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

dumbass

Have you ever been at work and been so irritated by something that you wonder to yourself, "What the #$%@ ?!" Today I had that feeling when one of my students made a very inappropriate comment. I only get to work with the kids for 25-30 minutes at a time so I really try to get as much out of them as I can. As the boys were sitting talking about some girl they had seen working at the animal shelter, in the middle of the lesson mind you, I asked them to get to their assignment. Of course, they ignored me and kept on talking and laughing with eachother. After telling them I thought they were being rude for NOT paying attention to their lessons, one of them had the nerve to tell the other that I was being bitchy because I hadn't had sex. Of course, I was appalled and I got up and walked out the door. How does one deal with this kind of language??? I wanted to yell at him and tell him to #%&# off, but what would be the point? So this boy thinks he will get the gift of a passing grade?! Oh HELL NO! He will be working for it. I am so sick of these kinds of students' S#@! Here's what I have for him...