or waking up...on my way to work
• It just tastes good
• Finally...BECAUSE I JUST DO!

is bored, was bored, is still bored

I am so bored today...I hate grading papers.
I am also irritated because on the day that I am going to be out of school at a convention, there's going to be the homecoming coronation in which the homecoming court...which I have been coaching on a dance...will be dancing! I sure hope someone decides to video it and put it up on my FB...
Still...bored bored bored...

...It's been a long time :)

OK, so I haven't posted anything for what, a year? So what?! Who cares? I've been busy with everything. Still gardening. This year, I'm growing these monster black beauty eggplants. We harvested the first one and it was like 2 pounds?! Talk about a monster eggplant! We made tempura with it and boy, it was good. Talk about "broke da mout ono kine grindz." We planted some Hawaiian chili peppers and habaneros as well. Chris has a friend who gave him some weird chili pepper called a Bhut Jolokia. It's some weird Nagaland chili pepper. I looked it up and it translates to "ghost chili pepper"... OK, whatever!

Nothing really that new except I'm supposed to be moving up a class at school...in pay that is. Although they are furloughing me 17 days this school year. That sucks. I figured it out. I have less than 5 days each with each of my kids now for the entire month of October. Can you say, WTF?! Sure, OK...Yah! I'm not working in the behavior class anymore. I'm working in a "real" classroom now with "real" kids. I now teach Algebra and Geometry. Who would have thunk it?!

OMG, Chris is singing in falsetto to Diana Ross. "I never knew love like this before..." and oh wow...I didn't know his voice got that high. He is so weird. I like it when he sings the "wake me up before you kaukau song..." instead of the real Wham! version. That's ok...ok, enough ranting :) C YA ALL LATER!

Good food, good friends

So my friend emails me and tells me she's going to be visiting the islands in a few days...so what do I do...I tell her to come to Hilo and guess what? SHE DID! I am so glad that she did. It's been years since I've seen Karen and it's been like no time has passed. We talked the same as before and it was a total trip. Karen finally moved back to C anada and got her teaching credential. That was awesome so I told her to get a job in Hawaii. We'll have to wait and see if she does. Hawaii, being Hawaii likes to make it difficult for people to get jobs. Go figure. Well, one of these days, I'll see Karen again and see how things are going. Maybe next time I'll see her in Canada!

I love fishing. Well, I don't love it...but I love it. Here's 10 reasons why:

1. You don't have to have any special skills
2. You can just kick back and relax
3. You don't have to fish for any specific amount of time
4. If you have a fishing rod, you can fish just about anywhere
5. If you don't catch anything, no one really cares
6. Fishing doesn't make you tired
7. It doesn't cost a lot to go fishing
8. You can eat what you catch (if you really want to)
9. Fishing is relaxing
10. You can fish by yourself or with friends

But a funny thing about fishing is this...you can catch some really interesting fish and increase the size of the fish every time you tell the story about how you caught it.

What U Can Get For $1000

Did you know that for the mere price of $1000, you can get a truck? Before we moved to Hilo, we needed something to transport our large, lemme say, huge pictures. We spent a little too much money on art work, so we needed to spend a little too much on transporting it here. At the time, we also needed something to transport garbage too and from the dump. No such thing as garbage pick up around here! If you want to get rid of your rubbish, you gotta take it to the dump yourself. I wasn't about to put garbage in the trunk of my car, so, what was the alternative? A rubbish truck! What as little as $1000 can get you...Go figure!

Life in Hilo

There's no doubt that I like Hilo. In fact, I love it. We moved here in July 2007 and we've done so many things since we've been here. After all the initial moving in, we did the following:

• planted all kinds of veggies - eggplant (white, green and the regular purple), beans - (green, purple and pencilpod), tomatoes (roma, black zebra and persimmon), rainbow chard, snap peas, sugar peas, choy sum, bell peppers (green, yellow, red) and papaya...just to name some of the stuff
• planted all kinds of flowers - sunflowers (mammoth, teddy bear, autumn harvest, vanilla ice - yes, it is actually called vanilla ice), marigolds (court jester, disco flame, jaguar, sunset giants), zinnias (candy cane, old mexico, scarlet flame, giants, peppermint, burpeeana, tetras), calendulas, foxgloves, sweet peas, impatiens, portulaca....and some other ones I forgot the names of...
• fished - but caught nothing
• swam - although not in Hilo, we have gone to the other side of the island...Hapuna Beach, Spencer Beach...
• caught bugs - yes, caught bugs...Chris is in some sort of biology class and he has to catch and pin bugs and weeds. Don't ask me...he's turning hippie on me. Oh well, better that than raging alcoholic!
• taught Ollie how to dance - well, sort of
• taken long motorcycle rides. we found that the rides down to the southern part of the island is pretty boring...that is unless you're going about 90-100 mph and going around cars. but mostly, it's pretty straight...like i said, boring. The ride up the Hamakua Coast is really nice and we've stopped here and there just to get a Diet Coke. We found that the ride up Saddle Road, which is supposed to be off-limits to rental car peoples, is the most fun. There's a lot of twisties and you can lean the bikes over pretty far if you're going fast enough.
• taken the bikes out for long rides