Now that's a Marine man with some guns!
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Thursday, June 29, 2006
Changes in Life
Thursday, 29 June 2006
My dad and I got this on a recent email and he joked that I should put this as my outgoing message on my voicemail...
"I am not available right now, but thank you for caring enough to call. I am making some changes in my life. Please leave a message after the beep. If I do not return your call, you are one of the changes."
Funny.
Here are some recent changes I read about in the news today:
* The Sleater-Kinney band is going on an indefinite hiatus, finishing up their summer concerts and then, that's it. That's too bad. The last time I saw them in concert was at the Showbox in Seattle a couple of years ago.
* As mentioned in this month's issue of Time as well, we are becoming more isolated individuals in society with the increased usage of emails and text messaging. People have less close knit friendships, so it is becoming more important for individuals to make the effort to reach out to family and friends.
My dad and I got this on a recent email and he joked that I should put this as my outgoing message on my voicemail...
"I am not available right now, but thank you for caring enough to call. I am making some changes in my life. Please leave a message after the beep. If I do not return your call, you are one of the changes."
Funny.
Here are some recent changes I read about in the news today:
* The Sleater-Kinney band is going on an indefinite hiatus, finishing up their summer concerts and then, that's it. That's too bad. The last time I saw them in concert was at the Showbox in Seattle a couple of years ago.
* As mentioned in this month's issue of Time as well, we are becoming more isolated individuals in society with the increased usage of emails and text messaging. People have less close knit friendships, so it is becoming more important for individuals to make the effort to reach out to family and friends.
How Yoga Changes Your Body
Thursday, 29 June 2006
Yesterday when I weighed myself after yoga, on an empty stomach, I was a particular weight. Then, after my gallavanting during the day, and a few drinks later, when I weighed myself in the evening, I noticed I had gained 5 pounds! Can that actually be true?!
Well, this week, two of my yoga teachers and fellow yoginis have commented that I have lost weight. I don't routinely weigh myself, but I have noticed my body changing. After practice this morning, someone asked me, "How much weight have you lost? You look really toned." Apparently, I've lost about five pounds around my waistline and am becoming more toned in my abs. I am proud of that, and know that it's probably because I always push myself in each class. Perhaps it is because I've bumped my practices up to 5 or 6 days a week. My goal is to go everyday, but I'm not quite there yet.
It is interesting too because my eating habits have changed. The more I do yoga, the more my body rejects "bad" processed, oily, and heavy food. Hence, I have been drinking a lot of fresh squeezed carrot and apple juice, salads, and yogurt for dessert. Anyone who knows me knows that I eat like a pig, but graze like a cow. I still do indulge in snacks every once in awhile, knowing that it'll make me feel sick later.
Again, I become a spokesperson and advocate for how great Bikram yoga is, no matter how torturous and insane the 90 minute practice may sound. Funny thing is, it was a little overcast outside this morning, and I was actually cold when I walked out of the 100 degree class! But, now I've worked up an appetite and am ready to eat!
Yesterday when I weighed myself after yoga, on an empty stomach, I was a particular weight. Then, after my gallavanting during the day, and a few drinks later, when I weighed myself in the evening, I noticed I had gained 5 pounds! Can that actually be true?!
Well, this week, two of my yoga teachers and fellow yoginis have commented that I have lost weight. I don't routinely weigh myself, but I have noticed my body changing. After practice this morning, someone asked me, "How much weight have you lost? You look really toned." Apparently, I've lost about five pounds around my waistline and am becoming more toned in my abs. I am proud of that, and know that it's probably because I always push myself in each class. Perhaps it is because I've bumped my practices up to 5 or 6 days a week. My goal is to go everyday, but I'm not quite there yet.
It is interesting too because my eating habits have changed. The more I do yoga, the more my body rejects "bad" processed, oily, and heavy food. Hence, I have been drinking a lot of fresh squeezed carrot and apple juice, salads, and yogurt for dessert. Anyone who knows me knows that I eat like a pig, but graze like a cow. I still do indulge in snacks every once in awhile, knowing that it'll make me feel sick later.
Again, I become a spokesperson and advocate for how great Bikram yoga is, no matter how torturous and insane the 90 minute practice may sound. Funny thing is, it was a little overcast outside this morning, and I was actually cold when I walked out of the 100 degree class! But, now I've worked up an appetite and am ready to eat!
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
A Well Spent Day Off
Wednesday, 28 June 2006
Today I had a day off since Dad had a doctor's appointment. So, after my brother got my dad out of bed and watched him in the morning, my stepmom took the afternoon off from work. I spent the day having a great workout at yoga in the morning (this time I took two advil just in case, as I worked through pain yesterday). I met Miya and baby Taiga for lunch at Jimbo's for tempura udon. We went to her chiropracter's appointment and doctor's to get xrays for her tweaked back. She threw out her back the other day and lifting the baby in and out of the car has strained her back, so I helped her today by doing all the lifting and transferring and watching the baby while she was being examined by the doctor.
Joel picked me up at 5 pm, and although I felt underdressed in my tank top and shorts and slippers, we headed to a fundraiser at Rumours Nightclub. The attire ended up being fine as he remarked that the crowd was the epitomy of "Hawai'is blue collar class", supporting a softball team fundraising event. We munched on pupus, listened to people get door prizes, talked about dating stories, and drank strawberry margaritas. We then headed off to Nashville, a country bar (probably the only one here) in Waikiki, to pick up Joel's mom who teaches line dancing there on Wednesday nights. We saw his brother Adam there too who dj's there, and other friends, who hooked us up with drinks. We had fun doing a few line dances to Steve Earle's "Copperhead Road" and another slower one to "Black Velvet". It was so much fun. I told Joel we have to come back every Wednesday. His mom's a good teacher, and she's been teaching there for over 5 years. She has quite a following.
They dropped me off at Miya's to pick up my truck, and I visited with them while I sobered up from my evening out before heading home. It was a fun day!
Today I had a day off since Dad had a doctor's appointment. So, after my brother got my dad out of bed and watched him in the morning, my stepmom took the afternoon off from work. I spent the day having a great workout at yoga in the morning (this time I took two advil just in case, as I worked through pain yesterday). I met Miya and baby Taiga for lunch at Jimbo's for tempura udon. We went to her chiropracter's appointment and doctor's to get xrays for her tweaked back. She threw out her back the other day and lifting the baby in and out of the car has strained her back, so I helped her today by doing all the lifting and transferring and watching the baby while she was being examined by the doctor.
Joel picked me up at 5 pm, and although I felt underdressed in my tank top and shorts and slippers, we headed to a fundraiser at Rumours Nightclub. The attire ended up being fine as he remarked that the crowd was the epitomy of "Hawai'is blue collar class", supporting a softball team fundraising event. We munched on pupus, listened to people get door prizes, talked about dating stories, and drank strawberry margaritas. We then headed off to Nashville, a country bar (probably the only one here) in Waikiki, to pick up Joel's mom who teaches line dancing there on Wednesday nights. We saw his brother Adam there too who dj's there, and other friends, who hooked us up with drinks. We had fun doing a few line dances to Steve Earle's "Copperhead Road" and another slower one to "Black Velvet". It was so much fun. I told Joel we have to come back every Wednesday. His mom's a good teacher, and she's been teaching there for over 5 years. She has quite a following.
They dropped me off at Miya's to pick up my truck, and I visited with them while I sobered up from my evening out before heading home. It was a fun day!
Expensive Housing in Hawai'i
Cynthia Oi wrote a great column in the Honolulu Star Bulletin. Read below...
With isle housing, maybe money talks too much
AT both sites, breezes fetch salt spray from the sea. At dawn and evening, the sun casts equally enchanting light across the sky over them and waves soothe in identical rushes of the ocean's constancy.
Both depict a thin illusion of Hawaii, but are separated by more than the 20-odd miles between them.
"Got $40 million?" chirped a news broadcaster in a stale lead-in to a story about one of the locations, a near-three acres of land up for sale in the wealthy enclave of Kahala.
For that astounding price, you get a vacant lot. There's no pseudo-Mediterranean, blue-tile-roofed mansion, no tiger-lily, bougainvillea, areca palm landscaped gardens, no moss-rock koi ponds or marble "infiniti" swimming pools.
As a matter of fact, the expensive parcel's weedy brown grass looks just about the same as the grounds of Keaau Beach Park, but there on the far reaches of the Leeward Coast are homes. Not anything a "got $40 million" type would want, though.
Assembled from tarps stretched open for daytime living and cheap tents for sleeping or protection from the occasional shower, scores of people have converted Keaau and other public parks into their own private quarters. The seasoned ones pass on advice to new arrivals, telling them to "stay out of sight, out of mind" even as their increasing number makes that impossible.
Hawaii, like almost everywhere in America, has always accommodated rich and poor. Only it seems that the breach has gotten wider as the affluent are indulgently welcomed to the point of embarrassment.
The Donalds and Hiltons win almost drooling cheers for just showing off blueprints of the extravagant, luxury, five-star, top-of-the-line, opulent, plush, lush vacation apartments they will build for those who can say yes to the "got millions" question.
Having the rich come to the islands to buy and sell is viewed as validation, "as testament," said one politician, that Hawaii is "one of the world's most celebrated destinations."
But we already know that, don't we? Why else would thousands pull up roots in Beverly Hills to sink them here or send out tendrils from Dallas and Houston to embed them in local soil?
Yet, this apparently escapes the movers and shakers in Hawaii. Or maybe it doesn't. It may be that the movers and shakers want to jostle more cash into their own pockets so they, too, can say yes. And in making their pitch to gratify the Donalds, they tell the rest of us that we'll share in the abundance, that tax revenue and spending by the rich eventually will trickle down.
OK, some of it will, but the lion's share won't. Not really. The big money goes mostly to those who have big money to invest in the first place. That's fair, but what's grating are the claims that they are doing good for Hawaii.
If that were true, the Donalds also would be investing in housing for the people who take care of "yes" people's dwellings, who fix the sewers into which "yes" people's wastes flow and who clean the sidewalks and patch the holes they stroll and drive on.
Developers of housing projects sing a similar tune. After all, they say, they are putting in needed infrastructure, but forget that the infrastructure is necessary due to their building. They say that 20 percent of the housing they build will be "affordable," but what they obscure is that the sale of the non-affordable houses will be priced to make up the difference and that law requires the 20 percent anyway.
So don't give me generosity. Don't give me doing good. It's money that's talking here and is it ever loud. Maybe it's time to say no to the ones who can say yes.
Cynthia Oi has been on the staff of the Star-Bulletin since 1976. She can be reached at coi@starbulletin.com.
With isle housing, maybe money talks too much
AT both sites, breezes fetch salt spray from the sea. At dawn and evening, the sun casts equally enchanting light across the sky over them and waves soothe in identical rushes of the ocean's constancy.
Both depict a thin illusion of Hawaii, but are separated by more than the 20-odd miles between them.
"Got $40 million?" chirped a news broadcaster in a stale lead-in to a story about one of the locations, a near-three acres of land up for sale in the wealthy enclave of Kahala.
For that astounding price, you get a vacant lot. There's no pseudo-Mediterranean, blue-tile-roofed mansion, no tiger-lily, bougainvillea, areca palm landscaped gardens, no moss-rock koi ponds or marble "infiniti" swimming pools.
As a matter of fact, the expensive parcel's weedy brown grass looks just about the same as the grounds of Keaau Beach Park, but there on the far reaches of the Leeward Coast are homes. Not anything a "got $40 million" type would want, though.
Assembled from tarps stretched open for daytime living and cheap tents for sleeping or protection from the occasional shower, scores of people have converted Keaau and other public parks into their own private quarters. The seasoned ones pass on advice to new arrivals, telling them to "stay out of sight, out of mind" even as their increasing number makes that impossible.
Hawaii, like almost everywhere in America, has always accommodated rich and poor. Only it seems that the breach has gotten wider as the affluent are indulgently welcomed to the point of embarrassment.
The Donalds and Hiltons win almost drooling cheers for just showing off blueprints of the extravagant, luxury, five-star, top-of-the-line, opulent, plush, lush vacation apartments they will build for those who can say yes to the "got millions" question.
Having the rich come to the islands to buy and sell is viewed as validation, "as testament," said one politician, that Hawaii is "one of the world's most celebrated destinations."
But we already know that, don't we? Why else would thousands pull up roots in Beverly Hills to sink them here or send out tendrils from Dallas and Houston to embed them in local soil?
Yet, this apparently escapes the movers and shakers in Hawaii. Or maybe it doesn't. It may be that the movers and shakers want to jostle more cash into their own pockets so they, too, can say yes. And in making their pitch to gratify the Donalds, they tell the rest of us that we'll share in the abundance, that tax revenue and spending by the rich eventually will trickle down.
OK, some of it will, but the lion's share won't. Not really. The big money goes mostly to those who have big money to invest in the first place. That's fair, but what's grating are the claims that they are doing good for Hawaii.
If that were true, the Donalds also would be investing in housing for the people who take care of "yes" people's dwellings, who fix the sewers into which "yes" people's wastes flow and who clean the sidewalks and patch the holes they stroll and drive on.
Developers of housing projects sing a similar tune. After all, they say, they are putting in needed infrastructure, but forget that the infrastructure is necessary due to their building. They say that 20 percent of the housing they build will be "affordable," but what they obscure is that the sale of the non-affordable houses will be priced to make up the difference and that law requires the 20 percent anyway.
So don't give me generosity. Don't give me doing good. It's money that's talking here and is it ever loud. Maybe it's time to say no to the ones who can say yes.
Cynthia Oi has been on the staff of the Star-Bulletin since 1976. She can be reached at coi@starbulletin.com.
Monday, June 26, 2006
Sunday, June 25, 2006
A Yakudoshi, A Movie in Tokyo, A Scottish Festival, and Hooters...Now THAT'S A Way To Spend a Sunday!
Sunday, 25 June 2006
No yoga this morning as Joel was going to pick me up early. Joel picked me up at 9 am to head to Hale Koa hotel for his brother-in-law's Yakudoshi, a Japanese tradition of celebrating the 41st birthday. It was also a celebration of life with good friends and family (about 400 guests), as Keali'i has been fighting colon and testicular cancer ever since he overcame his battle with leukemia. His wife, Noe (Joel's younger sister), is younger than me, and has already had to deal with so much in their few years of marriage. Since he was a firefighter for a few years, he knows my brother too, and we just made the connection that my brother attended one of his fundraiser's a few months ago. My heart goes out to Keali'i (aka Isaac) and Noe.
Had a lovely buffet of food, visited with old classmates and family friends, had fun listening to stories of debauchery, hilarious emcees telling embarrasing stories of Keali'i, the YMCA choir (that he used to belong to) sing songs, seeing his kenpo teacher promote him to a new level, as well as Keali'i thanking Noe for her support and love through such a difficult time.
After picture taking and stuffing ourselves with an eclectic brunch buffet spread, Joel and I went to go see "Fast and Furious" to get out of the heat of the day, of course stopping at Dave & Buster's first to play some shooting and racing video games. Then, we went to check out the Scottish Festival at Kapi'olani Park with his mom and Rick. Took pictures of the medieval dressed characters sparring, and then took off again to meet Joel's girlfriend Ei and drive around Waikiki a bit. We stopped near the boat harbor and watched the fisherman fishing, drank Jamba Juice, then dropped her off at work. Joel and I headed out once more to meet his mom and friends at Hooter's. We ate hot wings, laughed at baby Connor's love of cleaning the table, and after drooling over Connor's grilled cheese sandwich, (remember I had already eaten nearly a dozen hot wings already at this point) Rick and I had to split one ourselves.
With all the wine, rich fancy foods, cheesecake on a stick, lunch buffet, buttery movie popcorn, hot wings, and grilled cheese I had this weekend, my body will be ready for detox in yoga tomorrow!
No yoga this morning as Joel was going to pick me up early. Joel picked me up at 9 am to head to Hale Koa hotel for his brother-in-law's Yakudoshi, a Japanese tradition of celebrating the 41st birthday. It was also a celebration of life with good friends and family (about 400 guests), as Keali'i has been fighting colon and testicular cancer ever since he overcame his battle with leukemia. His wife, Noe (Joel's younger sister), is younger than me, and has already had to deal with so much in their few years of marriage. Since he was a firefighter for a few years, he knows my brother too, and we just made the connection that my brother attended one of his fundraiser's a few months ago. My heart goes out to Keali'i (aka Isaac) and Noe.
Had a lovely buffet of food, visited with old classmates and family friends, had fun listening to stories of debauchery, hilarious emcees telling embarrasing stories of Keali'i, the YMCA choir (that he used to belong to) sing songs, seeing his kenpo teacher promote him to a new level, as well as Keali'i thanking Noe for her support and love through such a difficult time.
After picture taking and stuffing ourselves with an eclectic brunch buffet spread, Joel and I went to go see "Fast and Furious" to get out of the heat of the day, of course stopping at Dave & Buster's first to play some shooting and racing video games. Then, we went to check out the Scottish Festival at Kapi'olani Park with his mom and Rick. Took pictures of the medieval dressed characters sparring, and then took off again to meet Joel's girlfriend Ei and drive around Waikiki a bit. We stopped near the boat harbor and watched the fisherman fishing, drank Jamba Juice, then dropped her off at work. Joel and I headed out once more to meet his mom and friends at Hooter's. We ate hot wings, laughed at baby Connor's love of cleaning the table, and after drooling over Connor's grilled cheese sandwich, (remember I had already eaten nearly a dozen hot wings already at this point) Rick and I had to split one ourselves.
With all the wine, rich fancy foods, cheesecake on a stick, lunch buffet, buttery movie popcorn, hot wings, and grilled cheese I had this weekend, my body will be ready for detox in yoga tomorrow!
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